First Epistle of Peter

The first Epistle of Peter was written to a group of people under persecution and contains this advice: "Rejoice, even if at this time you are undergoing persecution for your faith for its object is to test your faith."

Below her is a reference to chapter 2 of the first Epistle of Peter: Wherefore laying aside all malice, and all guile, and hypocrisies, and envies and all slander / As new born babes, desire the sincere milk of the word, that ye may grow thereby." Around her shoulders is a fragment of a line in Latin from the Hebrew Scriptures, psalm 36, line 9: "By Your light do we see." Together these Biblical references are a brilliant and poetic evocation of the acts of teaching and learning.

Irenaeus felt it important to affirm the harmony of Peter and Paul, and this concern might be apparent in the Pauline language deployed in the first Epistle of Peter. But while there is likely to have been a group of disciples (or school) of Paul and John, perhaps indeed of Matthew, one cannot discern a coherent Petrine school in the various early Petrine documents, even if 2 Peter used I Peter.