Tool Beta
The Ancient World Behind the Text
Pick a passage anywhere in the New Testament. See the customs and ideas a first reader knew without being told.
2 Peter 2:1-10, Angels in Tartarus, Noah, Sodom and Lot
As there were false prophets in Israel, so false teachers will come, greedy and denying the Master who bought them. God punished the angels who sinned, keeping them bound in darkness in Tartarus for judgment; he swept away the ancient world but kept Noah; he burned Sodom and Gomorrah but rescued righteous Lot. So the Lord knows how to rescue the godly and keep the unrighteous for judgment.
2 Peter 2:1-10, in every translation this tool compares.
Peter warns that false teachers will arise in the church as false prophets once did in Israel, greedy men who deny the Master who bought them and lead many astray. He offers three examples from the past: the angels who sinned and were imprisoned in Tartarus, the ancient world swept away by the flood while Noah was kept safe, and Sodom and Gomorrah burned while Lot was rescued. The lesson cuts both ways, since God can rescue the faithful and also hold the wicked for judgment.
- {"u":"https:\/\/jayms.com\/bible-study-tools-2\/ancient-world-ideas\/sages-and-philosophers\/","n":"Philosophers and their schools","s":"Stoics, Epicureans and other schools taught a whole way of life in lecture halls and marketplaces. A traveling teacher with a message about God would be heard, and judged, as one more philosopher.","r":""}
- {"u":"https:\/\/jayms.com\/bible-study-tools-2\/ancient-world-ideas\/the-abyss-and-bound-angels\/","n":"The Watchers, the flood and the bound angels","s":"Most Jews of the period read the sons of God of Genesis 6:1-4 as angels who took human wives before the flood. Their books, above all 1 Enoch, had the guilty angels bound under the earth in darkness until the judgment, and 1 Peter, 2 Peter and Jude speak of that prison.","r":""}
- {"u":"https:\/\/jayms.com\/bible-study-tools-2\/ancient-world-ideas\/sodom-and-gomorrah\/","n":"Sodom and Gomorrah","s":"The cities of the plain that God destroyed with fire in Lot's day. The prophets and later Jewish teachers made Sodom the byword for wickedness and sudden judgment, and its burned ruins by the Dead Sea were still pointed out in the first century.","r":""}
- {"u":"https:\/\/jayms.com\/bible-study-tools-2\/ancient-world-ideas\/gehenna\/","n":"Gehenna","s":"The valley of Hinnom outside Jerusalem, a place with a dark history, whose name had become the word for the fiery place of the wicked after death.","r":""}
The verb behind sent them to hell is formed from Tartarus, in Greek myth the prison of the Titans, which Jewish writers borrowed for the fallen angels (Keener; the CSB Study Bible; the Zondervan dictionary). Heiser writes that "Tartarus was part of the underworld (biblical Sheol)", and that the angels' punishment comes from 1 Enoch, where, Arnold notes, "the good angels, Raphael and Michael, have bound those angels" until the judgment. The Zondervan dictionary instead reads 2:4 as a fall of angels before Adam's. Jewish tradition made Noah a preacher of repentance (Keener; the cultural backgrounds notes). Who borrowed from whom between 2 Peter 2 and Jude is debated: Keener, the cultural backgrounds notes and Wright and Bird say 2 Peter used Jude; the CSB Study Bible prefers the reverse or a common source; Carson, Moo and Morris find "only 78 words are common to the two accounts" and say "we cannot say for certain which of the two borrowed from the other." The false teachers are read as Hellenized Diaspora Jews (Keener), unidentifiable and not Gnostics (the ESV Study Bible; Carson, Moo and Morris), or a range of currents (Wright and Bird).
- Craig S. Keener, The IVP Bible Background Commentary: New Testament, introduction to 2 Peter (Authorship and Date), and on 2 Peter 2:1, 2:2, 2:3, 2:4, 2:5, 2:6, 2:7-8 and 2:9
- NIV Cultural Backgrounds Study Bible, notes on 2 Peter 2:1, 2:2, 2:3, 2:4, 2:5, 2:6, 2:7-8 and 2:9
- ESV Study Bible, Introduction to 2 Peter (Author and Title), and study notes on 2 Peter 2:4-10a, 2:4, 2:5 and 2:6
- CSB Study Bible, Introduction to 2 Peter (Background), note on 2 Peter 2:4-10a, and word study box tartaroo
- N. T. Wright and Michael F. Bird, The New Testament in Its World, ch. 32, The Argument of 2 Peter, section 5, and Table 32.1
- Michael S. Heiser, The Unseen Realm, ch. 12, Divine Transgression, section Peter and Jude
- Clinton E. Arnold, Powers of Darkness, ch. 4, Judaism, section The Angelic Fall
- J. D. Douglas and Merrill C. Tenney, Zondervan Illustrated Bible Dictionary, entries Tartarus and angel
- D. A. Carson, Douglas J. Moo and Leon Morris, An Introduction to the New Testament, ch. 20, 2 Peter, Relation of 2 Peter to Jude, The False Teaching, and note 9
