1 Peter 1:1

Πέτρος. His old name Simon is only used in narrative passages before his call as an Apostle, but our Lord afterwards addressed him as Simon, Simon Bar Jona, or Simon son of John, and St James in his speech at the Apostolic Conference, Acts 15:14, speaks of him as Συμεών. In St John’s Gospel he is called Simon Peter 17 times and Peter 15 times, but in the other Gospels and in Acts Peter, the Greek form of the name given to him by our Lord, seems to have been his regular title. In 2 Pet. however the salutation is given in the name Συμεὼν Πέτρος. The Aramaic form Κηφᾶς, which occurs in 1 Cor. and Gal., may possibly be employed by St Paul because it was used by the Judaizing party against whom he was writing.

ἀπόστολος Ἰησοῦ Χριστοῦ occurs in seven of St Paul’s Epistles as an assertion of his authority in writing. So here St Peter states his authority for addressing churches with which he had little, if any, personal connexion.

The full name Jesus Christ is extremely rare in the Gospels and only occurs in the opening verses of Matt. and Mk, twice in John 1:17; John 17:3, and in the best text of Matthew 16:21, just after St Peter’s confession of Jesus as the Christ, when our Lord began a new stage in His teaching and as the Christ announced His Passion. In the Acts and Epistles Jesus Christ becomes a regular proper name, while Christ Jesus is a kind of confession of faith.

ἐκλεκτοῖς παρεπιδήμοις διασπορᾶς. The word διασπορά occurs first in the LXX. of Deuteronomy 28:25 describing the scattering of Israel if they are disobedient to God, and it is occasionally used in the later books of the O.T. In the N.T. it only occurs twice elsewhere, John 7:35, “Will he go unto the Dispersion among the Greeks?” James 1:1, “To the twelve tribes which are of the Dispersion.” In both these passages the word is generally supposed to refer to the Jewish Dispersion (but see Introduction, p. liii f.). So here some commentators would interpret the phrase literally and regard St Peter as addressing Jewish Christians only. But many passages in the Epistle (see Introduction) imply that the majority of the readers had been heathen, though in many towns it is morally certain that the nucleus of the Christian congregation would be derived from the Jewish congregation, as we find in St Paul’s missionary work. St Peter however does not merely mean scattered strangers, but uses the word διασπορά deliberately. Salmon suggests that it means “members of the Roman Church whom Nero’s persecution had dispersed to seek safety in the provinces.” Ramsay, who dates the Epistle as late as 80 A.D., finds a reference to the Fall of Jerusalem which left the Church a “dispersed” body with no recognized centre. More probably the word is used metaphorically, not merely in the sense that Christians are a scattered body of sojourners in the world, but one of the titles of the old Israel is transferred to the Church, the new Israel of God. Just as the Jewish Dispersion served to spread the knowledge of Jehovah more widely, so the Christian Church scattered far and wide is the new “Dispersion” and has a similar work to do for God in the heathen world around. So elsewhere in the Epistle St Peter constantly applies to the Christian Church titles which originally belonged to the Jewish nation.

ἐκλεκτοῖς. In the O.T. divine “Election” is spoken of (a) in the choice of Israel as a nation, (b) in the choice of individual Israelites to perform special functions for Israel, e.g. Abraham, Moses, Saul, David, Solomon, Zerubbabel, the tribe of Judah, or for priestly work, Aaron and the Levites. In each case the choosing by God was not a reward. It was not an act of favouritism on God’s part. Those chosen were selected not for their own sake or to the exclusion or “reprobation” of others, but to do some special work for God, and if they were untrue to their mission they would forfeit their position. Here St Peter probably means that the Church is the new Israel of God, “a chosen people.” As a corporate body the Church is chosen “to tell forth God’s excellencies” and to complete the work of Christ her Head, but every member of that body has his own work to do and was chosen by God for that work. To have been thus chosen by God is not a guarantee of final salvation unless those chosen are faithful to their position. But to be one of “the elect people of God” is a “state of salvation,” to which we are brought by God and not by chance, and we must pray for “grace to continue in the same unto our life’s end.”

παρεπιδήμοις, cf. 1 Peter 2:11. In one sense St Peter’s readers were sojourners because they lived among heathen. In another sense all Christians are in this world merely sojourners whose home is in heaven.

Pontus, etc. It is generally admitted that the names are used in their imperial sense as denoting Roman provinces and not in the popular or geographical sense. The order in which the various provinces are mentioned affords no clue to the place of writing. On the one hand Pontus is in the E. and therefore nearly the last in geographical order from Rome, but on the other hand it is in the N. and therefore not the first in geographical order from Babylon. Again, Pontus and Bithynia formed one Roman province, therefore there must be some reason for their being named separately first and last in the list. Probably the provinces are named in the order in which Silvanus was expected to visit them, landing perhaps at Sinope in Pontus and making a circuit round to the coast of the Euxine again somewhere in Bithynia.

The provinces named include all Asia Minor north of the Taurus Mountains, which were a natural frontier shutting off the provinces of the south coast.

Pontus. The old kingdom of Pontus was conquered by Rome in 65 B.C., when Pompey defeated Mithridates and the maritime district of the Euxine W. of the Halys was joined to the recently formed province of Bithynia, a further strip of coast to the E. being added about 100 years later. The rest of the districts remained independent for a time but were afterwards incorporated in the Roman province of Galatia, and early in the 2nd century were transferred to Cappadocia. The chief towns of Provincial Pontus along the coast from W. to E. were Heraclea, Amastris, Sinope and Amisos. All of these were thriving seaports with extensive commerce, the most important being Sinope, which was a Roman colony. In such centres of trade there were certain to be numerous Jewish settlers. In Acts 2:9 we read that Jews from Pontus were present in Jerusalem on the day of Pentecost, and it is conceivable that the first knowledge of Christianity may have been introduced into Pontus by them. Again Aquila, who had married a Roman wife, Prisca or Priscilla, is described in Acts 18:2 as “a Jew, a man of Pontus by race,” and it is possible that he may have helped to evangelize his native country during his visits to the East. In any case there was constant commercial intercourse between Pontus and other centres of early Christianity, and the Church may well have been established in Pontus about the middle of the first century (though Ramsay, Ch. in Rom. Emp. p. 225, regards 65 A.D. as the earliest probable date).

At any rate Pliny, the governor of Bithynia, writing apparently from Pontus to the Emperor Trajan about 112 A.D., speaks of many Christians of every age, every rank and of both sexes, not only in the towns but also in the villages and the country, through whom the temples had come to be well-nigh deserted and the sacred rites to be long suspended. This points to the fact that Christianity was of considerable standing in the district, and one suspected person who was examined declared that he had been a Christian but had abandoned the faith 25 years previously. Sinope was the birthplace of Marcion, a semi-Gnostic teacher, who came to Rome in 140. He had been a wealthy shipowner and his father is described as a bishop.

Galatia. The Roman province included all the central part of Asia Minor and extended from Pontus on the N. to the Taurus Mountains on the S. It embraced Paphlagonia, part of the old kingdom of Pontus, part of Phrygia including Antioch and Iconium, and part of Lycaonia including Lystra and Derbe, but it derived its name from the north central district, Galatia Proper, which had been occupied by Gaulish immigrants in the 3rd century B.C. They were conquered by the Romans under Manlius in 189 B.C. but retained semi-independence until 25 B.C., when Galatia Proper was made a Roman province. The chief towns in this district were Ancyra, Pessinus and Tavium. The southern part of the Roman province of Galatia was certainly evangelized by St Paul during his first missionary journey. Lightfoot and others hold that St Paul also visited Galatia Proper on his second and third journeys, and that the Epistle to the Galatians was addressed to that district, but Ramsay maintains that St Paul only wrote to the churches of the southern part of the Roman province of Galatia and never visited the northern district at all.

Cappadocia was the district east of Galatia and came into the possession of the Romans in 17 A.D., but it was treated as an unimportant frontier district, governed only by a procurator until 70 A.D. when it was considerably enlarged and made a regular province under a pro-praetor. From 76–106 it was under the same governor as Galatia, though otherwise the two provinces were distinct. The fact that it is here mentioned as if it was an important province has been urged as a slight argument in favour of dating the Epistle after 70 A.D., but if Silvanus was to visit this district it is difficult to see by what other name than Cappadocia it could be designated. Jews from Cappadocia were present on the day of Pentecost. Otherwise nothing is known of the introduction of Christianity there, but Caesareia, the chief town of Cappadocia, was on the great trade-routes from Syrian Antioch to the Black Sea and from Ephesus to the East.

Asia. The Roman province included all Asia Minor west of Galatia, the capital being Ephesus. St Paul had been forbidden by the Spirit to preach there on his second missionary journey (Acts 16:6), but stayed in Ephesus for three years during his third journey, “so that all they which dwelt in Asia heard the word of the Lord both Jews and Greeks” (Acts 19:10). Several of St Paul’s Epistles were addressed to this district, the Epistle to the Ephesians being almost certainly a circular letter to be passed on from Ephesus to the churches of the Lycus valley. The Epistles to the Colossians and to Philemon imply the existence of a considerable Christian body in Colossae, Laodicea and Hierapolis, though St Paul had apparently never visited those places in person (Colossians 2:1). The two Epistles to Timothy contain directions to him as head of the Church in Ephesus. Ephesus was also the home of St John in his later years; there his Gospel and Epistles were probably written and the letters to the Seven Churches in the Apocalypse are addressed to that district. In the beginning of the 2nd century the letters of Ignatius are addressed chiefly to churches of Asia and imply a developed organization with bishops, presbyters and deacons; while Polycarp, Bishop of Smyrna, who was martyred at the age of 86 in 155–156 A.D., is another link with the Apostolic age.

Bithynia had been bequeathed to the Romans by its last king, Nicomedes III, in 74 B.C., and was joined with Pontus and formed into a united province by Pompey in 65 B.C. St Paul attempted to enter Bithynia when precluded from preaching in Asia on his second missionary journey, but “the Spirit of Jesus suffered them not” (Acts 16:7). We have no evidence to shew how Christianity was introduced there, but there were two great roads connecting its chief towns Nicaea and Nicomedia with Antioch in Pisidia in the S. and Ancyra and Syria in the E.