This is an ironic complaint considering Christians typically insist that we take the NT as a whole with a single author (God) and resist particularising analysis. Samuel, thank you for your thoughtful replies. However, enough evidence was brought forward in the early church for it to included. This is a valid point, and Eusebius does discuss it. There has to be a first reference and manuscript to books.Ĩ. You cannot use the later works to disprove the earlier.ħ. Influential books influence those after them. Secondly, they have put the cart before the horse.

Consider the Greek of Hebrews for example. Firstly, this is a matter of opinion as Greek styles vary throughout the NT. 1 Peter 5:12 shows that Peter used prophetic scribes (Acts 15:32) to help him write his letters and the letters are on different topics so of course they have different arguments. Matthew, Mark, Luke, 1 Corithians, and 2 Peter, all draw upon the testimony of the Jerusalem church.ĥ. This point proves nothing about 2 Peter, except that 2 Peter and Jude come from a common ministry.ģ. There are synoptic gospels, and synoptic epistles: Ephesians and Colossians and Jude and 2 Peter. This does not indicate a late date for 2 Peter.Ģ. They were! There were people who accepted Paul as an apostle from the start. It simply presupposes that churches were using Paul’s letters are instruction from Jesus, that is scripture. You cannot consider an exception and apply your conclusion to the whole.ġ.

> This puts a huge question mark against the trustworthiness of the New Testament: Thanks Paul for posting the reasons some people doubt 2 Peter. Of what value for faith is invented testimony to the life of Jesus?Īnd it is not the only case of its kind in the Bible! This puts a huge question mark against the trustworthiness of the New Testament: Virtually all Christians throughout history have heard this letter as first person testimony from the Chief of the Apostles himself. If so then it is a letter designed to deceive its readership into thinking it is by Peter when it is not.

To put the matter more polemically: for the reasons itemised by Wright and Bird it is overwhelmingly likely that Peter is not the author of 2 Peter, even though the letter claims to be authored by an eyewitness to events in the life of Jesus, by a disciple who was actually present with Christ.Įvangelical New Testament scholar Richard Bauckham calls the letter a “fiction”. “Postulating the apostle Peter as the author of this letter feels to us like pushing a big rock up a steep hill the indications of post-Petrine authorship appear overwhelming.”

The new testament in its world