Tuesday, February 12, 2008

Audience of 1 Peter

Over at Torrey Seland's blog, there is an interesting conversation regarding Ben Witherington's proposal that the audience of 1 Peter is mainly Jewish. Joel Green, author of the new THNT commentary on Peter offers his thoughts on Seland's blog. As Seland notes, this goes against the scholarly trend, which sees this epistle as written to a predominantly Gentile audience. I find myself in agreement with Seland who states: "I came to realize that the descriptions inherent in passages as 1:14, 18; 2:10, 25 and 4:3-4 were hard to read as labels of former Jews." So it will be fascinating to see how Witherington handles these texts and the scholarship surrounding them.

My copy of Witherington's commentary will arrive today hopefully, and then perhaps I can make further comments on this interesting topic. I must confess to be enjoying 1 Peter rather more than expected. Not that I anticipated anything bad, but Joel Green's commentary is thoroughly helpful and absolutely brilliant in the exegesis and theological commentary. Anyone interested in 1 Peter should check this out immediately!

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