οὐκ ἐνδι€θηκον μὲν εἶναι παρειλήφαμεν. The authorship of the second Epistle of Peter has always been widely disputed. The external testimony for it is very weak, as no knowledge of it can be proved to have existed before the third century. Numerous explanations have been offered by apologists to account for this curious fact; but it still remains almost inexplicable, if the epistle be accepted as the work of the apostle. The first clear references to it are made by Firmilian, Bishop of Cæsarea in Cappadocia (third century), in his Epistle to Cyprian, §6 (Ep. 74, in the collection of Cyprian’s Epistles, Ante-Nicene Fathers, Am. ed., V. p. 391), and by Origen (quoted by Eusebius, VI. 25, below), who mentions the second Epistle as disputed. Clement of Alexandria, however, seems at least to have known and used it (according to Euseb. VI. 14). The epistle was not admitted into the Canon until the Council of Hippo, in 393, when all doubts and discussion ceased until the Reformation. It is at present disputed by all negative critics, and even by many otherwise conservative scholars. Those who defend its genuineness date it shortly before the death of Peter, while the majority of those who reject it throw it into the second century,—some as late as the time of Clement of Alexandria (e.g. Harnack, in his Lehre der Zwölf Apostel, p. 15 and 159, who assigns its composition to Egypt). Cf. Holtzmann, Einleitung, p. 495 sqq., and Weiss (who leaves its genuineness an open question), Einleitung, p. 436 sqq. For a defense of the genuineness, see especially Warfield, in the Southern Pres. Rev., 1883, p. 390 sqq., and Salmon’s Introduction to the N. T., p. 512 sqq.