"What Peter says about Paul tells us more about Peter than it does Paul."
Peter was a fisherman. An uneducated, 'unlettered' Galilean fisherman (Acts 4:13). In contrast, Paul was a Pharisee, the a son of a Pharisee with one of the highest education levels available. He was from the city Tarsus, one of the cultural and educational centers of the area. New Testament scholar John B. Polhill writes: "To his Tarsian heritage [Saul, later Paul] owed his fluency in the Greek language and probably much of his cultural orientation." (Polhill, John B., Paul & His Letters. Nashville: Broadman & Holman Publishers, 1999). Studying under the well-respected Rabbi Gamaliel (Acts 2:3), Saul mastered the Torah and the entire Jewish law. Roughly 1/3rd of the New Testament was written by Paul. He was multi-cultural and multi-lingual demonstrating is mastery of Greek, Hebrew and Aramaic in his many writings. Not including the book of Hebrews, although some believe Paul also wrote that epistle, he authored 13 of the 27 books of the New Testament, more than any other.
When Peter speaks of Paul (see above) he states that Paul writes about things that are difficult to understand. The Quote, "What Peter says about Paul tells us more about Peter than it does Paul," attempts to point out that Peter was revealing more about himself than his subject, Paul. Although this may be true in general what we see upon investigation is Peter spoke about salvation and the longsuffering of the Lord. His side comment, that many of the things Paul wrote are difficult to understand, may indeed point to the disparate levels of education shared between the two men, but Peter goes on to say that those who are "unlearned and unstable" twist Paul's meaning. Clearly, Peter was not including himself in that descriptive grouping.
~Sparrow