rel="nofollow" href="#ulink_da44ac09-bfc3-51ba-ab58-1992cfb93e94">17 This parallel with association language however, does not preclude Jude’s and 2 Peter’s clear agenda of iterating their conviction about the centrality of the communities’ faith in God through Jesus. In fact, it is in this regard that we will be able to witness their rhetorical inventiveness.
Such rhetoric not only seeks to paint the perceived enemy in as much a negative light as possible, it does not necessarily claim to be historically accurate in its portrayal of the perceived enemy. If the situation is one where rival groups are competing to persuade the same population about who is right, then the more the rhetoric escalates, increasingly becoming less realistic, and more stereotypical, in how each group portrays the other. It is less likely then to find in such rhetoric accurate representation of the opponents’ views. Instead, one is likely to find language that is characteristic of stereotyping of the Other, by portraying them as less desirable, dependable, lovable, acceptable, and even, less than human. This is probably even more so if the competing groups share a lot in common, meaning they have to find whatever they think is distinct about themselves and contrast it, as starkly as possible, with the competing group.
Greco-Roman associations, which included officially recognized groups, guilds, and gatherings of people who shared common trades such as funeral support groups in Roman Empire, provide us with a glimpse of how conflict and competing identities frequently turned to stereotyping as means to fend off any competing claims to the group’s distinct identity, membership or boundary. As Harland explains,
Although rules may often be drawn up to deal with problems that were actually encountered, the regulations suggest that “good order”—as defined by such groups—remained a prevalent value in many banqueting settings. So we should not imagine that stories of wild transgression are descriptive of real activities in immigrant or cultural minority groups, or in other associations.18
And as C. McGarty, V. Y. Yzerbyt, R. Spears, elaborate, “These beliefs [stereotypes] represent a necessary precondition for collective action such as protest as well as for regulation and law enforcement. Their argument is that stereotypes form to enable action. They are political weapons that are used in the attempt to achieve and resist social change.”19 All these elements are present in the way, for example, 2 Peter portrays the false-teachers and Jude caricatures the infiltrators.
There is no doubt that in both Jude and 2 Peter we are dealing with the three issues that Harland points out concerning minority groups’ interactions—rivalry between author and infiltrators/“false-teachers,” identity construction (who is the true representation of the teachings of Jesus?), and group-boundaries (who rightfully belongs to the Jesus community?). These are the issues at the heart of the construction of the virtues in 2 Peter 1:5–7, and in the characterization of vices of the “false-teachers” and infiltrators in Jude. If the virtues represent the “good order,” for example, the list of vices in 2 Peter 2, represent the dangerous inversions of this order.20
When dealing with their opponents, both Jude and 2 Peter are therefore steeped in Greco-Roman rhetorical banter that regularly employed the use of stock stereotyping when verbally jousting with known opponents. Even the primary characterization of the opponents by 2 Peter as false-teachers (pseudodidaskaloi), for example, must be tempered by the realization that this is still part of the negative caricature of opponents that says little, if anything, about whether they are actual teachers, and what they actually teach, or even how they in fact behaved.21 It is largely an effort to discredit the opponents and not necessarily intended to be an accurate description of their teachings or behavior.22
Banqueting Protocols in Associations and in Jude and 2 Peter
A second concern in association life was the place of decorum without which the gathering would easily devolve into chaos, a not-so-unusual result for many associations. Therefore, regulations were frequently put in place to guide behavior in the gatherings and heavy penalties meted against any that would exhibit anti-decorum behavior, including excommunication from the group. As Harland explains:
Evidently, banqueting practices played an important role in discourses of identity, in which certain authors, representative in some ways of their cultural group, engaged in the process of defining his or her own group as civilized by alienating another as barbarous.23
At stake in Jude’s and 2 Peter’s accusations are also issues of decorum and order, rituals and banquets.24 The behavior displayed by the opponents in both letters flies in the face of the established social practices that govern all Greco-Roman banquets and social gatherings. Both epistles make reference to “love feasts” (2 Peter 2:13—syneuōzocheomai: Jude 12—agapais, syneuchomai) for the communities into which the false-teachers and infiltrators, respectively, had introduced their untoward and scandalous behaviors and teachings. Both authors find fault with their opponents, alleging that their out of control shenanigans represent that which is “anti-banquet” behavior which reflects the image, to any outsider, of deplorable and out-of-control gatherings that are not fit to be classified within the category of civil organizations.
Similar concerns are also highlighted in contemporary Jewish writings on gatherings, giving us a glimpse of how such concerns were addressed, providing a larger context for Jude and 2 Peter. Josephus Ant. 14:214–16 (c. 93 CE), for example, reports that Julius Caesar, in a letter to magistrates, allowed the Jews in Rome “to collect money for common meals (sundeipna) and sacred rites,” even though it does not mention the regularity of such gatherings. Detailed meal gatherings and their decorum are outlined in the Dead Sea Scrolls writings (1QS 6.2–13 and 1QSa 2.17–21), while Philo compares what he considers the superior and civil Jewish therapeutae gatherings with those of Greeks, Romans, and Egyptians, which he portrays as tending to be filled with out of control drinking, violence, and recklessness that leads to “frenzy and madness” (Vit. Cont. 40–41; Flacc. 4: 136–37). Tacitus, Hist. 5.5.2 (c. 115 CE), on the other hand, accuses the Jews of supposed lurid and unlawful sexual practices in their gatherings.25
Similarly, the authors of Jude and 2 Peter are determined to expose the barbaric image of the anti-banquet attributed to their opponents, and which they fear may expose the entire group to accusations of barbarism and ritual uncleanness that reflect lack of order and piety.26 In contrast, they strive to define their own communities in association terms that align them with the respectable and recognized Greco-Roman associations. This seems to be the role played by the list of virtues laid out in 2 Peter (1:5–7), and exhortations for proper conduct in Jude (3, 20–24) which provide the foundation for the social structure of their communities. Granted, however, that the communities of Jude and 2 Peter do remain distinct in some ways from their Greco-Roman counterparts, they still mirror them in their striving to fit neatly in the larger society’s expectations and concerns about religious group structures and behavioral patterns.27 By indicting the opponents as anti-banqueters and anti-moralists, Jude and 2 Peter seek to conversely portray their own communities as models of association life within the Roman Empire, even as they seek to distinguish them as structured around the Lordship of Jesus Christ and not Caesar.28
So, while locating Jude and 2 Peter in their first-century setting, I do also hope that in my analysis of these two small but important New Testament writings, my own readings tempered by my sensitivities to
