These Churches are found in Pontus, Galatia, Cappadocia, Asia, and Bithynia, that is, partly in the region of Paul's early mission, and, as is shown by the phrase, of TOTE OỦ Xaós in ii. 10, as well as the backward glance at former idolatry and heathen vices renounced in the passage iv. 3, are essentially of heathen origin.1 It is not a formal and official persecution with which they are visited, but social pressure and an outbreak of hostile public opinion. The Christian communities were in great part composed of classes already oppressed, of women and slaves (ii. 18, iii. 1), and had thus become the objects of evil rumours and prejudices (ii. 15, iii. 16, iv. 4). These features do not all suit, as has been confidently maintained, the time of Trajan, of whose orderly judicial procedure against the Christians there is no trace, but they do harmonise with the time of Nero, in which Tacitus expressly bears witness to that popular prejudice against the Christians. The cruel measures of the emperor against the Christians of the capital do not appear to have been imitated by the officials of the provinces; but, as was natural, and as we see from the apocalyptic letters, these persecutions encouraged the animosity of the surrounding Jews and heathen, and thus made the already insecure position of the Christians a position of real hardship. According to v. 12, our Epistle was occasioned by a journey of Sylvanus, the old travelling companion of Paul (Acts xv. 22, 40), to those regions of Asia Minor, and, according to v. 13, it appears to have been written from Rome, and directly under the impression of the Neronic persecution. The words are indeed "at Babylon," but the phrase, "those chosen together with you in Babylon salute you," makes us look for a metaphorical meaning of this designation of peace in connection with the metaphorical designation of the saluting Church. The designation of Rome as the New Testament Babylon, which runs through our

1 Weiss advocates the contrary view, and at the same time places the Epistle in the pre-Pauline age. Though I expressed agreement with this view some years ago in a review of Weiss' doctrinal system of Peter, I must now dissent from it, and pray that I be no longer quoted as holding it. I have long been convinced of the untenableness of Weiss' conception of the Epistle, and regard the existence of a pre-Pauline Jewish Christian Church, stretching from Pontus to Bithynia and Asia, as a historical absurdity.

Apocalypse, had undoubtedly become current far and near among the Christians from the time of Nero's cruel treatment of them there. That Peter found himself at Rome in those days, and finally suffered martyrdom under Nero, is an old and credible tradition,' and therefore all historical probabilities unite in suggesting that it was he who, induced by the journey of Sylvanus, and probably by some earlier relations with these Churches in Asia Minor, felt himself constrained to send them this letter of encouragement. The personal traces in the letter only serve to strengthen that probability. In strong contrast with the premeditation of the second spurious Epistle, the name of the apostle is mentioned only in the simplest way (i. 1), and reference made to his having been an eye-witness of the sufferings of Christ only in the passage v. 1, and without any further object. The phrase used (i. 8), "Christ, whom, having not seen, ye love," is most naturally explained as the involuntary expression of one who has seen Him, and the passage i. 3, "Blessed be God, the Father of all mercy, who hath begotten us again unto a living hope by the resurrection of Jesus from the dead," strikes the reader as having the tone of jubilation over the event of Easter which would be in a heart awakened by it to a new life out of the death of despair. In other respects, also, the Epistle contains features of the first Christian age. The expectation of the immediate return of the Lord is uninterrupted (iv. 6, 7, 17), and the constitution of the Church is so primitive that the notion of the πреσßúтeρоι (v. 1, 5) still wavers between the official and the natural sense, in which latter they are contrasted with the verepot, as in Acts v. 6, 10. Add to all this that no motive can be discovered for the false attribution of the Epistle, and that the apostolic dignity and eye-witness of Peter are not brought forward to support any particular doctrine in it, we can thus say that the critics ought to consider well before they contradict, in the case of such a document, the unanimous judgment of antiquity.

1 A tradition in which even Weizsäcker (Apostolic Age) believes on the evidence of the well-known passage of Clement of Rome.

§ 3. ANSWER TO CERTAIN OBJECTIONS

As to the reasons urged against its genuineness, the remark of Holtzmann has perhaps the greatest plausibility: "It is inconceivable that the fundamental notions of the synoptic preaching of Jesus, the kingdom of God, the Son of Man, etc., should have been entirely lost, that the law should have vanished from his horizon, and that the earthly appearance of Jesus should have given place to reflections on His death which were not due to his own impression, but to Isa. liii." That all that must have been lost to him, and fallen into the background, is a bold conclusion to draw from the silence of a document of eight pages, and of definitely practical aims. We perceive throughout that the apostles did not so much fasten upon the separate doctrinal ideas of Jesus as upon His whole appearance and the conclusion of His life in its relation to the Old Testament. We should think that the personal impression of the Christ suffering in ideal patience was sufficiently plain in ii. 21-23, and that the citing of Isa. liii., the Old Testament passage which was above all fitted to remove for the apostle the offence of the cross, is conceivable enough in the case of Peter, seeing that it agrees well with the testimony of the Acts of the Apostles about the earliest christological view. Moreover, if one sought as diligently in the First Epistle of Peter for echoes of Christ's own words as for echoes of Pauline passages, one would find a considerable number. All else that is urged against the genuineness of the Epistle consists in the reproach that it is dependent on other New Testament Epistles, especially Romans, Ephesians, and James. First of all, we should have to determine the exact measure of these alleged borrowings. For our part we must admit that we can form no idea of the mental condition of an early Christian writer, whether Peter or any other, who, in order to say to his readers, "reward not evil with evil," or in order to avail himself of the phrase, "for conscience' sake," must go and borrow from another. And of this stamp are most of the

1

1 Cf. i. 6 with Mark v. 12; i. 8 with Job xx. 19; i. 13 with Luke xii. 35; ii. 7 with Matt. xxi. 42; iii. 9 with Luke vi. 28; iii. 14 with Matt. v. 10, etc. 2 Cf. Holtzmann, Einleitung ins N. T. p. 488.

alleged borrowings.

But while there are real echoes of Pauline or Jacobean utterances, there is, on the other hand, unquestionable independence of the whole mode of teaching either of Paul or of James. And it may be asked whether such marks of affinity, along with a marked individuality, do not excellently harmonise with the later Peter. According to Gal. i.-ii., Acts xv., Peter was spiritually in close touch with James on the one hand and with Paul on the other, and took a certain middle position between the two. That the scene narrated in Gal. ii. 12 f. permanently estranged him from Paul and drove him back into a narrow-hearted Jewish Christianity, can only be supposed by a criticism which thinks very meanly of the ability of a disciple of Jesus to submit to a fellow apostle when he tells him the truth. The respectful way in which Paul repeatedly refers to him in the First Epistle to the Corinthians (iii. 22, ix. 5, xv. 5) rather attests the continued brotherly relation. That Peter's mission circle became ever wider (cf. 1 Cor. ix. 5, πepiáɣei), that he was specially attracted to the Roman Church, which in all probability sprang from the intercourse between Jerusalem and Rome, and was from the beginning under a Petrine influence, has recently been considered probable even by Weizsäcker. Now, if he esteemed James as well as Paul, and put value on spiritual sympathy with them, what is more natural than that he should take cognisance of the letters which the one or the other sent here and there, and perhaps even possessed copies of them? And if he appeared in Rome soon after the death of Paul, hastening to the help of the cruelly persecuted Roman Church, how very likely it is that he should read with reverence the precious legacy which this Church possessed in the Epistle to the Romans? Nay, it may even be supposed that this man, unaccustomed to writing, would regard this and that letter of his friend directly as a model when he proposed to himself the task of writing to aid far off and afflicted Churches. No doubt all that might be supposed just as well of any later Pauline Christian who had arrogated to himself the name of Peter. But such a one would have done more; even though he had not understood the fundamental views of the Pauline system, he would have 1 Weizsäcker, Apostolic Age, p. 487.

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used its dogmatic watchwords, which confessedly are entirely wanting in our Epistle. The independence and peculiarity of our Epistle, which far outweigh the traces of relationship with Paul and James, and James, and the combination of independence and relation, point directly to an apostolic colleague rather than to a post-apostolic successor; for to say that the post-apostolic and Paulinising author has in this Epistle "allowed the Pauline dogmatic theories to drop," explains nothing. On the contrary, if the mode of thought and teaching lying before us in the Epistle show a simpler and more undeveloped character than the Pauline, if they hold that middle position between the Pauline and Jacobean methods which the historical Peter, according to Gal. ii., Acts xv., actually held, and if, besides, they exhibit throughout a relationship with the preaching of Peter in the Acts of the Apostles, then all signs that may be fairly required unite in favour of a genuine Petrine origin of our Epistle.

§ 4. THE DOCTRINAL PECULIARITY OF THE EPISTLE

In point of fact, the doctrinal character of our Epistle is just of this kind. It is quite what we must have expected from the Peter of the Gospels and the Acts of the Apostles after he had exchanged opinions with Paul, and passed through the further school of experience. The Old and New Testaments do not appear here in any relation of opposition or compromise any more than in the Petrine discourses of the Acts of the Apostles; they are seen as prediction and fulfilment. The only distinction between the author and James on this point is, that he finds the centre of gravity of the Old Testament to lie, not in the law, but in the prophets (cf. i. 10-12, ii. 6, 22-25). We have manifestly here a man who has not passed over to the gospel like James by spiritualising the law, but just as we must imagine Peter in the Gospel history— one who from the beginning has sought and found in Jesus Him of whom Moses and the prophets wrote (John i. 45), the fulfiller of the Messianic hopes. This accounts for what further distinguishes our Epistle from that of James, that the 1 So Pfleiderer, Urchristenthum, p. 600.