When and where the epistle was written cannot be definitely known. The place was Rome in all probability ; for Peter, after coming to Rome, did not, so far as we know, leave that city till his death. His death is usually placed in 64, but it may have been later, and this epistle was written just before it. Mayerhoff ascribes it to a Jewish Christian of Alexandria about the middle of the second century. Huther places it in the last quarter of the first century or the beginning of the second.
The persons for whom the epistle is intended are those who have obtained like precious faith with us and iii. r identifies them with those addressed in the first epistle. It is objected that this epistle asserts that Peter had taught them in person—such not being the case with those addressed in the first epistle. But the phrase adduced --17vcepica,tceP i. r6, made known unto you '—seems to refer not to oral discourse, but to various portions of the first epistle in which the coming and glory of Christ are dwelt on. The object of the epistle is to warn against ' false teachers,' bringing in damnable heresies," denying the Lord that bought them,' holding a peculiar demonology—covetous, sensual, and imperious apostates, the victims and propaga tors of antinomian delusion. Probably they taught some early form of Gnostic error, which, deny ing the Lord's humanity and atoning death, ridi culed his second advent in man's nature, set aside the authority of law, and by this effrontery justified itself in licentious impurity. The false teachers were like the false prophets,' perhaps claiming divine basis for their teachings, and therefore the more able to shake the faith of others, and seduce them into perilous apostasy. So that, in brief, as he himself describes it (iii. ID, his object is, first, warning, or to caution his readers against seduction ; beware lest ye also, being led away with the error of the wicked, fall from your own stedfastness'— rpo-yvyythaKovres—` as ye know those things before hand,' that is, from his descriptive accounts ; and secondly, counsel, or to urge on them, as the best of all antidotes to apostasy, to grow in grace and in the knowledge of our Lord and Saviour Jesus 'Christ.' For this xcipts and lev ijols would fortify
them and make them invincible against those as saults which so often succeeded with the unwary who fell in their heedlessness, the graceless who trusted in their own strength, and the ignorant or half-informed, so liable from their partial know ledge to be imposed upon by any system that dealt in novel speculations, professed to unfold mysteries, or give license and warrant for lawless practices. The supposition of Grotius, that it was written in the reign of Trajan against the Carpocra tians, and by Simeon, bishop of Jerusalem, is without any probability, as Bertholdt has more than suffi ciently shown. The arguments of Schwegler for its place as Rome, its date the end of the zd century, and its purpose as an effort to concili ate Petrine and Pauline theological differences, are answered conclusively by Huther. The con tents of the epistle have been generally referred to in the previous parts of the article. It may only now be noticed that the description of the origin and constitution of the globe in the third chapters is in harmony with the Mosaic cosmo gony, and that its destiny as there predicted is in keeping with many facts and disclosures in geology. In omnibus epistolic partibus,' says Calvin, spiritus Christi majestas se exserit.' Among commentaries may be mentioned Bede's Exposition, Works, vol. xii., ed. Giles, London 1844 ; Luther, Epistel Petri ausgelegt, Wittem berg 5524 ; Gerhard, Commentarius, 1641 ; Sem ler, Paraphrasis, 1784 ; Thomas Smith, Com mentarius, London 1690 ; Morus, Preselect., 1794 Pott, in the Editio .A79ppiana ; Ullmann, der Zweite B. Petri, etc., 1822 ; Dietlein, der Zweite Brief Petri ausgelegt, 1851 ; Huther, in continuation of Meyer, 1852 ; De Wette, ed. Bruckner, 1853 ; Wiesinger, in continuation of Olshausen, 1862. In English, Nisbet, Brief Exposition, 1658 ; Simson, Commentary, 1632; Thomas Adams, Commentary, 1633 ; Dr. John Brown's Parting Counsels, an ex position of the first chapter, Edinburgh 1856.—J. E.