on how best to interpret these writings in our day and age, while paying close attention to the first century Greco-Roman context of their origin.
Jude
Authorship
Today there are essentially two primary positions on the question of Jude’s authorship: advocates for an early authorship usually arguing for Jude the brother of Jesus (“a servant of Jesus and the brother of James”),29 and in contrast, advocates for a pseudepigraphical authorship (later author writing in the name of Jude).30 The latter position rejects the authenticity of the letter’s own claim in Jude 1. These two positions are equally balanced and both have committed defenders within the guild. Arguments made by Bauckham over twenty years ago, remain at the heart of the defense for the authenticity position.31
For these defenders of authenticity, the process of elimination is used in order to arrive at one of at least eight people named Jude (Judah, Judas) in the NT as the author. The name Jude was fairly common given its origin with one of the patriarchs of Israel, “Judah,” and is one of the most common names in the NT, besides the reference to “Judas Iscariot.”32 The early church seemed to assume that the Jude in the epistle, who identifies himself as the brother of James, is one of the disciples (“Jude son of James” listed in Luke 6:15; John 14:22; Acts 1:13) or a brother of Jesus listed in the Gospels with other Jesus’ siblings (Matt 13:55; Mark 6:3). A third identification was with the apostle Thaddeus (Matt 10:3; Mark 3:18), while a fourth identified Jude with disciple Thomas (whose name means twin) who some of the Syrian church traditions identified as a “twin” of Jesus (Acts of Thomas 11; 31; 39; Book of Thomas 138. 4, 7, 19).
While there are others called Jude in the NT (Judah father of Simeon Luke 3:30; Judas the Galilean Acts 5:37; Judas of Damascus in Acts 9:11; Judas Barsabbas Acts 15:22–32) none of them is identified as having a brother called James. As for the disciple in Luke 6:15, he is called a “son of James” and not brother, making him and others mentioned above as unlikely candidates of identification with the letter’s author. The only person in the Gospels who has a sibling called James is Jude the brother of Jesus (Matt 13:55; Mark 6:3). The James mentioned here can also be identified with the one mentioned in Acts (12:17; 15:13) who is also called “the brother of the Lord” in Galatians (2:9-12). Mention by Paul (1 Cor 9:5) of “the Lord’s brothers” as traveling missionaries strengthens the idea that the Lord’s brothers (James and Jude) were well known in the early Church.33
Early acceptance of the letter by the Church was followed by challenges, primarily for its use of 1 Enoch and other biblical writings.34 The Western church accepted it early, but the Syrian church hesitated (e.g., exclusion in the fourth Syrian Peshitta manuscript together with 2 Peter, 2 and 3 John, and Revelation) for a while to include it in its canon. But it is probably Jude’s reference to the non-canonical writing of 1 Enoch in Jude 14–15, that made it suspect in the early period, rather than questions of the author’s authenticity.35 While accepting Jude as authentic, Origen (second century), Tertullian (second century), Jerome (fourth century), Dydimus of Alexandria (fourth century) all point out to the questioning raised about its use of 1 Enoch, but nevertheless defend this use even to the point of arguing for recognition of 1 Enoch as Scripture. Against this argument, Augustine (fourth century), while accepting Jude as authentic, argued against 1 Enoch’s acceptance as he recognized it to be pseudepigraphical.36
Arguments for pseudepigraphical authorship of Jude only gained prominence largely following the rise of the German biblical interpretation in the mid-nineteenth century, especially following the work of F. C. Baur and the Tübingen school who argued for a late date of the book’s authorship than had traditionally been assumed. The basis of this argument was primarily an assumption that the letter of Jude (and 2 Peter) evidenced “early Catholic” teachings that focused less on eschatological expectations and more on establishing long term Christian communities. While grouping writings together under a common theme, such as early Catholic, may be useful in highlighting similarities in such works, it unfortunately also has the tendency to obscure and eradicate the individual characteristics of each writing in the group. Combined with this was the perception that Jude’s opponents exemplified Gnostic tendencies in beliefs; available evidence, however, suggests that Gnosticism as a theological teaching did not exist until the second century CE.
Bauckham made it clear that the “early Catholic” classification was inconsistent with the letter’s internal evidence including a strong eschatological nature (14–15), his classification of the letter as what he calls “a Jewish midrash” (which reflects a Jewish Palestinian provenance for the letter), and the lack of a record of Church offices such as elders, deacons or bishops.37 These factors, among others, convinced Bauckham that the benefit of the doubt lies with those who maintain the authenticity of Jude while the burden of proof is with those who think otherwise. Davids concurs, and after a lengthy analysis of the evidence finds that “. . . none of the explanations why someone would use Jude as a pseudonym is convincing.”38 It therefore makes more sense to maintain the authenticity of the Jude in this regard.
Date
The same split that we see in the arguments about authorship happens with regard to the dating of the letter. Scholars who maintain the authenticity arguments date the letter fairly early, either as early as the 50s/60s 0r 80s CE, while those who think it is pseudepigraphical date it as late as the 90s CE. The guideline dates that serve as points of reference are the well established date of the destruction of the temple of Jerusalem by the Romans in 70 CE, and the traditional dating of the death of Jude’s brother James as 62 CE. And since we have no record of Jude’s death, these serve as the plausible references to the period within which the letter was constructed. Jude’s reference to himself as “the brother of James” (Jude 1) would assume he was still alive and influential in the early Christian community (even though the reference does not require that James be alive) and would make most sense if that is the authority with which he seeks to align himself in getting his letter accorded the respect he desires. If that is the case then, one would assume that the letter would have been written before 62 CE.
Relationship to 2 Peter also assists in trying to situate the letter, depending on when one dates 2 Peter. Since 2 Peter utilizes and replicates a substantial amount of the material in Jude, one must assume that there was enough time for the letter of Jude to circulate among the churches and be familiar to the author of 2 Peter but, at the same time, not be well known by his audience who presumably did not know about Jude. That would be the reason that the author of 2 Peter would have included such a fair amount of the letter of Jude in his own letter while also performing some significant editorial work on it.
Eschatology
The issue of eschatology is important in both letters, but more pronounced in 2 Peter where the scoffers questioned what they perceived to be a delayed return of Jesus (Parousia) in 2 Pet 3:8–10. Whether they had misunderstood the timeline as presented earlier by some Pauline letters or they had simply misunderstood the anticipation of the earlier apostles, these scoffers referred to this perceived delay to argue that the message they had received about the Gospel could not be sustained since none of the expected or predicted events had taken place. Second Peter then turned to Psalm 90 to unearth a philosophical response to this accusation: “To the Lord a day is like a thousand years and a thousand years, like a day.”
Opponents
