Footnotes
Footnotes
1.E. G. Selwyn, The First Epistle of St. Peter (London: Macmillan, 1949), p. 28. See
also Robert H. Gundry, "‘Verba Christi ’ in 1 Peter,” NTS 13 (1966-67): 336-50; Ernest
Best, "I Peter and the Gospel Tradition,” NTS 16 (1969-70): 95-113; Robert H. Gundry,
"Further Verba on Verba Christi,” Bib 55 (1974): 211-32.
2.For other examples, see Selwyn, First Peter, pp. 33-36; Alan M. Stibbs and Andrew
F. Walls, The First Epistle General of Peter (London: Tyndale, 1959), pp. 35-36.
3.At the turn of the century J. H. Moulton likened the situation to that in modern Wales, where English is handled competently even by very many who speak Welsh. Of Jesus and the apostles he says, "They would write as men who had used the language from boyhood, not as foreigners painfully expressing themselves in an imperfectly known idiom” (A Grammar of New Testament Greek, vol. 1 [Edinburgh: T.
& T. Clark, 1906], p. 8). Johnson holds that "Peter could have improved his Greek during the years of his ministry. To deny him this capacity is cultural condescension. Two of the great English stylists of the twentieth century (Conrad and Nabokov) learned and mastered English only as adults” (pp. 432-33).
4.The author says "I wrote,” not "I sent” (εγραψα [egrapsa, from γράφω, G1211], not επεμψα [epempsa, from πέμπω, G4287] or απέστειλα [apesteila, from αποστέλλω, G690].
5.See esp. Peter H. Davids, The First Epistle of Peter, NICNT (Grand Rapids: Eerdmans, 1990), pp. 3-5.
6.More than fifty years ago, Enslin insisted, "It is not an overstatement to say that [1 Peter] is saturated with Pauline ideas. In fact, it actually stands closer to Paul’s thought than do some letters which bear his name” (p. 322). This is clearly an exaggerated estimate and lacks support today.
7.According to Klijn, "If Peter’s authorship be accepted, the letter becomes an important document of the life of the primitive church in general and more specifically of the relationship between Peter and Paul. For it appears, then, that these two apostles drew on the same traditions, which indicates a oneness in their preaching that has often been denied” (p. 158).
8.The words are taken from the summary of Childs, p. 453; the reference is to N. Brox, Der erste Petrusbrief, EKKNT (ZQrich: Benziger Verlag, 1979; 2d ed. 1986), p. 51. John H. Elliott, sees a fresh approach to 1 Peter in which "a more judicious distinction between tradition and redaction is beginning to clarify the peculiar features of the document.” This peculiarity "argues positively for the liberation of 1 Peter from its ‘Pauline bondage’” ("The Rehabilitation of an Exegetical Step-Child: 1 Peter in Recent Research,” JBL 95 [1976]: 248).
9.Selwyn, First Epistle, pp. 28-31.
10.Robert/Feuillet, p. 576.
11.Ernest Best holds that "the evidence is satisfied by the situation in which Christians lived at all times and in which violence might break out against them at any moment— in this they might suffer death, or the loss of goods, or be regarded as murderers or just mischief-makers” (1 Peter, NCB [Grand Rapids: Eerdmans, 1982], p. 39).
12.Childs, p. 455. It should be added that Childs does not argue that Peter was the author.
13.Fuller says, "The use of Babylon as a cryptogram points likewise to a period of official state persecution” (p. 158). But this is surely reading far too much into the use of a name.
14."We may conclude that, given the apostolic authorship whether direct or indirect, the Roman origin of this Epistle stands without serious challenge” (Martin 2:335).
15.W. C. van Unnik holds that "the comparison in i.18-19 can only have its full force if the letter was written before the fall of the Temple in A.D. 70”; he goes on to reason, "There are no cogent arguments which prevent us from seeing in Peter the mind which directed the hand of Silvanus (v. 12)” ("The Teaching of Good Works in 1 Peter,” NTS 1 [1954-55]: 92-110). Without being specific, J. H. L. Dijkman has argued that the letter must be early ("1 Peter: A Later Pastoral Stratum?” NTS 33 [1987]: 26571).
16.This is a far more likely assessment than that of J. H. Elliott, who argues that Jews were one of the persecuting groups (A Home for the Homeless: A Sociological Exegesis of 1 Peter, Its Situation and Strategy [Philadelphia: Fortress, 1981], esp. pp. 80-81), On this reading, the lack of any anti-Jewish polemic is decidedly strange. The wholesale application in this epistle of Old Testament (Jewish) categories to the church appears to be to the church as a whole and is part of a distinctively Christian reading of the Old Testament attested in many New Testament documents.
17.Moreover, the provinces in 1:1 are listed in the order in which a messenger might visit them; see C. J. Hemer, "The Address of 1 Peter,” ExpTim 89 (1977-78): 239-43.
18.B. F. Westcott similarly argues, "The present form of the Fragment makes the idea of a chasm in it very probable” (A General Survey of the History of the Canon of the New Testament, 6th ed. [Cambridge: Macmillan, 1889], p. 289).
19.On pseudonymity in general, see the section Pseudonymity in chap. 15 above.
20.G. Edmundson writes, "The Rescript of Trajan merely confirmed in writing the practice, which had subsisted since the time of Nero, of treating the very name of Christian as a crime against the State” (The Church in Rome in the First Century [London: Longmans, 1913], p. 139 n. 1; cited also in Martin 2:333).
21.R. Perdelwitz, Die Mysterienreligionen und das Problem des I. Petrusbriefes, RVV
11.3 (Giessen: Topelmann, 1911). Without referring to its originator by name, Wikenhauser says that this partition theory "is brilliant rather than well-founded” (p. 504).
22.In H. Windisch and H. Preisker, Die katholischen Briefe, HNT, 3d ed. (TQbingen: Mohr, 1951), esp. pp. 156ff.; Contra, e.g., Guthrie, pp. 789-90; J. Ramsey Michaels, 1 Peter, WBC (Waco, Tex.: Word, 1988), p. 73.
23.F. L. Cross, 1 Peter: A Paschal Liturgy (London: Mowbray, 1954).
24.Even under a strictly aspectual reading of the Greek verb, in which the tense in itself is not understood to provide any necessary reference to time, the context clearly argues that this new birth is something in the readers’ past.
25.J. N. D. Kelly comments, "Both Preisker’s and Cross’s theories are impressive in their breath-taking ingenuity”; he adds, "It is impossible, however, to feel much confidence either in the detail of their analyses or in their schemes as wholes” (A Commentary on the Epistles of Peter and of Jude, HNTC [New York: Harper, 1969],
p. 18) See also T. C. G. Thornton, "1 Peter, a Paschal Liturgy?” JTS 12 (1961): 14
26.
26.Martin 2:344.
27.The participle "living” may be attached to "word” (as in the NIV and many commentators). But perhaps F. J. A. Hort was correct in attaching "living” to God. He drew from this the inference, "It is in effect God Himself speaking, speaking not once only, but with renewed utterance, kindling life not by a recollection but by a present power” (The First Epistle of St Peter I.1-II.17 [London: Macmillan, 1898], p. 92). But even if we accept the NIV, God is still seen as vitally concerned with his Word.
28.F. W. Beare finds in this letter "the thought of God as Creator, Father, and Judge, as the One whose will determines all that comes to pass, who shapes the destiny and determines the actions of those whom He has chosen for His own, who sustains them through the sufferings which He sends to test them, and who at the last will vindicate them and reward them eternally” (The First Epistle of Peter [Oxford: Blackwell, 1947], p. 33).
29.See further Leon Morris, The Cross in the New Testament (Grand Rapids: Eerdmans, 1965), pp. 322-25.