Forgery and Counterforgery: The Use of Literary Deceit in Early Christian Polemics (69 page)

What can we say, on the other hand, about the author of 1 Peter? It is widely noted that the language of the book is that of an educated Greek-speaking author. J. H. Elliott notes that the polished Greek style “[reveals] numerous traces
of literary refinement”
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and “displays abundant affinities in vocabulary and style to classical writings, evidencing ‘rhetorical competence’ and ‘literary refinement’ of the author.”
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P. Achtemeier notes that, among other things, the author uses anaphora for parallel phrases; he employs antithetic as well as synthetic parallelism; he uses coordinate parallel expressions in which the first is negative, the second is positive, so as to stress a particular idea; in some places he produces a rhythmic structure and occasional long periods.
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Twice the author uses
with the optative, a refinement not found among most
koine
writers (3:14, 17). It seems scarcely possible that this is the writing of an Aramaic-speaking peasant from the hinterlands.

A related issue is the author’s use of the Septuagint. Jews in rural Palestine familiar with Scripture would have heard it read in Hebrew. The vast majority of them would not have the opportunity or ability to study it on the page. The author of 1 Peter, on the other hand, is intimately familiar with the Jewish Scriptures. Apart from the quotation in 4:8, which is sometimes recognized as a direct translation of Proverbs 10:12 from the Hebrew,
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the author invariably cites Scripture according to the Septuagint. This too is barely conceivable in a Galilean fisherman raised to speak Aramaic.

It is commonly argued that since Peter became a missionary to foreign lands after Jesus’ death (Gal. 2:7; 1 Cor. 9:5), he must have picked up a knowledge of Greek in his travels. The reality, however, is that we simply have no way of knowing how Peter engaged in his missionary work. Did he use an interpreter? Did he learn enough Greek to communicate more easily? Even if he did so, that would scarcely qualify him to write a highly literary composition. Everyone in the Greek-speaking world could speak Greek. But only those with extensive training could learn to read. And only those who went past the first few years of training could learn how to compose a writing. Training in composition came only after everything else was mastered at the end of one’s time with a grammatikos: alphabet, syllables, writing one’s name, copying, reading scriptio continua, studying the poets, and so forth. It took years, plus a good deal of native talent, to become proficient. When exactly would Peter have found the time and resources to go back to school? And what evidence is there from the ancient world that
anyone
received a primary and secondary education precisely as an adult? To my knowledge there is no evidence at all.

In combination with all the other evidence indicated at the outset, there is really only one viable conclusion. The book of 1 Peter was not written by Peter, but by someone falsely claiming to be Peter. It is, in short, a forgery.
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There have been numerous attempts to exonerate the author of 1 Peter of the charge that he wrote to mislead his reader into thinking he was Peter. As seen already, as far back as 1808 Cludius argued that 1:1 involved a textual corruption, where “the presbyter” was altered to read “the apostle Peter.” A somewhat more interesting emendation was suggested by K. M. Fisher, who proposed that the book was originally written as a (Deutero-)Pauline epistle: rather than
in 1:1 the author wrote
.
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This would make sense of the Pauline character of the letter otherwise, about which I will be speaking momentarily, although it would not get the author off the forger’s hook, as in either case he would be claiming to be someone other than who he was.

Sometimes it is argued that Peter is the authority behind the letter, who commissioned someone else to write it for him. L. Goppelt and (many) others have suggested that it was written (ultimately) by Silvanus
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; J. G. Eichhorn postulated that it was Mark
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; Seufert put forward the author of Acts
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; and Streeter, going yet further out on the precarious limb, proposed Ariston of Smyrna.
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The one thing all of these guesses have in common is that they are based on virtually no evidence whatsoever. In addition, quite apart from the speculation involving specific names, we have already seen that there is nothing to suggest that it was an acceptable practice—or even a practice at all—for an “author” to have someone else write a work for him.
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If he did commission such a work, this other person would be the author.

More commonly scholars have provided a toned-down version of the “commission” theory and suggested that the style, and possibly to some degree the substance, of the letter was provided by a secretary. More often than not, the secretary is named as Silvanus, in light of the conclusion of 5:12:
Brox notes several of the problems with this identification of the Greek stylist behind the letter. For one
thing, transferring responsibility for the wording of the letter to Silvanus does not actually solve the problem of the Greek, since he too was an Aramaic-speaking Jew from Palestine (Acts 15:22). Moreover, if he did compose the letter, then, once again, it is he, rather than Peter, who was its real author. But even more, it is implausible to think that Silvanus wrote the letter, given his self-praise, then, in 5:12, and his reference, to himself, as having written the letter “through” himself. But even more important, as is now widely recognized, to write a letter
someone is not to use that person as a secretary but as the letter carrier. 5:12 is not indicating that Silvanus composed the letter but that he took it to its destination.
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The ultimate problem with this view, however, is the one I dealt with at length in the preceding chapter. There is virtually nothing to support the so-called secretary hypothesis, which instead of ancient evidence rests on scholarly speculation. And one should always try to think through how, exactly, the hypothesis is supposed to have worked in a specific instance. In the case of 1 Peter, Peter himself could not have dictated this letter in Greek to a secretary any more than he could have written it in Greek. To do so would have required him to be perfectly fluent in Greek, to have mastered rhetorical techniques in Greek, and to have had an intimate familiarity with the Jewish Scriptures in Greek. None of that is plausible. Nor can one easily think that he dictated the letter in Aramaic and the secretary (Silvanus or anyone else) translated it into Greek. The letter does not read like a Greek translation of an Aramaic original, but as an original Greek composition with Greek rhetorical flourishes. Moreover the letter presupposes the knowledge of the Greek Old Testament, so the person who composed the letter (whether orally or in writing) must have known the Scriptures in Greek.

Given the lack of evidence for the use of secretaries in the ways needed for Peter to stand as the ultimate authority behind the letter, one is left having to make a choice. Which view is more probable, historically? A scenario that does not have any known analogy (Peter asking someone else to write the treatise in his name in a different language) or a scenario that has a very large number of analogies, since it happened all the time? Forgeries happened all the time. Surely that is the best explanation for the letter.

Apart from the name “Peter” at the outset of the letter and the reference to Rome (“Babylon”) at the end, there is nothing in the book of 1 Peter to tie
it specifically to the Petrine tradition. This makes the book decidedly different from all the other canonical books we have looked at so far, the Deutero-Pauline epistles that are clearly in trajectories that could trace themselves back to Paul, and 2 Peter, which goes out of its way to claim Petrine origins. In the case of 1 Peter, the authorial name is attached simply to provide apostolic credentials. There is nothing about the book itself that would make anyone think that it is Peter’s in particular.

According to Galatians, Peter was the apostle-missionary to Jews (Gal. 2:8–9). But this book is not addressed to Jews, Peter’s concern, but to gentiles. Thus 1:14 speaks of the “passions of your former ignorance” (a phrase hard to ascribe to Jews, but standard polemic against pagans); 1:18 refers to the readers as ransomed from the “futile manner of conduct passed down by their ancestors” (difficult to ascribe to Jews from a writer who sees Scripture as given by God); and most decisively, the author applies to his readers the words of Hosea 1:6, 9: “formerly you were not the people but now you are the people of God” (2:10). The author is speaking to converted pagans.
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This is not the apostle to the Jews. And so, when he speaks of their “dispersion” in 1:1 he is not referring to the Jewish diaspora; these are Christians who are living away from their “true home” in heaven, temporarily.
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