Forgery and Counterforgery: The Use of Literary Deceit in Early Christian Polemics (77 page)

32
. H.-M. Schenk and K. M. Fischer,
Einleitung in die Schriften des NT
(Berlin: Evangelische Verlagsanstalt, 1978), vol. 1. 199–203.

33
.
A Commentary on 1 Peter
(Grand Rapids, MI: Eerdmans, 1993), pp. 14–15.

34
.
Einleitung in das Neue Testament
(Leipzig: Weidmannischen, 1810), pp. 617–18.

35
. “Das Verwandtschaftsverhältnis des ersten Petrusbriefs und Epheserbriefs,”
ZWT
(1881): 379–80.

36
.
The Primitive Church
(New York: Macmillan, 1929), pp. 136–39.

37
. See pp. 218–22.

38
. Most recently see Lutz Doering, “Apostle, Co-Elder, and Witness of Suffering: Author Construction and Peter Image in First Peter,” in Jörg Frey et al., eds.,
Pseudepigraphie und Verfasserfiktion
, pp. 645–81. In other Christian writings from about the same time it is clear that writing “through” someone meant that the person carried the letter. Thus, decisively, Ign. Rom. 10. 1, Phil. 11.2, Smyr 12.1, Polyc-Phil. 14.1, and even Acts 15:22–23—where again Silas/Silvanus is designated as the letter carrier. Did the author of 1 Peter know this tradition of Silas and reemploy it here? Thus Harnack,
Die Chronologie der altchristlichen Literatur bis Eusebius
(Leipzig: J. C. Hinrichs, 1897–1904), 1. 459.

39
. The claim sometimes made (e.g., Elliott, “Peter, First Epistle of,”
ABD
5. 273) that since the author appeals to Jewish Scripture his readers must have been, or included, Jews overlooks the fact that gentiles in the church also used Scripture and that numerous writings, even in the New Testament, are directed to gentiles but use sophisticated modes of interpreting the “Old” Testament (cf. 1 Corinthians).

40
. When Elliott argues in
Home for the Homeless: A Sociological Exegesis of 1 Peter, Its Situation and Strategy
(Philadelphia: Fortress, 1981) that the language of “resident alien” is to be taken literally as a description of the recipients, not figuratively in the sense of life in this world, apart from one’s heavenly home, he makes some interesting sociohistorical points. But it is hard to believe that the author imagined all of his readers literally to be resident aliens wherever they happened to dwell. Would the letter not be read in churches with a variety of social groups present?

41
. John Mark is connected with Peter in Acts 12–13; Silvanus could conceivably be thought of as loosely connected with Peter because of Acts 15. But this is very weak, since there he is connected with all the apostles, including Paul. Moreover, it is important to recall, as will be argued at greater length below, Acts too is invested in making links between Peter and Paul, and does so in no small measure by claiming that they had the same associates.

42
. The one exception is the Coptic Apocalypse of Peter, which certainly postdates 1 Peter. See further the discussion on pp. 407–12.

43
. “Man kann unbedingt behaupten, daß, wenn unserem ‘Briefe’… das erste Wort
Petrus
fehlte, niemand auf die Vermutung, er sei von Petrus verfaßt, geraten sein würde.”
Einleitung in das NT
, 7th ed. (Tübingen, 1931), pp. 192–93. I find Doering unpersuasive with regard to the point that the author is intent on painting a distinct portrayal of Peter (“Apostle, Co-Elder, and Witness of Suffering”). The allusions to Peter, if they exist at all outside of 1:1, are far too sparse and indeterminate.

44
. Specifically, the views of Schwegler are not far off the mark: “[1 Peter is] the attempt of a Pauline author to mediate between the separate directions of Petrine and Pauline writers by putting into the mouth of Peter the witness to the orthodoxy of his fellow apostle Paul, a depiction, colored somewhat in a Petrine fashion, of the Pauline teaching.… We thus must recognize in the undeniably apologetic tendencies of this letter a historical situation, a historical motive, not from the apostolic, but from the post-apostolic era …” (“[1 Peter ist] der Versuch eines Pauliners, die getrennten Richtungen der Petriner und Pauliner dadurch zu vermitteln, dass dem Petrus ein Rechtgläubigkeitszeugnis für seinen Mitapostel Paulus, eine etwas petrinisch gefärbte Darstellung des paulinischen Lehrbegriffs in den Mund gelegt wird.… Wir haben also in der, nun einmal unleugbaren apologetischen Tendenz unseres Briefes eine historische Situation, ein historisches Motiv nicht der apostolischen, sondern der nachapostolischen Zeit zu erkennen”)
Das nachapostolische Zeitalter
II, 24 (as quoted in Prostmeier,
Handlungsmodellen
, p. 27). The difference from the perspective I map out here will be clear. Unlike Baur, Schwegler, and others of their ilk, I do not propose a master plan that encompasses the entire sweep of early Christian history, including the sense that this entire history was divided between Paulinists and Petrines, the single greatest fault of the Tübingen Schule. On the contrary, I think the early Christian tradition was far more fragmented than the Baur thesis allows.

45
. Goppelt,
Commentary
, 28–30; Achtemeier,
1 Peter
Hermeneia (Minneapolis: Fortress, 1996), 15–19; Elliott
1 Peter
Anchor Bible (New Haven, CT: Yale University Press, 2000), pp. 20–39. Jens Herzer,
Petrus oder Paulus? Studien über das Verhältnis des Ersten Petrusbriefes zur paulinischen Tradition
(Tübingen: Mohr Siebeck, 1998).

46
. Among older scholars who did not shy away from seeing the Pauline resonances of the book, see V. McNabb, “Date and Influence of the First Epistle of St. Peter,”
Irish Ecclesiastical Record
45 (1935): 596–613; F. W. Lewis, “Note on the Date of the First Epistle of Peter,”
The Expositor
5, 10 (1899): 319–20; W. Trilling, “Zum Petrusamt in NT,”
ThQ
151 (1971): 123–26; K. Kertelge,
Gemeinde und Amt im NT
(München: Kösel, 1972), p. 138.

47
. William Schutter,
Hermeneutic and Composition in 1 Peter
(Tübingen: Mohr Siebeck, 1989).

48
. For this point to stand, it scarcely matters that Paul is not recorded in Acts or the surviving letters as visiting all these provinces. He was known as the missionary to Asia Minor.

49
. See Bart D. Ehrman,
The Orthodox Corruption of Scripture
, pp. 233–38.

50
. See, e.g., Mitton, “The Relationship Between 1 Peter and Ephesians”; Kazuhioto Shimada, “Is 1 Peter Dependent on Ephesians? A Critique of C. L. Mitton,”
AJBI
17 (1991): 77–196; and K. Shimada; “Is 1 Peter Dependent on Romans?”
AJBI
19 (1993): 87–137. These questions go all the way back to 1777 and J. D. Michaelis’s claim that Peter had read Romans; so Herzer,
Petrus oder Paulus?
p. 5. For a negative judgment, see Achtemeier,
1 Peter
, pp. 15–19.

51
. “… aktualisiert für eine neue Situation paulinisches Erbe—und das im Namen des Petrus!” Schenk and Fischer, p. 202.

52
. Lindemann,
Paulus
, p. 258.

53
.
1 Peter
, p. 18.

54
. As some examples: somewhat oddly, the formulation that Christ “suffered”
in 2:21; 3:18 never occurs in Paul (although Paul does indicate that Christ “died” for us Rom. 5:8; and for our sins in 1 Cor. 15:3.). In fact, Paul never uses
in reference to Christ. Christ as an
or
2:25 is never found in Paul; for this author, however, Christ is the chief Shepherd, and the leaders are to shepherd his flock (5:2–4). Possibly most striking, Christians are to continue living life “in the flesh” (4:1–2), a view Paul would have found either puzzling or downright offensive.

55
. Wolfgang Trilling, “Zum Petrusamt im Neuen Testament: Traditionsgeschichtliche Überlegungen anhand von Matthäus, 1 Petrus und Johannes,”
TQ
151 (1971): pp. 123, 126.

56
. “Situation und Sprache der Minderheit im ersten Petrusbrief,”
Kairós
n.f. 19 (1977): 1–13.

57
. Brox is precisely wrong when he argues, elsewhere, that it is anachronistic to imagine different forms of Christian faith belonging to one apostle or another (Peter, Paul, etc.) and correspondingly that an apostolic name would be used by ancient Christians to guarantee apostolic content (“Zur pseudepigraphischen Rahmung des ersten Petrusbriefes,”
BZ
19, 1975, 78–96). By no means is this view purely modern, as seen both from the New Testament (cf. “I am of Paul, I am of Apollos, I am of Cephas,” 1 Cor. 1:12; or the conflict in Galatia) and from later writings such as the Pseudo-Clementines, as we will see in the next chapter.

58
. See Bart D. Ehrman,
The Apostolic Fathers
, LCL (Cambridge, MA: Harvard University Press, 2003), 1. 18–20.

59
. Another consideration–which is not exclusive to the one just discussed—involves the question of whether there was something specifically in the teaching of Paul on suffering that had created problems for the apostle that needed to be resolved by “Peter.” We know that Paul’s views of suffering did indeed create problems, for example, in the Thessalonian church, where he evidently taught that the miseries of this age were soon to end with the return of Jesus on the clouds of heaven. When that did not happen a good deal of anxiety arose in the community, as some of their members died in advance of Jesus’ return. Had those who “were asleep” lost their reward? 1 Thessalonians is written, in part, to deal with that problem. As time dragged on, Paul’s views may have continued to cause problems, as the imminent end to this world of hardship never appeared. 1 Peter may have been written, in part, to deal with that ongoing situation, to explain the reasons for suffering and to reassure readers that it is to be expected in this age, in part because Paul’s views were being discredited. If so, then this could be Peter sounding like Paul precisely in order to provide Petrine support for a specific Pauline perspective. It is striking that Asia Minor is the region where Peter and Paul’s conflict is best reported (Galatians) and where we first learn of Christians “suffering for the name” (Pliny’s letter to Trajan).

60
. See pp. 226–27.