1 Peter: "Suffering for Righteousness Sake" (Part 1 of 1)

Background and History to First Peter

Preamble

1 Peter has often been described from our platforms as a very practical epistle, and has frequently for that reason been used in exhortation. Its appar­ently general exhortationsof ch.2:13-17 have been used with complete disregard for context; and comforting passages such as 1:5, 3:10-13, 5:6&7 have often been quoted in time of distress. My concern in this series of essays, however, will be to try to set the letter against a historical background, and to examine the over-all message and particular use and context of quotations by the author. Whilst I do not expect that you will agree with every suggestion that I make, I trust that these short essays will give some food for thought.

To whom was it written?

The historical background of 1 Peter has been the subject of varied speculations and many entrenched positions over the centuries, and during the course of this essay I shall have cause to mention several Church Fathers, theo­logians and exegetes who have written on the subject. My aim, however, is not to give a review of the ideas of others, but to re-examine the evidence at my disposal – both scriptural and non-scriptural – in order to arrive at an indepen­dent conclusion.

My first task is to look very briefly at the writer. In Galatians ch.2 Paul draws a contrast between himself and Peter, stating that the latter was the apostle of the circumcision whereas he, Paul, was minister to the Gentiles (v.7,8). As we know from the Acts, the gospel was preached first to the Jews, and only after a considerable number of years was it preached to the Gentiles in any mea­sure. Even Paul on his journeys through Asia Minor and Greece found it easier to begin his preaching at the synagogue, and only later extend his horizons to include Gentiles who had no prior contact with Judaism. Thus it is that with Peter we are looking at someone specifically made an apostle to the Jews, and this must be borne in mind as the rest of the evidence is examined.

The recipients of the letter are described as “the strangers scattered throughout Pontus, Galatia, etc.” (1 Pet.1:1), and in this phrase which includes the term ouctaRopa (diaspora) we appear to have a description of the Jews of the dispersions of Old Testament times who were by this time settled and prospering in these overseas communities. “The reference to the readers as ‘strangers of the dispersion’ marks them as belonging to that part of Jewry which lay outside Palestine.”1 This is not the only evidence that the letter was written for a Jewish readership. In ch.2:6-8 three quotations about “the stone” are used, all of which are used elsewhere in the New Testament to describe Jesus’ relationship with the Jews as a nation. In particular, Jesus quoted Isaiah 8 and Ps.118 in Matt.21:41-45, where he relates the quotation to the rejection of the Jews and their eventual destruction at his own hands when he came in judgment in 70 AD. In other words, Peter is making the same point as Jesus made – once the Jews were the people of God by reason of their birth, but now they were in danger of stumbling through disobedience. I shall be dealing with these quotations more fully in a later essay. Suffice it to say at this point that we find Peter using language and ideas particularly significant to Jews as opposed to Gentiles.

There are one or two other little pointers suggesting a Jewish readership, such as “having your conversation honest among the Gentiles” (2:12); and although some have pointed to ch.4:3 as evidence of a Gentile readership, it is not diffi­cult to see that this phrase is not at all inappropriate to many Jews of the dispersion whose excesses may often have been worse than those of the Gentiles around them.

Over the centuries two distinct schools of thought on this subject have developed. On the one hand the Greek Fathers favoured a Jewish readership, where­as the Latin Fathers supported the Gentile view.2 Nowadays it is more fashion­able to support the “mixed” view, i.e. that the letter was written for both Jewish and Gentile believers,3 but this view seems to me to fall between two stools. Whilst there were no doubt some Gentile converts in northern Asia Minor at this time, they were probably very few in number and people who had previously been sympathetic to Judaism. Thus the use of “Jewish” terms and application of scrip­ture in a very Jewish way is understandable.

Jew, Gentile and Christian in the First Century

It is often vaguely supposed that the persecutions mentioned so frequently in 1 Peter are somehow connected with Nero, and that therefore we should imagine these brethren and sisters being torn by dogs or made into human torches. It is this sort of non-factual and melodramatic idea that is worthy only of apostate churches who value martyrs higher than true saints. What evidence is there, then, of persecution in the first century?

  • Suetonius, writing in approximately 120 AD states, “Since the Jews constantly made disturbances at the instigation of Chrestus, he (the Emperor Claudius) expelled them from Rome”.4 An expulsion of Jews from Rome did take place in 49 AD, but it is extremely doubtful that it had anything to do with Christians. It will come as no surprise to learn that Suetonius is not highly thought of as a historian.
  • Tacitus, writing at about 110 AD, was more objective than Suetonius. He
    states that Nero used the Christians in Rome as a scapegoat for the great fire of 64 AD. He goes on to say how Christians were torn by dogs, nailed to crosses, or made into human. But he tells of only one occasion on which this happened, and, significantly, comments: “Despite their guilt as Christians, and the ruthless punishment it deserved, the victims were pitied”.5

In other words, at this time there was no general persecution of Christ­ians. Moreover, Tacitns’ reference to the guilt of the Christians is probably a comment of his own, and not attributable to the times of Nero, since his own personal view of Christians was possibly coloured by the fact that as governor of the province of Asia he would very likely have had to deal with problems involving Christians. What is certain at any rate is that the Christians were too little-known in 64 AD to be the subject of mass-hatred and persecution.

  • Other sources for the first century are either very late and unreliable, or do not contain an evidence of persecution of Christians, let alone the mass persecutions of melodramatic fiction. As for Scripture, although the Apostle Paul was the subject of persecution from fellow-countrymen, there is little evidence that it went beyond a few troublemakers, or that it affected any other of the apostles or missionaries. The fact that Christians were not generally persecuted by Jews has been demonstrated by James Parkes.6

Who, then, did perpetrate this persecution? We do know that hatred between Jewish communities and their neighbours flared up from time to time in different places in the Roman Empire. In a Scriptural context this is illustrated by Acts 18:2&17, 19:34. There is also well-attested evidence from independent historical sources.7 In particular, both Josephus9 mention persecution of Jews by Gentiles as a result of the Jewish War which began in 66 AD. It is these persecutions, I believe, in which the brethren and sisters of Asia Minor were caught, since they themselves were Jewish; and in any case Christianity was for many years regarded by outsiders as just as much a sect of the Jews as were the Essenes or Zealots.

Peter’s Missionary Journey

We read little of Peter after the early chapters of Acts. He makes only a brief appearance in Acts 15 and in Galatians 2. But, as we see from his letters, he was by no means inactive. Paul mentions that he had an argument with him in Antioch (Ga1.2:11), and in the closing verses of this first letter he implies that he is in Babylon10 (where there was a thriving Jewish community). In Corinth when Paul wrote the first letter there was apparently a faction claiming to follow Peter (1 Cor.1:12). It comes as no surprise, then, to learn that Peter is writing to this group of believers in northern Asia Minor. Indeed, I feel it is not unreasonable to speculate that Peter visited that area on a preaching journey, just as Paul visited southern Asia Minor. Certainly, 1 Cor.9:5 seems to suggest that Peter did go on such journeys. The areas mentioned in 1 Pet.1:1 were probably not visited by Paul, and in Acts 16:6&7 Paul was forbidden to go into Asia and Bithynia. This view that Paul did not preach in northern Asia Minor because Peter had already been there (see Rom.15:20) has been followed through in detail by some11, and even though Paul preached in Galatia, for example, this was not the same area referred to by Peter.

When was the Letter written?

No certain answer can be found to this question, nor is it of vital impor­tance. I have already concluded that the Neronian “persecution” of 64 AD has no bearing on I Peter, and thus one red herring is removed. I also think it highly unlikely that 1 Peter was written before the events of Acts 15 (approx. 53 AD). It is likely that Peter was dead by 80 AD, and tradition has him dead before 70 AD. All this points towards a date of writing during the late 50’s or early to mid 60’s. If the persecutions referred to followed the Jewish revolt of 66 AD, then the letter was probably ,written about that time. A possible pointer to this date is found in ch.4:7 – perhaps “all things” here refers to the Jewish nation in Palestine which was shortly to be invaded and scattered.

Conclusion

This essay is intended to have set something of a working background for the following essays. Some of the details of the picture are relatively trivial and unimportant, since in the final analysis, for example, it is not crucial to my view of the letter whether or not Peter actually visited Asia Minor. I believe it is important, though, to grasp the Jewish background of the letter, since all this will materially affect the interpretation. In future essays I hope to deal with the over-all message and its exhortation for us, and in particular with Peter’s use of the Old Testament and of the words of Jesus.

  1. Selwyn, “The First Epistle of St. Peter” p.42.
  2. The Greek fathers and Origen and Eusebius were followed by Erasmus, Calvin and Beugel. The Latin fathers included Augustine and Jerome.
  3. Selwyn, op. cit. p.44.
  4. Suetonius’ “Life of Claudius”, XXV:4
  5. Tacitus, “Annals”, XV:44.8.
  6. “The Conflict of the Church and the Synagogue”, p.121-150.
  7. See Schurer, “A History of the Jewish People in the Time of Jesus Christ”, New Edition p.531,532.
  9. Bellum Judicum, 1/II:3[/note and Eusebius]8“History of the Church”, iii. 12.
  10. I do not see any reason to equate Babylon with Rome here.
  11. Ramsay, “The Church in the Roman Empire” p.110.