Harnack’s hypothesis is open to serious objections, based on the internal evidence of the document itself and on exter- nal evidence. In the first place, what was the character of the document (i.e. 13-519)? It was not a treatise, for it is hortatory throughout. Was it, then, like the so-called Second Epistle of Clement, a homily? This is in the highest degree improbable, partly because of its close resemblances to St. Paul’s Epistles, especially of the opening paragraph—slaocynros ὁ θεὸς καὶ τατήρ κιτ.λ. (13)—to the opening paragraph of 2 Co and ‘Ephesians’; partly because of the great variety of topics dealt with—a procedure natural in a letter, but ill-suited to a sermon ;
artly because the language is general, and there is an absolute lack of any such reference to the immediate surroundings or the special circumstances of his hearers as we should expect in the words of a preacher; partly because the whole tone of the document produces the impression that the teacher is not face to face with those whom he is addressing—note especially the phrase wpioBuripous οὖν ἐν ὑμῖν παρακαλῶ (51). If, then, the docu- ment was neither a treatise nor a homily, it must have been a letter ; and, if a letter, it must originally have included, if not some perecral message, at least some form of salutation. We must therefore suppose either that the interpolator deliberately excised the original beginning or ending or both, or that the document came into his hands ina mutilated form. This last hypothesis, so far as the initial salutation is concerned, is highly improbable; for the first leaf of the MS must have contained much more of the letter than the customary brief words of salutation, and the paragraph which must have immediately followed the salutation (15) is extant. Inthe second place, the difficulties arising from the consideration of internal evidence are increased when external evidence is taken into account. The main body of the Epistle, as Harnack admits (p. 461f.), waa known to Clement (probably), Polycarp, and Papias. The Epistle therefore must have been widely circulated before the time of the supposed interpolator. How are we to account, then, for these widely-circulated (uninterpolated) copies having disap- peared, leaving no posterity ; while all known MSS and versions all MSS used by Tertullian, Clement of Alexandria, Irenwus, and all other early writers who gn the Epistle as the work of St. Peter, must have descended from a single ancestor—the copy that is, in which the additions at the beginning and the end were made about the middle of the 2nd cent.?* The improba- bilities involved in Harnack’s hypothesis are many and great. It is important, because it essentially belongs to a period of transition. It is the product, on the one hand, of the linger: ing influence of an older criticism, too thoroughly bent upon negative results to retain much delicacy of perception ; and, on the other hand, of a keen literary and spiritual sense of the significance of a writer’s matter and manner. His own worda (p. 464 1.) are remarkable, and appropriately conciude this section: ‘If the hypothesis here brought forward should prove erroneous, I should more readily prevail upon mveelf to regard the gee as possible and to claim the Epistle for Peter himself, than to suppose that a Pseudo-Petrus wrote our frag- ment as it now stands, from the first verse to the last, soon after a.p. 90, or even from ten to thirty years earlier. Such an
* Harnack supposes interpolations not only in 1 P, but also in Jude, the Pastoral Epistles, Mt, Jn (Die Chronologie pp. 468, 485, 700, 679). The improbability of such a hypothesis in the case of a sett document, as pointed out above, is very great. The improbability of the same improbable series of events having taken place in the case of six separate documents is infinite. The argument is well put by Dom Butler in the Dublin Review for Jan. 1899, p. 13 ff.
PETER, FIRST EPISTLE
assumpton dimiculticn ag
We proceed, then, to examine the objections ἃ against the view that the salutation is original and veracious, and that the Epistle was The chief of these are five
urged
written by St. Peter. in number—
(1) The references to kind as to imply a date which lies outside the prob- able, if not the possible, limits of St. Peter’s life. This objection has been (p. 783 ff.) considered.
(2) St. Peter was a Jew of lowly origin, and Papias ks of Mark as his ἑρμηνευτής. The Epistle, on the other hand, is written in good Greek, and the writer was thoroughly familiar with the LXX (so, ¢.g., Jiilicher, Hind. p. 132f.). The facts alle; as to the Epistle are undisputed (see above, Ῥ. 781f.). Are they incompatible with St. Peter’s authorship? In Galilee, with its Greek towns such as Gadara (Jos. Ant. Xvil. xi. 4, Β τι. vi. 3), there was so considerable an element of Greek life that, even when St. Peter became a follower of Christ, it is unlikely (to say the least) that he was wholly ignorant of colloquial Greek (Mayor, St. James pp. xli, ecix ; Abbott, Zssays on the Original Texts of the Old and New Testaments p. 162 ff.; Zahn,
inl. i. p. 23f.). _We may reverently suppose that our Lord, when He chose the a e as ‘the rock on which He would build His Church,’ discerned in him intellectual as well as spiritual gifts which fitted him for his destined work. In Jerusalem, after the Ascension, St. Peter had much intercourse with Hellenistic Jews. His departure from Pales- tine can have been no sudden step; and it would be strange if he did not prepare himself for the work which lay before him by ing Op rtunities, which certainly were within his reach, of increasing whatever knowledge he already had of the lingua franca of the Roman world. Mark was known in the early Church as ‘the interpreter of Peter,’ probably because he assisted the apostle in his first ey so to address Greek-speaking people. Greek must have been the vehicle of communication with Cornelius, and not improbably with the Jews of the Dispersion on the Day of Pentecost. We may conjecture that Mark was one of ‘the brethren’ who accompanied St. Peter from Joppa (Ac 10%), and that he helped him in speaking to the Roman centurion and his household. It may well be that Mark ‘the interpreter’ read with the apostle some