Church Hopping

There is a fun and challenging riddle out there commonly called Who Owns the Fish? The riddle itself is fun but the supposed background story is what makes it even more appealing. Allegedly Albert Einstein wrote this riddle and made the claim that 98% of the world’s population would be unable to solve the riddle. Well of course that gets the competitive juices flowing in just about anyone and they can’t resist sitting down to see if they are in the top 2% of the world’s population. The truth is that there is no real evidence that Albert Einstein actually wrote this riddle or made this claim, but this riddle is still very popular mainly due to the reputation of the alleged author. There are many people who think that the book of 2 Peter benefits from this same scenario.

Prepare yourself for a new big word. The practice of pseudepigraphy became quite common in the 2^nd century. Pseudepigraphy is the act of writing a book or letter and naming one of the Apostles as the author of the piece you just wrote. There are numerous examples of this such as The Gospel of Peter or the Apocalypse of Peter. Both of these books claim that Peter was the author, yet the internal evidence and the external evidence show that it is not consistent with Peter’s other writings and that the early church did not accept these as a part of Scripture. There is a very large amount of people today who say that the Apostle Peter did not write the book of 2^nd Peter, but that it was probably written by someone else claiming to be him sometime in the 2^nd century after all the Apostles had died.

One of the main reasons for the doubts surrounding 2^nd Peter is the lack of quotations by early church fathers. Though a few of the early church fathers do quote the epistle, 2nd Peter is quoted the least of all the books in the New Testament. Origen obviously believed in the authenticity of 2^nd Peter since he is the first to quote it by name and goes on to quote the epistle six times, but he did say that there were people who had doubts about it. There are a few earlier quotations by authors like Justin Martyr and Clement that appear to be from 2^nd Peter, but the book is not named. If this book is a victim of pseudepigraphy, it needed to be written and to have gained a wide acceptance before these early church fathers could be aware. Since Justin Martyr died around 165 AD it seems unlikely that there would have been enough time for this “scam” to have established itself as fact.

Another thing that anyone can notice is the big differences in the style and content of 1^st and 2^nd Peter. In 2^nd Peter, the author refers to himself as Simon Peter while in 1^st Peter he leaves out the Simon part. Of the 543 words in 1^st Peter and the 399 in 2^nd Peter, there are only 153 in common (in the Greek not your NIV). There are some similarities as well, such as the phrase “May grace and peace be multiplied to you” and the theme of the second coming of the Lord is dominate in both. Many people attribute the style differences to Peter using a different amanuensis or scribe for the second letter.

It is no secret that the book of 2^nd Peter has had a rough time fitting in with its peers. This is not the only time we have talked about 2 Peter and I can promise you that it won’t be the last. Even though there are a lot of questions surrounding the authenticity of 2^nd Peter, there is probably too much evidence supporting it to just write it off. I have in no way (as usual) covered all of the aspects of this interesting debate so I encourage you to read up and decide for yourself. And if you think you know who owns the fish, send me your answer.

Thanks to Seth for helping me recover this article from the abyss that is the internet.

References:

• The Authenticity of 2nd Peter (PDF)
• The Authenticity and Authorship of 2nd Peter