(1) The traces of other Books point to a date not earlier than 61 or 62 but not necessarily much later.

(2) The spread of Christianity in the Northern provinces of Asia Minor is not impossible during the reign of Nero.

(3) The relations between the Church and the State which are implied are not inconsistent with what is known of the Neronian persecution, and would even admit of a date shortly before that persecution broke out.

(4) There is not sufficient evidence to set aside the tradition that St Peter suffered martyrdom in the reign of Nero, so that 68 A.D. is the latest date consistent with the Petrine authorship of the Epistle.

(5) That St Peter, St Mark and Silvanus might have been together in Rome between 61 and 64 or possibly, but less probably, at the end of Nero's reign after St Paul's death.

(6) That the absence of all mention of St Paul is less difficult to explain before St Paul's death than shortly after that event.

Therefore the evidence seems to be slightly in favour of dating the Epistle between 62 and 64 A.D., and such a date would suit one of the apparent objects of the Epistle, namely to promote the union between Jewish and Gentile Christians.

6. RELATIONS BETWEEN 1 PETER AND OTHER N.T. Books.

(a) 1 Peter and James.

1 Pet. i. 1 ἐκλεκτοῖς παρεπιδήμοις διασπορᾶς. Jas i. 1 ταῖς δώδεκα φυλαῖς ταῖς ἐν τῇ διασπορᾷ. Three views are possible:

(a) That both Epistles employ the word diaoroрá in its literal sense of the Jewish Dispersion. In this case either writer might have used the phrase independently of the other. To St James writing from Jerusalem Jewish Christians in other lands would naturally be thought of as "in the Dispersion." St Peter writing from the Roman centre of "the Dispersion" might quite naturally use the phrase of another district of the Dispersion. But if one writer did derive the word from the other the borrower was probably St Peter.

(b) It may be literal in St James and metaphorical in St Peter. In this case the natural inference would be that St Peter, with his mind evidently full of the thought of the Christian Church as the new Israel of God, borrowed St James' greeting to the Dispersion and applied it to his scattered readers as the "new Dispersion."

(c) That both St James and St Peter use the word metaphorically of the Christian Church. Certainly that suits the general tenour of St Peter's Epistle, and Parry adduces strong arguments for its use in that sense by St James.

If the report of St James' speech (Acts xv. 14-20) may be accepted as representing his actual arguments, he did speak of God choosing a people (λaós) for His Name from among the Gentiles to be included in the restored "tabernacle of David"; and the language of the prophets about the ideal Jerusalem, coupled with our Lord's words about "gathering together His elect," might suggest to one writing from Jerusalem the idea of the Church as forming the Twelve Tribes of the ideal Israel of God at present "scattered abroad." But if so it is a pregnant seed-thought suggesting the totality and the underlying unity of the Church despite present appearances. St James makes no attempt to expand it in the remainder of his Epistle, and, unless it was an idea already familiarized to the readers either by St James himself or other teachers, they would not readily grasp its meaning.

In St Peter on the other hand the idea is elaborated and worked out by other titles-"holy nation," "royal priesthood,"

etc.

It is however more likely that St Peter should have thus expanded a pregnant thought of St James' than that St James should have chosen one single title out of St Peter's list.

It is almost impossible to date St Peter's Epistle earlier than 61 A.D.; if it was written from Rome, and if St James' martyrdom was in 62 A.D. there would be barely time for St Peter's Epistle to become known to him and still less to his readers. This argument affects also all the other passages under discussion in the two Epistles and suggests that St Peter borrowed from St James rather than vice versa.

1 Pet. i. 6 f. ἐν ᾧ ἀγαλλιᾶσθε, ὀλίγον ἄρτι εἰ δέον λυπηθέντες ἐν ποικίλοις πειρασμοῖς, ἵνα τὸ δοκίμιον ὑμῶν τῆς πίστεως κ.τ.λ. Jas i. 2f. πᾶσαν χαρὰν ἡγήσασθε ὅταν πειρασμοῖς περιπέσητε ποικίλοις, γινώσκοντες ὅτι τὸ δοκίμιον ὑμῶν τῆς πίστεως κ.τ.λ.

In these passages the verbal correspondence is so close and the order of the words in the last clause so unusual that there must be some direct literary connexion between the two writers.

St Peter is referring to outward trials and persecutions, which form one of the main topics of his Epistle. He works out the idea of dokiμov by a comparison with the refining of gold, with an apparent allusion to Prov. xxvii. 21 δοκίμιον ἀργυρίῳ καὶ χρυσῷ πύρωσις (to which he reverts again in iv. 12) ἀνὴρ δὲ δοκιμάζεται διὰ στόματος ἐγκωμιαζόντων αὐτὸν and Prov. xvii. 3 δοκιμάζεται ἐν καμίνῳ ἄργυρος καὶ χρυσός, οὕτως ἐκλεκταὶ καρδίαι παρὰ Κυρίου.

It may therefore be argued that St Peter borrowed a pregnant thought from St James and elaborated it from the Old Testament, at the same time softening down the uncompromising stoicism of St James πᾶσαν χαρὰν ἡγήσασθε by adding ὀλίγον ἄρτι, εἰ δέον, AUTηoévтes. Such expansion and mitigation of an allusive paradox might be natural on the part of the borrower while the reverse process would be less probable.

On the other hand the ordinary view is that in St James also the words refer to external trials, which is not a prominent topic in his Epistle, and that he immediately deserts it to discuss temptations to sin. In this case the words are rather disconnected in St James and it might be argued that he borrowed them from St Peter as a kind of text. Parry however (St Jas. p. 32 ff.) argues that St James is throughout referring to temptations to sin and begins with the startling paradox "Count it all joy when ye fall into divers temptations."

In this case the words are connected with their context in St James, but it might be argued that such psychological analysis as St James bases on them is more subtle and therefore presumably later than the lessons of practical experience which St Peter gives. But, whereas the psychological phase would naturally be later than the practical in the same person, it is hardly a conclusive argument as to the relative dates of writings by two different persons. St Peter might have borrowed a subtle

idea from St James and either understood it or applied it in a more practical sense to outward trials.

1 Pet. i. 23 f. ἀναγεγεννημένοι...διὰ λόγου ζῶντος θεοῦ καὶ μένοντος...ἀποθέμενοι οὖν πᾶσαν κακίαν.

Jas i. 18, 21 βουληθεὶς ἀπεκύησεν ἡμᾶς λόγῳ ἀληθείας...διὸ ἀποθέμενοι...περισσείαν κακίας...δέξασθε τὸν ἔμφυτον λόγον.

Here St James begins by referring to "the manifestation of God's will in creation as a strong warrant and incentive for resistance to temptation" (Parry). In St Peter the only allusion to creation is in iv. 19, that God is "a faithful creator" who may be trusted in all trials not to neglect His own handiwork.

St Peter on the other hand is referring to the word of regeneration by which man is begotten anew as a new creature.

But St James goes on to urge his readers to receive the implanted word (λóyos éμputos), which seems to mean the fiat of creation after God's likeness, as an active redemptive principle now implanted within the man who receives it, and this must be the word of regeneration, the new principle of life given in Christ Jesus.

Both St Peter and St James shew that those who are thus begotten by the word of God must put away all malice. In St Peter this is urged as a necessary result of being so begotten. If the seed from which they spring is the incorruptible word of God which abides for ever, its fruit should be shewn in a love which is equally incorruptible and abiding, and this involves putting away all malice, etc. In St James the putting away of malice is rather a necessary preliminary in order to receive the implanted word. Thus the treatment of the subject is very different in the two writers. Whichever was the borrower has welded the idea into his own argument without any slavish imitation. But St James's appeal to the fiat of creation is more subtle and obscure than the appeal to regeneration by St Peter. It would therefore seem that St Peter has adopted one part only of St James' message, possibly not having himself grasped the allusion to the Gospel of Creation.

The contrast between corruptible seed and the word of God living and abiding for ever is emphasized by St Peter by a quotation from Isaiah xl. 6 πᾶσα σὰρξ χόρτος καὶ πᾶσα δόξα ἀνθρώπου ὡς ἄνθος χόρτου, ἐξηράνθη ὁ χόρτος καὶ τὸ ἄνθος ἐξέπεσεν,

τὸ δὲ ῥῆμα τοῦ θεοῦ ἡμῶν μένει εἰς τὸν αἰῶνα. In i. 24 he quotes the whole passage with three variations from the LXX. &s being inserted after σάρξ, αὐτῆς substituted for ἀνθρώπου and Κυρίου for Toù beoù μôv, all of which readings may possibly have been found in the text of the LXX. used by St Peter. Now the main point in St Peter's use of the passage is the last clause, "the word of the Lord abideth for ever," but the earlier portion is also very appropriate to his argument. The fading glory of grass is a fitting emblem of "the corruptible seed," the vain manner of living which his readers had inherited from their heathen forefathers. Moreover the whole passage in Isaiah is a gospel of redemption and new birth for God's exiled people in Babylon, based upon the lastingness of God's promise as contrasted with the vanity of human schemes. It is therefore very suitable to describe the new birth of the New Israel, ransomed from their old heathen surroundings.

St Peter therefore might quite well have selected the passage independently. But in view of the other traces of his indebtedness to St James, it is not unlikely that the quotation was partly suggested to his mind by the fact that in Jas i. 10 a few phrases ὡς ἄνθος χόρτου...ἐξήρανε τὸν χόρτον καὶ τὸ ἄνθος αὐτοῦ ἐξέπεσε had been applied to the transitoriness of earthly riches.

1 Pet. ii. 11 ἀπέχεσθαι τῶν σαρκικῶν ἐπιθυμιῶν αἵτινες στρατεύονται κατὰ τῆς ψυχῆς.

Jas. iv. 1 ἐκ τῶν ἡδονῶν ὑμῶν τῶν στρατευομένων ἐν τοῖς μέλεσιν ὑμῶν; ἐπιθυμεῖτε.

In St Peter the words are an injunction to Christians, as strangers and sojourners, to abstain from the mutinous desires of the flesh which are at war against their true self (yuxý). They must maintain an honourable standard in all their dealings with heathen neighbours.

In St James pleasures are regarded as hostile occupants of the members, resisting a lawful authority which is not named, and this causes quarrels and fightings. There is therefore not any close connexion of thought between the two passages. Possibly St Peter may have had St Paul's words in Rom. vii. 23 in his mind. βλέπω ἕτερον νόμον ἐν τοῖς μέλεσίν μου ἀντιστρατευόμενον τῷ νόμῳ τοῦ νοός μου. The use of σαρκικός in a bad sense is decidedly Pauline, but uxý must not be identified with

I PETER