Letter of Jude (Part Seven)

Part Seven of the New Testament Survey Series

Khen Lim



Image source: st-judes.lambeth.sch.uk

This may be a short letter but the interests we can draw from it would require more pages than this article can hope to deal with. In fact with no more than 25 verses, this is the briefest book in the whole Bible and not just the New Testament. 

Yet crammed in these few verses are references that find roots in the Old Testament as Jude draws from the Exodus, Satan’s rebellion, the story of Sodom and Gomorrah, Moses’ death the tales surrounding characters like Cain, Balaam, Korah, Enoch and Adam (vv.5-14). Like Peter, Jude’s use of the Old Testament references remind Jewish Christians of the need for truth, faith and obedience.

In canonising, the Early Church Fathers had determined that Jude was the author of this letter. Verse 1 lays a very clear and obvious claim, saying, “Jude, a servant of Jesus Christ and a brother of James” but then herein lies a potential opportunity for dispute. The phrase in that verse, “a brother of James” brings up vagaries, which modern biblical scholars have exploited and as a result, there are uncertainties as to the actual authorship.

According to these scholars, this phrase could suggest that James might not necessarily be the one apostle referred to in Lk 6:16. In Mt 13:55, Matthew lists Jesus’ brothers’ names as James and Judas. Judas is the Greek variation from which the English would shorten to Jude, possibly as a way of distancing it from any association with Judas. One can imagine a children named Judas and the eternal stigma attached to him for the rest of his life.

We should also not ignore how Jude referred to himself as “a servant of Jesus Christ.” While this points to Jude’s humility and reverence before Christ, it could also distract some from seeing the half-brother relationship between the two or that he was even one of the twelve apostles, as some modern scholars have suggested.

Others simply said that there are too many other characters of the same name not only around in the Gospels but even among Jesus’ own earthly relatives. All in all, modern scholarly claims merely reveal their confusion more so than any intelligent claims against the authority of the Early Church Fathers.

The point however is that like his elder brother James, Jude did not place his faith on Jesus until after His crucifixion and resurrection. 1 Cor 9:5 reveals how Jesus’ earthly brothers and their wives made missionary journeys thereafter, offering evidence of their latter-day coming to faith in Christ. Let us also not forget Jude’s sceptical past as well for here was one brother who draws parallel with Paul in being someone who ended up preaching to the very people he did not believe in.

Yet he became a disciple who travelled extensively, from one city to the next, spreading the Good News. In his missionary journeys, Jude would come to terms with the implications of his Greek name. In that sense he could either succumb to the stigma (of association with betrayer, Judas Iscariot) or rise to the opportunity of standing as a living example of true faithfulness to Christ.

Modern biblical scholarship however continues to press their claims because of the word ‘brother’ used in verse 1, going along with the Roman Catholic argument that the exegetical use of the word could mean a cousin or a half-sibling or just someone who shares similar biological parentage not necessarily amounting to a blood brother.¹

Jude’s writing style can be said to be edgy but bordering on brevity. He may prefer economy of words but he communicates with a sense of urgency as can be seen when he changes from his original idea of wanting to write about salvation (v.3) to a need to condemn faux teachings and have these heretical teachers removed from the church (vv.4-16).

His economical style may also tell us that Jude does not waste time waxing. His words are succinct and to the point. In vv.20-21, we see quite clearly how instead of waffling around, he went headlong against those who undermine church authority, those who indulge in hedonistic self-centredness and those who engage in spiritual warfare.

And in all of this, Jude capitalises on Old Testament imagery to drive home the importance of obedience, lessons of sinfulness and ultimately, the joy of God’s love (vv.20-21) using stories of Cain and Abel and also God’s devastating retort against Sodom and Gomorrah (vv.7,11).

Nothing would escape the attention of any biblical scholar in examining the Book of Jude when it comes to the glaring similarities between his and Peter’s writing of his second letter. As Eusebius describes in Church History (2 23), there appears to be inextricable links between the two as well as its use of the Apocryphal Books. These similarities have prompted some modern scholars to consider Jude’s letter to be pseudonymous written between 95AD and 125AD.

On the other hand, conservative scholars who lean more to the authenticity of the Early Church Fathers consider Jude’s letter to be written between 66AD and 90AD, using arguments drawn from references to the apostles, tradition and also Jude’s decidedly competent Greek style of writing. So let’s take a comparative look at Jude’s and Peter’s second letter:

Jude’s discussion concerning doctrinal and moral apostasy in verses 4-18 are similar to Peter’s in 2 Pet 2:1-3:4. This similarity can be used to set a fairly accurate date as to when Jude wrote his letter. However there is a unique but very subtle difference – Peter anticipates the coming of the faux teachers in 2 Pet 2:1-2, 3:3 but Jude focuses more on their actual arrival in verses 4, 11-12 and 17-18. And yet intriguingly in verses 17-18, Jude admits he quoted directly from Peter’s second letter in 2 Pet 3:3, which could explain the similar language used!

Jude also quotes directly from the Book of Enoch, which is interesting because it is only found in the Scripture of the Ethiopian and Eritrean churches while others do not subscribe to it. Here, he borrows Enoch’s prophetic description of the Lord coming amidst thousands of His saints to judge the world. He paraphrases an obscure incident (not found elsewhere in Scripture) in which Satan was arguing with Michael over the possession of Moses’ body (v.9). With this incident, Jude writes how God sent His archangel to claim the patriarch’s body after which He Himself buried (Dt 34:5-6).

Even as we find striking resemblances between Jude’s and Peter’s second letter, we can also make use of the information to make sense of their chronology within the New Testament. For that, we entertain just two possibilities:

• Jude wrote his letter earlier than Peter wrote his second

        If this is true, then it is likelier that Peter used Jude’s contents.

• Peter wrote his second letter earlier than Jude wrote his first

        If this is the case, then Jude is likelier to have relied on Peter’s letter.

• Jude and Peter wrote their letters at the same time

        This is technically possible but in reality, the scenario is not.

 According to the estimates we have in terms of dates of writing, the best information we have is that Jude wrote his letter either around 66-90AD or 95-125AD depending on whether you subscribe to the Early Church Fathers’ view or the standpoint of errant modern biblical scholarship respectively.

On the other hand, Peter’s second letter is said to be written around 65-67AD and could not be any later than that because he was martyred just before 68AD. So here is a rehash of the above but with timing details:

	Viewpoint 1	Viewpoint 2
From whose standpoint?	Early Church Fathers	Modern Biblical Scholars
Suggested date of writing (Jude)	66AD to 90AD	95AD to 125AD
Suggested date of writing (Peter)*	65AD to 67AD	65AD to 67AD
Probability that Jude copied Peter	Likelier than reverse	Very to extremely likely
Probability that Peter copied Jude	Possible but not likely	Extremely unlikely
Likely Early Church Father’s view	Hard to tell, indecisive	-
Likely modern scholar’s view	-	Jude copied from Peter

* With respect to his second letter

 As we can see from this simple deduction, dating Jude’s letter is the key problem in determining who lifted whose text. Part of this problem is because we know so little about Jude and we do not have anything historical to link him to other individuals or geographic locations or actual missionary journeys despite being aware that he would have done at least one with his family. However here’s what we do know:

• Being the younger brother to Jesus, Jude’s letter could not be dated later than 90AD. This is mere simple mathematics. 
• If you subscribe to the Early Church Father’s dating, then the dates of writing for Jude and Peter are well within a fairly tight time frame. And if this is the case, it is very difficult to resolve the question.
• On the other hand, if you prefer how the modern biblical scholars date Jude’s letter, then we can conclusively believe that Jude would have copied from Peter’s second letter.
• If Peter’s second letter was dated around 64AD to 65AD (based on some other scholars’ viewpoint), it is suggested that Jude would have written his around the middle-to-late 60ADs as well.
• Some scholars decided that because Jude failed to mention the destruction of Jerusalem in 70AD, that is an important enough clue that his letter would have been written before the fall of the Holy City.

If dating Jude’s letter is difficult, trying to determine where he wrote it from could well be just as challenging and again, the dearth of available clues make it another near-impossible exercise. We do know that most if not all of Jesus’ brothers did embark on missionary trips either of their own or together (1 Cor 9:5).

Jude in prison with other Christians (Image source: en.wikipedia org)

Admittedly tenuous, we might use this little piece of fact to maybe suggest that Jude might have written his letter from Jerusalem but once again, this is hardly definitive or authoritative.

Daniel B Wallace, professor of NT Studies at the Dallas Theological Seminary (DTS) provides a few other ways to consider the location source. Short of reading his article² in detail, a summary of his views is given here:

• Jerusalem and Rome are ruled out

Wallace says that Jude was aware of Peter’s execution in Rome but he did not know of John’s relocation from (presumably) Jerusalem to Ephesus, which was around 65AD. This implies that Jude couldn’t possibly be anywhere in Palestine including Jerusalem because if he were, he would’ve known of John’s tracks.

But again he also needn’t have to be in Rome to know of Peter’s demise. After all news of the death of someone of Peter’s stature would have been very quickly fanned out to all of Christendom. Even during such primitive times, such major news would have reached distant places reasonably quickly.

• Somewhere near to Rome is possible

According to Wallace, the limited means of communication during such primitive times would have prompted Jude to consider being near enough to Rome even if that doesn’t mean he had to be at its epicentre. The author suggests that the uncanny resemblance to Peter’s second letter – at least in the passages concerned – could tell us that this proximity issue might offer us useful clues.

• Somewhere near to Asia Minor is also possible

Seeing that faux teaching had become very endemic in the churches of Asia Minor, Wallace invites us to consider that Jude could well also be near to this region of the world.

• Maybe 1 Cor 9:5 offers us some clues

In his letter to the Corinthians, Paul tells us about Jude’s itinerant preaching, which then offers us evidence of his travels outside of Jerusalem.

Like his brother and many of the other apostles, Wallace said that Jude could have also ministered to the Jewish Christians but that does not tell us with any greater clarity if he did that in Palestine or that he was among the Diaspora Jewish Christians.

• We can dismiss the Syriac church

 Since the Syriac church did not recognise Jude’s letter for canonisation, Wallace’s point that Jude couldn’t have written his letter there is not difficult to understand.

That Jude could have had access to Paul’s other letters that were already in circulation by then, including the one to the Ephesians is a possibility and the universal nature of his writing could have contributed to his letter being encyclical, meaning that Jude had wanted it to be read by more than one church.

That and the strong evidence of Jewish overtones and frequent references to the Old Testament lead us to believe that his readers would have to be Jewish for his message to be understood. Jude’s focus on faux teaching is a clear indication of churches that were impacted by heretics and evidently, these were the churches that he could have visited.

Jude’s letter, though short, is important for different reasons. One of them is the way in which we view the End Times and what that means for the end of the Church Age that had just begun on the Day of Pentecost. When seen in that light, this letter is the only one seemingly dedicated to addressing the great apostasy. 

Jude’s writing style carries a sense of purpose in urging us to understand under no uncertain terms that behind every apostasy lies the work of evil and to that end, he used the letter as an opportunity to exhort us to deepen our faith when the situation reveals more tares than wheat.

Jude’s letter also teaches us that the church’s greatest and most dangerous enemy lurks from within. Instead of finding scapegoats on the outside, he reminds us that heretical teachers are evidently everywhere in the churches and therefore, unless we know how to best equip ourselves, we would end up imperilling ourselves. Jude’s words ring true even in today’s churches. In fact because we are under a more serious spiritual attack today than ever before, Jude’s words are worthy of close attention.

1. Rhys, Jocelyn. 2010 (reprinted). Shaken Creeds: The Virgin Birth Doctrine – A Study of Its Origins. Kessinger: Montana. Pages 3-53.
2. Wallace, Daniel B. June 28 2004. New Testament: Introductions and Outlines in 26. Jude: Introduction, Argument and Outline. Available in https://bible.org/seriespage/26-jude-introduction-argument-and-outline (accessed on Nov 20 2015).

Part Eight (Letter to the Romans) will be available on January 27 2016