CHAPTER III The Epistles of the Apostles. 147 CHAPTER III. The Epistles of the Apostles. 1. One epistle of Peter, that called the first, is acknowledged as genuine.547 And this the ancient elders548 used freely in their own writings as an undisputed work.549 But we have learned that his extant second Epistle does not belong to the canon;550 yet, as it has appeared profitable to many, it has been used with the other Scriptures.551
BOOK III
2. The so-called Acts of Peter,552 however, and the Gospel553 which bears his name, and the Preaching554 and the
547 The testimony of tradition is unanimous for the authenticity of the first Epistle of Peter. It was known to Clement of Rome, Polycarp, Papias, Hermas, &c. (the Muratorian Fragment, however, omits it), and was cited under the name of Peter by Irenæus, Tertullian, and Clement of Alexandria, from whose time its canonicity and Petrine authorship were established, so that Eusebius rightly puts it among the homologoumena. Semler, in 1784, was the first to deny its direct Petrine authorship, and Cludius, in 1808, pronounced it absolutely ungenuine. The Tübingen School followed, and at the present time the genuineness is denied by all the negative critics, chiefly on account of the strong Pauline character of the epistle (cf. Holtzmann, Einleitung, p. 487 sqq., also Weiss, Einleitung, p. 428 sqq., who confines the resemblances to the Epistles to the Romans and to the Ephesians, and denies the general Pauline character of the epistle). The great majority of scholars, however, maintain the Petrine authorship. A new opinion, expressed by Harnack, upon the assumption of the distinctively Pauline character of the epistle, is that it was written during the apostolic age by some follower of Paul, and that the name of Peter was afterward attached to it, so that it represents no fraud on the part of the writer, but an effort of a later age to find an author for the anonymous epistle. In support of this is urged the fact that though the epistle is so frequently quoted in the second century, it is never connected with Peter’s name until the time of Irenæus. (Cf. Harnack’s Lehre der Zwölf Apostel, p. 106, note, and his Dogmengeschichte, I. p. 278, note 2.) This theory has found few supporters. 548 οἱ π€λαι πρεσβύτεροι. On the use of the term “elders” among the Fathers, see below, chap. 39, note 6. 549 ὡς ἀναμφιλέκτῳ 550 οὐκ ἐνδι€θηκον μὲν εἶναι παρειλήφαμεν. The authorship of the second Epistle of Peter has always been widely disputed. The external testimony for it is very weak, as no knowledge of it can be proved to have existed before the third century. Numerous explanations have been offered by apologists to account for this curious fact; but it still remains almost inexplicable, if the epistle be accepted as the work of the apostle. The first clear references to it are made by Firmilian, Bishop of Cæsarea in Cappadocia (third century), in his Epistle to Cyprian, §6 (Ep. 74, in the collection of Cyprian’s Epistles, Ante-Nicene Fathers, Am. ed., V. p. 391), and by Origen (quoted by Eusebius, VI. 25, below), who mentions the second Epistle as disputed. Clement of Alexandria, however, seems at least to have known and used it (according to Euseb. VI. 14). The epistle was not admitted into the Canon until the Council of Hippo, in 393, when all doubts and discussion ceased until the Reformation. It is at present disputed by all negative critics, and even by many otherwise conservative scholars. Those who defend its genuineness date it shortly before the death of Peter, while the majority of those who reject it throw it into the second century,—some as late as the time of Clement of Alexandria (e.g. Harnack, in his Lehre der Zwölf Apostel, p. 15 and 159, who assigns its composition to Egypt). Cf. Holtzmann, Einleitung, p. 495 sqq., and Weiss (who leaves its genuineness an open question), Einleitung, p. 436 sqq. For a defense of the genuineness, see especially Warfield, in the Southern Pres. Rev., 1883, p. 390 sqq., and Salmon’s Introduction to the N. T., p. 512 sqq. 551 Although disputed by many, as already remarked, and consequently not looked upon as certainly canonical until the end of the fourth century, the epistle was yet used, as Eusebius says, quite widely from the time of Origen on, e.g. by Origen, Firmilian, Cyprian, Hippolytus, Methodius, etc. The same is true, however, of other writings, which the Church afterward placed among the Apocrypha. 552 These πρ€ξεις (or περίοδοι, as they are often called) Πέτρου were of heretical origin, according to Lipsius, and belonged, like the heretical Acta Pauli (referred to in note 20, below), to the collection of περίοδοι τῶν ἀποστόλων, which were ascribed to Lucius Charinus, and, like them, formed also, from the end of the fourth century, a part of the Manichean Canon of the New Testament. The work, as a whole, is no longer extant, but a part of it is preserved, according to Lipsius, in a late Catholic redaction, under the title Passio Petri. Upon these Acts of Peter, their original form, and their relation to other works of the same class, see Lipsius, Apocryphen Apostelgeschichten, II. I, p. 78 sq. Like the heretical Acta Pauli already referred to, this work, too, was used in the composition of the Catholic Acts of Paul and Peter, which are still extant, and which assumed their present form in the fifth century, according to Lipsius. These Catholic Acts of Peter and Paul have been published by Thilo (Acta Petri et Pauli, Halle, 1837), and by Tischendorf, in his Acta Apost. Apocr., p. 1–39. English translation in the Ante-Nicene Fathers (Am. ed.), VIII. p. 477. 553 This Gospel is mentioned by Serapion as in use in the church of Rhossus (quoted by Eusebius, Bk. VI. chap. 12, below), but was rejected by him because of the heretical doctrines which it contained. It is mentioned again by Eusebius, III. 25, only to be rejected as heretical; also by Origen (in Matt. Vol. X. 17) and by Jerome (de vir. ill. 1), who follows Eusebius in pronouncing it an heretical work employed by no early teachers of the Christian Church. Lipsius regards it as probably a Gnostic recast of one of the Canonical Gospels. From Serapion’s account of this Gospel (see below, Bk. VI. chap. 12), we see that it differs from the Canonical Gospels, not in denying their truth, or in giving a contradictory account of Christ’s life, but rather in adding to the account given by them. This, of course, favors Lipsius’ hypothesis; and in any case he is certainly quite right in denying that the Gospel was an original work made use of by Justin Martyr, and that it in any way lay at the base of our present Gospel of Mark. The Gospel (as we learn from the same chapter) was used by the Docetæ, but that does not imply that it contained what we call Docetic ideas of Christ’s body (cf. note 8 on that chapter). The Gospel is no longer extant. See Lipsius, in Smith and Wace’s Dict. of Christ. Biog. II. p. 712. 554 This Preaching of Peter (Κήρυγμα Πέτρου, Prædicatio Petri), which is no longer extant, probably formed a part of a lost Preaching of Peter and Paul (cf. Clement of Alexandria, Strom. VI. 5, and Lactantius, Inst. IV. 21). It was mentioned frequently by the early
