When was 2 Peter written?

The place of writing and the destination are alike unknown. The date of writing. assigned by the scholars, is between 67 and 80 AD. Peter's second epistle was written 67 - 68 AD and it may well have been that on receipt of that letter Jude wrote to those believers with whom he had a close connection and interest. The difference between the Epistle of Jude and the Second epistle of Peter is that Peter speaks of sin whereas Jude of apostasy. Peter predicts that false teachers would arise (2 Pet. 2:1, 3:3) and Jude states that they had come in (vA.

This internal evidence destructive critics try to evade and offset. They claim that the writer was not Simon Peter, but that some unknown author, using Peter's name, wrote this document. It is the same foolish invention advanced by Old Testament critics as to the authorship of the book of Daniel.

To establish this theory they point to the fact that there was a tendency in the early church to use Peter's name in different pseudo documents, such spurious writings as "The Gospel of Peter; The Revelation of Peter; the Acts of Peter, and the travels of Peter." But the fact of these forgeries, some of which cover some of the text of the Second Epistle of Peter, is an evidence that a genuine writing exists. According to the opinions of the men who reject the authorship of Peter, the writer of this Epistle to give standing to his production thought best to impersonate the Apostle Peter and so he started right in the beginning by saying he is Peter. And he is careful to select the Aramaic form of Peter's name, the name Symeon. Would a forger not rather have avoided that uncommon use of Peter's name? But, furthermore, he also tells us that the Lord had told him about His death; and yet this man was not Peter, nor had the Lord ever told him what He had spoken to Peter about the time and manner of His death. Then the writer of the Epistle claims to have been on the Mount of Transfiguration, that he beheld His glory there and heard the voice of the Father speaking. He is positive that he was present and was an eyewitness, the strongest possible claim.

Yet if it was not Peter who wrote this Epistle, then it must have been either John or James, because there were only three eyewitnesses of the transfiguration. But would John or James write thus, hiding his identity under the name of Peter? Then the writer, assuming the name of Peter, declares that he had written the first Epistle, which Peter beyond doubt wrote, yet he had not written that Epistle. Here are three (in plain English) lies. A man writes an Epistle claiming to be Peter, but he is not Peter at all; hence he is a fraud. The same man claims that he was at the lake of Tiberias , that the Lord told him about His death; yet he was not there, for he was not Peter; therefore this impersonator is a fraud. This is an especially strong point. The fact that the Lord had announced Peter's death was known to but a few at that time, when the Epistle was written, which we take was about the year 65 A.D.

From this time, A.D. 49 or 50, his name does not again appear in the Acts of the Apostles; and we have no certain knowledge of the sphere of his labours. But, as he inscribes his first Epistle to the Hebrew Christians, "scattered throughout Pontus, Galatia, Cappadocia, Asia, and Bithynia," he is supposed to have laboured in these countries. His second Epistle is of a much later date, and must have been written shortly before his death. This we learn from what he says in the first chapter: "Knowing that shortly I must put off this my tabernacle, even as our Lord Jesus Christ hath showed me." (See John 21:18-19)

The exact date of Peter's visit to Rome has been a subject of great controversy between Catholic and Protestant writers in all ages. But it may now be considered as a settled point, that he did not visit that city till near the end of his life. The date of his martyrdom is also uncertain. Most probably it took place about A.D. 67 or 68, and about the seventieth year of his age. The burning of Rome by Nero is dated by Tacitus about the month of July, 64. The persecution against the Christians broke out soon after; and it was under this persecution that our apostle was honoured with the crown of martyrdom.

In 1 PETER, we see that the gospel had spread widely amongst the Jews; this Epistle is addressed to the Jewish Christians of the dispersion. The second Epistle, of course, is later, and belongs to the end of the apostle's career, when he was about to put off his tabernacle and be separated from his brethren; he would not leave them without the warnings that apostolic care would soon no longer furnish: hence, like the Epistle of Jude, it contemplates grievous departure from the path of godliness on the part of those who had received the faith, and a mocking of the testimony that the Lord was coming.

Observe this also, that the Spirit of God in the word never notices Peter's death, so that the Church could know anything about it, till he was just on the point of departure: then Peter says the Lord had told him that he must "put off this tabernacle." Was this to make a sign of it, or to help on the systematic deferring of the hope? Besides, Peter might have died any day; Though he was not a young man when the first epistle appeared, yet the Spirit of God kept him from writing about it then. Nowhere else does he refer to it till he was just going to depart. The Church's hope could not therefore be affected by it, for the mention was made only as he was leaving the earth; and the gospel of John did not appear for long after. Just so was it with the apostle Paul. He names something similar, but when? He was not even aware that he was going to die when he wrote his epistle to the Philippians; or rather, he was sure he was to live a little longer, though stating it in one of the last of his writings. It was only at the end of all, when he was on the point of being offered up, that he declared his departure was at hand. What sort of proof is this that there are intervening events revealed in God's word which ought to hinder a Christian from continually watching for Christ? It is really strong presumption in a direction exactly the reverse.

There is no evidence that the question as to 2 Peter was raised in the first century. We hear of it much later in the fourth century when unbelief and unspirituality had long prevailed to the decay of faith and the prevalence of heterodoxy, to which the open and sanctioned worldliness that followed gave great impetus and wide currency. The death of Peter no more invalidated his Second Epistle, than Paul's death did his Second to Timothy. This is a mere imagination of circumstances to account for a much later and a wholly ungrounded hesitation about our Epistle. The supposition of delay at first, and the collection of evidence from various parts, before the Epistle was received on the church's verdict of its genuineness, are but an amiable dream.

The Second Epistle, like the First, eminently bears on daily life, but with less doctrine, as is natural, being avowedly written afterward to the same persons. Both are hortative; but the Second pronounces, as the First does not, a solemn warning on closing evils, with the severest denunciation of false teachers denying the Sovereign Master that bought them. These bring on themselves swift destruction, and mislead many into their dissolute doings, whereby the way of truth shall be blasphemed; as also by covetousness with feigned words they make merchandise of the saints. Hence prominence is given to these appalling enormities under the garb, not only of professing Christians, but of accepted teachers. This, at a later date at least, struck superficial observers so strangely as to raise a question of the authorship. But they ought to have recognised the selfsame spirit in the early episode of the apostle's dealing (Acts 8:18-24) with Simon of Samaria, the sorcerer of old. The fervour of love which characterised his evangelising kindled into a flame against the profanity of the baptised man, who thought to obtain the gift of God with money. Peter therefore pointed him out for the warning of others, yea, of himself too, as in the gall of bitterness and in the bond of iniquity. The advance and spread in corruption now descried by the Spirit called for still more energetic terms of abhorrence; as the last chapter exposes the latter day mockery of infidels in a philosophic form.

The author of the Second Epistle of Peter introduces himself with “Symeon Peter, a servant and an apostle of Jesus Christ.” Symeon is the Hebrew-Aramaic way of writing Simon which is also used in Acts 15:14 (according to the Greek text of the NT of Nestlé-Aland26). Peter anticipates his death in the near future (chap. 1:14) and thereby remembers the Lord Jesus’ announcement in John 21:18-19. Besides he mentions that he was one of the three eye-witnesses on the mount when the Lord Jesus was transfigured (compare Luke 9:27-36). Peter knows and estimates Paul’s epistles and calls him “our beloved brother Paul” (3:15). Finally he writes that this is the second epistle addressed to them (chap. 3:1). All these facts form part of the internal evidence for the genuineness of the epistle and authorship of Peter.

And yet this epistle is dismissed today by most scientists as not being from Peter. The main reasons are as follows:

219 As to 2 Peter, the epistle most contested and latest known in the Church, I am thoroughly satisfied it is genuine. External evidence is not "against," but there is not so early evidence of quotation for it: that internal is, I formally deny. That mere critics who look at the surface have thought so I know. The similarity to Jude is dwelt on. There is an exactly suited difference. Jude speaks of apostasy; Peter of wickedness, because Peter speaks in both epistles of God's government, and gives the link between the glorious grace of the heaven-revealing gospel, and that government on earth as revealed already in the Old Testament: in the first epistle, viewed as exercised in favour of the just; in the second, against the wicked. Hence, he goes on to the end of all things. It professes to be the second epistle, and written by Simon Peter, saying, that he had been with Jesus in the transfiguration (and if thus an imposture, it is an audacious one; yet one which is most solemn in its denunciation of evil, and holy in its character). It properly and exactly completes the first. The question of the canon I need not go into with you, nor general councils. They do not in themselves command much respect when we read their history. There was what the rationalists, however, ought to delight in — abundance of the human element. But I do not feel much more respect for the "first freedom of the gospel." What we have of the fathers here alluded to was mere Alexandrian speculation — after the school whose views are presented to us by Philo — Neoplatonism! But we can bless God, that (in spite of shameful human violence and intrigue, and the emperor's authority to keep the peace amongst the bishops of the holy councils — for this is the real truth of the case) God, who promised that the gates of hell should not prevail against the Church, has maintained substantial foundation truth for saints to live by, through the means of, or in spite of, human aberrations. The early contentions of the Church, and the deplorable scenes of the first councils, are full of instruction in this respect.

The fact is that external evidences to confirm the authenticity of Second Peter are not needed, for the internal evidences are beyond controversy of such a nature as to establish the Petrine authorship. The Epistle starts with the name of Peter. In the Greek the name Simon is spelled "Symeon" or "Simeon." If we turn to Acts 15:14 we read that James called Peter "Symeon," the Aramaic form for Simon. Then the writer refers to the fact that he would have soon to put off this tabernacle "even as our Lord Jesus Christ hath showed me." He was now an old man, and the Lord had spoken to him at the lakeside. "When thou art old thou shalt stretch forth thy hands" (John 21). Still stronger is the reference of the writer to the transfiguration, where Peter was present, and he speaks of it as being an eyewitness of His coming and of His majesty And, finally, the writer says: "This second Epistle, beloved, I now write unto you" (3:1).

The Epistle is not found in the Peshito version. According to Bishop Westcott in his Canon of the New Testament there are in existence two classes of manuscripts of this version. Both omit the Second and Third Epistles of John, the Second Epistle of Peter, the Epistle of Jude and the Book of Revelation, but include all the other books. This Canon seems to have been generally maintained in the Syrian churches. It is reproduced in the Arabic version of Erpenius, which was taken from the Peshito. Cosmas, an Egyptian traveller of the sixth century, states that only three of the so-called "Catholic" Epistles were received by the Syrians. Later sources charge the Syrian churches with mutilating the New Testament by not having these books in their Bibles.

The Epistle is also omitted in the Latin version, that is, in the oldest editions. That the Vulgate is unreliable is well known. Westcott makes the following argument about the missing Second Epistle of Peter in the Latin version: "If we suppose that it was once received into the canon like the First Epistle, it would in all probability have been translated by the same person, as seems to have been the case with the Gospel of Luke and the Acts (both written by Luke), though their connection is less Obvious; and while every allowance is made for the difference in style in the original Epistles, we must look for the same rendering of the same phrases. But when on the contrary, it appears that the Latin text of the Epistle not only exhibits constant and remarkable difference from the text of other parts of the Vulgate, but also differs from the First Epistle in the rendering of words common to both, when it further appears that it differs not less clearly from the Epistle of Jude in those parts which are almost identical in the Greek; then the supposition that it was admitted into the Canon at the same time with them becomes at once unnatural. It is indeed possible that the two Epistles may have been received at the same time and yet have found different translators." But this argument does not mean at all that this Epistle is spurious and should be excluded from the New Testament.

But while the Epistle is not mentioned in the Muratorian fragment, in the writings of Polycarp, Papias, Irenaeus and others, and while it is missing in the Peshito and the earlier editions of the Vulgate, Hippolytus (living in the first half of the third century) was evidently acquainted with the Epistle, for in writing on the Antichrist he makes use of 2 Peter 1:21. Eusebius, the church historian, gives incontrovertible testimony that the Epistle was positively known at the close of the second century as the second Epistle of Peter. He shows that Clement of Alexandria (about 190 A.D.) knew the Epistle as the work of Peter and used it. The successor of Clement, Origen, according to Eusebius wrote: "Peter has left one acknowledged Epistle, and possibly also a second, for it is disputed." It was through Jerome's (Eusebius Hieronymus, born 390 A.D.) efforts that the Epistle was added to the Vulgate. He wrote: "Peter wrote two Epistles, which are termed Catholic, the second of which is denied by most to be his, because of the disagreement of its style with that of the former Epistle." On account of these historical facts opinions among scholars have been very much divided. Many reject the Petrine authorship of this Epistle, but other scholars accept it without any question. Among those who defend the Epistle against those who deny it are scholars of the highest reputation like Alford, Olshausen, Keil and others.