The
Introduction for 2 Peter says that the author was a later writer who attributed his work to the apostle. Let us take a closer look at the “principal reasons” for this assertion made with “wide agreement” among modern scholars.
The first reason given for this assertion is that the “author refers to the apostles and ‘our ancestors’ as belonging to a previous generation, now dead (2 Peter 3:2-4).” After working through all of this, I have to say that I am really surprised that this is given as one of the “principal reasons” for doubting Petrine authorship when only a total of four such reasons are presented to justify their case. It seems rather weak, which is what I hope to prove…
If someone accepts a later author, there are basically two ways of thinking about why this author would connect “the fathers” with the apostles so as to situate all of the apostles in “a previous generation, now dead.” The first is that he simply goofed, and, while he was trying to write as if he was Peter, he let this one slip. But it can’t be
both late
and an attempt made by a later author to pawn off his letter as apostolic, by an author who writes without the modicum of wherewithal needed to avoid such an extremely sloppy move! This position is, I think – and I hope that all agree –
absurd. The second position would see this as a purposeful insertion, a “literary device,” to help the reader pick up on the fact that this is a pseudonymous work. But if that is what he is really trying to do, he does not seem to insert these devices with any level of consistency or with a discernable rationale; in fact, there would be no other example of a device such as this one, delivered with such conspicuous obviousness! It would be the only one of its kind in that it alone irrefragably denies that Peter could have written this letter. Critics will say, for example, that the author tactically refers to himself as Simeon Peter – and also includes other biographical information – in order to pretend like he’s Peter, even going so far as to use both of Peter’s names, so that it thus becomes a sign that he really isn’t Peter! And so we have something plausibly Petrine signaling to us that he can’t be Peter. Then this same author will turn around and make the scheme clear to us by telling us that all of the apostles are dead, again meaning to signal to us by something impossibly Petrine that he can’t be Peter. Let me say it again. If there is something in the text that suggests that Peter wrote it, then this is part of a technique used to make it appear as if it’s
too Peter to be Peter. If there is something in the text that suggests that Peter didn’t or even couldn’t have written it, then this too is a device used to alert the reader once again to pseudonymous authorship. In order for anything to be a device, everything has to be a device! Such so-called literary devices or techniques, in their whimsical application, are truly names without substance because they avoid any real interaction with what the text says about its author by arrogating to themselves all of the Petrine material via universal invocation. Again, I say that we can’t have it both ways. We can’t allow for a writer signaling to the reader through the use of plausible details from a person’s life
and impossibilities for that same person, both to the same effect of trying to make it appear that the author is not that person. When we do this, we leave ourselves without a coherent rationale for explaining
why an anonymous author would have written this letter. What we need to do in this case is to make certain that those passages that seem to suggest that Peter could not have possibly written this letter actually carry their probative weight.
In truth, there is no necessary link between “the fathers” who are now dead and the apostles mentioned two verses earlier (taken by the NAB as meaning
all of the apostles), and attempts to force the connection in this way are strained at best. It must have appeared strained as well to the Fathers and Councils that determined the canon because none of them hesitated in attributing this letter to Peter. Or perhaps, what is really the case, the connection not being found in the text, the Church Fathers showed a lack of prophetic gifting in being unable to predict the unfounded assertions of modern imaginations.
The
Synod of Rome, A.D. 382, says that we have “[o]f Peter the Apostle two epistles;” likewise
The Third Council of Carthage, A.D. 397: “two Epistles of the Apostle Peter;”
Athanasius: “of Peter, two;” likewise
Augustine (of course! see Ch. 8),
Jerome (see Ch. 1), Cyril of Jerusalem, Gregory Nazianzus,
etc. We would be led to believe by the NAB introduction that these Councils, Doctors, and Saints were blind to the obvious, genre-identifying tip-off to pseudonymity! The fact that the commentators have automatically subsumed all of the apostles into the category of the fathers, when a straightforward reading of the passage doesn’t call for it or, as we shall see, even sit well with it after it has been made, indicates that they’re arguing
from their conclusion.
I’ll continue with this point in my next post…
For John’s Gospel, I think the introduction for the Italian translation found there is much better (I don’t know Italian so please forgive me if the translation is bad. I used 
). It is improbable in the extreme that Tacitus is giving a report of Calgacus’ words verbatim, & there is no reason to think he was trying to do so. If Tacitus can be allowed to reveal character through speech in that way, why can’t St. John ?
Now that he didn’t exist seems highly unlikely. 2nd and 3rd John are even attributed to him by the Roman Synod of 382 (see the 
I’d love to see an answer to this question too. The Church Fathers lived in that culture… surely they knew the ‘literary genres’ of the time? What is their take on it?