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  • From: Jeff Peterson <peterson AT austingrad.edu>
  • To: "Corpus-paul" <corpus-paul AT franklin.oit.unc.edu>
  • Subject: Re: Peter and Paul
  • Date: Thu, 20 Jun 2002 01:12:06 -0500


Thanks to Edgar Krentz for the thoughtful engagement of my post. To
be entirely clear, I regard 1 Peter as Luke Johnson does the
Pastorals: I'm not convinced that Peter wrote it, but I'm profoundly
unconvinced by the standard arguments that he did not.

But it is in the 90s that there is a burgeoning of immediate
apocalyptic expectation in the Apocalypse of John, Matthew [far more
apocalyptic than Mark], 2 Thessalonians. It is precisely when there
is oppression that apocalyptic flourishes. Did anyone suggest that 1
Peter is an example of Frühkatholizismus? I certainly would not>

The Haustafel in 2:18-3:7 has certainly been claimed as evidence of a
second-generation church shedding its radical past and settling
comfortably in among patriarchal Greco-Roman society, one standard
characteristic of early Catholicism; and 1 Peter's Paulinism has been
similarly treated. I'm not confident that all texts you cite were
written in the 90s; I'm inclined to put 2 Thessalonians in the 50s (a
question Abraham Malherbe has recently reopened in his Anchor Bible
volume), Matthew in the 80s, and Revelation ca. 100. And I'd need to
see your definition of apocalyptic to offer a confident assessment of
the claim that Matthew scores higher than Mark on this scale; offhand
I'd say it holds only if apocalyptic is defined as "indulging in more
elaborate description of the Great Assize." On the particular point
at issue in our discussion of 1 Peter, Matthew does not expect a more
imminent end to the present order of things than Mark does (cf. 9:1;
13:30, 35-37), and 2 Thess is written to suggest that the parousia is
farther away than its intended audience fears (2:1-2).

Are you so sure that the Silvanus of 1 Peter and the one named in 1
Thessalonians are the same person? After all, Silvanus is a Latin
name of a nature deity. Is the name so uncommon that two people could
not bear it? And were all of Paul's letters written by scribes?
Romans, certainly. Galatians and Philippians name no scribe, nor does
1 Thessalonians. Are you explaining the difficult here by the unknown?

Certainty that Peter's Silvanus is identical Paul's isn't required to
insist that it remains a real possibility, not to be dismissed
without argument. If 1 Peter is pseudonymous, wouldn't the mention of
Silvanus represent a conscious association of Peter with Paul (mehr
Frühkatholizismus!)? Or would one imagine a deutero-Petrine named
Silvanus writing himself into the text? (Actually this is a good
question for any deutero-apostolic letter: was the inital composition
presented as a documentary letter or as a scribal copy? Has this been
pursued?)

The conclusion to Galatians draws attention to its having been
composed in Paul's own, relatively undisciplined hand (6:11),
implying that the foregoing was written by a scribe (cf. also 1 Cor
16:21). I'm not whether Phile 19 should be interpreted similarly or
whether it indicates that Paul wrote the whole letter himself, but
documentary letters extant on single sheets of papyrus exhibit a
disciplined script yielding to the sender's less practiced hand in
closing. (Col 4:18 and 2 Thess 3:17 raise the question asked above:
was the first version of these letters circulated presented as an
autograph or as a scribal copy? If the latter, why would a
deutero-Pauline author draw attention to a feature which would only
be visible to the reader in a documentary letter and which is not
uniformly mentioned in the text of the letters being imitated?) I
would take 1 Cor 16:21 as evidence that at least the concluding
benediction was routinely appended in Paul's own hand even when he
did not draw explicit attention to the shift from his scribe's
handwriting to his own (thus in 2 Cor 13:13; Phil 4:23; Rom 16:20 [or
17-20, perhaps?]; 1 Thess 5:28 [27-28?]).

What Paul does here is expressly cite an early Christian creedal
statement. He does not attribute the tradition to them as tradents,
but says that "whether it is they or he, that is the way they preach
and that is the way the Corinthians came to believe.

In view of v. 1, it seems better to me to describe 1 Cor 15:3ff as a
summary of Paul's missionary proclamation than as itself a creedal
statement, though of course there was a correlation between what Paul
preached and what his converts affirmed in the act of assenting to
his preaching. Indeed, the correlation is explicit in v. 11, but
proclamation is still primary there. In any case, the referent of
EKEINOI in 1 Cor 15:11 is precisely the list of apostolic worthies
enumerated in vv. 5-7 (I'm inclined to take v. 6 as a parenthesis,
referring to an appearance that did not result in the commissioning
of the 500 as apostles, but that's open to argument), also the
referent of v. 10's AUTWN PANTWN, whom Paul says he outdid in
missionary productivity. The rhetorical point of 15:1-11 is similar
to other passages in which Paul reminds his converts of ties binding
them to other Christian communities (1:2; 4:17; 7:17; 9:4-6;
14:33b-34; 16:1-4). The summary of his gospel offered in 1 Cor 15:3ff
is presented as an apostolic consensus, which those Corinthians who
hold that there is no resurrection of the dead are opposing.

I think that this is a misinterpretation of Gal 1:23. Paul does not
here refer to agreement at all. The sense of his first visit is to
make clear that he went to Jerusalem to interrogate Peter [and that
he also saw James]. He was not personally known to the rest of
Jerusalem Christianity; they had heard that a former persecutor was
now a proclaimer. But there is not one syllable about agreement in
content. So I find the statement in the paragraph below not at all
persuasive.

The report in Gal 1:23 is that the church's erstwhile persecutor "now
gospels the faith that he formerly sought to stamp out." THN PISTIN
here refers to the content of Paul's proclamation, which is described
as identical with that of those he previously opposed. (Such a use of
PISTIS has of course been claimed as yet another index of early
Catholicism.)

1 Peter also cites early Christian tradition in 2:18-25 and in
3:18-22. But that does not date the letter. I doubt that your
arguments will bear the conclusions you suggest.

I'm afraid I don't see the relevance of the first two sentences to
the question. As to the third, each reader must judge for himself!

All best,

Jeff Peterson
--
Jeffrey Peterson
Associate Professor of New Testament
Austin Graduate School of Theology
Austin, Texas, USA




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