The Epistle of 2 Peter

But we think this is an unfortunate move. The acceptance of 2 Peter as both pseudonymous and inerrant requires us to believe that the claim in 1:1 would not have been understood in its day as a claim to authorship-which is unlikely. We have many examples of certain kinds of books being written in someone else's name-apocalypses especially. And we have evidence that some people, even in the early church, wrote letters in other people's names (2 Thess. 2:2). But what we also find is that such books and letters were always regarded with suspicion. L. R. Donelson concludes after a thorough study: “No one ever seems to have accepted a document as religiously and philosophically prescriptive which was known to be forged. I DO NOT KNOW OF A SINGLE EXAMPLE.”

The very fact that 2 Peter was accepted as a canonical book, then, presumes that the early Christians who made this decision were positive that Peter wrote it. Those who did not think that Peter wrote it barred it from the canon for this reason. In other words, we have to choose between (1) viewing 2 Peter as a forgery, intended perhaps to claim an authority that the author did not really have-and therefore omit it from the canon; and (2) viewing 2 Peter as an authentic letter of the Apostle Peter. The ‘have-your-cake-and-eat-it-too’ theory of a canonical pseudepigraphon does not seem to be an alternative.

As a matter of fact, however, we do not think the reasons scholars put forward for thinking that the apostle Peter could not have written this letter are at all convincing. Let me deal briefly with each of the objections we listed above.

(1) The Greek of 2 Peter has an undeniable literary and even philosophical flavor, quite different from the Greek of 1 Peter. But (a) there is nothing in the letter that Peter, after many years of ministry in the Greek world, could not have written; (b) Peter may have deliberately chosen to write in this style because of the needs of his readers, and (c) the more commonplace Greek of 1 Peter may be the result of the help of an amanuensis (Silvanus?-see 1 Peter 5:12).

(2) Nothing the false teachers were propagating is unknown in the first century church.

(3) Other New Testament texts suggest that (words?) of the Lord and certain New Testament books were being regarded as scriptural from an early period.

(4) While some Christians expressed doubts about 2 Peter, many others accepted the book from the beginning. People probably had doubts because the book was not widely used and because there were so many Petrine forgeries about.

(5) Nothing in 2 Peter suggests any kind of ecclesiastical organization or hierarchy; and ‘early Catholicism’ itself is a dubious concept.

(6) Resemblances between 2 Peter and the ‘testament’ form are undeniable. But the use of this form within a letter renders comparison with other ‘testaments’ dubious. We should accept the plain meaning of the letter's opening words and accept it as an authentic letter of the Apostle Peter. (Moo, The NIV Application Commentary: 2 Peter, Jude [Zondervan Publishing House, Grand Rapids MI 1996], pp. 23-24; bold emphasis ours)

"The slowness of determining the final limits of the canon is testimony to the care and vigilance of early Christians in receiving books purporting to be apostolic. But, while the collection of the New Testament into one volume was slow, the belief in a written rule of faith was primitive and apostolic… In the most basic sense neither individuals nor councils created the canon; instead they came to perceive and acknowledge the self-authenticating quality of these writings, which imposed themselves as canonical upon the church." (Metzger, The New Testament: Its Background, Growth and Content [New York: Abingdon Press, 1965], p. 276; bold emphasis ours)