1 Peter was accepted as genuine and canonical earlier and more broadly than almost any other disputed New Testament book, cited approvingly by writers as early as the 2nd century, and its standing has never seriously wavered in any tradition. That early acceptance sits alongside a real puzzle that later scholarship has raised: the letter's Greek is notably more polished and its Old Testament citations more consistently drawn from the Greek Septuagint than would be expected from a Galilean fisherman whose native language was Aramaic.
The letter itself offers a possible answer, naming Silvanus in its closing verse as the one "through whom," a phrase ancient letters commonly used for a secretary given real compositional freedom, Peter has written; if taken at face value, this would explain the letter's literary quality without requiring that Peter himself supplied every word, a solution many scholars, though not all, find sufficient.
The letter's theology of suffering as participation in Christ rather than as meaningless hardship has made it a central pastoral text wherever Christian communities have faced persecution in later history, quoted extensively, for example, in the letters and sermons of Christians under state pressure in the 20th century.