---
title: 1 Peter 1:1
url: https://jw-apologetics.app/verses/1-peter-1-1/
markdown: https://jw-apologetics.app/verses/1-peter-1-1.md
type: verse
perspective: Protestant (historic Nicene) response to Jehovah's Witness teaching
reference: 1 Peter 1:1
testament: NT
section: Letters
index: https://jw-apologetics.app/llms.txt
---

# 1 Peter 1:1

## Text (Berean Standard Bible)

> Peter, an apostle of Jesus Christ,  To the elect who are exiles of the Dispersion throughout Pontus, Galatia, Cappadocia, Asia, and Bithynia, chosen

## JW Usage

The Watchtower treats 1 Peter 1:1 as ordinary epistolary framework — Peter writes to believers "scattered about" in five Roman provinces. What the verse is not pressed to do in Watchtower literature is anchor the readership of the letter when 1 Peter 2:9 ("you are a chosen race, a royal priesthood") is reached. The standard JW reading restricts 2:9's royal priesthood to the 144,000 anointed, which requires the letter's audience in 1:1 to be either restricted to that class or partitioned somewhere unmarked in the text.

## Protestant Usage

Start 1 Peter at 1:1, always. Peter names his audience: "the temporary residents scattered about in Pontus, Galatia, Cappadocia, Asia, and Bithynia." That is all the Christians in five Roman provinces — at minimum tens of thousands of people by AD 65. One chapter later Peter calls these same scattered believers "a chosen race, a royal priesthood, a holy nation" (2:9). Either all the Christians in five provinces were already part of the 144,000 (which would mean the 144,000 was nearly full by the time 1 Peter was written, decades before John wrote Revelation), or the royal-priesthood language applies to ordinary believers and the two-tier restriction is an addition to the text. Use 1:1 and 2:9 as a paired unit in the conversation — they are designed to be read together, and they expose the partitioning move the Watchtower has to make.

## Arguments Using This Verse

- [A Royal Priesthood — Every Believer is a Priest](https://jw-apologetics.app/arguments/universal-priesthood-1peter29.md) — 1 Peter 2:9 / Revelation 1:6 / 5:10 — The end of mediating classes [Authority]