differences might be accounted for by saying that Peter was deliberately adopting a humbler tone than he had used in his first letter, perhaps in response to a criticism that he had been allowing his exalted position as chief of the apostles to go to his head. Modern scholarship has tended to reject the letter’s authenticity, though it still finds defenders and almost everyone would agree with Eusebius that 2 Peter is far removed from the spurious Petrine works that he names and rejects. A particular