1 Peter 1:1

Peter We note that the new name which his Lord had given him has replaced, in his own mind as in that of others, that of Simon Bar-jona (Matthew 16:17), by which he had once been known. So, in like manner, Paul takes the name of Saul, in the letters of that Apostle. Like him also, he describes himself as the "Apostle," the envoy or representative, of Christ.

to the strangers scattered Literally, taking the words in their Greek order, to the elect sojourners of the dispersion. The last word occurs in the New Testament in John 7:35 and James 1:1, and in the Apocrypha in 2Ma 1:27. It was used as a collective term for the whole aggregate of Jews who, since the Assyrian and Babylonian captivities, had been scattered in Asia and elsewhere. It follows from this that the Apostle, true to his character, as sent to the circumcision (Galatians 2:7), addresses himself mainly, if not exclusively, to the Jewish Christians of the regions which he names, but the term would naturally include also the proselytes to Judaism, and so accounts for some of the phrases in the Epistle which seem to imply that some of its readers had had a Gentile origin. The term "sojourners" is translated "pilgrims" in chap. 1 Peter 2:11 and Hebrews 11:13. Its exact meaning is that of "dwellers in a strange land."

Pontus, Galatia, Cappadocia, Asia, and Bithynia The order of the names is, on the whole, that which would present itself to the mind of a man writing, as St Peter does, from the East (chap. 1 Peter 5:13). The existence of Christian communities in the five provinces witnesses to the extent of unrecorded mission-work in the Apostolic age. The foundation of the Churches in Galatia and Asia is, of course, traceable to St Paul (Acts 16:6; Acts 19:10); those in Pontus may possibly have been due to the labours of Aquila, who was a native of that region (Acts 18:2). Bithynia had once been contemplated by St Paul as a field for his labours (Acts 16:7), but we do not read of his actually working either there or in Cappadocia. See Introductionas to the history of the Churches thus named.