What does the vocabulary of 2 Peter indicate about its authorship?

Question

The opening verse of 2 Peter states that the book was written by “Simeon Peter, a servant and apostle of Jesus Christ" (ESV). By this we understand the claim to be Simon Bar-Jonah (Matt 16:17), a fisherman from Galilee. Although many arguments have been made against this claim¹ I am here focused on a particular issue — the peculiar vocabulary of the letter.

There are 686 hapax legomena in the NT; 54 are found in 2 Peter.² Considering the brevity of the letter, this is markedly disproportionate. It seems odd that a Galilean fisherman would employ a vocabulary so different from his fellow apostles. Most explanations I have found defending apostolic authorship have surmised that the vocabulary is due to the use of an amanuensis.^3,4 My confusion is about exactly what the job of such a person was. My impression had been that this is basically a scribe. I don’t picture a scribe introducing such a large volume of new words, but I may be misunderstanding the role.

• Based on historical knowledge of such arrangements, does this hypothetical scenario reflect a typical degree of linguistic freedom in an author-amanuesis relationship?

• Do these observations about the vocabulary have any bearing on the question of authorship of 2 Peter?

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Notes

1. Wikipedia: "The vast majority of modern scholars regard [2 Peter] as pseudepigraphical."

2. From A critical and exegetical commentary on the epistles of St. Peter and St. Jude. by Charles Bigg, which also includes the complete list of unique words.

3. That is approximately the conclusion of the commentary above, although he switches to the word “draughtsman” which may carry a somewhat different connotation?

4. From what I can tell, for those who hold to apostolic authorship, 1 Peter is almost unanimously thought to have been written through the hand of an amanuensis. There the trouble is not so much the vocabulary as the style, which (is very unlike 2 Peter and) seems to indicate a highly educated author. The same basic question applies there.

Answer 1

If the author is not the apostle Peter, we can never establish from the text who the real author was. However, the text can help establish whether Peter or another author wrote this epistle, and if another author then perhaps in what timeframe it was written. I think Susan has dealt with the issue of vocabulary very well, and I would endorse this, noting that some new words crept into the Christian lexicon in the second century, when I will show that 2 Peter was written.

In 2 Peter 1:1, the author refers to himself as Simeon Peter, using the Hebrew, whereas Peter's first language was Aramaic, and his given name was Aramaic: Simon. A Judean would be unlikely to make this mistake, and a Galilean never would. So this was a clumsy attempt by the author to place himself in Palestine. Verse 3:2: refers to "your apostles" as if he is not one of them. [Note: the KJV corrects the first to "Simon" and the second to "us the apostles," but we need to go back to the earlier texts.]

2 Peter is well known for copying material and ideas out of the Epistle of Jude, which self-identifies as being written long after the apostolic era, and probably in the second century. The prince of apostles would scarcely have needed to rely on Jude even if that epistle was genuine, but here we also have evidence that 2 Peter was written in the second century. I am not sure of whether *2 Peter * includes words rarely used in the first half of the first century, but becoming increasingly common in the second, but that would be a useful avenue for investigation.

Many words commonly used in 1 Peter do not appear in 2 Peter. If 1 Peter is genuine, we would expect Peter to continue to use the same words in his second epistle. If 1 Peter is not genuine, then 2 Peter is unlikely to be genuine, especially as it refers back to Peter's earlier letter.