One of the earliest and most pervasive arguments for the inauthenticity of James and 1 Peter is their good Greek. Such eloquent-sounding polished Greek style, it is said, could not have come from men who were simply rustic fishermen from Galilee. Kummel gives this reason pride of place in his Introduction:In wonder and amazement, they asked, “Are not all these men who are speaking Galileans?
How is it then that each of us hears them in his own native language? ...
Amazed and perplexed, they asked one another, “What does this mean?”
But others mocked them and said, “They are drunk on new wine!”
Then Peter stood up with the eleven, lifted up his voice, and addressed the crowd: "Men of Judea and all who dwell in Jerusalem, let this be known to you, and listen carefully to my words. These men are not drunk as you suppose. It is only the third hour of the day!"
Similarly, on 1 Peter, Paul J. Achtemeier writes (A Commentary on First Peter, pp. 4-5):1. The cultured language of James is not that of a simple Palestinian. Sevenster's evidence that the Greek language was much used in Palestine at that time and could be learned does not prove that a Jew whose mother tongue was Aramaic could normally write in literary Greek.
There's a remarkable blind spot in this argumentation, however: what if James and Peter were not Palestinian fishermen? Like many bits of data from our ancient sources, by making ourselves comfortable with the solutions of well-worn critical scholarship, we've built up our defenses against finding any data that can alert us to other plausible explanations: scholarship has already factored in most of the incongruous facts within this exhaustively-studied material and supplied us with a familiar, credible-sounding narrative that becomes our default position. Giving the basic planks -- assumptions -- of modern scholarship this privilege is to hand it an extra weapon while asking any challenger to tie one hand behind the back. Surely, though, we'd rather see what wins out in a fair fight? So, let's let go of this assumption, for now, and see what's in play here.The type of Greek found in 1 Peter reveals that whether or not the author was born a Greek, he had enjoyed some level of formal education, if not an 'advanced' education in rhetoric or philosophy, at least a 'middle' education that would have included, along with geometry, arithmetic, and music, a reading of such classical authors as Homer. While one may surely presume some facility in Greek even among Palestinian fishermen in the first century who lacked formal education, the kind of Greek found in this epistle was probably beyond such a person, and hence the language was in all likelihood not given its present form by Simon Peter.
If the arguments against the authenticity of James and 1 Peter stand firmly on their own, without such assumptions, then that helps support the reasonableness of making those assumptions. If they cannot, however, then similarly those assumptions may be getting in our way, instead of helping us understand better. What other arguments have been made?
James
As the second argument, Kummel writes:
Quote:2. It is scarcely conceivable that the Lord's brother, who remained faithful to the Law, could have spoken of "the perfect law of freedom" (1:25) or that he could have given concrete expression to the Law in ethical commands (2:11 f) without mentioning even implicitly any cultic-ritual requirements.
As I read it, the author wants there to be less partiality in assemblies. In the last bit, there is a veiled threat: you may not be breaking the letter of the law by showing partiality, but by showing judgment to the poor, you'll receive judgment yourself. By showing mercy, you'd act like those who are "judged under the law of liberty" (to love your neighbor as yourself), and you'd receive mercy yourself.2 My brothers, show no partiality as you hold the faith in our Lord Jesus Christ, the Lord of glory. 2 For if a man wearing a gold ring and fine clothing comes into your assembly, and a poor man in shabby clothing also comes in, 3 and if you pay attention to the one who wears the fine clothing and say, “You sit here in a good place,” while you say to the poor man, “You stand over there,” or, “Sit down at my feet,” 4 have you not then made distinctions among yourselves and become judges with evil thoughts? 5 Listen, my beloved brothers, has not God chosen those who are poor in the world to be rich in faith and heirs of the kingdom, which he has promised to those who love him? 6 But you have dishonored the poor man. Are not the rich the ones who oppress you, and the ones who drag you into court? 7 Are they not the ones who blaspheme the honorable name by which you were called?
8 If you really fulfill the royal law according to the Scripture, “You shall love your neighbor as yourself,” you are doing well. 9 But if you show partiality, you are committing sin and are convicted by the law as transgressors. 10 For whoever keeps the whole law but fails in one point has become guilty of all of it. 11 For he who said, “Do not commit adultery,” also said, “Do not murder.” If you do not commit adultery but do murder, you have become a transgressor of the law. 12 So speak and so act as those who are to be judged under the law of liberty. 13 For judgment is without mercy to one who has shown no mercy. Mercy triumphs over judgment.
There seems nothing here that is incompatible with the little that we read about James (and the people in Jerusalem) in Paul's letters.
This one is easy:
Perhaps, if this James were not his flesh and blood.3. Would the brother of the Lord really omit any reference to Jesus and his relationship to him, even though the author of James emphatically presents himself in an authoritative role?
Regarding this:
As natural as it seems to us, used to the theory that the letter is inauthentic, could we not simply turn the tables around on this? We have no real evidence that the issues debated in Paul's letters regarding faith and works continued to be fought in the late first century. This seems to be a particular concern for Paul, among the earliest Christian writings, that just isn't framed this way in several other texts of the late first and early second century. Is it not more natural to assume that the polemical issues brought up by Paul would be opposed by those who were living, at the time, and who could oppose Paul's teaching? And, even if James does so, the idea that James couldn't misunderstand or misconstrue "the polemical intent of Pauline theology" appears risible.4. The debate in 2:14 ff with a misunderstood secondary stage of Pauline theology not only presupposes a considerable chronological distance from Paul - whereas James died in the year 62 - but also betrays complete ignorance of the polemical intent of Pauline theology, which lapse can scarcely be attributed to James, who as late as 55/56 met with Paul in Jerusalem (Acts 21:18 ff).
But this seems to be a poor argument, since the tradition is seldom simply trusted, guided as it is more by theological arguments than actual tradition. Besides, the dispute over whether this James was actually Jesus' brother can be interpreted differently, as indeed casting doubt on James' presumed relationship.5. As the history of the canon shows (see 27.2), it was only very slowly and against opposition that James became recognized as the work of the Lord's brother, therefore as apostolic and canonical. Thus there does not seem to have been any old tradition that it originated with the brother of the Lord.
Udo Schnelle writes (The History and Theology of the New Testament Writings, pp. 386):
It really is amazing, isn't it?If James the Lord's brother were the author of the Letter, then it is amazing that in James 5.10-11 it is Job and not Jesus who serves as an example of willingness to suffer.
But that doesn't really count against authorship by James.
Two or three facts seem to keep this letter in the orbit of Christian writing, generally: the outward form of the letter itself with its references to James and Jesus Christ, the shared paranetical material, and the discussion of "faith and works" in contrast to Paul's teaching. Norman Perrin explains:
If it is a letter by James, it bears witness to an expression of the Jerusalem side of what is otherwise a one-sided conversation undertaken by Paul the apostle. Not all ancient Christian literature has to beat the same drums (and the Didache might be very similar in its emphasis to James). While it may still be strange to us to consider that we may have had another document in our hands going back to around 60 CE all along, we should consider the possibility carefully, at least as long as we are not moored to the assumptions of the historicity of Jesus.James shows knowledge of parenetical tradition that uses sayings ascribed to Jesus in the gospels: 5:12 (compare Matt 5:36-37); 1:5, 17 (compare Matt 7:7-12); 1:22 (compare Matt 7:24-27); 4:12 (compare Matt 7:1); 1:6 (compare Mark 11:23-24). There is, further, parenetical material also used in 1 Peter: Jas 1:2-3 (compare 1 Peter 1:6-7); Jas 4:1-2 (compare 1 Pet 2:11). It is not that James necessarily knows the gospels or 1 Peter, but rather that there is a Christian parenetical tradition into which sayings ascribed to Jesus in the gospels have been taken up, although not in the form of sayings of Jesus, and of which both James and 1 Peter make use. . .
Moral exhortation is very much the same throughout the various elements in a given culture. By the same token parenesis itself has little doctrinal concern, and James, a wholly parenetical work, has almost nothing distinctively Christian about it. Jesus Christ is mentioned only twice (1:1, 2:1), and both verses could be omitted without any harm to the flow of thought in the text. When the "coming of the Lord" is mentioned (5:7) there is nothing to denote the specifically Christian hope of the parousia; it could equally be a reference to the coming of the Lord God. "Faith" in this text is not specifically Christian faith but rather the acceptance of monotheism (2:19). These facts have led some scholars to suggest that the text is a Jewish homily lightly Christianized. But a number of features seem to speak of a Christian origin, especially the evidence of contacts with Christian parenetical tradition already noted and the discussion of "faith and works" in 2:14-26. The latter seems to presuppose an awareness of Paul's teaching in Galatians 3 and Romans 4.
1 Peter
The letter known as First Peter is in much the same boat: it is assumed to be sunk because of the high quality of the Greek writing. If Peter weren't a Galilean fisherman called by Jesus to be one of the Twelve before being crucified by Pilate, but instead were a competing apostle and contemporary of Paul who could command Greek just as well, then this argument goes by the wayside.
Like the author of Paul's letters, the author of 1 Peter was more familiar with the Septuagint than with any other version.
Some of the arguments approach the comical, once you remove the immovable assumption of the historicity of Jesus.Paul J. Achtemeier writes: "The intimate acquaintance of our author with the Greek language is shown by the text of the OT which the author quotes and to which he alludes frequently: it is the LXX rather than the MT. Direct quotation is limited to two instances (gegraptai, 1:16; en grafh, 2:6), and there the text is rather clearly the LXX (1:16 from Lev 19:2; 2:6 from Isa 40:6-8, though with modifications); additional clear examples of quotation would include Isa 40:6-8 at 1:24-25 and Ps 33:13-17 (MT Ps 34) at 3:10-12, in both instances with modifications. In addition to quotations, allusions to the OT that contain LXX language occur in such places as 2:3, 7, 9-10, 22-25; 3:14; 4:14; 5:8, indicating that the author was saturated with the language of the Greek Bible. The absence of influence from the language of the Hebrew Bible or the Targumim on the one hand, and the clear influence of the LXX on the other, show that the author was at home in Greek rather than Semitic culture, and such is likely not to have been the case with Simon Peter." (A Commentary on First Peter, pp. 6-7)
W. G. Kümmel writes: "I Pet contains no evidence at all of familiarity with the earthly Jesus, his life, his teaching, and his death, but makes reference only in a general way to the 'sufferings' of Christ. It is scarcely conceivable that Peter would neither have sought to strengthen his authority by referring to his personal connections with Jesus nor have referred to the example of Jesus in some way." (Introduction to the New Testament, p. 424)
Some play up the division between Paul and Peter in Galatians as showing that they must have had dissimilar theologies, but this doesn't necessarily follow. Peter and Paul preached in the same places and often to the same people (in Antioch and in Corinth). The letter to the Galatians focuses on a difference regarding whether the movement was to be fully open to Gentiles, not a disagreement regarding theology. And, if we don't trust the evidence of Paul's letters here, then a letter claiming to be by Peter might be the next best thing for trying to figure out what Peter believed. We don't allow it to function as evidence if we rule it out because it's not what we're expecting. In any case, the tradition of the clashing theologies of Peter and Paul is more a matter of the record in the secondary literature, rather than the primary and oldest (the Pseudo-Clementine Recognitions notwithstanding).Paul J. Achtemeier writes: "An argument often cited against the authenticity of 1 Peter is the lack of personal reminiscences from the life of Jesus, something one would surely expect in a letter from one who had accompanied him from Galilean ministry to resurrection. In defense of Petrine authorship, a variety of indications have been cited that are held to represent such reminiscences. For example, the alteration of first and second person in 1:3-9 is claimed to show that while the readers have not seen Jesus (v. 6), the author (by implication) has (v. 3). Again, the reference to 'witness' in 5:1 is taken to mean Peter is calling himself an eyewitness to the passion of Jesus, a witness reflected supremely in 2:22-25. The difficulty with finding assurances of the report of an eyewitness is that these verses are patently drawn from Isaiah 53, and hence may owe more to the author's demonstrable reliance on the OT, and even to a notion of the fulfillment of prophecy by Jesus, than to the reminiscences of an eyewitness." (A Commentary on First Peter, p. 9)
Donald Guthrie writes: "There has been such widespread assumption that Peter's epistle is but an echo of Paulinism that it is refreshing to find an increasing tendency to mark the individual contribution of Peter in the field of New Testament theology. There is both an absence of such Pauline doctrines as justification, law, the new Adam, and the flesh, and the presence of highly characteristic methods in Peter's own presentation, such as his copious use of Old Testament citations and moral codes, his church-consciousness, historic consciousness and Christ-consciousness. Peter's teaching cannot be systematized into a theological school of thought, but there is enough distinctiveness about it to differentiate it from Paul's approach. The most notable contribution is the doctrine of Christ's descent into Hades, which in its focus upon the resurrection of Christ stands in direct relationship to Peter's emphasis on the resurrection in the early Acts speeches." (New Testament Introduction)
Some see a situation of persecution described in the letter that point to a later date, in the second century or under Domitian, but this is not necessary.Eric Eve writes: "It is not clear that similarities between 1 Peter and, for example, Romans and Ephesians require literary dependence, but at first sight the letter does have a deutero-Pauline feel. Yet many distinctive elements of Pauline theology (e.g. justification by faith) are entirely absent from 1 Peter, and even where characteristic Pauline expressions, such as 'in Christ' are employed, they are hardly used in a distinctively Pauline manner (see 1 Pet 5:14). The epistle also shows some affinities with non-Pauline writings such as James, Hebrews, and 1 Clement. This suggests either that all these writings are drawing on common traditions, or that at least some of them were sufficiently well known to our author to have influenced his language (in favour of literary dependence, see Beare 1970; in favour of common catechetical and liturgical traditions, see Selwyn 1958; Achtemeier 1996)." (The Oxford Bible Commentary, p. 1263)
Raymond Brown writes: "If one thinks the work is pseudonymous and written about 90, the references could be to imperial harassment in Domitian's time . . . A more recent tendency has been to refer I Pet's suffering/trial language not to imperial persecution but to local hostility wherein non-Christians spoke badly of Christians, treating them as evildoers (2:12), defaming their conduct (3:16), vilifying them (4:4), and insulting them because of their belief in Christ (4:14). Christians would have constituted a new cult, exclusive and, to outside eyes, secretive and subversive—suspect of immorality or even of atheism because they did not participate in the public cult and thus insulted the gods. On the one hand, 'trial by fire' (4:12) might seem overly hyperbolic for such treatment; on the other hand, this explanation accounts very well for the atmosphere of alienation that pervades the letter. The strong stress on the dignity of Christians and their status would be meant to encourage a group being ostracized by their countrymen, a group that can be addressed as homeless and sojourners (2:11; also 1:1,17). They are like Israel in the exodus on the road to the Promised Land; they should not look back to their former status as did the Israelites (1:14), but press on to their imperishable inheritance (1:4). Although they may have been accepted by their neighbors before, they were then 'no people' in God's eyes and had not received God's mercy (2:10 echoing Hos 1:9, 1:6); now they are a chosen race, a royal priesthood, a holy nation, God's own people (I Pet 2:9)." (An Introduction to the New Testament, pp. 713-714)
There remain a couple questions about 1 Peter, however.John H. Elliott writes: "An attempt to link 1 Peter and the Christian suffering it describes to a general persecution of Christianity initiated by Rome (Beare 1970: 28-38; Windisch-Preisker Katholischen Briefe HNT, 76-77) has justifiably been rejected by the majority of scholars. 1 Peter speaks of Christians suffering 'throughout the world' (5:9) but the first general imperial persecution of Christianity did not occur until 251 C.E. under Decius. Earlier anti-Christian actions under Nero in 64-65 (Tac. Annals 15:44; Suet. Ner. 16:2), possibly Domitian in 93-96 (Suet. Dom. 10-17), and Trajan (Pliny Ep. 10:96-97) were limited in scope to Rome or Pontus and were the product of sporadic local incidents rather than of universal legal proscription. Nor is a state persecution envisioned where respect for the emperor and civil law is enjoined (2:13-17) and a positive outcome of good behavior is anticipated (2:11-12; 3:13-17). The nature of the hostility encountered—verbal abuse and reproach (2:12, 3:16, 4:14), curiosity concerning Christian hope (3:15), anger at the severance of former social ties (4:4)—likewise makes the theory of a state-sponsored persecution both improbable and unnecessary. Details of the situation point rather to social polarization and conflict which was local, disorganized and unofficial in character (Selwyn 1947; van Unnik IDB 3: 758-66; Reicke James, Peter, Jude AB; Kelly Peter HNTC; Best 1 Peter NCBC; Goppelt Petrusbrief MeyerK; Elliott 1981; Brox Petrusbrief EKKNT). As strangers and aliens belonging to a novel cult and exclusive minority actively seeking adherents, these Christians were the victims of the harassment and discrimination regularly experienced by those suspected of posing a disruptive threat to local peace and prosperity." (The Anchor Bible Dictionary, art. "First Epistle of Peter")
First, the letters of Paul are conspicuous for never using the word "Christian," but 1 Peter 4:16 refers to those who "suffer as a Christian." On the other hand, it may not have taken much time after the last Pauline letters for this expression to gain currency, especially in Rome. In this matter, we are fortunate to have some literary remains to provide a context. Both Suetonius and Tacitus refer to the "Chrestians"/"Christians" being punished by Nero, ca. 65 CE. While they are writing from the second century, the name under which this group was punished in the 60s CE is mentioned specifically in both cases. So it is certainly plausible that this name was being used in Rome in the 60s CE (and, specifically, in the context of suffering as Christian, no less).
If by "Babylon," it refers to Rome, then it becomes likely that the Jewish war had begun, pointing to a date after 66 CE. It also might be easier to read as having a date after 70 CE, when the destruction of the temple had been accomplished, thus creating the clear parallel between Babylon and Rome.
Thus, if it is authored by Peter, we'd want to set the terminus a quo around 65 CE (after the letters of Paul and after the Jewish war was afoot) and end somewhere before the references to the death of Peter and within this apostle's lifetime (perhaps up to around 80 CE). A date range of 65-80 CE is consistent with the reference to "Christians" (Chrestians), to "Babylon," and with authorship by Peter.
Have James and 1 Peter Been Rehabilitated?
It's naturally quite difficult to prove authorship and, perhaps, especially difficult to prove the positive side of the case. They could still be written in the names of the famous apostles -- as could any letter claiming to be by Paul, or a John, James, or Peter. Yet, if we are willing to consider the authenticity of the Pauline letters as something that seems probable, and if we are also wiling to let go of the assumptions that come with the HJ package, then we should also be ready to take a careful look at the epistles of James and 1 Peter and wonder whether additional witnesses to early forms of Christianity, on par with the letters of Paul, have been hiding in plain sight.