Authorship
There are strong reasons to accept the claim that Peter (1:1) authored this letter. Early Christian writers from the beginning of the second century cite this letter as genuinely from Peter (Papias fragment 21.2). Strong and early tradition supports Peter’s martyrdom in Rome, and churches would surely have preserved any letters he wrote from there. Some object to Peter’s authorship by noting the letter’s polished Greek style. Yet most Galileans could speak Greek, and fishermen had better access to education than the peasants who constituted the majority of Galileans. Peter’s Judean ministry may have developed his Greek skills further (including in Ac 9:32–43). These factors alone might not explain the letter as it stands, but more important, influential Judeans (such as Josephus) often used scribes to improve the quality of their Greek. Most of Rome’s Jewish community and other Christians there could speak Greek, and Peter explicitly notes the assistance of Silas, a Jewish Roman citizen (cf. Ac 16:36–37) and thus likely someone well-educated, with this letter (1Pe 5:12). Silas would affect and improve Peter’s style.
Peter was martyred during Nero’s persecution. Although Peter expects persecution to spread (as it did under some later emperors, see Introduction to Revelation: Setting), under Nero it affected Rome itself most directly. At the time Peter writes, hostility was still more indirect (4:4), perhaps fitting a time shortly before or shortly after Nero’s persecution began in AD 64.
Setting
Nero’s persecution devastated the Christian community in Rome, although its numbers remained strong afterward. A fire burned much of Rome in AD 64 yet suspiciously left unscathed the estates of Nero and his older boyfriend Tigellinus. Like any good politician, Nero needed a scapegoat for his ills, and what appeared to be a new religious movement, understood as a fanatical form of Judaism begun by a crucified teacher some 35 years before, filled the need perfectly.
Romans viewed Christians, like Jews, as hostile to the rest of society. Certain charges became so common that they were stereotypical by the second century: Christians were “atheists” (for rejecting the gods), “cannibals” (for eating Jesus’ “body” and drinking his “blood”) and incestuous (for statements like “I love you, brother” or “I love you, sister”). Judaism was a poor target for outright persecution because its adherents were numerous and it was popular in some circles; further, Nero’s mistress, Poppaea Sabina, was a patron of Jewish causes. By contrast, Jesus’ movement was viewed as a form of Judaism whose support was tenuous even in Jewish circles, and therefore it offered an appropriate political scapegoat.
According to the early second-century historian Tacitus (Annals, 15.44), who disliked Christians himself, Nero burned Christians alive as torches to light his gardens at night. Nero killed other Christians in equally severe ways (e.g., feeding them to wild animals for public entertainment). In all, he murdered hundreds, and probably thousands, of Rome’s Christians, although many Christians escaped his grasp. (That many survived seems clear from the continuing strong Roman church at the time that Clement sent his letter, 1 Clement, to Corinth, a few decades later.) Thus, even though the Greek part of the empire loved Nero, Christians saw him as a prototype of the final antichrist. Nero died in disgrace several years later, pursued by fellow Romans who hated him. ◆
Quick Glance
Author:
The apostle Peter
Audience:
Gentile and Jewish believers in Pontus, Galatia, Cappadocia, western Asia Minor and Bithynia
Date:
About AD 60 to 64
Theme:
Peter gives instructions on holy living for those suffering persecution.