1 Peter

I was not impressed with this commentary, although Perkins raises necessary questions about slavery, patriarchy, abuse, and the harmful use of 1 Peter. Her concern for marginalised readers is valuable, but her feminist and postcolonial framework too often controls the exegesis. She gives disputed reconstructions of a pseudonymous, culturally educated author and a largely low-status audience considerable weight, and allows the letter’s later use in support of slavery and male domination to shape her account of its original meaning. As a result, she underreads the agency of slaves and wives, the accountability of husbands and elders, the community’s mutual care, and the distinction between approving suffering and faithfully doing good within situations believers may have lacked the power to escape. The contrast with her more balanced 1995 commentary in the Interpretation series is striking: there she emphasised God’s mercy and protection, Christ’s resurrection and unique saving suffering, and explicitly said that modern Christians should not remain subservient to abusive employers or husbands or read the text as a call to passivity. Perkins does not adequately explain why the text/application distinction she maintained so clearly in that earlier volume now carries so much less weight. The ethical questions are worth hearing, but the resulting interpretation is more reductive than persuasive.