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Ausgabe: | November/2023 |
Spalte: | 1079–1080 |
Kategorie: | Neues Testament |
Autor/Hrsg.: | Müller, Christoph Gregor |
Titel/Untertitel: | Der Erste Petrusbrief. |
Verlag: | Göttingen: Vandenhoeck & Ruprecht 2022. 406 S. m. 1 farb. Abb. = Evangelisch-Katholischer Kommentar zum Neuen Testament (Koproduktion mit Patmos). Neue Folge, XXI. Geb. EUR 99,00. ISBN 9783525501894. |
Rezensent: | David G. Horrell |
It is now almost fifty years since John Elliott lamented the »benign neglect« that 1 Peter suffered, and nearly forty-five years since Norbert Brox’s commentary on 1 Peter for the EKKNT series was pub-lished (in 1979). In the intervening years many further commentaries have been published, along with monographs and articles. The letter no longer feels so neglected.
The wealth of contemporary scholarship is well represented in Christoph Müller’s new contribution to this esteemed commentary series: it begins with seventy-five pages of bibliography, covering scholarship in several languages, organised into various categories, and there are extensive footnotes referring to this lit-erature throughout the volume. (The categorisation may be help-ful when using the bibliography to search for relevant literature, but it sometimes makes life more difficult for the reader seeking to locate a reference from the footnotes.) There follows a (surpris-ingly) brief fifteen-page introduction (87–102) covering some of the standard introductory questions about the letter: authorship, date, place, addressees, structure, history of the text and its canon-ical status, and reception. Müller’s judgment, shared with much recent critical scholarship, is that the letter is highly likely to be pseudonymous (90), and probably written sometime during the time of Domitian (81–96 CE) – though here Müller also endorses Lutz Doering’s caution about specifying the date too precisely, allowing, it seems, for a possible range between around 80–120 CE (96; cf. 110–11, 114–15 with n. 75). He is non-committal on the letter’s likely place of origin, mentioning Rome and Asia Minor as possibilities, along with Syria, an option Müller sees as »increasingly« favoured in recent scholarship (96, 110; cf. 94 n. 65), though in my view this remains an unusual and minority position. He reports the conventional view that the addressees are likely to be mostly gentiles, a network of communities, distinct from diaspora Jew-ish communities (so Müller), in the regions to which the letter was sent (96–97). His analysis of the letter’s structure (with major sections of the letter-body in 1,13–2,10; 2,11–4.11; 4.12–5.11) follows a widely held perspective, though the alternatives proposed by William Dalton and Troy Martin (both of whom place a section break at 3,12) are not discussed. Indeed, the brevity of the introduction means that assessment of the range of scholarly views is somewhat limited, though the extensive footnotes point the reader to further resources.
For example, it is surprising, given its prominence in scholarship on 1 Peter, that questions about the nature of the readers’ suffering are not discussed: Is it (only) the experience of informal (verbal) hostility, or might it include legal trials, even the possibility of a death sentence, as in the trials that Pliny reports in the early sec-ond century (Epistles 10,96)? Müller’s view, insofar as this becomes evident in the commentary, seems to be that they are facing only informal verbal hostility (see 349–50 with n. 58 [discussing 4,16], 400 with n. 11, 402 n. 33); but when analysing the language of 3,15 the possibility of legal terminology (ἀπολογίαν παντὶ τῷ αἰτοῦντι ὑμᾶς λόγον) is hardly discussed (despite a long history of seeing precisely such nuances here, though see 301 n. 88 and the quotation from Martin Vahrenhorst on 302 n. 92).
The commentary itself provides for each section of text a concise bibliography, a translation of the text, an introductory analysis (with points of literary, textual, or grammatical significance), an exegesis (»Erklärung«, the most extensive and detailed of the sections), and finally a section on Wirkungsgeschichte (though these sections sometimes also include material on comparative material in the Jewish or Greco-Roman context; see, e.g., 213–17). A concluding »Rück- blick« offers a compact but rich and insightful summary of Müller’s interpretation of the letter (399–406). The exegesis generally offers a concise and informative explanation of the meaning of the text, with ample references to relevant scholarship for further detail. In common with other scholars, notably Reinhard Feldmeier, Müller sees the identification of the recipients as »Fremde« as a »Grundmotiv« of the letter (114), and, like Leonhard Goppelt, notes the significance of their existence as a »Minderheit«. The positive counterpart to this sense of alienation from the world is their calling by God (they are ἐκλεκτοί, 1,1), specifically a calling to share in the suf- fering and also the glory of Christ, as they follow in his steps (2,21). This »Partizipation an den Leiden Christi und seiner Herrlichkeit«, seen as »thematisiert« especially in 4,12–14, »kann für den 1Petr als Kernthema christlicher Identität verstanden werden« (403). While the commentary is, in keeping with its series, primarily historical and exegetical in focus, Müller occasionally gives brief hints as to the contemporary theological significance of such material (e. g., 122, 265, 279, 285, 399). And the sections on Wirkungsgeschichte often offer illuminating information on aspects of the letter’s reception and impact, from the early church to the present day.
Such is the mass of contemporary scholarship — evidenced in the extensive notes throughout this volume — that even a 400-page commentary does not have scope to discuss many of the textual, grammatical and exegetical issues that have long been debated in the history of the letter’s interpretation. Furthermore, the inclusion of a lot of quotations within Müller’s main text sometimes detracts, I find, from the systematic clarity of his own analysis. Among the grammatical or exegetical issues not discussed are: the awkward grammar of 1.2 (How does »obedience« [ὑπακοήν] link, if at all, with »sprinkling with the blood of Jesus Christ« [καὶ ῥαντισμὸν αἵματος Ἰησοῦ Χριστοῦ], and specifically with the final genitive phrase?); the possibility that τὰ εἰς Χριστὸν παθήματα in 1.11 refers to the »messianic sufferings« of God’s people (so Mark Dubis, though note the brief comment on 146 and n. 32); the structural relation of 2,4–5 to 2,6–10; the switch from aorist to present imperatives in 2,17 (the comment #1 in the analysis on 233 actually deals specifically with this verse, but this is not clear: »Der erste Imperativ« appears to refer here to v. 13, but makes sense only in relation to v. 17); the question of whether »the dead« in 4,6 heard the gospel when they were alive, and have since died, or whether they heard the gospel as (physically) dead people – though the quotation from Richard Bauckham near the end of the discussion of this verse somewhat confusingly introduces precisely this range of possibilities (329). These are just examples of places where someone familiar with the detail of scholarly discussion may find that some of the main options are not clearly set out or assessed. How much this matters depends, of course, on the purpose for which any reader uses this commentary. Those seeking a survey and critical evaluation of the main options in the history of scholarly interpretation of the letter may need to look elsewhere for more comprehensive coverage. Overall, though, this volume offers an informed and generally judicious exegesis of the letter, insights into its reception and legacy, and a valuable compilation of contemporary scholarship.