The particular background into which an NT letter was addressed can sometimes emerge into clearer focus from a study of the unusual details and so enable a sharper application of the text.
This is the case with the short epistle of Jude. Looking at this letter through modern eyes we are struck by a number of rare features. Perhaps the most obvious is the close similarity between Jude and 2 Peter. At first glance the parallel seems so close that we might wonder why Jude's letter was necessary at all. It seems almost to be a duplicate of a large section of Peter's material. Then there is Jude's near obsession with angels. Celestial spirits are of course, referred to elsewhere in the NT. But in this short letter of just 25 verses, there are at least four separate references to angelic beings, vv. 6,8,9,14. Why this preoccupation?.
A further peculiarity, which particularly jars in the minds of evangelical Christians, is the fact that twice Jude quotes from extra-Biblical books. In v9, he alludes to what scholars say is the lost ending to an inter-testamental book called The Assumption of Moses. Later in v14,15 he cites the beginning of a similar work, this time The Book of Enoch. These books were probably written some time during the second or first century before Christ. Though Jude quotes from them, the church has always excluded them from the canon of Scripture. The question arises, 'Why has Jude chosen to use these works ?'
Then there are some lesser oddities in the book which are worth registering. Jude uses the Greek word despotes to describe Christ, v4. Though this is used of God elsewhere, and though it is an entirely appropriate word for Christ, meaning Master or Sovereign, it is only used as a title for Jesus here and in the parallel passage in 2 Peter 2:1 in the New Testament. Further, here in Jude, (though not in 2 Peter), the Lord Jesus is spoken of as the only Sovereign. Do these facts give some clue as to the error which Jude is opposing?
The general background
Bearing these thoughts in mind we will first sketch out the plain thrust of Jude. It is a letter, like most N T letters, written to oppose certain false teachers, v4, 8, etc.. Jude feels he must urgently warn Christians. He sums up the heretics' error describing them as 'godless men, who change the grace of God into a licence for immorality and deny Jesus Christ our only Sovereign and Lord,' v4.
Where did the false teachers get their teaching ? Jude describes them as 'these dreamers,' v8. It would appear that they claimed to have received special authoritative revelation from God in dream-like experiences and visions. This claimed revelation was either to be added to the apostolic faith or even to supersede it. Jude's concern is that the churches should hold on to the fact that the true faith has been already 'once for all delivered to the saints,' and therefore the false teachers are to be rejected.
The ethical content of the false teaching was such as to legitimise immorality of the worst sort among Christians. This is implied by the kind of examples which Jude uses to warn the churches in v5-7. The doctrinal element associated with this immorality appears to impugn the uniqueness of Christ as our only Sovereign and Lord.
This then is the general situation which the letter addresses. But how do the peculiarities of the epistle which we noted earlier relate to all this ? Can we fit the details together ?
The delusion of elitism
From time to time in Christian history there have arisen those within the church who somehow feel they are a special group who are a cut above other believers. They see themselves as a super-spiritual elite chosen by God, to whom the guidelines of Scripture for Christian behaviour do not necessarily apply. Their claims are often backed up with prophetic utterances and claimed instances of the miraculous. They are in a class of their own and the normal guidelines do not apply to them.
For example, during the civil war years of 17th century England, a number of religious groups arose who threw aside Christian sexual norms. Christopher Hill, in his classic introduction to the religious turmoil of the period, The World Turned Upside Down, mentions a number of such sects.
Today there are those in some extreme charismatic circles who look for God to raise up a 'new breed' of Christian. This new breed, it is said, will be anointed and empowered by the Spirit in a remarkable way to be an invincible end-time army for the Lord. They will be on a different level from ordinary Christian people. It is just such groups, which see themselves as a spiritual elite, receiving new revelation from God over and above the Scriptures, who are vulnerable to the delusion that normal Christian morality no longer applies to them and their followers.
There are of course, others in the wider religious world to whom the same applies, not least the New Age movement, with its spirituality of self-fulfilment, which encourages its devotees to see themselves as 'gods'. With self as 'god' this movement is able to embrace promiscuous sex of various types as valid expressions of spirituality.
Certainly we are told that the false teachers opposed by Jude were boastful, v16 and saw themselves as above authority v8. And it seems that if they are located somewhere in this spiritually elitist category, then many questions raised by the peculiarities of the letter can be given reasonable answers.
A possible scenario
The following scenario makes a lot of sense.
Jude's false teachers saw themselves as having received special revelation from God v8, which was subsequent to and went beyond the apostolic faith v4. The dreams and visions they claimed to have had involved contact with angels and other celestial beings, and they were given understanding into supposed new truth concerning the spiritual realm. These false teachers probably saw themselves as having been raised by the grace of God to a higher spiritual status, and were on a par with angels or even above them. Since the apostle Paul speaks of Christians judging angels in the world to come, 1 Corinthians 6:3, their ideas can be thought of in terms of over-realised eschatology. They were able to move in a dimension as yet inaccessible to the ordinary believer.
This idea may seem fantastic to us, but in the widely circulated Book of Enoch from which Jude quotes, the patriarch Enoch is depicted as a godly man who has many visions of angels and is let into celestial secrets while journeying in the spiritual dimension.
Allying themselves with experiences similar to the adventures of Enoch, the false teachers may even have attached the term 'masters' (despotes) to themselves, v4, or even have seen themselves as in some sense 'gods'. With supposed power over angels, we can imagine many embroidered stories littering their racy sermons to gullible congregations in which they boasted of treating angels as servants, and casting out demonic spirits with abusive language v8. Such stories of dazzling spiritual prowess would have made heady illustrations of their doctrine and produced a huge impact on their listeners.
If this is somewhere near the true background into which Jude is writing, it would provide a straightforward reason as to why Jude would choose to quote from The Assumption of Moses and the Book of Enoch. If the false teachers were claiming revelation on a par with or superseding Scripture, then initially at least, Jude must find ways of arguing against them other than reference to Christ and his apostles. Thus Jude chooses to base much of his case on inter-testamental literature. The point would be, not that these documents were necessarily authoritative, but that they reject sin and command godliness. The line of Jude's argument would be simple. Here are documents which parallel the supposed experiences of the false teachers and which they may well have used to some extent to legitimise their claims, but these very same documents contradict their lax morality. Jude would be answering the claims of the false teachers from their own preferred material. We can understand then why Jude would quote these books without in any way having to revise the traditional view about the canon of Scripture.
Why Jude writes ?
Further, this idea of an elite group claiming angelic visitations may well hold the key as to why Jude felt it necessary to write his letter, even though it is so close in content to 2 Peter. Some scholars have argued that Jude in fact acted as the secretary to Peter, writing down Peter's thoughts into his second letter, (see J. A. T. Robinson, Redating the New Testament, SCM). This would certainly account for Jude's familiarity with the 2 Peter material. But why would Jude himself feel that he must put pen to paper in his own name?
If Jude had been closely involved with the apostle in writing 2 Peter, then if he was aware that what had been prophesied as in the future in 2 Peter 2.1, had now actually come to pass, then this may well have stirred Jude to feel that he had a particular obligation write to the churches.
But perhaps the answer lies more particularly in the fact that, as we shall argue later, Jude was a part of the earthly family of the Lord Jesus Christ, a child of Mary and Joseph, a brother of James v1, and a half-brother of the Lord Jesus. In his commentary on Jude, Richard Bauckham, points out that according to Julius Africanus, who lived in Emmaus in the late 2nd century, the family of Jesus were known as the desposunoi. This is related to the idea that the Lord Jesus was known as ho despotes, the Master, in early Palestinian Christian circles in which his family was known. If this was the case, it indicates that the family was popularly regarded as a special group. Certainly it was a family, the father and mother of which had truly been visited by angels in connection with the nativity of Jesus. Yet Jude in his letter opposing elitist false teachers, calls himself only a servant of Jesus Christ. The point would be this. If Jude, who is popularly seen as among the elite of the earthly family of Jesus will only call himself a servant of Jesus Christ, what right do these (false) teachers have to see themselves as Masters ? This would have particular force coming from someone like Jude, rather than, say, Peter, who was not a part of the so-called 'holy family.' If our scenario is somewhere near the truth, it may have been such a consideration which moved Jude himself to write.
JEB
This is an edited extract from Slandering the Angels: The message of Jude, recently published by Evangelical Press, £6.95.
