Well, not to stir the pot again or anything, but since all "our" Bibles say that Peter was the writer of both epistles under his name, for example, and that the epistle itself attests to being written by Peter (II Peter 1:1) and that some important doctrine is included in it such as the Day of the Lord (II Peter 3:11-18), the surety of prophecy of Scripture (II Pet. 1:12-21) and the warnings about false teachers and their destruction (II Pet. 2), then who are we (you) to cause doubt as to its truthful author? If others can cause us to question who wrote it and why there needed to be collusion to make it appear to be by the Apostle, then they can certainly cause confusion as to whether or not the words contained in that book or the others, for that matter, are indeed inspired and/or to be received as the commands from God.
Mark, you have in the past said you accepted the veracity of Scripture, so I wonder what the motive is when it is called into doubt with these kinds of questions concerning authorship? There are many worthy scholars who do NOT doubt that Peter indeed wrote both letters and there is ample proof that he most certainly did INCLUDING early church fathers who accepted them as well. Please then explain why there is a need to cause doubt in others about the truth of Scripture especially the reliability of the named authors.
But not as often as they think they do.For example, they often try to 'quantify' style, and then draw conclusions from that.
You both might have guess that I enjoy writing and enjoy trying to be funny. One of my current projects is this: A friend is going on a ten day vacation. I am preparing as many emails as I can which say pretty much the same thing, but in wildly different styles. I have two, one written as an Elmore Leonard gangster and one as something out of Oscar Wilde.
When I preached, my style was usually consistent. But sometimes I would go off in an completely new stylistic direction.
So who's to say that Peter or Paul didn't also sometimes go off in new directions?
Lewis gave a pretty good address on the problems of Biblical "criticism". I am preparing to move so a lot of my books are packed but if you REALLY want to know, I might be able to get the title.
But the attitude "Mark" and I have is (I think) pretty much, "Yeah, yeah. It could be the way you say. But here is the Bible the Church gave me."
So, that's not maybe quite as ful a submission as you'd like, but it's not like we're rejecting the whole thing as some of the scholars want us to do.
When I was newly ordained, some jackass archeologist condescendingly told me that the God of the OT was just a primitive sky-god.
I know what he means. There is a lot of evidence that a thunder storm over a volcano would have seemed like a theophany to our forebears.
But just because some archeological sociologist can "classify" the religion of the Jews simplyis not enough to show that that wasn't exactly how God, the REAL God, chose to get the attention of those Hebrews. And once he had their attention, he took them beyond the sky to something anyone, everyone, should worship.