4. Destination and readers
4. Destination and readers
The destination of the letter is explicitly stated in the opening verse: ‘exiles of the Dispersion in Pontus, Galatia, Cappadocia, Asia, and Bithynia’. Hort suggested in 1898 that these names described a travel route to be followed by the bearer of the letter as he travelled through four Roman provinces south of the Black Sea, in what is today called Asia Minor, mostly in modern Turkey. This suggestion has been widely accepted, although it has been penetratingly refined and corrected in detail by Colin Hemer, who argues that the only feasible ports and trade routes require the messenger to follow a route beginning at Amisus (modern Samsun), then travelling through Amasia in eastern Galatia, Zela, Caesarea in Cappadocia, Iconium, Pisidian Antioch, and Laodicea, and then perhaps, if time allowed, into other churches of Asia (Colossae?, even Ephesus?), then finally to Nicea, Nicomedia and Chalcedon. From there the messenger could board a ship in nearby Byzantium and return to Rome. (See map on p. 19.)
This circular route means that all the major centres of Christian influence in Asia Minor would be reached by the letter. Moreover, copies could have been made at each stop and distributed to the smaller churches in neighbouring cities.
But if all the churches in Asia Minor in AD 62–63 were reached by this letter and were the intended recipients of it, then the question of whether Peter is writing to Jewish Christians or Gentile Christians is already answered. By this time, over thirty years after Pentecost, the rapid growth of the church would have meant that there were both Jewish and Gentile Christians in all of these churches. Therefore, while Peter can readily use Jewish terminology to apply to his readers (note the phrase ‘exiles of the Dispersion’ for example in 1:1), this is simply applying to the church in the New Covenant age the language which previously had been appropriate for God’s covenant people, the Jews (see commentary at 2:10, and discussion there on the theme of the church as the new people of God).
There are several indications in the letter that Peter assumed there to be a large segment of Gentile Christians among his readers. He says, ‘You were ransomed from the futile ways inherited from your fathers’ (1 Pet. 1:18), and, ‘Once you were no people but now you are God’s people’ (1 Pet. 2:10)—something which he would hardly say of converted Jews. He says their lives had been filled with sin uncharacteristic of Jews: ‘Let the time that is past suffice for doing what the Gentiles like to do, living in licentiousness, passions, drunkenness, revels, carousing, and lawless idolatry’ (1 Pet. 4:3). Then he adds that unbelievers ‘are surprised that you do not now join them in the same wild profligacy’ (1 Pet. 4:4), something which would not have been surprising to unbelievers if the Christians had previously been Jews following the strict moral standards of first-century Judaism.
On the other hand, there were no doubt converted Jews in these churches, for even at Pentecost there were present residents of ‘Cappadocia, Pontus and Asia’ (Acts 2:9). The readers are therefore best thought to be mixed congregations of Jewish and Gentile Christians.