1 PETER 1 — A LIVING HOPE, TESTED FAITH, AND A HOLY PEOPLE

First Peter was written by the apostle Peter, who identifies himself in the opening line and later calls himself a fellow elder and a witness of Christ's sufferings (5:1). The letter was sent from "Babylon" (5:13), almost certainly a code name for Rome, with the help of Silvanus (5:12), who is likely the Silas of Acts and Paul's letters, and who may have shaped the polished Greek. It is addressed to believers in five regions of Asia Minor, in what is now northern and central Turkey. The date is probably AD 62–64, in the years before or at the beginning of Nero's persecution, when Christians were becoming objects of suspicion and hostility. The readers were mainly Gentile converts, as the references to their former ignorance and pagan conduct show (1:14, 18; 4:3), though Peter uses language of Israel for them, which shows that the church shares in the calling of God's people. The letter's theme is how to live as God's holy people in a hostile world. Peter combines doctrine and exhortation, grounding the call to endure in the work of Christ and in the hope of His return. Key images include exile, living stones, the royal priesthood, the suffering servant, and the shepherd. Peter had once denied Jesus under pressure, and the risen Lord restored him and told him to feed His sheep (John 21:15–19). The letter is the fruit of a man who learned about suffering, failure, and grace, and who now strengthens others.

The authorship of 1 Peter is well attested in the early church. It is cited or echoed by Polycarp in the early second century, mentioned by Papias, and quoted by Irenaeus and Tertullian as the work of Peter. Second Peter 3:1 refers to an earlier letter, and its association with Peter was unchallenged in antiquity. The polished Greek has led some to doubt that a Galilean fisherman could have written it, but Peter names Silvanus as the one who wrote or assisted, and Galileans were often bilingual in a region where Greek was widely spoken. The reference to "Babylon" as a name for Rome fits Jewish and Christian usage after the destruction of the temple, as in Revelation, and early tradition places Peter in Rome and ties his death there to the persecution under Nero. The historical setting is also supported by outside sources. Tacitus (Annals 15.44) records that Nero blamed Christians for the fire of Rome in AD 64 and punished them with great cruelty, and he says that Christianity had spread from Judea to Rome. Pliny the Younger, writing around AD 112 to the emperor Trajan from Bithynia, one of the provinces named in verse 1, describes how many Christians had been brought before him and how he executed those who refused to renounce Christ. This shows that the churches of that region faced exactly the sort of pressure Peter addresses. The language of living hope and the resurrection fits the earliest Christian preaching, in which the resurrection of Jesus was proclaimed publicly within weeks of His death and was the core of the message that changed Peter from a man who denied Jesus into a man who was willing to die for Him.