Over the early 2010s one Jörg Frey wrote a commentary upon 2 Peter (and Jude). In 2015ish Frey built upon the work of Tobais Nicklas and others especially Wolfgang Grünstäudl, arguing for the Ethiopic Apocalypse of Peter as a canonical Petrine work (in Greek) as of the early second-century AD, from which assumption 2 Peter used this apocalypse as its own "1 Peter". This flips Richard Bauchman's direction-of-dependence. (Also makes Joel Thomas, Eleutheria, and Liberty "University" all look silly.)
Nicklas's own oeuvre has mainly gone to bolstering Montague Rhodes James that the Akhmîm fragments represent the already-tattered Gospel of Peter, itself secondary to the Apocalypse.
Among the Frey arguments I caught, before Google Books refused my reading further, is that where 2 Peter refactors Jude, the Apocalypse shares no common text with Jude except inasmuch as both rely upon prior literature, such as the visions in Book of Watchers, 1 Enoch 1-36 in Ethiopic. Frey has floated other arguments in interviews.
Now a book exists reviewing that lecture; which itself has acquired some reviews. Bauchman himself dropped by that collection, eating a partial helping of crow such that the Apocalypse could not have used this Epistle. Instead Bauchman would plead that these works shared sources - like 1 Enoch 1-36, one imagines.
Most essays nitpick side-comments in Frey's essay, which at seventy-odd pages will be making a few of those. I've already picked the imprecision-in-language concerning Jude and the Apocalypse. Also Frey could have bolstered his argument by reminding the reader that 2 Peter did not enter the Peshitta until late; e.g. Isho'yahb III and John bar Penkaye do not quote it. We also have a Coptic "Epistle of Peter", which is just our 1 Peter, but not called "the first Epistle" as should be expected.
Where Frey downplays this letter's links with 1 Peter David Nienhuis argues for 2 Peter as 1 Peter's bridge to 1 John, even 1-3 John. Martin Ruf contrasts that 2 Peter is no bridge to source Jude, which rival 2 Peter aims to supplant.
I agree with Bauchman on a Problematic when two documents share common innovations. If 2 Peter borrowed from the Apocalypse, say about the coming Deluge Of Fire; then whence did the Apocalypse get the idea? I wonder if Bauchman could have added, as a shared source, the teaching of John the Baptiser, that where he baptises in water someone else will come to baptise in fire. This sort of talk should naturally give rise to sermons on the Flood to presage a prediction of a coming Fire. Everyone seems to agree that 2 Peter and the Apocalypse both knew Matthew's Gospel (and not John's, Nienhuis notwithstanding).
Overall it looks to me like Frey is winning this one. I don't know how Christian homilists can keep using 2 Peter without a massive asterisk. Were I Pope, I should strike it from the lectionaries. It would be only just, for a work as tried to do just that to Jude.
Perhaps-ironically Terrance Callan seems the most conservative of the responders. I recall the Campus Crusade arguing that 2 Peter had confronted the Gnostics. It seems modern scholarship does not argue this, and indeed Frey dismisses this. Callan would restore this, against Basilides in particular; and would restore that 2 Peter had Josephus as well. Nicklas also notes Basilides, claiming the Coptic Apocalypse of Peter as from his school - and as dependent upon 2 Peter. I suppose that's an avenue for future discussion between Nicklas and Callan. As a word-of-warning: Coptic literature tends to rework its themes and sources, especially once the Miaphysite debates got started.
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