Did Peter know Greek?

Forged…Boo

Bart Ehrman has really been helping the enemies of God. He has quite a corpus of material against Christian orthodoxy. Atheists and Muslims are more than eager to purchase his books and accept his conclusions; often uncritically. Sadly, there is nothing that we can do about this except to learn to respond to these criticisms.

Ehrman is intimidating but beatable. All that is needed is to think critically and look carefully at what he states. Being a liberal scholar, he likes to say that Peter never wrote the two epistles attributed to him in the New Testament. One of his main arguments is based on Peters lack of ability to read or write in Greek.

In 2011, Ehrman published Forged in which he claims that a large amount of New Testament writings are forged. The works of Peter are no exception to his list of supposed forgeries. He has a few arguments against the Petrine authorship of the two Epistles but the main argument seems to be that Peter could not read or write in Greek.

On page 73 and 74 of his book Forged, Ehrman tries to make the point that although Gentiles who would have spoken Greek lived in Galilee, they were concentrated in only a few areas and most Jews would not have come across them. He writes:

“…the Gentiles in Galilee were almost exclusively located in the two major cities, Sepphoris and Tiberias. All the rest of Galilee was predominantly Jewish. And since most of Galilee was rural, not urban, the vast majority of Jews had no encounters with Gentiles. Moreover, Greek was not widely, let alone normally, soken. The vast majority of Jews spoke Aramaic and had no facility in Greek.”

We need to remember that Jesus and his disciples moved around a lot to preach the Kingdom of God. They went from place to place and they operated quite a while in the Galilee. Did the Gentiles of the two cities mentioned by Ehrman come into contact with Jesus and the disciples? In John 6:23 we read:

“Other boats from Tiberias came near the place where they had eaten the bread after the Lord had given thanks.”

It doesn’t necessarily say that they were Gentiles but the fact is that Galilee was more mobile than Ehrman makes it out to be.

Later on, during Acts, the Church is centered in Jerusalem. Jerusalem would have had many foreign soldiers that would have spoken Greek. In fact, Peter dialogues with Cornelius in Chapter 10 of Acts. It mentions that he was Italian but this dialogue probably took place in Greek. This is because it is very improbable that Peter knew Latin and equally improbable that Cornelius would have spoken Aramaic. However, I will concede that at this time, Peter could probably not read or write in Greek.

On page 75, Ehrman tries to say that even the Bible testifies to the illiteracy of Peter. He writes:

“As it turns out, there is New Testament evidence about Peter’s education level. According to Acts 4:13, both Peter and his companion John, also a fisherman, were agrammatoi, a Greek word that literally means “unlettered,” that is, “illiterate.””

At first glance this seems intimidating. If Peter is unlettered, how can he write 1 and 2 Peter? Ehrman is trying to prove more than this verse suggests. All that this verse suggests is that Peter was illiterate in 30 AD. The epistles are said to be written in the 60’s which is thirty years later. Does being unlettered in 30 AD make someone lettered in 60 AD? Certainly not! Five years ago, I didn’t speak any Russian. Now I know enough to write letters and carry on a conversation. This is in less than five years, let alone thirty.

In the next paragraph, Ehrman goes on to say that there was no adult education classes in those days so he could not have learnt it as an adult. He then says that Peter would have had other concerns than learning Greek such as running the Church. That is true, but according to tradition, Peter was in Rome and probably for quite a while.

In First Clement 5 we read:

“There was Peter who by reason of unrighteous jealousy endured not one but many labors, and thus having borne his testimony went to his appointed place of glory.”

He then uses the example of Paul. This goes to show that Clement was giving examples that would have been familiar to the Roman Christians. It also talks about the “many labors” which means that he was probably in Rome for a large amount of time.

When St. Ignatius wrote to the Roman Church in 107 AD he said:

“I do not enjoin you, as Peter and Paul did. They were Apostles, I am a convict; they were free, but I am a slave to this very hour. Yet if I shall suffer, then am I a freed-man of Jesus Christ, and I shall rise free in Him. Now I am learning in my bonds to put away every desire.”

This implies that Peter taught the Church in Rome and probably for a long time because his name is mentioned with Paul who did teach for a long time. Other Church tradition attests to Peter’s long tenure in Rome but this should suffice for now to show that Peter spent a long time in Rome.

If Peter spent a long time in Rome, what does this prove? It proves that he would have had to learn Greek. Aramaic would have been pretty useless in Rome, even amongst the Jewish converts, let alone the Gentile converts. It’s easier to learn a new language when one is totally immersed in the culture. He also would have had Paul and other literary trained men to help him out. To run the Church, he would have had to have had a good command of the Greek language.

Ehrman then says on page 76 that Peter would have had to have a good command of the Greek Old Testament to write the two epistles. He writes:

“Moreover the letter presupposes the knowledge of the Greek Old Testament, so the person who composed the letter (whether orally or in writing) must have known the Scriptures in Greek.”

As I have shown above, there was a good chance that Peter learned Greek to run the Church of Rome. If that was the case, when learning, he would have gone to literature in Greek he was familiar with. Having grown up in the synagogues of Galilee, he would have been really familiar with the Bible in Aramaic. When learning Greek to run the Church in Rome, he would probably have looked at the Greek Bible before he looked at any other Greek literature.

There is no reason to think that Peter didn’t know Greek. It is possible and even probable that he did. Knowing this, Ehrmans prime objection to Petrine authorship is gone.