1 1. Place and Time. — The place is indicated in v. 13, in the clause aaixaZ,iTai vfiat; >/ tv B«/3u\wi'i avi'tuXiKTi). Babvlon is named as the place where the apostle was
PETER (FIRST EPISTLE OF) IS PETER (FIRST EPISTLE OF)
when lie wrote the epistle, as he sends this salutation from it. mi the part of a woman, as Mayerhoff, Neander, Alford, and others suppose; or on the pan of a Church, a- is ili«' opinion of the majority. !t i- remarkable, how- ever, thai from early limi - Babj Ion has here !■>■< rj taken t<> signify Rome. This opinion i< ascribed by Eusebius on report to Papias ami Clemen! of Alexandria {Hist. Eccles. ii. 15). Jerome ami CEcumenius also held it. In later times it has been espoused by Grotius, Cave, Lardner, Hengstenberg,Windischmann,Wiesinger, Baur, Thiersch, Schotl (/'■/ I. Brief Pet. erHart, p. 346, Er- langeu, L861 |, and Hofmann (Schi-ifib. i. 201 I. lint why discover a mystical sense in a name set down a.s the place of writing an epistle? There is no more rea- son for doing this than lor assigning a like significance to the geographical names iii i. 1. How could his reail- ers discover the Church at Rome to he meant by t) ffvvtic\tKr!i in Babylon? Ami if Babylon do signify a hostile spiritual power, as in the Apocalypse (xviii. -.'P,. linn ii i- strange that Catholic critics as a bodj should adopl such a meaning here, and admit by implication the ascription of this character to their spiritual me- tropolis Dr. Brown, of Edinburgh, puts a somewhat parallel case - "< lurown city is sometimes called Athens from its situation, and from its being a seal of learning;
a quiet and blameless life might escape it, though cer- tainly trials for righteousness' sake are implied and virtu- ally predicted. About the year •'•" the dark > l< ments of Nero's character began to develop themselvt -. and after this epoch the epistle was written. The churches ad- dressed in it wire mostly planted by Paul, and it is therefore thoughl by some that Paul must have been deceased ere I'eter would find it hi> duty to address them. Paul was pnl to death abonl A.D.64; but such a date would he too late for our epistle, as time would not. on Buch a h\ pothesis, 1m- ]< ii for the apostle's going to Rome, according to old tradition, and for hi- martyr- dom in that city. It may be admitted that Peter would not have intruded into Paul's sphere had Paul been free to write to or labor in the pro\ inct s spe< ified. Still it may lie supposed that Paul may have withdrawn to some more distant Held of labor, 01 may ha suffering imprisonment at Home. Davidson places the dale iii 63; Alford between 63 and 07. If the Mark of v, 13 be lie of whom Paul speaks a- being with him in Rome (Col. iv. in |, then we know that he was purposing an immediate journey to Asia Minor: and we learn from 2 Tim.iv, 11 that he had not returned when this last of Paul's epistlo was written. It i- surely not im- possible for him lo have -one jn t hi> interval to Peter
hut it would not do to argue that a letter came from at P.ahylon : and as he must have personally known the Edinburgh because it is dated from Athens" I Esrposi- tory Discourses on \-<t Peter, t, 548).
Some, again, think that Babylon may mean a place of that name in Egypt Of this opinion are Le Clerc, Mill. Pearson, Pott, Burton, Greswell, and Hug. Strabo {Geog. svii, 1. 30) calls it not a town, hut a strong for- tress huih by refugees from Babylon, and a garrison for one of the three legions guarding Egypt, The opinion that this small encampment is the Babylon of our epis- tle has certainly little plausibility. It is equally strange to suppose it to he Ctesiphon or Seleucis; ami stranger still to imagine that Babylon represents Jerusalem, as is maintained by CappeUus, Spanheim, Hardouin, and Si mler. The natural interpretation is to take Babylon as the name of the well-known city. We have indeed no record of any missionary journey of Peter into Clial- daea, lor bul little of Peter's later life is given us in the New Test. But we know that many .lews inhabited Babylon -oil yap dXiyoi iivptdStg, according to Jose- phus ami was not such a spot, to a greal extent a
Jewish colony or settlement, likely to attract the apos- tle of the circumcision? Lardner's principal argument,
that the terms of the injunction to loyal obedience (ii. 13, 1 1) imply that Peter was within the hounds of the Roman empire, proves nothing; for as Davidson re- marks—'•The phrase 'the king,' in a letter written by a pei-ou in one country to a person in another, may mean the kin-' either of the person writing, or of him to whom the letter is written." Granting that the
Parthian empire had its own government, lie is writing to person- in other provinces under Roman jurisdiction, and he enjoins them to obey the emperor as supreme. and the various governors sen! by him for purposes of nol an irrational ferocity peculiar to Trajan's times that
local administration. Moreover, as has often heen oh- in the provinces Christians were always exposed to pop- served, the countries of the persons addressed in the ular fury and irregular magisterial condemnation ; that epistle (i. I) are enumerated in the order in which a person writing from Babylon would naturally arrange them, beginning with those lying nearest to him. and passing in circuit to those in the wesl and the south, at the greatest di tance from him. The natural mean- ing of the designation Babylon is held by Erasmus, Calvin, Beza, Lightfoot, Wieseler, Mayerhoff, Bengel, De Welt.-, r.lii!.. and perhaps the majority of modern critic-.