It was probably written in Rome, and some of the earliest references to it are by writers who lived in Rome. {252} Justin Martyr lived in Rome, and if the references in Justin Martyr and other writers before Hippolytus be considered doubtful, Hippolytus is a Roman witness of the first importance. The date is perhaps between A.D. 63 and 67. If it were later than 70, we might reasonably expect to find a reference to the destruction of Jerusalem after the allusion to God's retribution on the people of Sodom and other malefactors of old times. The errors which are denounced are akin to those which are denounced in 1 and 2 Timothy. The allusion to St. Paul's Epistles in iii. 16 suggests that some collection of these Epistles already existed, and that St. Paul was already dead. It has been urged against the genuineness of the Epistle that it includes the Pauline Epistles in _Scripture_ (iii. 16), and that this would have been impossible in the apostolic age. But the statement need not necessarily mean more than that the Epistles were on the margin of a Canon which was in process of formation. There is good reason for believing that the Pauline Epistles occupied this position at a time when men who had known some of the apostles were still living, and perhaps earlier. The manner in which St. Peter has made use of St. Paul's work in his First Epistle, makes it quite possible for us to think that he believed in the peculiar inspiration of his great comrade. And it is an interesting fact that the Syriac _Doctrine of Addai_ in speaking of the Epistles of St. Paul, adds, "which Simon Peter sent us from the city of Rome." [Sidenote: Character and Contents.] The key-word to the Epistle is not _hope_, as in 1 Peter, but _knowledge_ (i. 3, 8; ii. 20). We find, as in 1 Peter, a fondness or the word "glory." But in 1 Peter glory seems to be represented as given to Christ after His sufferings, and promised to Christians in the future after their sufferings (1 Pet. i. 11; iv. 13; v. 1). Here glory is rather spoken of as manifested in all the new dispensation, and especially at the Transfiguration (i. 3, 17). The apostle {253} appeals to the fact that he witnessed the Transfiguration as a guarantee of his prophecy of the second "coming" of Christ. He finds another warrant in the prophecies of the Old Testament, and asserts that prophecy is not a matter for a man's own private unaided interpretation, inasmuch as it was an utterance prompted by the Holy Spirit (i. 19-21).