The difficulties which are connected with the authorship of this Epistle are greater than those connected with the authorship of any other book of the New Testament. A multitude of objections have been raised against its genuineness, and it has been pronounced spurious by a considerable number even of Christian writers. But while fully admitting that the problem is complicated, we can lawfully simplify it by at once dismissing some of the weaker objections. For instance, the statement that 2 Peter quotes from Josephus, the celebrated Jewish historian, who died c. A.D. 103, is utterly unproved. Again, the often-repeated statement that the doctrine of man being made a partaker of the divine nature (2 Pet. i. 4) is a doctrine which was not taught until after the apostolic age, is unwarrantable, unless we repudiate wholesale many books of the New Testament which we have every reason to regard as apostolic. For the indwelling of the Father in Christ and in the believer through Christ is implied by St. Paul, St. John, St. James, and St. Peter. The writer, in laying stress upon the importance of spiritual knowledge, is once more in agreement with St. Paul and St. John. He plainly does not mean mere intellectual _knowledge_, and the doctrine which he teaches is of a very simple kind. The slight reference made to the Redemption (ii. 1) and the silence manifested as to the Resurrection cannot be considered so crucial as some scholars believe them to be. Readers of the First Epistle could hardly fail to have these {247} facts printed in their very souls. They would not require to have them repeated in a second letter. The language of the Epistle, especially in the verses which do not depend upon Jude, shows several small coincidences with 1 Peter and with the speeches of St. Peter in Acts. We may compare the phrases in 2 Pet. ii. 15 with Acts i. 18, and 2 Pet. iii. 10 with Acts ii. 19, and Compare 2 Pet. i. 7 with 1 Pet. i. 22, iii. 8. " " i. 19, 20 " " i. 10-12. " " ii. 1 " " i. 18 " " iii. 6 " " iii. 20. " " iii. 14 " " i. 19. The writer abstains from copying the designation of the apostle contained in 1 Peter, and does not record the words spoken from heaven at the Transfiguration exactly as they are reported in the Gospels. In both these points a forger would very probably have acted otherwise.