8. The readers addressed in the epistle are “the elect sojourners of the dispersion, of Pontus, Galatia, Cappadocia, Asia, and Bithynia,” all provinces of Asia Minor.  The words “sojourners”—­or “strangers” as rendered in our English version—­and “dispersion” are both the appropriate terms for the Jews living in dispersion.  That the apostle, in an introduction of this kind, should have used the word “sojourners” in a simply figurative sense, to describe Christians as “pilgrims and strangers on the earth,” is very improbable, especially in immediate connection with the word “dispersion,” which must be understood literally.  We must rather understand the apostle as recognizing in the Christian churches scattered throughout the world the true “Israel of God,” having for its framework the believing portion of the covenant people, into which the Gentile Christians had been introduced through faith, and thus made the children of Abraham.  Compare Rom. 4:12-17; Gal. 3:7-9; and especially Rom. 11:17-24.  Hence it comes to pass that while Peter addresses them as the ancient people of God, he yet includes Gentile Christians in his exhortations, as is manifest from various passages, especially from chap. 4:3.

9.  According to chap. 5:13 the place from which this epistle was written was Babylon.  No valid reason exists why we should not understand here the literal Babylon.  The old opinion that the apostle used the word enigmatically to signify Rome is nothing more than a conjecture in itself improbable.  It has been urged not without reason that Peter names the provinces of Asia Minor in the order which would be natural to one writing from Babylon; naming Pontus first, which lay nearest to Babylon, and Asia and Bithynia, which were the most remote, last.  The question of the date of this epistle is connected with that of its occasion.  This seems to have been a “fiery trial” of persecution that had already begun to come upon the Christians of the provinces named in the introductory address.  Chaps. 1:6, 7; 2:12, 19, 20; 3:14, 16, 17; 4:1, 12-19; 5:9, 10.  The exact date and character of this persecution cannot be determined.  The majority of commentators assign it to the latter years of Nero’s reign, which ended A.D. 68.  The second epistle of Peter was written not long before the apostle’s death, and after the epistles of Paul had become generally known in Asia Minor.  As we cannot reasonably separate the two epistles by a great space of time (see below, No. 11), we infer that the first was written after Paul’s first imprisonment in Rome, say somewhere between A.D. 63 and 67.