Reading 1 Peter, Jude and 2 Peter

by Earl J. Richard

Publisher:

Smyth & Helwys

, 2000

Overview

The commentaries on Peter and Jude underscore the light that these letters shed upon one another and focuses on the snapshots they provide of early Christian communities as they encountered the social and religious environment in which they were situated. Careful reading of 1 Peter reveals the complex world of the post-apostolic period. Jude and 2 Peter provide a sober look at the early community's evolution in doctrinal and moral terms. This volume discusses the social relations Christians are to have with outsiders, about the Christian challenge of living in a non-Christian environment, and about the Christian community’s growing pains as they increased in membership and complexity.

Contents

Top Highlights

“Spiritual cleansing is meant to accompany or even to give meaning to the washing symbolism of baptism, but it is not 1 Peter’s concept of baptism itself.” (Page 162)

“Dia then has an instrumental sense: ‘by means of water.’” (Page 161)

“More recent scholarship questions the wisdom of such an analysis and has concluded that 1 Peter focuses on Christian suffering not as a result of persecution but as the result of hostility, harassment, and social, unofficial ostracism on the part of the general populace. The author perceives the Christian reality as that of a minority culture within the Greco-Roman world.” (Page 17)

“Jude wishes here to stress the believer’s intimate relationship to God as protection from and the antithesis of ungodly activity.” (Page 248)

“The themes of suffering and glory, representing the contours of the Christ-event, offer the framework for the author’s understanding of the Christian’s life in the world and allows for a paraenetic application of the Christ-event to those suffering unjustly in the provinces of Asia Minor. Having established a doctrinal basis for exhortation, the author develops the letter’s major thesis: Jesus is the Christian’s model of suffering and glory (2:21—‘leaving you an example that you might follow in his footsteps’); between these two poles—the suffering that has ransomed humanity and the establishment in glory that is a future reality for the believer—lies an interim period of crucial importance to author and audience.” (Pages 19–20)

Product Details

• Title: Reading 1 Peter, Jude and 2 Peter
• Author: Earl J. Richard
• Series: Reading the New Testament Commentary Series
• Publisher: Smyth & Helwys
• Publication Date: 2000
• Pages: 394

About Earl J. Richard

Earl J. Richard is professor emeritus of New Testament at Loyola University in New Orleans. He holds graduate degrees in biblical studies from Ottawa University, Johns Hopkins, and The Catholic University of America in Washington DC. He is the author of Jesus: One and Many and is editor and contributor to New Views on Luke and Acts. He is past president of the Society of Biblical Literature (southeast region) and a member of the Catholic Biblical Association.