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Why do scholars question whether St. Peter wrote the Second Letter of Peter?
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St. Peter the Apostle
St. Peter the Apostle, painting by Gerardus Laurentius Keultjes, 1816; in the Rijksmuseum, Amsterdam.
Although the author of the Second Letter of Peter explicitly identifies himself as Peter, scholars have questioned this attribution since as early as the 3rd century. These doubts regarding its authorship are based on numerous textual difficulties, which have been reinforced by subsequent modern scholarship.1