A CRITICAL AND EXEGETICAL COMMENTARY ON THE EPISTLES OF ST. PETER BY THE REV. CHARLES BIGG, D.D. RECTOR OF FENNY COMPTON CANON OF CHRIST CHURCH, AND REGIUS PROFESSOR OF ECCLESIASTICAL HISTORY NEW YORK CHARLES SCRIBNER'S SONS PREFACE. I SEND this laborious volume to the press with a clear sense of its limitations. But on this subject no more need be said; the shortcomings of the work will be at least as evident to others as to myself. The books that I have used most for the purpose of the commentary are those of Alford, Kühl, and von Soden, that of Dr. Hort for part of the First Epistle of St. Peter, that of Spitta for 2 Peter and Jude.1 Of Introductions I know at first hand only those of Salmon, B. Weiss, Westcott, Jülicher, and Zahn, the excellent articles of Dr. Chase in Hastings' Dictionary of the Bible, and Harnack's Chronologie. No one can write of the early Church without feeling how greatly he has been helped in an infinity of directions by the eminent scholar last named. But the apparatus of a commentator on the New Testament ought to be much wider than it usually is. The Antinomians with whom we meet in 2 Peter and Jude cannot be understood from the New Testament alone. To see what they were we must turn not merely to Corinthians, Thessalonians, or the Apocalypse, but to the lives of Luther and Wesley, to the times of Eckhart, Tauler and Ruysbroek, or to such books as Barclay's Inner Life of the Religious Societies of the Commonwealth. Every great religious upheaval repro 1 Valuable summaries of the Literature are found-for 1 and 2 Peter, Hastings' D. of the B., vol. iii. pp. 817, 818; for Jude, vol. ii. pp. 805, 806, and Smith's D. of the B., vol. i. p. 1839, ed. 1893. 133851 duces the same phenomena. There can be no doubt that they existed also in apostolic times. The Gnostics again, with whom these Antinomians have been confounded, cannot be understood without some acquaintance with the magic and devil-worship which reigned throughout the GrecoRoman world. For this we must go to Plutarch, Apuleius, Lucian, the Neo-Platonists, or the papyri. Deissmann, in his Bibelstudien, gives some specimens of magical formulæ, and the Pistis Sophia will show how the sacred names of the Bible and of the heathen mythology were mixed up together. At this moment in Hayti there are Gnostics who blend Vaudoux, or snake-worship, with Roman Catholicism, and it is probable that the same kind of "syncretism" is known to missionaries in other quarters. The Gnosticism of the Greeks and Orientals was probably not quite so sinister as that of the Haytian negroes, but it belonged to the same family. A point which gives the commentator much trouble is the nature of the Greek with which he has to deal. It is Vulgar Greek, but this is a most indefinite term. There is (1) the Greek that was written by men of education, by Epictetus, Plutarch, Dio Chrysostom, Lucian, Clement of Alexandria. In this there are many new words and expressions, and the niceties of Attic grammar are relaxed; at the same time the old classics exercise a strong influence over the writer's mind. (2) Again there is colloquial Greek, which, as it was spoken in Egypt, we see fresh from the source in the Oxyrhynchus Papyri, published by Grenfell and Hunt. (3) There is, again, the colloquial Greek as written by Jews, whose grammar and phraseology were more or less influenced by the Septuagint and the genius of the Hebrew tongue. (4) Again we have to take into account the force of Christian usage, which coined many new terms of its own. (5) Finally, there are perceptible differences in the linguistic habits of the New Testament writers themselves. Constantly we have to ask whether any inference can be drawn from the presence or absence of the article, what sense is to be attached to a μ or an , whether such a phrase as xpiois βλασφημίας is Hebrew or Greek, whether ἐν Χριστῷ is Pauline or liturgical. Much has been done in later years to simplify these questions. The admirable Concordance of Hatch and Redpath is often the best of commentaries. Field has done much good service, and books like Deissmann's Bibelstudien (of which an English translation has recently been published by Messrs. T. & T. Clark) are of great use. Finally, Dr. Blass has earned the gratitude of all commentators by his Grammar. It is the work of one who with a profound knowledge of classical Greek combines a large and accurate acquaintance with the language of the New Testament, and no book shows so clearly, what we want especially to know, the difference between the two. Some of my readers may be startled, or even shocked, by the view taken in this volume of the relation between the two great apostles, St. Peter and St. Paul. It has not been adopted hastily, nor is it, I trust, irreverent. But it will not be accepted by anyone who regards the Didache as belonging to the first or even to the second century. My own conviction is that it belongs to the fourth. According as the reader accepts one view or the other, his conception of the early history of the Church will be fundamentally different. As regards the relation between St. Peter and St. Paul again, there is need of a wider historical sense than is usually brought to bear upon the question. The difference between the two apostles was, as I believe, practically that which divided Hooker from Cartwright. I say practically, as meaning that a strictly Pauline Church would, in the details of worship and discipline, approximate very closely to the ideal of the Puritans. It would be built upon the theory of direct and personal inspiration, not upon that of indirect and corporate inspiration. These two theories produce very different results in the way of organisation, as, in fact, |