There are two epistles in the New Testament that are attributed to the Apostle Peter. Skeptics argue that Peter did not write them and apologists argue that Peter did. This post is not about whether Peter did write 1 & 2 Peter but whether he could have.
Some have argued that Peter, an uneducated fisherman, could not have written those epistles, especially in Greek, which would not have been his primary language. Is this true?
There are a couple of problems with this assumption.
One is that it assumes that a lack of formal education and a fishing occupation indicates a lack of intelligence. There is no reason to make that connection.
It also ignores the biblical data that Peter had decades of experience between his fishing days and when those epistles were written as a leader and communicator within the early church.
But what about the quality of Greek in 1 & 2 Peter? Like Paul’s epistles, those epistles were most likely not put pen to paper by the person who came up with the content. The author would have dictated the content to a scribe who would have written it down. A person who was speaking in their second language could be aided by the scribe who was writing in their first language.
This does not prove that Peter wrote 1 & 2 Peter. Nor does that need to be proved. But this give reason to question the assumption that Peterine authorship is an impossibility.
