On the periphery of the Bible: 2 Peter and Jude

-

Some books of the Bible are effectively marginalised. In today’s church, Second Peter and Jude are among those which are pushed out to the edge of the canon. Modern scholars’ doubts that 2 Peter was written by Peter are paralleled by the early church’s reluctance to accept the book as one for public reading. Jude was rather more popular in the earliest centuries. When it comes to our lectionaries, there are only two readings from Second Peter, and none from Jude. One comes in Advent,1 and the other is one of those provided for the Feast of the Transfiguration.2

Today’s scholarship is overwhelmingly convinced that 2 Peter is not from Peter’s hand, but written to perpetuate the author’s view of Peter’s teaching. It seems something almost written in the genre of a testament or farewell speech (see 2 Pet 1:14-15). Quite oddly, 2 Peter’s second chapter plagiarises the letter of Jude, which is a good reason for treating them together. Jude’s letter, like Peter’s second chapter, is rooted in traditions of Jewish interpretation and apocalyptic literature. Both are full of urgent and dire moral warning.

A detail from an illustration by Gustav Doré of John Milton’s Paradise Lost,
one of the most famous versions of the story of an angelic fall found in 2 Peter.

There are, in both of these, but more obviously in Jude’s version, ideas which show something of the mingling of various popular traditions with biblical stories. In 2 Peter 2:4, sinful angels3 are cast into Tartarus,4 normally the name of the deepest part of the Greek underworld where the Olympic gods imprisoned the Titans. This is the small acorn of text concerning fallen angels from which a huge mediaeval oak tree grew. Jude has a slightly different reference, but draws in stories from other Jewish legends (especially verses 9 and 14) to embellish the biblical accounts he refers to. Like a number of Jewish texts which “rewrite” the Bible, Jude does not distinguish between scripture and late expansion. It was for reasons like this that some early protestants had problems with these texts: another reason they have stayed peripheral.

One other key reason people reject the idea this was written even close to Peter’s lifetime is the reference to Paul’s letters (2 Pet 3:13–16). Some at least appear to exist already as a collection, which are treated primarily as inherited texts without any reference to a living Paul who is still teaching. They seem also (verse 16) to be referred to as “scriptures” – it is a moot point whether the word simply means “writings” or whether it has the sense of “sacred writings”.

The reading for the Transfiguration, Peter’s “eyewitness” account of it, seems to be one of those sorts of details put in to establish the identity of the author as Peter, quite unlike the understated claims of the first letter. The other reading, used in Advent, is the famous description explaining the delay between Christ’s resurrection and his coming in glory: “with the Lord one day is like a thousand years, and a thousand years are like one day (2 Pet 3:8).”

Notes

  1. Advent 2, Year B – 2 Peter 3:8-15a (or 8-14 in the Lectionary for Mass)

  2. The same reading is also used when the Revised Common Lectionary uses the theme of the Transfiguration on the Sunday before Lent, Year A.

  3. Probably this refers to the same “sons of God” from the mysterious beginning of the flood story that I noted in yesterday’s post on the First Letter of Peter.

  4. Tartarus is used on a couple of occasions in the Greek translation of the Old Testament. In Proverbs 30:16, both Hades and Tartarus are used for poetic variation. In Job, it also appears to be for poetic reasons.

Comments

Post a Comment

Some frequently read posts

Welcome to Lection and Liturgy

-
Welcome to Lection and Liturgy. I have backed up to this site a series of posts making a guide to the whole of the Christian Bible, aimed particularly at those who read it in public. My name's Doug Chaplin, I work as a priest and trainer in the Church of England. Everything here is written in a purely personal capacity. I hope the posts here will help people read Scripture in ways which help their listeners understand what is being read. You can read more about this site in this introductory post , and you can follow it in "book order" using this Reading Guide Index . So here it is: the Bible in 90 posts.
Read more

The material reality of love: the letters of John

-
Image
Although there are three letters which bear John’s name, the second and third are very short, and perhaps show something of how the teaching of the longer letter is put into action in some specific relationships. Only the first letter is used in the lectionary. This letter in particular shares some significant thinking and vocabulary with the Fourth Gospel. Whether this means they come from the same person or simply the same theological circles is impossible to say. None of them give their author a name. Tradition has associated them with John the Apostle, but there is no way of knowing exactly what relationship, if any, he had with the circles from which these writings came. Detail from a portrait of John the Apostle by Alonso Cano. John is sometimes portrayed blessing a poisoned chalice. For more on this story, see the page for this picture at the Louvre. Apart from the festivals of John the Apostle and All Saints’ Day, readings from 1 John provide the second reading
Read more

Visions, vindication and victory: the strange world of the Apocalypse

-
Image
The Revelation to John, also known as the Apocalypse, contains seven letters, which make up the second and third chapters. However, it is not itself a letter, but the only New Testament book which as a whole is in the literary genre of apocalyptic. This is a type of literary description of visions that claim to unveil the meaning of history for those in the know. 1 They often contain the metaphor of a journey through heavenly or spiritual realms with a guide. The vision at the heart of the Apocalypse is that the soft power of the Lamb’s self-sacrifice will be triumphant over the hard power of the mighty Roman empire. While readings from this book are used on a number of feast days, 1 Revelation also provides the second reading for the Sundays of Easter in Year C. Its celebration of Christ’s triumph draws out a key aspect of the Easter gospel. Readers are somewhat prone to introducing readings from this book wrongly. It is the Book of Revelation in the singular, not R
Read more

The first papal encyclical? 1 Peter

-
Image
My title is somewhat tongue-in-cheek. Historically, Rome seems not to have had a single monarchical bishop until well into the second century. Nonetheless, there is a sense that, in looking back to Peter as the first pope, church tradition reflects his calling to be first among the apostles, the rather wobbly rock on which Jesus chooses to start building his church, as well as his clear association with Rome, from where this letter appears to be written. More accurately, calling it an encyclical picks up the way in which it is written to a circle of churches rather than a single congregation. Peter’s first letter is read mainly on the Sundays of Easter during year A. This reflects the way in which it begins with a celebration of the resurrection which remains the frame for the rest of the letter. There are a number of overlaps with some of the letters of Paul, in language and theology. First Peter also shares an expectation with the later Pauline letters that women an
Read more

More perfect priest, superior sacrifice: Hebrews

-
Image
There’s a long tradition of grouping Hebrews with Paul’s letters. In the Latin and King James Bible tradition it has usually been titled “Paul’s letter to the Hebrews” as well. Despite that, it has still always been placed after the letters which stand under Paul’s name. Paul’s letters come in order from the longest, Romans, with sixteen chapters, to the shortest, Philemon, with only a single chapter. Even when Hebrews was referred to as Paul’s letter, then, its position in the New Testament put a question mark over the attribution. The style and content have persuaded most contemporary readers that Paul, whose name is entirely missing from the anonymous text, cannot possibly be the author. This, the longest of the miscellaneous letters is a single continuous argument, an exposition of Old Testament texts, with a final chapter of advice and greetings tacked on. The impression is of a sermon which the preacher has decided to turn into a letter and send to (probably) the
Read more