7. CONCLUSION. — The task remains of inter- preting, as a whole, the evidence bearing on the question of the genuineness of 2 Peter. The ex- ternal evidence is, as was pointed out, wholly insufficient. No evidence exists at all till the time of Clement of Alexandria, or (if we would speak with absolute certainty) till the time of Origen. Thus the burden of proof is thrown on the Epistle itself. It is conceivable that, through some accident or series of accidents, a genuine Epistle of St. Peter might lie hid till the end of the 2nd or the be- ginning of the 3rd cent. and then suddenly come to light. But an Epistle claiming to be such must bear unmistakable testimony to its own genuine- ness. The internal evidence of 2 P has been examined. The literary style of the Epistle is artificial ; it shows little command over or appre- ciation of the language, and yet it is extra- ordinarily ambitious. It is not easy to think that St. Peter can have cultivated such a style, and the Epistle itself gives no support whatever to the idea that an amanuensis was employed in its composition. Again, the only events in the gospel history to which allusion is made are incidents which had a conspicuous place in St. Peter’s life. About all other events in the Lord’s life, even the most momentous, the Epistle is absolutely silent. It hardly alludes to any of the Lord's sayings which are recorded in the Gos- pels. The suspicion, therefore, cannot fail to arise, that the references which are made to the gospel history are selected as being in harmony with the supposed authorship. From history we turn to doctrine. Nothing is said in the Ppistle of the Passion or the Resurrection or the exaltation of Christ, or of the Holy Spirit in the Christian Church, or of Prayer. Not only is the Resurrec- tion passed over, but the Transfiguration takes its Rats as the guarantee of the truth of the gospel.
‘he difficulties, therefore, in the way of holding that the Epistle is the work of a personal disciple of Christ, called to be a witness of the Resurrection, which a study of the Epistle itself reveals, are ve serious. They become much more serious when it is compared with what we have every reason to believe to be the genuine words of St. Peter. The First Epistle is wholly different from the Second in literary style, in its use of OT language, in its allusions to the Lord’s life and teaching. It dwells with reiterated emphasis on those primary Chris- tian facts and doctrines which have no place in the Second Epistle. The internal evidence, then, re- viewed so far, is adverse to the Petrine authorship. But there is another element in the internal evidence, of which, at this point, account must be ken. There are in the Epistle what appear to be lear signs of a date much later than the apostolic age. It is only by unnatural interpretations that 3* and 3! can be made to harmonize with a time within the possible limits of St. Peter’s life. The anachronisms of the Epistle seem clearly to point to the 2nd cent. as the time of its composition. This eonclusion, based on internal evidence, is confirmed when external evidence is taken into account. On the one hand, it is in accordance with the absence
PETER, SECOND EPISTLE
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of any trace of the Epistle till the beginning of the 8rd cent. On the other hand, it is at one with what is the natural, if not necessary, inference from the resemblances between the Epistle and the Apocalypse of Peter, viz. that these two docu- ments are the work of the same school and belong (approximately) to the same date.
The evidence is obviously cumulative. Different minds will vary in the interpretation of this or that piece of evidence, and in the weight which they allow to evidence the interpretation of which is unquestioned. To the present writer it appears that too many independent lines of evidence con- verge towards one result to allow of hesitation. The only conclusion, it is believed, which is in accordance with the evidence, external and in- ternal, is that 2 P is not the work of the apostle, but is a document which must be assigned to the 2nd century.
Two subjects 1emain for consideration—
(1) Is it possible to ascertain with any degree of probability the place where, and the time when, the Epistle was written? It has been shown to be ἘΣΟΠΣΡΙΕ on literary grounds that the Apocalypse of Peter and the and Epistle of Peter belon to the same school. This conclusion is confirme by what seems to be the natural interpretation of the evidence as to Clement of Alexandria. It appears likely that he, in his Hypotyposeis, placed the two documents side by side, and commented on them as closely related writings. It seems prob- able that the birthplace of the Apocalypse was Egypt (see above, p. 777), and we therefore infer that it is also probable that 2 P was written in Egypt (ef. Jiilicher, Hind. p. 151; Harnack, Die Chronologie p. 469). This conclusion is further supported by the fact that the Epistle has pcints of contact in language and thought with two great writers of Alexandria—Philo and Clement.