The second volume in Travis B. Williams' and David G. Horrell's magisterial ICC commentary on first Peter. Williams and Horrell bring together all the relevant aids to exegesis - linguistic, textual, archaeological, historical, literary, and theological - to help the reader understand the letter. This second covers the major part of the letter, providing commentary on 2.11 to the end of the letter. The exegesis provides for each passage sections on bibliography, text-criticism, literary introduction, detailed exegesis, and overall summary. The volume concludes with a comprehensive bibliography, which covers the whole epistle.

The nature and reliability of the ancient sources are among the most important issues in the scholarship on the Dead Sea Scrolls. It is noteworthy, therefore, that scholars have grown increasingly skeptical about the value of these materials for reconstructing the life of the Teacher of Righteousness. Travis B. Williams' study is designed to address this new perspective and its implications for historical inquiry. He offers an important corrective to popular conceptions of history and memory by introducing memory theory as a means of informing historical investigation. Charting a new methodological course in Dead Sea Scrolls research, Williams reveals that properly representing the past requires an explanation of how the mnemonic evidence found in the relevant sources could have developed from a historical progression that began with the Teacher. His book represents the first attempt in Dead Sea Scrolls scholarship to integrate history and memory in a comprehensive way.

In scholarship on 1 Peter, most interpreters understand the letter's call to "do good" as an admonition to behave in a manner which was consistent with popular standards of conduct. As such, many contend that the Petrine readers could expect their "good works" to be favorably acknowledged by Greco-Roman society. This fact is significant considering that good works are one of the primary paraenetic themes in the epistle, providing the readers with a strategic plan of response for the conflict in which they are engaged. For many years, this consensus reading of good works has shaped and directed investigations of the letter's social strategy. Travis B. Williams' goal is to challenge the modern consensus regarding the meaning and function of good works in 1 Peter in order to thereby provide a fresh reading of the letter's social strategy. Drawing on recent insights from postcolonial theory and social psychology the author demonstrates that the exhortation to "do good" envisages a pattern of conduct which stands opposed to popular values. The Petrine author appropriates terminology that was commonly associated with wealth and social privilege and reinscribes it with a new meaning in order to provide his marginalized readers with an alternative vision of reality, one in which the honor and approval so valued in society is finally available to them. The good works theme thus articulates a competing discourse which challenges dominant social structures and the hegemonic ideology which underlies them.