2 Peter

2 Peter used Jude

held by the majority of modern commentary, including Bauckham (1983); the case rests on the judgment that Jude's tighter and rougher text is more likely the original and that the removal of the 1 Enoch quotation is easier to explain than its addition

Jude used 2 Peter

held by an older tradition of commentary and some modern defenders; the case rests on the future tense of 2:1 against Jude's present tense, and on Jude 17 and 18, where Jude quotes what the apostles had told his readers beforehand in words close to 2 Peter 3:3

Both drew on a common body of teaching against these men

held by commentators who observe that a standard catalogue of Old Testament judgments circulated in Jewish teaching and that both writers may be using it independently

This reading accounts for the shared order without requiring either author to have had the other's letter open, and it is weakened by the number of exact verbal agreements.

The angels of Genesis 6, whose sin brought on the flood

held by this site's tradition, and the reading of the Second Temple Jewish literature the language comes from; it is held today by Michael Heiser and by the line of commentary that reads 2 Peter 2:4, Jude 6 and 1 Peter 3:19-20 as one connected witness, and it was the reading of Justin Martyr, Irenaeus, Athenagoras and Tertullian in the second and third centuries

The order of the chapter is the strongest support. Angels, then the flood, then Sodom, is the order of Genesis 6 to 19, and Jude sets the same angels beside Sodom's going after strange flesh. 1 Enoch 6 to 16 tells this story at length; it is a Jewish work of the third to second century BC, a labeled study resource here and never Scripture, and Jude quotes from it openly at verses 14 and 15.

The first fall of Satan and his angels, before the creation of man

held by Augustine and the long line of Western commentary after him, and many modern conservative commentators; on this reading 2:4 refers to a rebellion the Bible describes nowhere in narrative and the chapter's order is chronological only in a loose sense

The difficulty pressed against it is that Scripture never places that fall in a pit of darkness awaiting judgment, and that the New Testament elsewhere shows the devil and his angels at large.

The line of Seth intermarrying with the line of Cain, with 2:4 referring to some other angelic sin

held by Julius Africanus in the third century, then Augustine and Chrysostom, and the reading that became standard in the West from the fifth century onward

Its holders read Genesis 6 as a story about human intermarriage and holiness. The objection is that the phrase 'sons of God' names angelic beings everywhere else it appears in the Hebrew Bible, and that 2 Peter and Jude both place the angels' sin in this setting.

Real participation in the life of God, called deification or theosis

held by the Eastern Christian tradition, running from Irenaeus in the second century through Athanasius in the fourth, who wrote in On the Incarnation that the Son became man so that men might be brought into God, to Maximus the Confessor in the seventh; it is the standard teaching of the Orthodox churches and rests on this verse above all others

The tradition guards itself carefully. It teaches participation in God's energies and never in his essence, so the creature remains a creature. Named, dated and placed here so the reader knows what he is meeting.

Moral likeness to God and freedom from corruption, worked in the believer by the Spirit

held by the Reformers and most Protestant commentary since, resting on the second half of the verse and on the chain of qualities that follows it; Calvin took the phrase of the image of God restored in holiness

This reading keeps the verse tied to what 1:5-7 asks for and to the contrast in the letter with men who returned to the world's defilements (2:20).

Incorruptibility and immortality granted at the resurrection, anticipated now

held by commentators who read the escape from corruption as the promise of a body no longer subject to decay, tying 1:4 to the new heavens and new earth of 3:13

It concerns the prophet's origin: no prophecy arose out of the prophet's own untangling of things

held by the reading most commentary now takes, on the ground that verse 21 gives the reason for verse 20 and speaks entirely about how prophecy came, and that this is what the argument needs against men who called the message a fable (1:16)

It concerns the reader: prophecy is not to be interpreted by one man on his own authority

held by a long tradition of Christian reading, and the sense the phrase carried in the sixteenth-century debates over private judgment; it takes the noun in its ordinary later sense of explanation

Read this way the verse commends interpretation in the company of the church and against the isolated interpreter. Its holders point out that chapter 3 does exactly that, warning against the ignorant who wrest what Paul wrote (3:16).

Both, since a message that did not originate privately is not to be untied privately either

held by commentators who take the sentence as a single principle about the whole life of a prophetic text, from its giving to its reading

The men described were never regenerate, and the proverbs of 2:22 say so

held by the Reformed reading and most who hold to the perseverance of the saints; the dog and the sow both return to their own nature, and the letter says these men were teachers who had come near the message rather than men born of God

A real warning that a person who has known the way can turn back from it and be lost

held by the Wesleyan and Arminian tradition, which takes 2:20-21 at full weight and reads the warnings of this letter and of Hebrews as addressed to people who could heed them; much of this site's own heritage stands in that tradition

Its holders point out that the letter tells its own readers to 'give the more diligence to make your calling and election sure' (1:10) and warns them at 3:17 against falling from their own stedfastness, which is language addressed to believers.

A warning God genuinely uses to hold his own, so that the danger is real and the outcome is secured

held by commentators who take both halves seriously, reading the warning as one of the means by which those who are Christ's are kept, and resting the outcome on John 10:28-29 rather than on the warning passage itself

The original read shall be found, and the other readings are attempts to repair a difficult sentence

held by most modern textual scholarship, following Sinaiticus and Vaticanus on the principle that the harder reading is more likely to be original, since a scribe would sooner replace a puzzling word than create one

The original read shall be burned up, which the ASV and the King James tradition carry

held by the Byzantine textual tradition and the versions that rest on it; the reading fits the surrounding language of fire and dissolving at 3:7, 3:10 and 3:12, and its holders judge the fit to be evidence rather than a scribal smoothing

The end described is a purging that renews rather than annihilates

held by commentators who read the chapter with Romans 8 and Revelation 21 and take the fire as refining, noting that the flood of 3:6 destroyed a world order without destroying the planet, and that the same comparison is the writer's own