There exist a number of possibilities whereby Peter could have been the source of the epistles attributed to him without directly writing them. The "secretary" hypothesis is the most common of these, that Peter either dictated to a literate associate or perhaps even just summarized the gist of his thoughts while the secretary turned it into a proper Greek letter. In one version of this, Peter did learn spoken Greek, but dictated the letters to a secretary capable of writing Greek. This still assumes a truly impressive leap in education for Peter late in his life; the epistle 1 Peter is in fluent Greek and the author well acquainted with the Septuagint, the Greek translation of the Old Testament.
Another version that assumes less of Peter is that he dictated in Aramaic, while the secretary translated to Greek. An issue against this possibility is that the letters do not show signs of Aramaic speech patterns turned into Greek ones; if this occurred, then the secretary modified the message sufficiently well to turn the passage into Greek idiom and style rather than Aramaic idiom and style. Another raised possibility is that a Greek-writing associate of Peter was summarizing his general thoughts yet essentially writing the letter themselves. Finally, it is possible that the author was a disciple of Peter who wrote later in Peter's honor, especially if the date of composition is believed to be well after Peter's death (such as 2 Peter). The issue with the final two is that the letters directly identify themselves as being directly from Peter; if a coauthor was involved, the letters would be more properly identified as coming from the coauthor under Peter's guidance or inspiration. Additionally, for the final possibility of a disciple writing in Peter's honor, any proof that such an unknown author indeed knew Peter closely, rather than simply giving his own personal views to Peter, has long since vanished.[18]