Craig S. Keener - 1 Peter: A Commentary

While I hope to make valuable contributions in this work, I recognize that this commentary is nowhere as comprehensive as my four-volume commentary on Acts. Although I seek to make fresh contributions from primary sources (despite some inevitable overlapping with what others have also found there), I engage much less secondary scholarship here than in my Acts volumes. This is not from lack of appreciation for Petrine scholarship, but for a personal, pragmatic reason. Usually it takes me about a year to catch up on the recent secondary literature on any book that I write a commentary on (often at forty hours a week), and the demands of schedule with other publications have precluded that full engagement in this case. Rather than cite only the older secondary literature that I had already assimilated in the past, I have chosen to engage the secondary literature in general only lightly. To confess this deficiency is not to diminish the importance of such engagement; it is to apologize in advance for this limitation, to refer the reader to other commentaries for such engagement, and to suggest that the contributions I hope to offer are in other areas.

First Peter might have been a much later project, if indeed I would have gotten to it in my lifetime, because I had other major projects scheduled ahead of it. But when Canon Jennifer Strawbridge graciously included me in Archbishop Justin Welbys invitation to scholars to work on 1 Peter, I decided to prepare by collecting my background material on 1 Peter. Thinking that I might never have the opportunity to publish it myself, I made the most important material available for the other members of the St. Augustine Seminar that gathered at Lambeth Palace on November 2325, 2018. Especially in small groups, membersa mix of both Anglican and non-Anglican scholars from around the worldengaged one another vigorously and charitably. (The small group to which my colleagues and I contributed addressed especially the fourth chapter of 1 Peter.) Archbishop Justin Welby and his wife, Caroline, were astonishingly gracious and available, and the worship in the chapel services, at the same time both liturgical and Spirit-filled, was renewing.

Likewise, more courteous a facilitator than Professor Strawbridge is difficult to imagine, as she both welcomed and shepherded the range of contributions toward productive and pastorally relevant studies. When Jim Kinney at Baker and I discussed potential projects, I observed that even the condensed version of my material on 1 Peter seemed sufficient and useful for a modest book. With Dr. Strawbridges blessing, then, I have proceeded with the present commentary. I do so, however, with the recognition that it is intended only to complement and supplement, rather than to supplant, other commentaries available. (Commentaries rarely supplant their predecessors anyway, or at least, not for very long.) I am grateful to my editors on this project at various levels: Jim Kinney for acquisitions; and Tim West and Robert Maccini on the details.