Hey, Jude

#66: “Hey, Jude” by Brendon Wahlberg
The letter of Jude is one of the four shortest documents in the New Testament. Tucked in next to the book of Revelation, it fills up only one page of the Bible. Yet this little letter contains some very big mysteries. Chief among them are such basic questions as who wrote it, and what enemies is it talking about? These questions perplex scholars to this day. Additionally, although it is very short, Jude is loaded with references to other writings. Some of these references are very obscure and surprising. So let us take these mysteries one at a time, and see if there are any answers.
“And don't you know that it's just you? Hey Jude, you'll do…” -The Beatles
Who is this Jude person anyway? The short answer is, no one is sure, and we probably cannot ever be sure. But there are a few candidates. The first thing to realize is that the name Jude is a translation of the Hebrew name “Ye’hudah”. This name is variously translated in English as Judah, Jude, and Judas. That’s right – the name Jude is the same as the name Judas. The letter of Jude could just as easily be called the letter of Judas. But then people would associate the letter writer with the Judas who betrayed Jesus. For this reason, in some Bible translations, other Judases besides the betrayer are called “Jude” instead.
So who are the candidates? Number one is Judas Iscariot. But of course it probably isn’t him, because he was long dead by the time the letter was written. That was easy, wasn’t it? So, who else is there?
Number two is the Disciple/Apostle Jude, one of the Twelve. When the Gospel of Luke lists the twelve disciples (6:14-16), one of them is named “Judas son of James”. He is carefully differentiated from “Judas Iscariot who became a traitor”. Likewise, the Gospel of John mentions “Judas (not Iscariot)” (14:22). Curiously, when Mark and Matthew list the twelve disciples, they omit Judas and replace him with Thaddaeus (or Lebbaeus). This has made some scholars conclude that Judas son of James and Thaddaeus are really the same person.
So, did one of the twelve apostles write the letter of Jude? Again, the answer is that it is unlikely. The author never claims to be one of the apostles. If he was one of them, he probably would have said so. The author of the letter introduces himself instead as “Jude, a servant [literally, “a slave”] of Jesus Christ and brother of James” (Jude 1). However, the apostle Judas was called the son of James in Luke’s gospel, not the brother of James. Also, later in the letter, the author says, “remember the predictions of the apostles of our Lord Jesus Christ, for they said to you…” (Jude 17-18). If the author was an apostle, why would he talk about the apostles as if he was not one of “them”?
Moving on. Who else is there? Number three is perhaps the most likely candidate. Mark 6:3 lists the male siblings in Jesus’ family. “Is this not the carpenter, the son of Mary and brother of James and Joses and Judas and Simon…” So, one of Jesus’ brothers was named Jude/Judas. Christian tradition holds that this Jude wrote the Letter of Jude. It is possible that this was the case. Jesus’ brothers, including Jude, became leaders in the early Jewish Christian church in Jerusalem. The most important of these sibling leaders was “James the Just”. He could have been the brother “James” mentioned in Jude 1. If the author was Jude, brother of Jesus, it would make sense that his letter would have been saved. But then, why didn’t the author call himself “brother of Jesus Christ” in the beginning of the letter? Wouldn’t that be at least as important to mention as “brother of James”? Or, was Jude a brother of Jesus who was too humble to mention it, calling himself a slave/servant instead?
Candidate number four is: anyone at all. Some letters were “pseudepigrapha”, meaning that they were written by anonymous authors who used the names of apostles to lend authority to their works. Jude might have been one of those. In the end, without more evidence, we can never know for sure.
“Hey Jude, don't make it bad, take a sad song and make it better…” -The Beatles
What bad situation is Jude writing about in his letter? Who are the good people he is writing to? Who are the bad people he is complaining about, and what have they been doing wrong? What can be done about it? The Letter of Jude is rather vague about all of this. In some of Paul’s letters, there are specific details regarding places, events, names, and conflicts between people. These details make it possible to identify dates and historical situations in Paul’s letters. Not so for Jude. Scholars cannot determine when or where Jude wrote. It is hard to decide who he was writing to or exactly who he was attacking.
So, what do we know? Jude seems to be a general letter, meant to be spread around to everyone, encouraging believers to defend their faith and fight against the influence of troublemakers among them. Jude condemns an unspecified group of bad people for their bad behavior. The following verses mention some of the things they were doing. These ungodly intruders have stolen in among the faithful, perverting the grace of God into licentiousness and denying Jesus (4). Jude mentions that they are sexually unnatural and immoral, indulging their lusts (7). Furthermore, these malcontents reject authority and complain all the time (8,16). In their ignorance, they speak slander against the angels (8,10). At the shared thanksgiving meals, the love feasts, these people eat greedily (12). They are insincere flatterers and scoffers (16,18). And they are causing divisions among the godly (19). Who were these people? Some scholars think they may have been Gnostics, that is, if the letter was written at a late date, say, in the early second century. If Jude was written in the mid-first century, then we just do not know.
What does Jude want the faithful to do? He hopes they will fight for the faith (3), pray in the Holy Spirit (20), look forward to eternal life (21), have mercy on those who are wavering (22), and save others from “the fire” (23). As I said, it is all pretty vague. Maybe Jude is describing the kind of behavior that could have arisen in a community which was expecting the end of the world. Some people may have decided that if the end was coming, they could join up with the Christians in order to save themselves, while also cutting loose and living it up with food and sex before Jesus returned.
“So let it out and let it in, hey Jude, begin - You're waiting for someone to perform with…” -The Beatles
What are all the references Jude makes to other books? Were you ever handed a small book containing a copy of only the New Testament? Those annoy me, because they are incomplete Bibles. I think that without the Old Testament, the New Testament is impossible to understand. The letter of Jude is a good example of why this is so. Despite its short length, Jude makes many references to Old Testament stories. Jude doesn’t explain the references. He assumes that the reader knows the Hebrew Bible and understands them. I counted at least eight interesting references in Jude. Each one is used to illustrate bad behavior and to show how the bad people are going to be punished. Let’s look at them one by one.
1) Jude 5 mentions “the Lord, who once for all saved a people out of the land of Egypt, afterward destroyed those who did not believe.” This is obviously a reference to Exodus 14, the story of the Israelites leaving Egypt.
2) Jude 6 mentions “angels who did not keep their own position, but left their proper dwelling, he has kept in eternal chains in deepest darkness for the judgment of the great Day.” This one is a reference to the story of the fallen angels, which is briefly mentioned in Genesis 6:1-4. It is also a reference to a book which did not make it into the Bible, named “1 Enoch”. We still have the Book of 1 Enoch today, and we know that it was once considered authoritative by many people. Compare Jude 6 (above) to the following: “And to Michael God said, ‘Make known to Semyaza [a fallen angel leader] and the others who are with him, who fornicated with the women […] bind them for seventy generations underneath the rocks of the ground until the day of their judgment…” (1 Enoch 10:11-12). Jude quotes Enoch again later in the letter, as we shall see.
3) Jude 7 mentions “Sodom and Gomorrah and the surrounding cities which […] indulged in sexual immorality and pursued unnatural lust…” This is a reference to Genesis 19, the story of Lot’s escape from the destruction of Sodom.
4) This next reference is a tricky one. Jude 9 is talking about how it is bad to slander others, and to illustrate this, Jude refers to an example of a time when the Archangel Michael refused to sin, avoiding slandering even…Satan himself! “But when the archangel Michael contended with the devil and disputed about the body of Moses, he did not dare bring a condemnation of slander against him, but said, ‘The Lord rebuke you!’” (Jude 9). The question is, what is this a reference to? The Bible has no story of Satan trying to claim Moses’ body while Michael confronts him. Fortunately, a third century Christian writer named Origen has the answer for us. Origen wrote: “…in the work entitled The Assumption of Moses, a little treatise, of which the Apostle Jude makes mention in his letter, the archangel Michael, when disputing with the devil regarding the body of Moses…” So, you see, Jude was referring to an apocryphal book which is now lost to us.
5,6,7) A single verse, Jude 11, has three references to the Old Testament in it. “Woe to them! For they go the way of Cain, and abandon themselves to Balaam’s error for the sake of gain, and perish in Korah’s rebellion.” This is a lot of references to pack into one sentence! But we can identify them easily enough. Cain is the brother of Abel who responded to God’s disapproval with anger, jealousy, and violence (Genesis 4). Balaam was hired to go and curse God’s people, until an angel stopped him (Numbers 22). Korah was a Levite who led a rebellion against the authority of Moses and Aaron because he wanted to be a Priest but was denied (Numbers 16). Korah was swallowed up by the earth when God judged him.
8) Jude 14-15 is a second reference to 1 Enoch. You can compare the following two passages for yourself:
“It was also about these that Enoch, in the seventh generation from Adam, prophesied, saying, ‘See, the Lord is coming with tens of thousands of his holy ones, to execute judgment on all, and to convict everyone of all the deeds of ungodliness that they have committed in such an ungodly way, and of all the harsh things that ungodly sinners have spoken against him.’” (Jude 14-15)
“Behold, he will arrive with ten thousand times a thousand of the holy ones in order to execute judgment upon all. He will destroy the wicked ones and rebuke all flesh on account of everything that they have done, that which the sinners and the wicked ones committed against him.” (1 Enoch 1:9)
The fact that Jude makes references to two non-canonical books, namely “1 Enoch” and “The Assumption of Moses”, has always been a problem for some readers and a source of controversy. It is assumed that any book that is in the Bible is inspired by God. It troubles people to think that an inspired letter can refers to apocryphal sources. What does it mean when Jude, an accepted book, quotes a rejected book? Does that confer any portion of authority or canonical status on the book which Jude is quoting? Probably not, but the very idea can be upsetting to some. In the fourth century, when the New Testament canon was being finalized, some people objected to including Jude, precisely because it made those references to things like Enoch.
So there you have it - Jude, a small book containing large mysteries. I am sorry there are few answers to give you. My own amateur scholar opinion is that Jude was a leader in a community that revered angels and complicated angel lore (like their names, types, and ranks). Jude’s letter has several direct and indirect references to angels, in verses 6, 7, 8, 9, 11, 13, and 14. That’s about 30% of the verses! Jude refers to books like Enoch, which tell detailed and elaborate stories about angels. Clearly, Jude was an angel fan. I think Jude’s enemies were fellow Christians who did NOT believe in all the angel lore, but instead scoffed at it, loudly enough to make others begin to doubt it too. Jude said that his enemies had slandered the angels, the glorious ones. Using poetic insults, Jude called his enemies “wandering stars for whom the deepest darkness has been reserved forever” (13). Wandering stars, known to us as planets, were once thought to be fallen angels. Jude meant that if you disrespect the angels, you deserve the same fate as the fallen angels.
(We’ll just have to finish by playing out the end of that old Beatles song, so that it will be stuck in your head as it is in mine. “Naa, Na Na, Na Na Na Naa, Na Na Na Naa , Hey Jude…”)