PETER, LETTERS OF

two New Testament writings attributed to the foremost of Jesus' 12 Apostles but perhaps written during the early 2nd century. The first letter, addressed to persecuted Christians living in five regions of Asia Minor, exhorts the readers to emulate the suffering Christ in their distress, remembering that after his Passion and death Jesus rose from the dead and is now in glory. The Christians are urged to repay evil with goodness and to love one another and are cautioned to safeguard their reputation as good citizens of high morality, thereby removing all doubt about the injustice of their sufferings. The question of authorship has not been solved to the satisfaction of scholars. Whereas the fluent Greek style and certain historical references seem to argue against Petrine authorship, the description of a primitive church organization, for example, seems to indicate an early composition, with the actual writing perhaps done by a secretary of or spokesman for Peter. The second letter is principally concerned with the Second Coming of Christ. The author attributes the apparent delay to God's patience in allowing time for universal redemption and notes that in the sight of God 1,000 years are like one day. The writer also warns against false teachers, whose conduct is as immoral as their words are deceptive. They, and those who follow them, says the writer, will be destroyed in a great conflagration that will precede "new heavens and a new earth in which righteousness dwells" (3:13). Though the author explicitly identifies himself as Peter, numerous textual difficulties created doubts as early as the 3rd century about the actual authorship, which have been reinforced by subsequent scholarship.