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Source: (consider it)
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Thread: 1 Peter 2:18... Slaves, submit to your masters
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Bullfrog.
Prophetic Amphibian
# 11014
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Posted
I've done some study (per posted above,) and think there are decent arguments on both sides, though I lean more toward authentic authorship.
I've also been taught not to assume that "the majority of scholars" have it right.
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Some say that man is the root of all evil
Others say God's a drunkard for pain
Me, I believe that the Garden of Eden
Was burned to make way for a train. --Josh Ritter, Harrisburg
Posts: 7522 | From: Chicago | Registered: Feb 2006
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mousethief
Ship's Thieving Rodent
# 953
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Posted
quote:
Originally posted by Bullfrog.:
I've also been taught not to assume that "the majority of scholars" have it right.
If it were really obvious there wouldn't be a "majority of scholars" there would be a "unanimity of scholars".
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This is the last sig I'll ever write for you...
Posts: 63536 | From: Washington | Registered: Jul 2001
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Hamp
Apprentice
# 15362
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Posted
First, I want to thank Chris for his excellent work and hope when I start a fire in the future he will be there to put me out. Now for the next fire,Lamb Chopped, honey, what I am trying to ask; Paul's Letter to the Church in Rome which he did not found and has never visited but plans to visit, is to introduce himself. Now it seems strange to me that in introducing himself he would not refer to his association with Peter. It is my understanding Catholics assert that Peter founded the church in Rome and became the first Bishop of the church; therefore, the first Pope.
Posts: 47 | From: Winston Salem NC | Registered: Dec 2009
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Lamb Chopped
Ship's kebab
# 5528
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Posted
Hamp, bless your heart, you've got a LOT of catching up to do. Paul was well-known (shall I say notorious?) throughout the Christianity-touched world, first as a persecutor and later as a missionary. And he was known to both Jewish and Christian communities. The chances of the folk at Rome saying "Who dat?" were next to nonexistent.
As for the rest of your response, may I take it that you are satisfied with Chris' information? Or must we bore everyone to tears pulling out more church fathers to satisfy you?
Warning: I'm about to bore the ever-living pants off you on the subject of Peter's literacy in a moment, provided my young son cooperates. Think carefully before you volunteer for more!
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Er, this is what I've been up to (book).
Oh, that you would rend the heavens and come down!
Posts: 20059 | From: off in left field somewhere | Registered: Feb 2004
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Lamb Chopped
Ship's kebab
# 5528
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Posted
Lyda*Rose, I'm sorry to be annoying. I'll post a summary here before I get into the Mega-Boredom I promised Hamp.
First of all, a disclaimer since I've probably gone too far teasing the newbie, and I see the Lord looking rather sternly at me (apologies, Hamp)--
Yes, I've taught at seminary for several years, in the graduate school, but I am not a theological professor. My doctorate is in English and rhetoric, with a major concentration in Renaissance and textual studies (hence my boring pedantry on the subject of manuscripts and authorship!). My teaching at the seminary focused on preparing doctoral students to construct effective and logical argumentation, and ended this past year during a round of layoffs (the economy, yo). It was fun while it lasted!
As for my theological background, I would judge I have the equivalent of a half-finished doctorate from a variety of sources. My Greek and Hebrew I got as one of my college majors, and I've used them in the course of my academic, publishing and ministry work ever since. I hope some day to have the money to formalize the theological training with a second doctorate. And I expect my colleagues WOULD prefer I did it under their beady eye! In short, I am a theological geek.
Okay, the short summary (God bless you Chris for saving me pulling out the textbooks)--
The primary reason as I understand it in favor of believing in actual Petrine authorship is the fact that this was believed to be the case by people much closer to the facts of the situation than we are, both in time and in culture. In other words, we are talking about the witness of individual church fathers (like those Chris cites) and the corporate judgement of the early church expressed in the canon. I'll take the church fathers first.
The fathers are of course not infallible. They can and do make mistakes. Nevertheless as human beings they are much better placed than just about anybody to know and report what was generally believed concerning the authorship of ancient Christian writings. (The ability of modern scholarship to somehow magically divine authorship problems is much exaggerated. Take a few courses, or talk to a few authors, and see if you don't believe me then.)
People can and do write in radically different voices, using different vocabulary, on different occasions. Anyone analyzing the corpus of work allegedly produced by Lamb Chopped would doubtless be able to get a whole community of authors out of me, if I weren't there to tell them the truth. In fact, the whole "Homer/Shakesepeare/Whoozit didn't write Homer etc." thing is an old fad in the classics and in modern literature, quite old-fashioned in fact; for some odd reason the literary fads seem to take years or even decades to jump the genre wall into theology! Whereupon they are hailed as New & Exciting Developments, and people waffle on about them in the journals for ages. (This, by the way, is one of the tricks I handed my aspiring ThD students: bone up on a lit crit theory or a new fad in history, and then apply it to theology. You'll be hailed as a startlingly original thinker. ![[Two face]](graemlins/scot_twoface.gif) )
But back to authorship--
This all means that, if you want to know who REALLY wrote something, you can analyze to your heart's content, but in the end there is no substitute for human testimony--and that testimony from sources placed as near the original writing as possible. If you can't get the author himself, talk to his friends. If you can't get the eye and ear-witness friends, talk to THEIR friends and see what they've heard. (It's worth remembering that the church fathers start with people who learned from the apostles themselves--Polycarp, anyone? Or people like Justin Martyr? The fathers are not ALL of them centuries removed from Peter.)
Now my understanding is that none of these early witnesses denies the Petrine authorship of 1 Peter. (2 Peter is a different matter, the word you want to Google is "antilegoumena" if you're interested.) But AFAIK Peter's authorship was pretty much a done deal. It would take some pretty strong evidence against Petrine authorship to overturn that kind of settled and unanimous testimony.
I'm also considering here the testimony of the church-as-a-whole in canon formation. One of the criteria for something getting into the canon was apostolic authorship. To be sure, there are books by non-apostles in the canon (Luke, duh) and by unknowns (Hebrews); so this was not an absolute requirement. But it WAS an absolute requirement that, if the book CLAIMED to be apostolic, it had to be so. If anyone had popped up with a credible claim that 1 Peter was written by someone else, that would have thrown a spanner into the works immediately.
"But wait," someone may argue. "There are plenty of pseudo-writings floating around that claim to be by apostles and are not." Yes; and you'll note that those are not in the canon. Certainly not among the homolegoumena (the books about which there was never any serious debate in the early church). But 1 Peter is a homolegoumenon.
Both the individual early church fathers and the whole church as a group believed Peter to be the author of 1 Peter; these are early and credible witnesses. I therefore conclude that 1 Peter was most likely written by Peter.
(boredom to be continued after child is in bed)
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Er, this is what I've been up to (book).
Oh, that you would rend the heavens and come down!
Posts: 20059 | From: off in left field somewhere | Registered: Feb 2004
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Lamb Chopped
Ship's kebab
# 5528
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Posted
Boring Screed No. 3: On the literacy of St. Peter. To be included. The location of ancient Galilee, effects on literacy and language of. Occupational advantages of literacy and multilingualism. Together with a short excursus touching the subject of the literacy of Our Lord and Savior, together with His linguistic achievements. To which is added sundry other matters, as may become the discourse and render it the more profitable unto the readers thereof...
Ahem.
(Literature geeks. ![[Razz]](tongue.gif) )
Where to start? Literacy first.
I'd have to say that if you were looking for relatively high literacy rates in the ancient world you'd probably be best off looking among the Jews, simply because they were so thoroughly people of the Book. It was a religious duty to train up your sons in the Law of the Lord, and this was most easily done by hoicking them off to the local synagogue school, if you lived in a town (as Peter and Andrew did). The school existed to support religious education, and while a lot of that would be accomplished through recitation and memorization, some would be done through reading and writing. The scrolls of the Law and Prophets would be most readily available there, so even if you came from a family too poor to have books of their own, you could get your eyes on them there and would likely be encouraged to do so because of the religious aspect. So in this the Jews were very different from most or all of the surrounding religions which were not "of the Book."
Peter was of course from Galilee, also known as "Galilee of the nations" on account of the heavy Gentile influence. As I recall King Herod had at least one major building project within a day's walk or less of Peter's home. We'll consider what that means for multilingualism later (duh!) but for right now, I'll simply say that this is a situation that encourages trade and lots of it. That includes trade in foodstuffs, such as FISH. (What else do you feed hungry builders? I seriously doubt Herod was the kind of man to put out hard cash on expensive red meat for his labor force. He strikes me as a cheap SOB as far as people's welfare goes.)
And trade requires record-keeping (and thus literacy and numeracy)--particularly if you are part of a fairly well-to-do fishing venture, as Peter seems to have been. (He appears to have pretty close ties to John and James bar Zebedee, also fishermen in the same area, and their ties appear to pre-date their call to follow Christ, though that's more an impression than something proveable. But John and James certainly came from a well-off fishing family with hired men and connections to the high priest's establishment in Jerusalem--so Peter may have been much the same. Certainly he is credited with having at least one boat, which suggests he was somewhere above the lowest of hired hands, anyway. And he's married, and owns a home and supports his wife's mother as well. On balance the evidence suggests a fairly stable job of the sort where literacy would be useful if not absolutely essential.)
So far I see no reason to suppose Peter could not have been literate, in Aramaic at least, and probably Hebrew as well (at least a reading knowledge). If I'm right about his job and co-workers, literacy would have been a distinct advantage. (Sure, you can hire a scribe if you're illiterate; but why put out the money? I suspect Peter's Dad saw to it that his son had this skill for practical reasons as well as religious ones.)
Brief aside on Jesus' own literacy: We know he could read--we have his reading of Isaiah in the synagogue to testify to that--and as for writing, there's that slightly dubious John 8 passage. Plus a carpenter/builder in Galilee would find the same advantages to literacy that a prosperous fisherman would.
Let's move on to multi-lingualism.
Jesus was definitely bilingual at least in Aramaic (his home language) and Hebrew (the language of the OT, which he read and explicated in the synagogue). To this we can likely add Greek, which was the common trading language of the Roman Empire, and particularly useful in a polyglot multicultural place like Galilee. (Palestine was and is a major crossroads for just about everybody in that part of the world--it's why they kept getting wiped out by traveling armies all the time--and Galilee in particular was surrounded by Gentiles to one side and Samaritans to the other. At least one major trade route ran through it and gets referenced in that Micah prophecy, if I recall correctly.) The foreign influence shows up in some of the local names, even--the disciple Philip carries a Greek name (phil + hippos, "lover of horses"). And what about Nicodemus? Surely that's Greek for "victory of the people."
For Jesus--or Peter, or James, or John, or any of the Galilean disciples--to be without Greek would be as much of a handicap as being without English on the Tijuana border. You can survive, certainly, but your opportunities in life are going to be severely limited.
What about Latin? Well, my guess would be that there was less scope for learning this kind of thing, since the Romans too spoke Greek when they were out and about among the foreigners. Still, it WAS the language of the conquerors and occupiers, who could harass you on a daily basis if they felt so inclined, so a wise man would try to pick up what he could. So it wouldn't surprise me if Peter (and Jesus) had at least a smattering of Latin. Again, this logic would apply to any of the disciples, though I doubt they could hold civilized conversations with Cicero! Scraps and pieces, maybe. But nothing for most of us to sneeze at.
So to sum up, I expect Jesus and most of the Twelve, including Peter, were literate and numerate. They were also most likely fluent or reasonably so in at least two languages (Aramaic and "street Greek, koine), had a basic reading knowledge of Hebrew (Jesus in particular), and had a few scraps of Latin. Not bad by Western standards. Not surprising by African standards (where multi-lingualism is necessary for survival in places).
So what does this mean for Peter's authorship? It makes it possible. There's certainly nothing against it. And if I recall correctly, the Greek of 1 Peter is by no means highly polished. I see no reason why a fisherman turned missionary could not have written it.
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Er, this is what I've been up to (book).
Oh, that you would rend the heavens and come down!
Posts: 20059 | From: off in left field somewhere | Registered: Feb 2004
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Lyda*Rose
Ship's broken porthole
# 4544
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Posted
Thank you, Lamb Chopped, for being so generous with your reply. Now I have a map for some of these discussions.
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"Dear God, whose name I do not know - thank you for my life. I forgot how BIG... thank you. Thank you for my life." ~from Joe Vs the Volcano
Posts: 21377 | From: CA | Registered: May 2003
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sanityman
Shipmate
# 11598
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Posted
Thank you Lamb Chopped for taking time to write that excellent summary. I'm rather embarrassed that anyone should thank me for taking a couple of minutes to look up 1 Peter in Wikipedia!
- Chris.
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Prophesy to the wind, to the wind only for only the wind will listen - TS Eliot
Posts: 1453 | From: London, UK | Registered: Jun 2006
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Lamb Chopped
Ship's kebab
# 5528
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Posted
![[Hot and Hormonal]](icon_redface.gif) I'm glad if it helps, Lyda*Rose!
Actually, Chris, you helped me out hugely. I got halfway home from work before I remembered I'd left the book I needed at the office.
[ 13. January 2010, 22:31: Message edited by: Lamb Chopped ]
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Er, this is what I've been up to (book).
Oh, that you would rend the heavens and come down!
Posts: 20059 | From: off in left field somewhere | Registered: Feb 2004
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Hamp
Apprentice
# 15362
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Posted
Everyone please, I am not a scholar, expert or anything of the sort. Most of what I know about the Bible comes from taking these courses:
The Writings of the Apostolic Fathers
From Jesus to Constantine
Historical Jesus
Lost Christianities
New Testament
The Making of the New Testament Canon
Apostle Paul
Jesus and the Gospels
Story of the Bible
Exploring the Roots of Religion
Early Christianity
History of Christian Theology
Philosophy of Religion
Great Figures of the New Testament
Old Testament
Natural Law and Human Nature
The Catholic Church: A History
Popes and the Papacy
Book of Genesis
Skeptics and Believers: Religious Debate in the Western Intellectual Tradition
Luther: Gospel, Law, and Reformation
Augustine: Philosopher and Saint
Late Antiquity: Crisis and Transformation
Great World Religions
Emperors of Rome
Religion in the Ancient Mediterranean World.
Are the professors who give these courses scholars, authorities, experts? In my opinion you have to take the course and decide for your self. The courses are available to all. What I do is pick out of the courses what I think are religious sticky points and post them with the hope that someone out there will have a source that throws a different light on the point.
Hamp
Posts: 47 | From: Winston Salem NC | Registered: Dec 2009
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Hamp
Apprentice
# 15362
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Posted
LC,
You are right in a way, Paul was notorious, but if you read his letter to the Roman Church carefully it strikes me he is laying out his religious beliefs for the Church not his character. In his other letters doesn't he send greeting to those he knows in the Church? But here not even a "hello" to his fellow missionary Peter who he spent time with in Jerusalem and would know his take on "The Good News".
Hamp
Posts: 47 | From: Winston Salem NC | Registered: Dec 2009
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Lamb Chopped
Ship's kebab
# 5528
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Posted
Peter didn't spend his life in Rome! I expect he wasn't there at the time. And even if he were there, there's no reason Paul should be expected to know that. No telephone to ring him up, after all. When Paul sent greetings, he did it to people he could reasonably expect to be present--that is, the residents.
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Er, this is what I've been up to (book).
Oh, that you would rend the heavens and come down!
Posts: 20059 | From: off in left field somewhere | Registered: Feb 2004
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Hamp
Apprentice
# 15362
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Posted
LC,
As in most cases you are probably right. Was he, Paul, not going to take up a collection to take to the Jerusalem church? When he went to Jerusalem was that the time he got into trouble with the Jewish authorities had to be saved by the Roman authorities and as a Roman citizen was allowed to appeal his case to the Emperor and finely sent to Rome under house arrest? What puzzles me that on Peter's turf why would he do this? He must have know what he was risking,his life and his services to a fragile Christian movement. Was he blinded by his belief that the "end Time" would come in his life time as Jesus had predicted?
Hamp
Posts: 47 | From: Winston Salem NC | Registered: Dec 2009
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Janine
The Endless Simmer
# 3337
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Posted
I see this passage as wrapping it -- and related matters -- up in a neat package. Sort of a "Meet the Lord where He finds you and walk onward and upward from there."
We're all supposed to be His (POW voluntary bondservant) slaves, whether or not we are slaves to another man. (The voluntary bit I see because I believe we have a choice about accepting the rescue.)
We're all supposed to be His bought-and-paid-for, redeemed, bride-price-freed siblings, something much more to be treasured than whether or not we can claim some sort of freedman status in the flesh.
Regardless of the condition of the outward man, the inward man needs to be free in Jesus.
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I'm a Fundagelical Evangimentalist. What are you?
Take Me Home * My Heart * An hour with Rich Mullins *
Posts: 13788 | From: Below the Bible Belt | Registered: Sep 2002
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bush baptist
Shipmate
# 12306
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Posted
quote:
POW voluntary bondservant
Is that POW for prisoner-of-war? Just trying to follow the metaphor -- are we being Christ's prisoner's, or freed prisoners, previously held by the enemy? Or is POW something else entirely?
Posts: 1784 | From: drought-stricken land | Registered: Jan 2007
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Lamb Chopped
Ship's kebab
# 5528
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Posted
Hamp, thanks for the undeserved compliment--but do more reading, esp. in Acts. Peter and Paul and etc. had at least twenty years or more to play with between Christ's resurrection and their own deaths--during that time they appear to have been on the road a great deal. Which is natural for apostles ("apostle" = missionary). Nobody seems to have had "turf" so to speak except possibly James in Jerusalem, and even that was shared (so to speak) with the original apostles. Really, there is room enough and time to come up with multiple competing theories on just about anything--travels to Jerusalem or Rome, letters criss crossing, people in a zillion constantly-changing places--if you want to discuss it more, we'd probably better vamoose for Purg or Kerygmania, before we annoy the hosts.
Back to the OP in general, then.
Yes, POW normally means prisoner of war, and there are a holy ton of metaphors that express our relationship to Jesus Christ. This could well be one of them. Former enemies of God, now taken captive by God's Son and converted to loving bondservants? Why not?
Or you could look at it as POWs taken by Satan and forcibly rescued by Christ and restored to the glorious freedom of the children of God.
It's sort of like a kaleidoscope. Ever changing patterns, each more beautiful than the one before.
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Er, this is what I've been up to (book).
Oh, that you would rend the heavens and come down!
Posts: 20059 | From: off in left field somewhere | Registered: Feb 2004
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Janine
The Endless Simmer
# 3337
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Posted
Philemon 1:23 uses the description "fellow prisoner in Christ" -- that's what the word is in the Greek, masculine, a fellow prisoner.
Seems like anyone in the Roman world would "see" the imagery of a conquering hero, coming home after his triumph, leading the valuable captured ones in His wake, taking them home to His Father.
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I'm a Fundagelical Evangimentalist. What are you?
Take Me Home * My Heart * An hour with Rich Mullins *
Posts: 13788 | From: Below the Bible Belt | Registered: Sep 2002
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bush baptist
Shipmate
# 12306
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Posted
Thanks, both!
(I've always read Philemon 1:23 as meaning a literal fellow-prisoner -- but I don't want to pull this into Keryg territory, or too far from the verse in hand!)
Posts: 1784 | From: drought-stricken land | Registered: Jan 2007
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Kelly Alves
Bunny with an axe
# 2522
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Posted
Oh, go for it. This board definitely has Keryg elements.
[ 25. January 2010, 00:48: Message edited by: Kelly Alves ]
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I cannot expect people to believe “
Jesus loves me, this I know” of they don’t believe “Kelly loves me, this I know.”
Kelly Alves, somewhere around 2003.
Posts: 35076 | From: Pura Californiana | Registered: Mar 2002
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Janine
The Endless Simmer
# 3337
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Posted
I've always considered myself a literal prisoner of the Lord.
Privileged place to be. Consider the only other jailer you could pick.
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I'm a Fundagelical Evangimentalist. What are you?
Take Me Home * My Heart * An hour with Rich Mullins *
Posts: 13788 | From: Below the Bible Belt | Registered: Sep 2002
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Lyda*Rose
Ship's broken porthole
# 4544
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Posted
Is there a "safe word" with Christ?
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"Dear God, whose name I do not know - thank you for my life. I forgot how BIG... thank you. Thank you for my life." ~from Joe Vs the Volcano
Posts: 21377 | From: CA | Registered: May 2003
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bush baptist
Shipmate
# 12306
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Posted
Ummm... Christ is the "safe word".
Posts: 1784 | From: drought-stricken land | Registered: Jan 2007
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