- Chapters
- 5
- Verses
- 0
- Where it sits
- The Catholic Epistles
What it is
A circular letter to churches scattered across five Roman provinces of Asia Minor. The pressure they were under was social rather than legal — slander, exclusion, the cost of no longer joining in.
Peter’s answer is to tell them who they now are — a chosen race, a royal priesthood, a holy nation, a people for God’s own possession — and to set their suffering beside Christ’s, which is the pattern.
Known for
2:9. 2:21–25. 3:15, on always being ready to give a reason for the hope in you. 4:8.
A note for Orthodox readers
3:19–20, on Christ preaching to the spirits in prison, is a foundation of the Orthodox understanding of the descent into Hades — the thing the Paschal icon actually depicts.
Where it sits
The ancient Church never disputed it. Eusebius lists it among the acknowledged books without qualification. Modern scholars raise two questions from the text: the fluent literary Greek, and the fact that the letter says it was written by Silvanus, which leaves open how much of the composition was his.
---