The Gospels Corroborated In The Letters Of Peter

Skeptics sometimes tell us that Paul is the only New Testament author who claims to have seen Jesus after he rose from the dead. But the fourth gospel also claims to have been written by a resurrection witness. See here, for example. And a document doesn't have to claim to be written by a resurrection witness in the main body of its text in order to justify the conclusion that the author is giving us his eyewitness testimony about seeing the risen Christ and other matters pertaining to the resurrection. If the traditional authorship attribution of the gospel of Matthew is correct, for example, then that document provides us with the testimony of an eyewitness of the risen Christ. If the evidence suggests that a particular individual was identified as a document's author by means of an oral report, a document title, a tag attached to a document, writing on the front or side of a codex, or some other means, we don't dismiss that author identification just because it doesn't appear in the main body of the document's text. For more about the evidence that the gospel of Matthew was originally attributed to that apostle and did come from him, see here.

Skeptics also sometimes claim that there isn't much corroboration of the gospels elsewhere in the New Testament. Supposedly, a lack of reference to gospel material in the letters of the New Testament, for example, casts a lot of doubt on the historicity of the gospels.

What I want to focus on in this post is what information we can gather from the letters of Peter regarding the subjects discussed in the two paragraphs above. The Petrine letters tend to be neglected in discussions of these issues.

I think both letters were written by the apostle Peter. But skeptics often reject Petrine authorship of one or both of the letters, and both documents would still be significant as early Christian sources if Peter didn't write them, so I won't refer to the author as Peter in what follows.

Both letters identify their author as an apostle named Peter (1 Peter 1:1, 2 Peter 1:1), which agrees with the testimony of all four gospels that Jesus had a prominent disciple named Peter. Since an individual had to at least be a witness of the risen Christ to be an apostle (Acts 1:21-22, 1 Corinthians 9:1), the implication is that the author of the Petrine letters is claiming to be such a witness.

And there's a reference to being an eyewitness in the context of the Mount of Transfiguration (2 Peter 1:16-18).

Jesus' crucifixion is mentioned as well (1 Peter 2:24).

The resurrection is mentioned prominently in 1 Peter (1:3, 1:21, 3:21). The phrase "from the dead" is used as a qualifier in 1:3 and 1:21. That qualifier makes the most sense as a means of emphasizing that what's in view is a return to life of the body that died. The resurrection the author has in mind isn't something like a non-physical resurrection or a resurrection involving a second body that replaces the one that died.

Both letters emphasize a high, traditional view of Old Testament prophecy and Jesus' fulfillment of it (1 Peter 1:10-12, 2 Peter 1:19-21). 1 Peter 2:21-25 is focused on Isaiah's Suffering Servant prophecy. That passage in Isaiah refers to a lot of details that are reported about Jesus in the gospels. Isaiah 53:9, which is quoted in 1 Peter 2:22, refers to the Servant's tomb and his being associated with a rich man in his death, and verse 10 of Isaiah 53 implies a physical resurrection. Notice that 1 Peter 2:21 introduces the references to Isaiah 53 by saying that Jesus set an example for us to follow. The implication is that the references to Isaiah 53 that come after that are about historical events in Jesus' life.

But what if 1 Peter 2 is only citing portions of the Suffering Servant prophecy without intending to apply all of it to Jesus? Maybe the author of 1 Peter thought Jesus only fulfilled part of the passage and did so in a secondary, typological way.

A few points should be made. First, even if 1 Peter 2 is only appealing to portions of the Isaiah passage without thinking that all of it applies to Jesus, we'd still have partial corroboration of what the gospels say about how Jesus' life aligned with what's in Isaiah. Secondly, the most likely meaning of the Suffering Servant passage in its original context is that it's about a future messianic, eschatological individual. See my post here about the first three Servant Songs and the other posts linked within that one. It's unlikely that an early Christian source who held such a high, Messianic view of Jesus, such as the author of 1 Peter, would have thought that only part of the Suffering Servant passage is applicable to Jesus. Third, the number and diversity of references to Isaiah 53 in 1 Peter 2 make more sense if the author of 1 Peter thought the entire passage applies to Jesus. It's less likely that the author would see so much of the passage as applicable to Jesus, yet reject the applicability of the rest of it. Fourth, other early Christian sources, sometimes individually and especially collectively, apply an even larger percentage of the Isaiah passage to Jesus (e.g., Acts 8:30-35). So, the point I just made about 1 Peter is even more relevant to early Christianity in general. And since 1 Peter was written in that early Christian context, that early Christian view of the Suffering Servant passage makes it more likely that the author of 1 Peter saw the passage that way as well. It seems likely, then, that the author applied all of Isaiah's passage to Jesus. And that involves a large amount of agreement between 1 Peter and the gospels.

Similar observations can be made about other Old Testament prophecies. Given the high view of Jesus' fulfillment of prophecy in the Petrine letters and given the high view of his fulfillment of Isaiah 52-53 in particular, what are the implications for his fulfillment of other prophecies, like the ones in Isaiah that are connected to the Suffering Servant passage (e.g., in chapters 9, 11, 42, and 49-50)?

2 Peter 3:15-16 refers to Paul's letters as scripture. Let's think about the implications related to one of Paul's letters, 1 Corinthians, as an example. There's widespread agreement that 1 Corinthians was written relatively early, sometime in the 50s, and we have evidence that it was broadly circulated and often discussed early on (e.g., ancient letter writing conventions; references in the Pauline letters to how those letters should be circulated; references to 1 Corinthians in First Clement, Ignatius, and other early patristic sources). So, it seems likely that 1 Corinthians was one of the documents the author of 2 Peter had in mind when he referred to Paul's letters. If 2 Peter 3 implies that 1 Corinthians is scripture, then it follows that what Paul says in 1 Corinthians 15:5-7 about resurrection appearances to Peter is being affirmed by the author of 2 Peter. Similarly, there's an implication that 2 Peter 3 is affirming what Paul said about the physical nature of Jesus' resurrection, the empty tomb, the resurrection appearances to other witnesses, the crucifixion, Jewish involvement in Jesus' execution (1 Thessalonians 2:14-15), the Last Supper (1 Corinthians 11:23-25), that Jesus had brothers (1 Corinthians 9:5), his Davidic ancestry (Romans 1:3), etc.

Notice the implications of giving a late date to 2 Peter. The later the letter is dated, the harder it becomes to exempt one or more of the canonical letters attributed to Paul from the implications of 2 Peter 3 discussed above.