Adoption Into The Canon
ADOPTION INTO THE CANON
"No NT document had a longer or tougher struggle to win acceptance than 2 Peter,” writes Kelly. 14 The subject matter of the book was not such as to make it wildly popular, and there were certainly doubts as to whether the book was really written by the apostle Peter. So the church hesitated. Kelly finds evidence of its acceptance first in the East, where it is present in the early Coptic version (c. A.D. 200) and in the early-third-century p 72. According to Rufinus’s Latin translation of Origen, that Father says it was a disputed writing, but he cites it and apparently regards it as authoritative. Eusebius accepts 1 Peter, "but the so-called second Epistle we have not received as canonical, but nevertheless it has appeared useful to many, and has been studied with other Scriptures” (H.E. 3.3.1). Of all the writings bearing the name of Peter, he says "I recognize only one as genuine” (3.3.4). He includes 2 Peter in his list of "the Disputed Books which are nevertheless known to most” (H.E. 3.25.3). The book does not appear to have been used by Chrysostom or Theodore of Mopsuestia, but it does appear in Athanasius’s festal letter of 367. In the West it seems to have been unknown or overlooked for quite a long time. Jerome says that Peter "wrote two epistles which are called Catholic, the second of which, on account of its difference from the first in style, is considered by many not to be by him” (De vir. ill. i). But evidently it won its way, and after Athanasius it seems to have been generally accepted.