New Testament Commentaries: 1 Peter

"The significance of the First Letter of Peter for the formation of Christianity stands in sharp contrast to its brevity. John H. Elliott, a leading authority on this letter, brings its significance to life in this magnificent addition to the renowned Anchor Bible Commentaries. Elliott sets the letter into context, covering its literary, historical, theological, and linguistic elements. In detailed, accessible discussions, he draws on the latest research to illuminate the social and cultural influences on the Church in its initial years. Treating such important Petrine concerns as living honorably in a hostile society, finding meaning in suffering, and resisting social assimilation as the elect and holy family of God, the translation, notes, and commentary in this volume will help readers appreciate the powerful and enduring message of this fascinating letter." - Yale University Press

"In this new edition in the award-winning BECNT series, leading evangelical biblical scholar Karen Jobes offers a substantive commentary on 1 Peter. The first edition, widely regarded as one of the leading commentaries on 1 Peter, has sold over 22,000 copies. The second edition takes recent scholarship into account and has been updated and revised throughout. Jobes takes a historical-grammatical approach to exegeting 1 Peter and considers the possibility that the original readers of the letter were actual exiles who had known Peter in some other location, probably Rome. She analyzes each discourse unit of the Greek text with a view toward not only what the letter meant in its original setting but how it speaks to readers today." - Baker Academic

"Crisis in the church is not a new phenomenon. In fact, the church has always been - and probably always will be - involved in some kind of crisis. Even in the apostolic period, which is regarded by many as the church's golden age, there were serious crises coming both from the outside, as in 1 Peter, and from the inside, as in Jude and 2 Peter. The three short New Testament letters treated in 1 Peter, Jude and 2 Peter illustrate the problems early Christians faced, as well as the rhetorical techniques and theological concepts with which they combated those problems. In the first part of this volume, Donald Senior views 1 Peter as written from Rome in Peter's name to several churches in northern Asia Minor - present-day Turkey - in the latter part of the first century C.E. The new Christians addressed in 1 Peter found themselves aliens and exiles in the wider Greco-Roman society and suffered a kind of social ostracism. But they are given a marvelous theological Vision of who they have become through their baptism and pastoral encouragement to stand firm. They are shown how to take a missionary stance toward the outside world by giving the witness of a holy and blameless life to offset the slander and ignorance of the non-Christian majority and possibly even to lead them to glorify God on the day of judgment. In the second part of this volume, Daniel Harrington interprets Jude and 2 Peter as confronting crises in the late first century that were perpetrated by Christian teachers who are described polemically as intruders in Jude and as false teachers in 2 Peter. In confronting the crises within their churches, the authors appeal frequently to the Old Testament and to early summaries of Christian faith. While Jude uses other Jewish traditions, 2 Peter includes most of the text of Jude as well as many distinctively Greek terms and concepts. It is clear that for the authors, despite their different social settings, what was at stake was the struggle for the faith." - Liturgical Press

"Presenting some of the most unique problems in the New Testament, 1 Peter requires a vast knowledge of the classical world and the New Testament documents. J. Ramsey Michaels’ work on 1 Peter provides a tour through all of the relevant historical data, examining the circumstance which gave rise to Peter’s exhortations. He provides analysis of textual problems, and draws out the epistle’s implications of the epistle for contemporary life." - Logos