To Whom was First Peter written?

An interesting debate is appearing amongst bloggers about the original audience for whom the First Epistle of Peter was written.  Were they Jews or were they gentiles before coming part of the Church? The author of the epistle doesn’t address the identity of his audience directly, but rather leaves us with some way markers.

The problem for commentators is that Peter in writing his epistle expected his audience to know the Hebrew Scriptures.  Hence some say that the audience must be Jewish.  Not so say others, pointing to 1 Peter 1:18 and 1 Peter 2:10. Understandably, these verses are hard to contextualize if the audience came from a Jewish background.

But perhaps the problem and solution lies elsewhere.  Commentators today insist on seeing two distinct groups in the early church—converted Jews and converted pagans—who followed different sets of requirements.  The Jews would have had to maintain their commitment to the Torah, while gentiles only kept the seven Noachide commandments.  Thus the church had two standards of behavior required of its members. But what if there was only one standard for the early church and the followers of Jesus rather than the double standard that we have adopted today to justify Christianity’s own position—a position aided and abetted by Judaism to maintain a degree of separation between the two groups?

Consider that the early gentile followers of Jesus started as being God-fearers in the Synagogues.  As such, they already were exposed to the teachings of the scriptures, having heard them expounded to some degree in the Synagogue on a weekly basis.  As a God-fearer, did they eat bacon for breakfast before heading off to the Synagogue for Sabbath prayers?  The term God-fearers indicates a high level of commitment to the way of life set out by the God of Israel.  Such people wanted to follow that ideal.  Following Jesus of Nazareth was not contradictory to that goal just as it was not contradictory for a devout Jew of the same day.  It may have had political consequences within the Jewish community, but it was not contradictory behavior. Imagine other gentiles coming into this group as a result of the teaching of Peter or another apostle or evangelist. Already, gentile God-fearers were being law observant together with those who had been devout Jews.  It would be natural for new gentiles to follow the example of those who went before.  Like the God-fearers they would have immersed themselves in the study of the Scriptures. In writing to the church in Corinth, it is apparent that Paul had spent considerable time and effort in teaching the Scriptures to the new converts (1 Corinthians 10:1-11).

Consider then that Peter wrote his letter to a group of people, whose nationality remains unknown, but whose commitment to the God of Israel was central to their behavior.  They could have been Jew or gentile. Both groups would then have known the Scriptures and would have been motivated by them in terms of their behavior and standards.  Hence the problem of the audience identity as seen by commentators may be one of our own making, borne out of the insistence that there were different life styles for both Jew and gentile within the church.