A Sub-Christian Epistle? Appreciating 2 Peter as an Anti-Sophistic Polemic

Abstract

Drawing from recent ancient historical, New Testament and Second-Sophistic scholarship, this article proposes that the enigmatic 2 Peter can be better understood with closer reference to anti-sophistic polemical writings. Increasing light has been shed on the sophists’ interest in wisdom, display and rhetoric in contexts such as Athens, Rome, Corinth and cities of Asia Minor in the first centuries CE. After introducing historical attempts to identify a worldview compatible with 2 Peter’s polemical response, this article (1) describes the nature of the Second Sophistic in the first century with reference to two contemporary anti-sophistic polemicists, Epictetus the Stoic and Philo the Jew, (2) highlights features of 2 Peter which resonate with contemporaneous anti-sophistic writings, beginning with 2 Pet. 1.16-21 and (3) observes the way in which the Ante-Nicene Fathers, when seeking to discredit later sophistic opposition, drew heavily from 2 Pet. 2–3. It may outrun the evidence to conclude that 2 Peter’s opponents were professional σοϕισταί‎ per se. It can be affirmed, however, that 2 Peter bears significant resemblance with first- and second-century anti-sophistic polemic and may be best understood with reference to it.

Impure Mouths and Defiled Hearts: The Development of Deceit Impurity in Second Temple Judaism

“…Dial. 7, 82;Wahlen 2004;Reed 2004), as well as the use of the traditional evil image of the sophist and the magician to talk about deceit (Burge 2021;Stratton 2007). 22 The intimate connection between demons, magic, and heresy was to have an impressive career, for example in the person of Simon Magus (Knust 2007).…”