This epistle presciently declares that it is written shortly before the apostle's death (1:14). This epistle contains eleven references to the Old Testament. It also contains at 3:15, 16 a remarkable reference to one of Paul's epistles, which some have identified as 1 Thessalonians 4:13-5:11.
The book also shares a number of shared passages with the Epistle of Jude, e.g. 1:5 with Jude 3; 1:12 with Jude 5; 3:2f with Jude 17f; 3:14 with Jude 24; and 3:18 with Jude 25. Scholars agree that it depends on the Epistle of Jude and should be dated later than that epistle, perhaps as late as AD 140.
This is the last of the books accepted into the canon of the New testament. Niether Irenaeus nor Polycarp of Smyrna supply quotations from this text, and it was only accepted unreservedly as canonical at the Council of Laodicea in AD 372 due to the influence of Athanasius of Alexandria, Jerome and Augustine.
Some have questioned whether Peter was the author, because of differences in the linguistic style from the First Epistle of Peter. The editors of Barclay's New Testament characterize the epistle's style as "florid, rhetorical and flamboyant." Some scholars explain this difference by explaining that Peter had assistance in writing his first epistle from Barnabas, and therefore the second epistle is actually Peter's own unaided writing.
Part of the case for a date no earlier that the second century AD is the internal evidence of 3:15, 16, where the writer assumes that the letters of Paul are well known to his readers. This implies that the letters of Paul had been collected and published and had become part of the literature of the church at the time 2 Peter was written. The critic who accepts Peter as the Simeon Peter assumes that Paul's letters to the various churches were collected and edited and published for all to read by the early 60s, when Peter died.