The Text of 1 Peter in Polycarp and Irenaeus

Abstract The second-century Polycarp is recognized as a witness to the text of 1 Peter, but his witness is not found in the Editio Critica Maior (ECM). Another second-century witness to the text of 1 Peter is Irenaeus, but only the witness of its Latin translation (IrLat) was cited in the ECM, despite the existence of an independent Armenian translation. In this article, I survey and resynthesize the criteria for identifying patristic quotations of the New Testament, apply them to Polycarp’s Epistle to the Philippians and Irenaeus’s Adversus haereses, and propose several updates to the patristic citations in the ECM for 1 Peter. Among these, both Polycarp and Irenaeus attest to a form of the text of 1 Pet 1:8 that strikingly disagrees with the critical text of the ECM and warrants further consideration.