Originally Posted by antelope_sniper
Originally Posted by Thunderstick
Originally Posted by DBT
There is no historical evidence for the existence of Jesus. All we have are the words of anonymous writers, accounts written decades after the described events. And before Josephus, et al, is brought up, the few brief mentions outside of the gospels were made on hearsay, so these are not eyewitness accounts. Paul himself was not aware of some of the things mentioned by the later works of the gospel writers.


Peter as an eye-witness and apostle affirms the writings of Paul as reliable and the equal of other Scriptures.
2Pet.3:15-16 And count the patience of our Lord as salvation, just as our beloved brother Paul also wrote to you according to the wisdom given him, 16 as he does in all his letters when he speaks in them of these matters. There are some things in them that are hard to understand, which the ignorant and unstable twist to their own destruction, as they do the other Scriptures.



Second Peter wasn't written by Peter. Of all the letters, it's the most widely accepted as a later FORGERY.


I did a bit more study on this one as it seems this is one of the latest fads among the skeptics--that 2 Pet was a forgery because:
1. Peter was illiterate
2. Peter could not speak or write in Greek
3. Peter's language was different between the two epistles
4. It was not quoted by the earliest Church writers

Let's weigh those arguments:

1&2. The basis of Peter's illiteracy was that he was fisherman and that he was considered unlearned. The literacy rate among Jews was very high for those times because the fathers were to instruct their children in the law. He was considered uneducated by the standards of scholars Acts 4:13. However they were amazed at what he knew without going to school. Jesus chose him to be one of his witnesses and specifically gave him a prominent position among the others and gave him the Greek name, Peter. Whether Peter could or could not write is really not a relevant issue because many times the author used an amanuenses to dictate their words.

3. I quote .. As Kruger {2} describes, 1 Peter has 542 words, 2 Peter has 399 words, and they share 153 words in common, which means only about 38% are shared words, while 62% are unique to 2 Peter. While this may seem like good evidence for two different writers to some critics, consider that 1Timothy and Titus share about 40% of their words and about 60% are unique to Titus, yet both are believed by critics to have the same author, even if they don’t believe it’s Paul, (which is another debate). And also 1 Corinthians and 2 Corinthians, both believed by practically all scholars to be written by Paul, share 49% of their words, and 51% are unique to 2 Corinthians. So differences in language are not conclusive, especially when we consider that they really seem to have two very different purposes, 1 Peter to encourage a church during persecution, 2 Peter to address the problem of false teaching.
Attributing documents to different authors because of style has always been problematic, many times because of the subjective nature of the argument. For example, in the introduction to each letter, the only parts that match are the second verses of each. Why would a forger only copy this one part? Furthermore, this particular word combination “grace and peace be multiplied” can only be found in these two books in the entire New Testament.

4. I quote ... It’s true that Origen was the first to officially quote the epistle. But he quotes the book six times, and there is no trace of a doubt in his writings that it belongs in the canon of the New Testament. This would not happen casually with some recently composed document. What it means is that by his time the book was widely accepted as authentic. Church father Eusebius listed 2nd Peter along with some other books as “disputed”, the others being James, Jude, and 2 and 3 John. But he clearly indicates that the majority of the church regarded it as authentic.
All church fathers after Origen acknowledge that 2nd Peter is canonical. Learned church father Jerome accepted 2nd Peter without hesitation even though he admitted it differed in style from 1 Peter, which he attributed to different scribes employed for each letter.
2nd Peter appears in some early manuscripts such as the P72 Bodmer Papyrus from the 3rd century and in the very authoritative Codex from the 4th century, Sinaiticus and Vaticanus, on which many of our modern translations are based.
One of the reasons the church fathers in the first 2 centuries may have been reluctant to quote 2nd Peter was because there were many other documents around at that time that were forgeries falsely attributed to Peter, such as the Gospel of Peter, the Apocalypse of Peter, and others. But the fact that 2nd Peter rose above the rest of these and ultimately gained full acceptance is greatly in its favor.
Although the first official quote of 2nd Peter was from Origen, there is evidence for an early date of composition contrary to some critic’s charges. Clement of Alexandria (150-215 A.D.) wrote a commentary on 2nd Peter, which unfortunately is now lost. Why would he have written this if the church thought that 2nd Peter was a forgery? [1] Irenaeus (130-200) quotes from Psalm 90:4 in language almost exactly matching 2 Peter 3:8, both deviating widely from the Septuagint translation in almost the exact same places, indicating that Irenaeus may have been quoting directly from 2nd Peter. Justin Martyr (115-165) also may be alluding to 2nd Peter with a passage in his Dialogue with Trypho that matches up with the wording in 2 Peter 2:1. There is evidence that the Apocalypse of Peter written in 110 A.D. depends on 2 Peter, and finally even 1 Clement (written 95-97 A. D.) has two phrases in it that have matches in 2 Peter but are not found in the rest of the New Testament. These phrases are referring to God as “the magnificent glory” (2 Peter 1:17) and “the way of truth” (2 Peter 2:2, also 1 Clement 35:5). It’s unlikely the Greek in these phrases would match so closely when they are both so rarely used. {2}