Epistles of Peter.
Most Christians contend that the First Epistle of Peter is genuine. Some of the early Christian Fathers, however, rejected it. Irenaeus did not place it in his canon. Not until the third century was it accepted as the writing of Peter.
The celebrated Tubingen school of critics rejects the authenticity of the book. Baur and Zeller believe it to be a Pauline document. Schwegler believes that it was written to reconcile the Pauline and Petrine doctrines. The Dutch critics say that it was borrowed largely from Paul and James, and that it was probably written early in the second century. Regarding its authorship, Jules Soury, of the University of France, says:
“Nobody, however, knows better than he [Renan] that the so-called First Epistle of Peter, full of allusions to Paul’s writings, as well as the epistle to the Hebrews and the epistle of James, dates in all probability from the year 130 A.D., at the earliest, thus placing two generations between the time of its composition and the latter years of the reign of Nero, when Peter is fabled to have been in Rome” (Jesus and the Gospels, p. 32).
All critics pronounce Second Peter a forgery. Chambers’s Encyclopedia says: “So far as external authority is concerned, it has hardly any. The most critical and competent of the Fathers were suspicious of its authenticity; it was rarely if ever quoted, and was not formally admitted into the canon till the Council of Hippo, 393 A.D. The internal evidence is just as unsatisfactory.”
Smith’s “Bible Dictionary” contains the following relative to its authenticity: “We have few references to it in the writings of the early Fathers; the style differs materially from that of the First Epistle, and the resemblance amounting to a studied imitation between this epistle and that of Jude, seems scarcely reconcilable with the position of Peter.... Many reject the epistle altogether as spurious.”
It is believed by some that the original title of Second Peter was the Epistle of Simeon. Grotius argues that it is a compilation from two older epistles. The third chapter begins as follows: “This second epistle, beloved, I now write unto you.” These words clearly denote the beginning of a document. Those who affirm its genuineness consider the second chapter an interpolation. Westcott says there is no evidence of the existence of this epistle prior to 170 A.D. Scaliger declares it to be a “fiction of some ancient Christian misemploying his leisure time.”