Epistle written to us through Clement”.! Here the preposition clearly denotes the interpreter who writes in the name of the Church and cannot cover the messenger also, because the bearers of the Epistle—Claudius Ephebus, Valerius Bito, and Fortunatus—are named at the end.’
Since, therefore, διά can in such contexts designate the writer as well as the bearer of an Epistle, it is hardly safe to say that Silvanus cannot have been both in this case. If St. Peter had not so far profited by his general experience and in particular by his association with Silvanus and other missionaries as to write moderately good Greek and to employ ‘“‘Pauline”’ ideas, then we may suppose that he permitted Silvanus to write the Epistle for him. He was none the less the real author if he employed a letter-writer whose position and experience enabled him to supplement the author’s alleged deficiencies in respect of the language and modes of thought familiar to the persons addressed. The postscript indicates St. Peter's approval of the draft thus made and submitted to him. The tone of authority which is used in the addresses to separate classes is naturally reproduced by the secretary from his recollection of what St. Peter had said. The secretary’s intervention affects only the manner of the Epistle at most. If Silvanus had really contributed to the matter he would have been joined with St. Peter in the salutation. On the other hand, there is every reason to suppose that Silvanus was also St. Peter’s messenger plenipotentiary and would, as when he was sent by the Apostles of Jerusalem, ‘‘ proclaim the same things by word of mouth ’”’.®
The fourth objection to the traditional view is that the Epistle reflects conditions which were definitely later than the date of St. Peter’s death. No other book of the New Testament offers any plain information about St. Peter at any time after the hypocrisy he practised at Antioch. But Christian tradition connects him not only with Antioch ® and Asia Minor ®&—statements which are probably simple inferences from the statements of St. Paul’s Epistle to the
1 Τὴν σήμερον οὖν κυριακὴν ἅγιαν ἡμέραν διηγάγοµεν ἐν ᾖ ἀνέγνωμεν ὑμῶν trv ἐπιστολήν:' ἣν ἕξομεν ἀεί ποτε ἀναγινώσκοντες νουθετεῖσθαι ὡς καὶ τὴν προτέραν ἡμεῖν δια Κλήμεντος γραφεῖσαν (Eusebius, Historiae Ecclesiae, iv. 23. 8).
2Clement, ad Corinthios, Ixv. 3 Acts xv. 27. 4 Gal. ii.
5So Origen (in Lucam Homilia, vi.): ‘‘ Eleganter in cuiusdam martyris epistola
scriptum repperi, Ignatium dico, episcopum Antiochiae post Petrum secundum, qui in persecutione Romae pugnavit ad bestias, ‘ principem saeculi huius latuit virginitas
Mariae’.””
8So Origen (fragment in Eusebius, Historiae Ecclesiae, iii. 1): Πέτρος δὲ ἐν Πόντῳ καὶ Γαλατίᾳ καὶ Βιθυνίᾳ Καππαδοκίᾳ τε καὶ ᾿Ασίᾳ κεκηρυχέναι τοῖς ἐκ διασπορᾶς ᾿Ιουδαίοις ἔοικεν.