Jude-2 Peter, Volume 50

Dr. Richard Bauckham, David Allen Hubbard, Glenn W. Barker, John D. W. Watts, Ralph P. Martin, David Allen Hubbard, Glenn W. Barker, John D. W. Watts, Ralph P. Martin

• Publisher: Zondervan Academic
• Year: 2017
• eBook ISBN: 9780310586326
• Topic: Theology & Religion
• Subtopic: Biblical Criticism & Interpretation

The Word Biblical Commentary delivers the best in biblical scholarship, from the leading scholars of our day who share a commitment to Scripture as divine revelation. This series emphasizes a thorough analysis of textual, linguistic, structural, and theological evidence. The result is judicious and balanced insight into the meanings of the text in the framework of biblical theology. These widely acclaimed commentaries serve as exceptional resources for the professional theologian and instructor, the seminary or university student, the working minister, and everyone concerned with building theological understanding from a solid base of biblical scholarship.

 

Overview of Commentary Organization

• Introduction—covers issues pertaining to the whole book, including context, date, authorship, composition, interpretive issues, purpose, and theology.
• Each section of the commentary includes:
• Pericope Bibliography—a helpful resource containing the most important works that pertain to each particular pericope.
• Translation—the author’s own translation of the biblical text, reflecting the end result of exegesis and attending to Hebrew and Greek idiomatic usage of words, phrases, and tenses, yet in reasonably good English.
• Notes—the author’s notes to the translation that address any textual variants, grammatical forms, syntactical constructions, basic meanings of words, and problems of translation.
• Form/Structure/Setting—a discussion of redaction, genre, sources, and tradition as they concern the origin of the pericope, its canonical form, and its relation to the biblical and extra-biblical contexts in order to illuminate the structure and character of the pericope. Rhetorical or compositional features important to understanding the passage are also introduced here.
• Comment—verse-by-verse interpretation of the text and dialogue with other interpreters, engaging with current opinion and scholarly research.
• Explanation—brings together all the results of the discussion in previous sections to expose the meaning and intention of the text at several levels: (1) within the context of the book itself; (2) its meaning in the OT or NT; (3) its place in the entire canon; (4) theological relevance to broader OT or NT issues.
  • General Bibliography—occurring at the end of each volume, this extensive bibliographycontains all sources used anywhere in the commentary.

The Second Letter of Peter

Introduction

Like the Introduction to Jude, this Introduction presupposes the exegetical discussion in the commentary.

Form and Structure

Second Peter belongs to two literary genres, the letter and the testament. It not only calls itself a letter (3:1), but it is a real letter, whose letter-opening (1:1–2) conforms to the style of the Jewish and early Christian letter. An introductory statement of theme (1:3–11) and an explanation of the occasion for the letter (1:12–15) follow. As in many NT letters, there is a paraenetic section toward the end (3:11–18a), though, like Jude, 2 Peter closes with a doxology alone (3:18b), without any specifically epistolary conclusion or personal greetings. However, it was the letter-opening which was the really essential formal constituent of the ancient letter.

Second Peter is also a genuine letter in that it was written and sent to specific addressees: a church or group of churches which had been (among) the recipients of 1 Peter (3:1) and to which one or more letters of Paul had been addressed (3:15). Thus despite the generality of the address (1:1), it is not a “catholic letter” to all Christians, but a work written for a specific, localized audience. This is also clear from the apologetic content of 2 Peter, which is directed against specific objections to Christian teaching and a group of false teachers with specific characteristics.

However, it is equally clear that 2 Peter belongs to the genre of ancient Jewish literature known to modern scholars as the “farewell speech” or “testament.” In the intertestamental period there was a considerable vogue for accounts of the last words of OT heroes, whether as independent works (e.g. T. Mos., T. 12 Patr., T. Job, 1 Enoch 91–104) or as parts of historical or pseudo-historical works (e.g. Tob 14:3–11; 4 Ezra 14:28–36; 2 Apoc. Bar.. 57–86; Jub. 21–22; 35; 36:1–18; Bib. Ant. 19:1–5; 24:1–5; 28:3–4, 5–10; 33; Adam and Eve 25–29; Josephus, Ant. 4.309–19). Such testaments had two main types of content: (1) Ethical admonitions: before his death a patriarch gives to his children or a national leader to his people a definitive summary of his ethical and religious instruction which they are to follow in the future, often with eschatological sanctions attached. (2) Revelations of the future: in accordance with the ancient belief that the last hours of a great man were a time when he was endowed with prophetic knowledge of the future, the hero predicts the future of his descendants or the destiny of his people, often in the form of apocalyptic revelations of the last days, often as a basis for eschatological paraenesis. On these characteristics of Jewish testaments, see especially Stauffer, Theology, 344–47; Kolenkow, JSJ 6 (1975) 57–71; J. Munck, “Discours d’adieu dans le Nouveau Testament et dans la littérature biblique,” in Aux Sources de la Tradition Chrétienne (M. Goguel Festschrift; Neuchâtel: Delachaux & Niestlé, 1950) 155–70.The genre of the farewell discourse was rather naturally applied in the early church to the apostles (Acts 20:17–34; 2 Timothy; Acts Pet. 36–39; Acts John 106–7; Acts Thom. 159–60), and 2 Peter has been widely recognized to be intended as a “testament of Peter” (Munck, “Discours,” 162; Spicq, 194; Reicke, 146; Grundmann, 55–56; Knoch, “Vermächtnis,” 149–54; Neyrey, Polemic, 99–105).

The following passages identify 2 Peter as belonging to this genre: (1) The passage 1:3–11 is in form a miniature homily, which follows a pattern used in the farewell speeches of Ezra (in 4 Ezra 14:28–36) and John (in Acts John 106–7) (see Form/Structure/Setting section on 1:3–11). In the light of the references back to this passage in 1:12, 15, it is clearly intended as a definitive summary of Peter’s ethical and religious teaching, set down for the instruction of readers after his death. (2) 1:12–15 is full of language typical of farewell speeches (see Comment on those vv) and explicitly describes the occasion for the writing of 2 Peter as Peter’s knowledge of his approaching death and his wish that his teaching be remembered after his death. These two features are standard and almost universal features of the genre. (3) In two passages (2:1–3a; 3:1–4; cf. 3:17a) Peter predicts the rise of false teachers in the churches in the last days following his death (3:4: the death of the “fathers,” of whom Peter was one). These four passages, but especially 1:12–15, would leave no contemporary reader in doubt that 2 Peter belonged to the genre of “testament.” Perhaps we should also add, as further testamentary features, the Transfiguration as a revelation of the future to Peter (see Form/Structure/Setting section on 1:16–18), the apocalyptic prophecy of 3:7, 10, and the eschatological paraenesis of 3:11–15a (see Form/Structure/Setting section on 3:11–16).

The rest of 2 Peter is structured around the sections which clearly belong to the testament genre in the following manner. 1:3–11 provides, as the core of Peter’s testament, a summary of Peter’s definitive teaching of which it is the purpose of his testament to “remind” the readers (1:12–15) and which emphasizes ethics and eschatology and the link between the two. The two sections of prophecy (2:1–3a; 3:1–4) are Peter’s predictions of false teachers who will undermine Christian ethics and deny the eschatological expectation. The rest of the letter defends Peter’s teaching on ethics and eschatology against the objections raised by these false teachers. There are four passages which reply to a series of objections to the eschatological expectation (1:16–19; 1:20–21; 2:3b–10a; 3:5–10): in one case the false teachers’ objection is specifically stated in quotation in Peter’s prophecy (3:4; cf. 3:9), in the other three cases it is implicitly contained in the author’s denial of it (1:16a, 20b; 2:3b). In addition to these pieces of apologetic argument, there is a long denunciation of the false teachers’ libertine behavior (2:10b–22) and, by way of contrast, a passage of eschatological paraenesis which exhorts the readers to holy living on the basis of the eschatological expectation (3:11–16). Thus the two traditional characteristics of the testament—the definitive summary of Peter’s ethical and religious message (1:3–11) and the revelations of the future (2:1–3a; 3:1–4)—provide a framework around which is built an apologetic defense of Peter’s teaching against the false teachers.

Two further aspects of the use of the testament genre in 2 Peter remain to be considered: its combination with the letter genre, and its pseudepigraphal character. One Jewish example of a testament in the form of a letter is 2 Apoc. Bar. 78–86. Baruch, having already made his farewell to the people in Judea, responds to their request that he also write to the people in exile, and chaps 78–86 are his farewell letter to the nine and a half tribes, largely consisting of eschatological paraenesis. This letter within the framework of a fictional history is not entirely comparable with 2 Peter, but it highlights the motive for putting a testament into letter form: the testator’s desire to communicate over a distance. In most testaments the farewell speech is a homily delivered orally to immediate hearers. The speaker himself is not supposed to have written it down and in fact most testaments are not in the really strict sense pseudepigrapha, represented as having been written by the hero who is making his farewell. They are supposed accounts of oral speeches, reported in writing by an anonymous writer within a (frequently minimal) narrative framework. They are fictional, rather than strictly pseudepigraphal. But 2 Apoc. Bar. 78–86 reproduces a testament supposedly written by Baruch himself, and the reason for this exception is Baruch’s desire to give his last instructions to people who lived far away. (It happens to be set within a narrative framework which in this case is itself pseudepigraphal, told in the first person by Baruch.)

The desire to communicate at a distance is of course the reason for almost all genuine letters, and the desire to communicate religious instruction at a distance was the reason for the apostolic letters of early Christianity. The composition of Peter’s testament in the form of a letter was really an obvious combination of genres if the testament were addressed not to the church of Rome, where Peter’s life ended, but churches elsewhere. But the combination of genres in this case created a genre with a unique communicative capacity: a testamentary letter could communicate at a distance in space (like all letters) and also at a distance in time, for in a written testament it is possible explicitly to address not only those who read it immediately but also those who will read it after the testator’s death (as 1:12–15 makes very clear). This unique capacity of the testamentary letter would make it uniquely serviceable to a pseudepigrapher. If someone wished to write an apostolic pseudepigraphon to communicate the teaching of the apostles to Christians living after their death, he faced a serious problem of literary genre. In what genre could an apostle be represented as addressing a situation which would exist only after his death? In one sense the letter was the obvious genre to use, since it was the principal genre in which the apostles had written, but letters are naturally addressed to contemporaries. A pseudo-apostolic letter could be addressed to fictional readers in the apostle’s lifetime, but then the immediacy of direct address to the real readers is lost. To this dilemma the testamentary letter is the ideal solution. It is almost the only plausible way ...

Table of contents

• Cover
• Title Page
• Copyright Page
• Dedication
• Table of Contents
• Editorial Preface
• Author’s Preface
• Abbreviations
• Jude
• 2 Peter
• Indexes