Participants: Tom Shepherd & Deyvy Rodriguez
Series Code: PBOTB
Program Code: PBOTB00001A
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00:22 Hello and welcome to "Books of the Book."
00:24 My name is Deyvy Rodriguez 00:26 and I'm glad that you're able to join us 00:27 in this bible study program. 00:29 Today we begin a series of programs 00:31 focusing on the Books of Peter. 00:33 So grab your bible, 00:34 a piece of paper and something to write with. 00:36 And be blessed by today's study. 00:38 With us is Dr. Tom Shepherd. 00:40 He's currently a Professor of New Testament interpretation 00:43 at Andrews University. Welcome, Dr. Shepherd. 00:45 It's good to be with you. 00:47 Welcome back because you've been with us 00:48 before in Books of the Book. 00:50 You did the gospel of Mark 00:51 with Kevin Hart, is that right? 00:53 That is correct. 00:54 And you're currently studying or not studying, 00:55 you're teaching at Andrews University. 00:57 How's that going? It's going really well. 01:00 I enjoy my work a great deal. 01:02 I started teaching there in 2008. 01:04 And it's just a joy to help the students 01:07 learn the word of God. 01:09 Well, I'm also very pleased to be here studying with you. 01:12 And in this series we're studying 01:14 the books of 1 and 2 Peter. 01:17 Now why are we studying 01:18 or why should we study this book or these books? 01:22 Well, when I came to the seminary, 01:25 Chairman of the New Testament department wanted-- 01:27 he wants all these teachers to be passionate 01:29 about what they teach. 01:30 And so he said, we want to give you 01:32 some leeway to choose what you want to teach. 01:35 And so, oh, gospel of Mark was an obvious choice. 01:39 But I would branch out a little bit. 01:41 I was interested in the Book of James. Okay. 01:43 But it turns out that one of the other Professors 01:45 was already teaching that. 01:47 And so I kind of, said, "okay, well. 01:49 I guess I'll try 1 and 2 Peter." 01:52 When I delved into these two books, 01:53 little did I realize how amazing 01:56 and beautiful the theology of these two books is. 01:59 It just really kind of overwhelmed me. 02:01 I was really struck with the power of these books. 02:04 And so that lead me eventually to work on a book for the-- 02:10 on these two books, the theology of these two books. 02:12 And lead also to this-- this time with you. 02:15 Wonderful. Well, why don't we dive right into our study 02:18 and why don't we begin with my first question. 02:20 Who wrote the Books of Peter? 02:23 Okay, maybe the best place to turn 02:26 is to the very first verse of the very first book, 02:29 1 Peter 1:1. Could you read that for us? 02:32 "Peter, an apostle of Jesus Christ, 02:36 to the pilgrims of the Dispersion in Pontus, 02:38 Galatia, Cappadocia, Asia, and Bithynia." 02:41 All right, for most Christians just seeing that name there, 02:46 they say, "well Peter, apostle Peter 02:48 is obviously the author of this book." 02:51 And that's enough for them. 02:54 Of course, what happens is scholars are always 02:57 studying these books, 02:58 looking at them carefully and everything. 03:00 And they have questions that they ask. 03:03 And one of the-- a number of the questions 03:05 that they ask is well, 03:07 "could Peter really have written this book?" 03:09 We have numerous books of the time period 03:13 that were use-- somebody used a pseudonym. 03:16 You know, it wasn't the author. 03:18 It was somebody else but they wanted to give credit 03:20 to their book so they put, you know, Abraham, you know? 03:24 Or they put Enoch or somebody else. 03:26 And so some people think that this book was not written 03:29 by the apostle himself 03:31 but maybe by one of his disciples or somebody-- 03:33 there are people who say that 03:35 it was written even in the second century AD 03:36 and not--not the time period of Peter at all. 03:40 Well, for people like you and I 03:42 who have a high view of scripture 03:44 and take it seriously, we find that problematic. 03:46 So we say, "okay, so what are your objections? 03:49 Why don't you believe, you know, in this book?" 03:53 And one of the main things that point 03:55 to is the Greek of the book of 1 Peter. 03:59 I've brought my Greek bible with me. All right. 04:02 I don't leave home without it kind of a thing. 04:04 Okay. I'm gonna have you read it-- 04:06 Maybe sometime we can read it out loud even 04:08 but, you know, we want to make it clear to everybody. 04:12 The Greek of 1 Peter is really just about the very best Greek 04:17 that there is in the New Testament. 04:20 And people ask the question, "well, how could an uneducated," 04:23 we know Peter was uneducated. 04:24 "How could an uneducated fisherman write 04:27 such good Greek, you know?" 04:28 It's clearly Hellenistic kind of Greek. 04:31 It's got beautiful alliteration and, 04:34 you know, complex sentence structure. 04:37 So that's one of the issues that comes in. 04:38 Because of his education background 04:40 some people doubt that it was him 04:41 who wrote such beautiful Greek. 04:43 Right, right. Well, and he is in Galilee. 04:46 Does he even speak Greek, you know? 04:48 Is he just speaks Aramaic, you know? 04:50 So that's one question that they have. 04:52 So this is the same Peter who followed Jesus 04:54 or was with Jesus for more than 3 years, who denied Him. 04:58 So my question is how do we know 04:59 it was the same Peter who wrote 1 Peter? 05:01 Yeah. All right. 05:02 Well, there's several other problems 05:04 besides the question of the Greek. 05:06 There's little mention of the teachings of Jesus, 05:09 according to some people, in this book. 05:11 And a man who had traveled with Jesus so much, 05:14 wouldn't he have talked about Jesus' teachings a lot more? 05:18 Well, that's not discussed. 05:20 Also there's no indication that Peter was ever in Asia Minor. 05:25 We have the sense that this book is written from Rome. 05:27 The very last, the very end of chapter 5 05:30 mentions the church that's in Babylon in cipher IV for Rome. 05:36 So it seems like our author is writing 05:38 from the city of Rome to these people. 05:41 But there's no indication that Peter was ever in Asia Minor. 05:45 And then the problems that are raised in this book 05:49 seem to be unlike problems in other New Testament epistles 05:52 like we think of Paul's epistles 05:54 to Galatians and Corinthians and Romans. All right. 05:57 So there seems to be a number of problems 06:00 that we have to respond to, 06:01 to support Petrine authorship of this book that Peter wrote. 06:06 So how do we answer them? 06:09 Well, the first thing I talk to people 06:10 about on this is actually, 06:12 well, you know Peter was with Jesus for 3½ years. 06:16 Now I have a PhD and we say 06:17 that the PhD changes the way you think. 06:20 In fact, I tell the students 06:22 if we don't change the way you think 06:23 then we've failed, you know. 06:25 So when Peter was with Jesus, 06:28 that was like the greatest PhD you could have, 06:30 so his whole outlook on life was changed. 06:33 Secondly, he went through the day of Pentecost. 06:37 And we know that the gift of tongues, 06:38 the gift of languages was given to people. 06:40 Peter could well have received the gift 06:42 to speak Greek fluently from that time on. 06:46 This book is also written at the end of his life. 06:50 So he seems to be much more mature. 06:53 30 years ago when I started ministry, 06:56 my sermons weren't like they are today. Okay. 06:58 So we expect the same with Peter. 07:00 And we expect the better now. 07:01 Yeah, we expect the better now. Yeah. 07:03 And Peter's actually words in 1 Peter 07:06 have numerous linkages to his speeches in the book of Acts. 07:10 And they really are quite a few parallels 07:12 to the teachings of Jesus. 07:14 Just to suggest that this doesn't fit 07:16 with Peter being the author. 07:20 There's a certain bias that sometimes people have. 07:22 They don't want to say anything supernatural 07:24 that has happened in Peter's life. 07:26 But we can come--we can argue for Petrine authorship. 07:29 And we accept that Peter was 07:31 the author of both of these books. 07:32 Okay. So Peter is writing from Rome to a certain people. 07:36 Right. Where do these people live? 07:39 All right. Compare to his writing. 07:41 Right, we have a graphic that shows this, 07:43 of the Mediterranean world during the time of Peter 07:48 and maybe a little bit later. 07:50 But you see here on this picture, 07:52 all of the Mediterranean area and it's over 07:56 on the eastern side of the Mediterranean. 08:00 You'll see what is today-- today's Turkey, okay? 08:03 You can see if you can recognize Turkey there. 08:06 And you will notice on our graphic it says 08:08 Asia that was a province of the Roman Empire. 08:13 And then above it there's Bithynia and Pontus, 08:16 Cappadocia and Galatia. 08:18 So really it's a lot of central, what is today central Turkey. 08:24 It's the area that where these people lived. 08:26 Now this particular area had 08:29 about 8½ million population, all right? 08:33 There were about a million Jews living in this area. 08:37 But the number of Christians was quite low, 08:39 maybe 40 to 50 thousand. 08:41 Some people estimate up to 80,000 Christians. 08:44 That would be like 1 out of every 100 people 08:48 would be Christians. 08:49 And remember, most of this area is rural. 08:52 So you have small rural communities 08:55 where these people live. 08:56 And very few questions, all right. 08:59 And so they are a group that is surrounded mainly by pagans. 09:07 Not, you know, today in rural areas of our country-- 09:11 our country has a Christian background 09:13 and has all of it's time. 09:15 And so Christian principles and concepts 09:18 fill our whole thinking and pattern of way of life. 09:23 That's not the way it was in Peter's day. 09:26 There paganism and the polytheism 09:29 and beliefs in the pagan gods was what was 09:32 all about the concepts of their time. 09:35 Now the recipients of Peter's letter, 09:38 are they Jews or were they Gentiles? 09:42 Well, that's a wonderful question. 09:44 And it's a little hard to verify, you know. 09:48 You're kind of when you open this book, 09:52 you are hearing one half of a telephone conversation. 09:56 You're only hearing Peter's words. Right. 09:58 And so you don't hear these other people. 09:59 So from what Peter writes we can gather 10:02 certain kind of ideas about these people. 10:06 Peter uses the Old Testament a lot 10:09 and the ideas of the Old Testament a great deal. 10:13 He quotes from it. 10:14 He never says to them, 10:16 "oh, yes, and that's a book you haven't heard of before 10:18 or let me explain to you about Isaiah." 10:21 He never goes into an explanation of those. 10:23 He just assumes his reader understand all those things. 10:27 So they had to people who were well aware of the Old Testament. 10:31 Actually much more than a lot of people are today. 10:34 And so he uses the promises, the concepts, 10:38 the texts of the Old Testament. 10:40 That leads us to think that, 10:42 "wow, there must have been 10:44 at least some kind of Jewish linkage here, 10:49 some kind of pattern of Jews or people 10:52 who knew a lot about Jews 10:54 that were part of this congregation." 10:56 But it's in a Gentile area. 10:59 And so we think, 11:01 "well, maybe it's Jews and Gentiles together." 11:05 Now we have lots of the New Testament 11:07 where we have that kind of experience. 11:09 And typically we have problems where these people are, 11:13 you know, kind of there's a tension between them. 11:16 1 Peter, 2 Peter show none of that tension 11:20 between Jew and Gentile. 11:22 Now we said that the problems are different. 11:24 It doesn't seem to be quite the same problems set 11:28 that they were, you know, that they were dealing with. 11:31 And so is it Jew? Is it Gentile? 11:35 The answer is probably yes. 11:37 Okay, now you've got me interested 11:39 in the kinds of problems that they were facing. 11:41 Maybe you can help us on that. 11:43 What kind of problems were these people having at that time? 11:48 Well, you can imagine that if you're living in a-- 11:53 in an area where you have mostly, 11:57 most of the people around you are different than you. 12:01 I'll tell you a little story. 12:04 For 5 years I-- when I worked in Nebraska, 12:07 I lived in a very small town, about 2,500 people. 12:11 I think my family was the only Seventh-day Adventist family 12:13 in the whole town, okay? 12:16 Small communities have-- are close knit, you know. 12:20 They are very tight together. They're linked together. 12:23 And the problem is that people who come from the outside 12:28 are considered as outsiders and not accepted very well. 12:32 And, so that kind of an experience 12:36 I went through personally in that small town. 12:40 And I imagined that that's exactly 12:42 what the Christians were going through 12:44 because they were in these small communities 12:47 and people around them were quite different from them. 12:50 And so they didn't link into them too well at all. 12:54 So that kind of perspective gives you an idea of-- 12:58 some of it suggests some of the problems 13:01 that these people may have faced, 13:03 the kind of situation that they may have gone through. 13:06 So exactly what were those kinds of situations? 13:10 Well, first maybe we can describe 13:13 what these people were like. 13:15 And they were of, it seems, lower social status. 13:20 We get that picture from looking at the book 13:24 and how it describes the different participants 13:27 that are in the book. 13:28 Some of them were slaves. 13:31 Some of them were free people. 13:34 They were families that were broken, 13:37 sometimes one member a Christian, 13:39 the other member not. 13:41 We'll be looking at some of that as we go through the book. 13:43 Well, why don't we pause there? 13:45 We will continue talking of this description on the problems 13:48 that they were facing. 13:49 Friends, I invite you to continue joining us 13:51 in this very interesting and fascinating bible study 13:53 of the books of 1 and 2 Peter after this short break. |
Revised 2014-12-17