How could an illiterate fisherman have written a book in florid, cultured Greek a century after his death?

Question

2nd Peter, if one needs further specification.

Dates for the "answerer" who believes in talking donkeys but not linguistic analysis.

Peter died between 64-67 AD, this is widely accepted.

To give a reasonable confidence interval, Peter II was written between 110 and 190, depending on a variety of factors; like the authorship of Jude and how fast the Pauline letters spread. I took the mean date for the purposes of my question.

Ab,
Peter I I agree could have been written by Peter himself; although he does reference the persecution of the Christians so this would have been very, very late in his life.

The are major textual differences between I & II, however, and parts of 2nd Peter were copied from Jude (or vice versa) -- if the former case is true the book could be as late as 250.

Also Ab, for 2nd Peter to have been written by Peter himself, the Pauline letters he refers to would have to have been collected and published and widely distributed before he wrote the Book.

Then again, I suppose if one can believe a lot of the Old Testament mythology they have no problem with this leap of faith...

Answer 1

The Bible was spread by "word-of-mouth" for 3,000 years before it ever had a written form. For this reason, there are quite a few questionable things.

Edit: Rallie have you ever played telephone? You know how misconstrued something can become with just a few friends. Now imagine that over 3,000 years. There's a reason there are over 5,000 different versions of the Bible. Unless savants transferred every piece to one another, it is impossible to have everything exact.

Edit II: Ctitek, that's what many say, but I still find that doubtful. People may have been eating without the preservatives and other garbage that they do today; however, there was still disease, famine, and such. Even if there were three people who lived for 1,000 years each, they still couldn't get it completely accurate for two reasons: 1) they had no way of writing it down so they'd have to remember it for quite a long period of time, and 2) they'd dispute their beliefs, and add their own to the mix. Therefore there really is no way of proving whether the original context of the Bible was mythology or not. Speaking of mythology, how can people disprove Greek and Roman mythology when there is no absolute way of knowing?

Answer 2

If you think of this as "mythology " that is too bad...

Some of the holy people are purported to have lived several centuries.

The human body can live much longer than a hundred years.

The problem is with disease and other things that happen to people.


If you believe in the holy spirit, then it is not much of a leap to believe that with the correct mindset and fasting, praying practices one can live a long time. Of course a holy person is by definition not performing sinful acts and thoughts.

So, this is very difficult to find in todays age.

We need more saints.



Suppose we live in a 11 dimensional universe (as some current cosmologists claim - with no proof by the way)

Then what about this:

What if God is in the 11th dimension?


It would be very easy to go in and out of time (the fourth dimension - according to Einstein) or see all of time in one look.


There are a lot of things that current scientists do not understand of this world --- if they are honest.


_How_ does gravity work?

Why is it that a refrigerator magnet is more powerful than the earths gravity, but then the moon moves water like it does (tides).

We are still barely understanding the universe.


Faith is something that everyone struggles with - and it is ok.

It is supposed to be a struggle - nothing really good comes easy.

Doxa si O Theos.

Answer 3

From the tone of Peter's letters, it appears that they were written prior to the outbreak of Nero’s persecution in 64 C.E. The fact that Mark was with Peter would seem to place the time of composition of the first letter between 62 and 64 C.E. (1Peter 5:13) Earlier, during the apostle Paul’s first imprisonment at Rome (c. 59-61 C.E.), Mark was there, and when Paul was imprisoned for a second time at Rome (c. 65 C.E.), he requested that Timothy and Mark join him. (Colossians 4:10; 2Ti 4:11) Likely Peter wrote his second letter not long after his first, or about 64 C.E.

Why do you think 2 Peter was written "a century after his death?"

Answer 4

In the early ages of men, very few in every nation or tribe knew how to write. However, most man at that time have great memories to tell stories of their lives. Arabs have that distinct qualities that when they reached the age of writings they were able to compile many exotic, epic and romantic stories.
It is not impossible for Peter to have told his story to friends and the story went from mouth to another mouth to tell until it reached an inquisitive Greek scholar who wanted to know what happened in the Jesus time and after that.
Even in todays age, many who write about a remote or interesting countries are either people from here in USA and the other advanced countries of Europe and Asia who are in to discovering the other parts of the world.
Most great histories of the past were not written on parchments but rather carved on stones and rocks if not from words of mouth handed down from generation to generation.

Answer 5

First: According to Calmet, his 2nd epistle was written one year before his martyrdom (A.D. 66,) and six years before the destruction of Jerusalem by Titus, A.D. 71.
Second: Who said that Simon Pete was illiterate? Even if that were true, you are ignoring the power of God to create.
God was using Simon Peter to write these things so Simon Peter did not NEED to be literate, only receptive.

Answer 6

How could a kiddie on the internet about 2000 years later have any idea how widespread a language was or how cultured the average fisherman was?

How could a Yahoo Question possibly answer this without 65 tons of evidence and who in the world can prove someone's date of death or the time that a 2000 year old document was written?

Answer 7

He could have dictated it to a scribe or some other literate person, as was common practice at the time. Just sayin'.

As for after death, that's a tough one.

Answer 8

How could a dog trolling for fundies can think such and post a question here?? Eh??

Answer 9

i don't think it is possible that he could have

but then again most bible books weren't written by the guys themselves

Answer 10

He couldn't..it is impossible.