[3] Among these critics must be numbered Lützelberger (1840), Keim (1867), Bousset (1899).
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CHAPTER XXIV
THE GENERAL EPISTLE OF JUDE
[Sidenote: The Author.]
"Judas, a servant of Jesus Christ, and brother of James." We can be sure that the James here mentioned is the James who acted as the first bishop of the Church at Jerusalem. The author's designation of himself would not be intelligible unless he meant that he was related to a very prominent man of that name. The writer cannot be the Apostle Jude. He does not claim to be an apostle, and he seems indirectly to repudiate the authority of an apostle by describing himself only in relation to his brother and by referring to "the apostles of our Lord Jesus Christ" in a manner which seems to distinguish them for himself. If the Apostle Jude was the son of James (as many scholars think), this Jude was clearly another man. If the Apostle was the brother of James (as the English Authorised Version holds), then his identification with this Jude is still doubtful.
Jude was a son of St. Joseph. At first he did not believe in our Lord (John vii. 5), but was convinced by the Resurrection (Acts i. 14). He was married (1 Cor. ix. 5). Hegesippus, a writer of the 2nd century, tells us that two of his grandsons were taken before the Emperor Domitian as being of the royal house of David, and therefore dangerous to the empire.[1] He found them to be poor rough-handed men, and dismissed them with good-humoured contempt when they described the kingdom of Christ as heavenly. Philip of Side, about 425, says {266} that Hegesippus gave the names of these two men as Zocer and James.
The Epistle was known to Clement of Alexandria and Tertullian, and is in the Muratorian Fragment.
The chief objections to the authenticity of this Epistle fall under three heads. It is said that (a) a late date is indicated by the allusion to the teaching of the apostles in ver. 17. But the allusion seems to correspond exactly with a late date in the apostolic age, for vers. 17 and 18 assume that the readers remember what the apostles had said. It is said that (b) the phrase in ver. 3, "the faith which was once for all delivered unto the saints," indicates that a definite body of doctrine was recognized by the Christians of the period, and that the Christians of the apostolic age did not use the word "faith" in this sense. But it is not difficult to suppose that the word would be soon extended from the act of believing to the facts believed. And in such early passages as Gal. i. 23 and Rom. x. 8 we find the word closely approximating to the latter sense. It is said that (c) the heresy which is described is a heresy of the 2nd century, and implies a definite Gnostic system. But the fact that the Epistle does not describe such a definite system is convincingly shown by the inability of certain critics to determine who the heretics are. The Balaamites of Asia Minor, the Carpocratians of Egypt, and some obscure sects of Syria, are all suggested. There is no evidence to show that the errors here described could not have grown up in apostolic times, and the Epistles of St. Paul contain several passages which point to similar perversions of Christianity. The word "sensual" in ver. 19 was an insulting term applied to ordinary Christians by the Gnostics of the 2nd century, but St. Jude's use of it betrays no consciousness of this later application.
The style of the letter makes it practically certain that it was written by some one who had been a Jew. The Greek is forcible. It shows a considerable knowledge of Greek words, {267} including various poetical and archaic expressions. But the manner is stiff, and the sentences are linked together with difficulty. Several phrases come from the Septuagint, some of them being taken from the Book of Wisdom. It is probable that the author was acquainted with the Hebrew Old Testament, as ver. 12 (from Ezek. xxxiv. 2) and ver. 22 f. (from Zech. iii. 2 f.) suggest this.