AUTHOR
AUTHOR
The style of this letter is not like that of 1 Peter, and the language is quite different. R. J. Bauckham points out that 2 Peter has the highest proportion of hapax legomena of any New Testament book. Of the fifty-seven words not found elsewhere in the New Testament, thirty-two do not occur in the LXX, that is, they are not biblical in any sense—even though many of them occur in Hellenistic Jewish writers of the period. He suggests that "2 Peter belongs to the sphere of Hellenistic Jewish Greek.” 1Those who see Peter as the author hold that this may result from the use of different secretaries. They point out that little is known about what a secretary might contribute 2and that if Peter used different secretaries or if he wrote one letter himself and used a secretary for the other, the stylistic differences are adequately accounted for. They hold also that any writing that comes down to us from antiquity bearing the name of its author should be accepted as coming from that author unless there is strong evidence that the attribution is erroneous.
In modern times most scholars hold that there is such strong evidence. Kummel, for example, bluntly says, "Peter cannot have written this Epistle.” 3A variety of considerations is put forward for this conclusion, including (1) the idea that the relation of this letter to Jude forbids Petrine authorship, (2) the differences in literary style and vocabulary between this epistle and 1 Peter, (3) the reference to Paul’s letters as Scripture (2 Pet. 3:15-16), (4) the references to the apostles as "in the past” (3:2) and to "our fathers” as having died (3:4)—references that are said to point to a time later than the apostle. The message of Peter that we get in the letter is said to be the product of an emerging tradition from a later period, rather than personal recollections of the apostle. Some point out that there were several books attributed to Peter, such as the Gospel of Peter, the Acts of Peter, and the Apocalypse of Peter. There is no reason for ascribing these writings to the apostle, and (it is suggested) 2 Peter is simply another product of the thinking that multiplied writings said to have been written by Peter.
Generally speaking, conservative scholars have held to the Petrine authorship, but scholars of other points of view have held that Peter was not the author. Interestingly Bauckham, whose general stance is quite conservative, accepts the view that the letter is pseudonymous, but he argues that the original readers would have recognized what the writer was doing; there was no intention to deceive. Bauckham says they "must have expected it to be fictional,” and again, "the Petrine authorship was intended to be an entirely transparent fiction.” 4Perhaps this view does not give enough attention to the fact that in the early church the debates over whether it should be accepted or not raged over whether it was written by an apostle or not. If the fiction was really transparent, the question arises, "Why was it that so many in the early church did not realize it?”
We must consider several points in determining the authorship of 2 Peter.