472 Ora Delmer Foster, 



DEPENDENCE OF I PETER UPON THE PAULINE EPISTLES 



(A) 



Supporting Considerations 



Zahn maintains, with others, that the churches addressed in 



I Pt. 1 ; 1 were not in existence long enough before Paul penned his 

 letter to the Romans to permit of its dependence upon our Epistle. 

 " According to the testimony of his own letters and of Acts, Paul 

 was the missionary who, in the sense of Rom. 15; 20, I Cor. 3 ; 10, 



II Cor. 10 ; 15, laid the foundations of Christianity in all this region " 

 (Zahn Int. II, p. 135). " The supposition that Paul found in Eph- 

 esus or Iconium Christian Churches already organised or even indi- 

 vidual Christians, is contrary to the evidence of all existing sources 

 of information." (ibid.) " Regarding the founding of the churches 

 in Cappadocia, Pontus, and Bithynia, regions which Paul did not 

 visit personally, we have no information. But it is probable that 

 in these provinces . . . the gospel was preached somewhat later, but 

 practically under the same conditions" (ibid. p. 136). "Nor were 

 the provinces evangelized by persons from these districts, who heard 

 the preaching at Pentecost. It must be remembered that these hear- 

 ers were not pilgrims to the feast, who, after the feast, returned to 

 the lands of their birth, but Jews from abroad residing in Jeru- 

 salem " (ibid. p. 138). 



Jiilicher also contends that " Paul would not have begun his 

 missionary work in Galatia and Asia if flourishing Christian commu- 

 nities had already been founded there under the influence of Peter, 

 as we should be obliged to assume from I Pt. 1 ; 2 ff." (Int. p. 211). 

 The same author argues that : " (a) the independence asserted by 

 Paul in the Epistle to the Galatians becomes a grievous delusion, 

 since he would have owed not only the kernel of his Gospel but even 

 his epistolary style to Peter ; (b) he must, contrary to his principles, 

 have worked upon a field over which Peter had prior rights ; (c) the 

 history of the Apostolic times becomes an absolute riddle, for we 

 should find Peter, who had just been publicly rebuked by Paul at 

 Antioch (Gal. 2 ; 11 f.) for exercising a moral pressure towards 

 Judaism upon Gentile Christians, writing immediately afterwards 

 to Christian communities in a manner by which it might be supposed 

 that such a thing as a written norm for the social conduct of mankind 

 — the Law — did not exist : that he knew only of Christians, not of 

 Jewish or Gentile Christians ; and (d) we should be forced to admit 

 that Peter already possessed everything in Paul's teaching which 

 helped to form the common Christian consciousness." 



