Forgery and Counterforgery: The Use of Literary Deceit in Early Christian Polemics (82 page)

Such is the story of James, to whom is attributed the first of the “general” epistles. Admittedly its authenticity is doubted
since few early writers refer to it, any more than to Jude’s, which is also one of the seven called general
But the fact remains that these two, like the others, have been regularly used in very many churches. (
H.E
. 2.23.25)

Jerome voiced a more specific doubt about the book: since it quotes from 1 Enoch, it was regarded by many as non-Scriptural and rejected:

Jude the brother of James, left a short epistle which is reckoned among the seven catholic epistles, and because in it he quotes from the apocryphal book of Enoch it is rejected by many (a plerisque reicitur). Nevertheless by age and use it has gained authority and is reckoned among the Holy Scriptures. (
Vir. ill
. 4)

Modern times have seen a healthy split among scholars who see the book as authentically written by the brother of Jesus and of James, and those who consider it forged.
³²
Numerous factors give the palm to the latter group. For one thing, the book gives every indication of being produced relatively late in the first century, after the “age of the apostles.” The apostles themselves are referred to as living in the past, and as predicting the “last time” when the author is now living—differentiated from the time of the apostles themselves (vv. 17–18). The author speaks of “the faith” as the content of the body of knowledge that makes up the Christian religion, a usage found in the Pastorals but not in earlier Christian writings such as those of Paul, despite occasional scholarly claims to the contrary.
³³
That this “faith” was “delivered once and for all to the saints” assumes an event that transpired in the now distant past.

More important for our purpose here, there are highly convincing reasons for thinking that whoever wrote this letter, it was not Jude, the Aramaic-speaking peasant from Nazareth.
³⁴
Here again, as with the book of James, we need to deal with the problem of language. This author too is not just writing-literate; he
writes very good Greek, not the sort of skill one can acquire simply by spending time on the mission field without years of serious literary training.
³⁵
As R. Bauckham points out, the book employs “wide and effectively used vocabulary”; some of its terminology is “rather specialized”
other words are relatively rare
The author has “command of good Greek idiom,” his “sentence construction is handled with considerable rhetorical effect.” Bauckham goes on to speak of the author’s “almost poetic economy of words, scriptural allusions, catchword connections, and the use of climax.”
³⁶
In the fullest study of Jude’s style, J. Daryl Charles speaks of the author’s “elevated use … of rhetorical invention, composition, and style,” and mentions, in particular, his use of “parallelism, antithesis, figures of speech, repetition, ornamentation, vivid symbolism, word- and sound-play.”
³⁷

In addition, it should be pointed out that the author is not only flawlessly fluent in Greek composition, but he also knows the Hebrew Bible, evidently in Hebrew.
³⁸
Moreover, he knows the book of 1 Enoch, arguably in Aramaic.
³⁹
As a result, we have here an author who is not merely literate—able to read, apparently effortlessly—in three languages, but fully writing-literate in one of them (a second language for him, if he were a native of rural Palestine). How could this be true of Jesus’ brother, an Aramaic-speaking peasant from a small hamlet of Galilee, who no doubt like his father was a common laborer?
⁴⁰

As a side note, I might mention that we have some record about Jude’s family from later times, which gives us no indication that it came from the upper
classes that could afford the time and money for education. Hegesippus tells the story of Jude’s grandsons brought before the emperor Domitian, when he learned they were from the line of David and so, possibly, instigators of a kind of messianic uprising against the state. These men convinced Domitian that they were poor farmers who could barely eke out an existence working full-time on the land, showing him their calloused hands as proof. And so he set them free (Eusebius
H.E
. 3.19–20). There can be little doubt that the report is apocryphal. It defies belief that the Roman emperor himself would cross-examine Jewish peasants from Palestine, let alone that he would do so out of fear that their insurgency might cripple his empire. But the story does show how Jude’s family was remembered in the early church: not as aristocratic elites with wealth and leisure to receive the refined benefits of higher education. Just the contrary, they continued to be known as lower-class peasants who engaged in full-time manual labor simply to survive. Nothing suggests that their progenitor, Jude, was any different.

In short, the book of Jude appears to have been written relatively late in the first century, after the age of the apostles, by a highly educated Greek-speaking (and -writing) Christian who was able to negotiate the complexities of both the Hebrew Bible and surviving Aramaic literature. Whoever this elite, well-trained figure was, he was not the Aramaic-speaking peasant of Nazareth, the brother of Jesus and James.

The epistle of Jude presents an outpouring of invective against a group of persons who have allegedly infiltrated the Christian community, wreaking havoc in their wake. In the influential view of Frederik Wisse, the “heresy” promoted by these persons has no real content.
⁴¹
These persons are accused of being wildly licentious (v. 4) and of denying “our only Master and Lord Jesus Christ” (v. 4). This shows that the predictions of the apostles have come to pass, that the readers are indeed living “in the last time” (v. 17). Wisse appears to be absolutely right that the author of this short piece of polemic must grossly exaggerate the character of his opponents: “It is beyond belief that persons of this description could have been accepted and tolerated in a Christian congregation, much less have slipped in unnoticed.”
⁴²
But he probably goes too far in claiming that the author would have not written pseudonymously to an unspecified group of readers if he had wanted to address a specific problem. Pseudepigraphic polemics regularly attack specific problems and deal with concrete issues. Moreover, we can indeed say some things more concretely about the views of these enemies to the true “faith once delivered to the saints” (v. 3).

For one thing, the opponents are portrayed as having come from the outside and having infiltrated the community (v. 4). It is not at all clear that we should
accept their outsider status: this part of the polemic could easily have arisen from the concern not to concede that “the truth” was perverted from the inside. But that the opponents were
eventually
inside the community should at least be clear. Otherwise it is impossible to explain the author’s vexation.

Modern interpreters have taken the portrayal of the enemies as licentious reprobates to two equally unlikely extremes. Some, such as Gerhard Sellin, have discounted all of the language of moral iniquity and claimed that modern interpreters have read licentiousness into the book instead of out of it.
⁴³
Even though other parts of Sellin’s understanding of the book are attractive, it is difficult to concede to him this particular point. Whatever else the author wanted to say about his opponents, charges of antinomian behavior figure prominently (thus:
v. 4,
v. 7 [spoken about Sodom and Gomorrah, but the opponents behave “in a similar way”];
v. 8;
v. 12;
v. 13;
v. 16;
v. 18). The other extreme is represented by Bauckham, who claims that the author is concerned with antinomianism and nothing but antinomianism.
⁴⁴
This view overlooks other charges leveled against the opponents, or at least it has to force them into an uncomfortable antinomian mold, as they are said to “deny … Christ” (v. 4); to “revile glorious ones” (v. 8); to follow the error of Balaam and the rebellion of Korah (v. 11); and to be grumblers, boasters, and flatterers (v. 16)—none of which necessarily involves licentious lifestyles.