Highly qualified assistants are mentioned elsewhere in the New Testament. Thus 1 Peter 5:12: “I write these few words to you through Silvanus, who is a trustworthy brother, to encourage you and attest that this is the true grace of God. Stand firm in it!”
St Paul's Letter to the Romans 16:22 reads: “I, Tertius, who am writing this letter, greet you in the Lord' ('Ego Tertios ho grapsas ten epistolen'). On the strength of this declaration, the American New Testament scholar Gary Burge entitled a recent article on Tertius 'The Real Writer of Romans'.
-The Jesus Papyrus (1996)
If I'm not mistaken, Ehrman does not question that Paul was the author of the Epistle to the Romans. He does say 1 and 2 Peter are forgeries.
Here is part of his argument about 1 Peter:
"...The author ends his exhortation to be steadfast in the face of adversity by indicating that he has written this letter "through Silvanus, a faithful brother" (i.e., a true Christian) and by sending greetings from "she who is in Babylon, who is also chosen" (5:13). Scholars have long realized what this last bit means. Babylon was the city that was seen as the ultimate enemy of God among Jews, since it was Babylon that had defeated Judah and destroyed Jerusalem and its temple in the sixth century BCE. By the end of the first century, Christians and Jews had started using the word "Babylon" as a code word for the city of Rome, which also destroyed Jerusalem and its temple, in the year 70 (see e.g., Rev. 14:8; 17:5). The author, then, is claiming to be writing from the city of Rome. This makes sense, given the later traditions that associated Peter with the city of Rome, in fact as its first bishop - the first pope.
But tradition also indicates that Peter was martyred in Rome under Nero in 64 CE. Would it make sene that he would be calling Rome "Babylon" before the Romans had destroyed Jerusalem in the year 70? By the time that catastrophe hit, Peter was long dead. As it turns out, there are other, very good grounds for thinking that Peter did not actually write this book. It was written by someone claiming to be Peter. Before explaining some of thse grounds, we should first look at the second letter in the New Testament written in Peter's name".
Then there are many pages of text which I am afraid I won't copy here. I would need to re-copy many pages of a very new book. But the text continues later this way:
"And so, is it possible that Peter wrote 1 and 2 Peter? We have seen good reasons for believing he did not write 2 Peter, and some reason for thinking that he didn't write 1 Peter. But it is highly probable that in fact he could not write at all. I should point out that the book of 1 Peter is written in a highly literate, highly educated, Greek-speaking Christian who is intimately familiar with the Jewish Scriptures in their Greek translation, the Septuagint. This is not Peter.
It is theoretically possible, of course, that Peter decided to go to school after Jesus's resurrection. In this imaginative (not to say imaginary) scenario, he learned his alphabet, learned how to sound out syllables and then words, learned to read, and learned to write. Then he took Greek classes, mastered Greek as a foreign language, and started memorizing large chunks of the Septuagint, after which he took Greek composition classes and learned how to compose complicated and rethorically effective sentences; then, toward the end of his life, he worte 1 Peter.
Is this scenario plausible? Apart from the fact that we don't know of "adult education" classes in antiquity -there's no evidence they existed- I think most reasonable people woul conclude that Peter probably had other things on his mind and on his hands after he came to believe that Jesus was raised from the dead. He probably never thought for a single second about learning how to become a rhetorically skilled Greek author.
Some scholars have suggested that Peter did not directly write 1 Peter (as I've indicated, almost no one thinks he wrote 2 Peter), but that he indirectly wrote it, for example, by dictating the letter to a scribe. Some have noted that the letter is written "through Silvanus" (5:12) and thought that maybe Silvanus wrote down Peter's thoughts for him. I deal with this question of whether scribes or secretaries actually ever composed such letter-essays in Chapter 4. The answer is, "almost certainly not". But for now I can say at least a couple of words about the case of 1 Peter".
First off, scholars now widely recognize that when the author indicates that he wrote the book "through Silvanus", he is indicating not the name of his secretary, but the person who was carrying the letter to the recipients. Authors who used secretaries don't refer to them in this way.
But why not suppose that Peter used someone else, other than Silvanus, as a secretary? It would help to imagine who this theory is supposed to work exactly. Peter could not have dictated the letter in Greek to a secretary any more than he could have written it in Greek. That would have required him to be perfectly fluent in Greek, to have mastered rethorical techniques in Greek, and to have had an intimate familiarity with the Jewish Scriptures in Greek. None of that is plausible. Nor can one easily think that he dictated the letter in Aramaic and the secretary translated it into Greek. The letter does not read like a Greek translation of an Aramaic original, but as an original Greek composition with Greek rethorical flourishes. Moreover,t he letter presupposes the knowledge of the Greek Old Testament, so the person who composed the letter (whether orally or in writing) must have known the Scriptures in Greek.
Is it possible, then that the historical Peter directed someone to write a letter, basically told him what to say, and let him produce it? To that there are two responses. First, it would seem that if someone else actually composed the leter, it would be that person, not Peter, who was the author. But the other person is never named. Even in Paul's letters that are coauthored (almost all of them), he names the others, even though he probably wrote them himself. In this case, Peter would not have even written the thing. And it should be remembered that there are good grounds for thinking that the letter was written after Peter had died, since it alludes to Rome's destruction of Jerusalem in the year 70.
But even more compelling is this. Where in the ancient world do we have anything at all analogous to this hypothetical situation of someone writing a letter-essay for someone else and putting the other person's name on it - the name of the person who did not write it- rather than his own name? So far as I know, there is not a single instance of any such procedure attested from antiquity or any discussion, in any ancient source, of this being a legitimate practice. Or even an illegitimate one. Such a thing is never discussed.
There are plenty of instances of another phenomenon, however. This is the phenomenon of Christian authors writing pseudonymous works, flasely claiming to be a famous person. Ancient scholars would have called a book like that a "falsely inscribed" writing, a "lie", an "illegitimate" child. Modern people would simply call it a forgery."
