prophecies of the false teachers with present-tense accounts of them conveys to 2 Peter’s readers the message: these apostolic prophecies are now being fulfilled. It also enables the writer to engage in apologetic argument with the false teachers (as in 3:5). But such deliberate breaches of the fiction of Petrine authorship are possible only if the fiction was a transparent one. For further consideration of the author’s purpose in writing in the form of a testament, see section on Authorship and