Forged by Bart D. Ehrman Page B

claiming to be Peter. Before explaining some of those grounds, we should first look at the second letter in the New Testament written in Peter’s name.
    2 P ETER
    There is less debate among scholars of the New Testament about the authorship of 2 Peter than for any of the other books sometimes considered forgeries. Whoever wrote 2 Peter, it was not Simon Peter. 20 The author certainly claims to be Peter, even more explicitly than in the case of 1 Peter. He introduces himself as “Simeon Peter, 21 a slave and apostle of Jesus Christ.” But more than that, he claims personally to have been present at the “transfiguration” scene narrated in the Gospels, where Jesus was transformed before the eyes ofhis disciples Peter, James, and John and began speaking with Moses and Elijah, before a voice came from heaven saying, “This is my beloved son in whom I am well pleased” (see Matt. 17:1–8). The author insists that he himself was there to hear these words, brought to him by the “voice…of the majestic glory” (1:17). The author wants there to be no doubt: he is Peter.
    His chief concern is that there are false teachers in the community who have twisted the true message of the gospel. Most of chapter 2 is devoted to maligning these persons, without ever explaining what, exactly, they teach. This highly vituperative attack calls their teachings “destructive heresies” and says that they, the opponents, are licentious, greedy, and exploitative. The author indicates that they will suffer like the people of Sodom and Gomorrah and like the inhabitants of the entire world in the days of Noah. That is to say, they too will be destroyed. He calls them ignorant and says they are “blots and blemishes, reveling in their dissipation, carousing.” He says they have eyes that are “full of adultery, unslakable for sin.” And on and on.
    This assault on his opponents, the “false prophets,” contains numerous verbal similarities to what can be found in the New Testament book of Jude. The parallels are so numerous that scholars are virtually unified in thinking that the author has taken Jude’s message and simply edited it a bit to incorporate it into his book.
    In addition to the false teachers, “scoffers” have appeared who mock the Christian view that Jesus is soon to return from heaven in judgment on the earth. If he was supposed to come soon, say these skeptics, why hasn’t he come? A lot of time has passed, and everything goes on just the same as before! The author replies that these unbelievers are ignorant and deceived, having forgotten that “with the Lord one day is as a thousand years and a thousand years are as one day” (3:8). In other words, even if Jesus waits another three thousand years, he still is coming “soon.” Jesus has in fact delayed returning simply to give people a chance to repent before the coming destruction. Paul himself, the author tells us, taught such things in “all hisletters, which the ignorant and unstable people twist, as they do with all the other Scriptures, to their own destruction” (3:16).
    One of the reasons virtually all scholars agree that Peter did not actually write this letter is that the situation being presupposed appears to be of much later times. When Peter himself died—say, the year 64 under Nero—there was still eager expectation that Jesus would return soon; not even a full generation had passed since the crucifixion. It was only with the passing of time that the Christian claim that all would take place “within this generation” (Mark 13:30) and before the disciples had “tasted death” (9:1) started to ring hollow. By the time 2 Peter was written, Christians were having to defend themselves in the face of opponents who mocked their view that the end was supposed to be imminent. So “Peter” has to explain that even if the end is thousands