- J. N. D. Kelly writes of 1 Peter: . . . many find the theory of Petrine authorship and the early date it necessitates incredible. Their scepticism is grounded partly on the refined Greek style and literary vocabulary of the letter, its habit of citing the OT exclusively from the Greek LXX, and the sparseness of its personal allusions to Jesus (all surprising features, as they think, if it comes from the Galilean fisherman who was His constant associate), partly on its apparent dependence on the Pauline correspondence, the indications it seems to contain that Christianity is now a criminal offence in the eyes of the law, the numerous traces some have detected of the ideas and practices of the mystery-cults, and the comparative lateness of its attestation. They are also troubled by the absence of any reference to Paul if the addressees included communities he had evangelized, and (on the alternative hypothesis) by the lack of any evidence that Peter worked in northern Anatolia. (Commentary on the Epistles of Peter & Jude, p27.)
- Of 2 Peter he has this to add:
- Scarcely anyone nowadays doubts that 2 Peter is pseudonymous . . . First, the central section of the epistle is a recasting of Jude, and the rest of it is studded with other borrowings from the same source; but the earliest possible date for Jude is (as we have just seen) the early seventies of the 1st cent, i.e. well after Peter’s death in Nero’s anti-Christian pogrom (c. 64). Secondly, while his acquaintance with Jewish haggadah (cf. ii) makes it probable that the writer was a Jewish Christian, he also had a close familiarity with Hellenistic religious and philosophical culture which the one-time Galilean fisherman is hardly likely to have possessed. Thirdly, he lets it out that he lived at a time when the first Christian generation had passed away (iii. 4), and when a collection of Paul’s letters had been compiled (iii. 15 f.). Fourthly, his concern for the orthodox interpretation of scripture (i. 20 f.; iii. 15 f.) and for the apostolic tradition (e.g. ii. 21; iii. 2) smacks of emergent ‘Catholicism’ rather than of first- generation Christianity. Fifthly, if the epistle really is the product of Peter’s pen, the slowness and reluctance of the Church, especially at Rome, to accord it recognition present a serious problem. (p235)