Episode Transcript
[00:00:01] Is the Book of Jude a Forgery? First Considerations by Bart D. Ehrman, read by John Paul Middlesworth.
[00:00:09] In my previous post, I explained the major themes and emphases of the Letter of Jude, including some of its most intriguing and even unexpected features, for example quoting apocryphal tales texts as seemingly authoritative scripture. In this post and the next, I will deal with the thorny question of who actually wrote it.
[00:00:30] Since it claims to be written by Jude, the brother of James, it has traditionally been understood to have been penned by Jesus own brother Jude found in Mark 6. 3.
[00:00:41] Is that right?
[00:00:42] As I've done a few times before, I've decided to provide a longer and more nuanced discussion in this case about whether in fact it is a forgery. The following is drawn from my book Forgery and Counter Forgery, Oxford University Press, 2013.
[00:00:57] I've edited it in places to make it more accessible to broader audiences. This will take two posts.
[00:01:04] Jude is the shortest forgery of the New Testament, and like many of the others, it is filled with invective against its opponents, even if scholars have found it difficult to discern what exactly these enemies of truth were thought to have proclaimed.
[00:01:19] An initial question to be addressed concerns the book's authorial claim. There are a number of persons named Jude Judas in the New Testament Judas Iscariot Mark 3. 19 and parallels 22 occurrences altogether. Judas the son of James the Apostle seen in Mark 6. 16, who may also be Judas not Iscariot of John 14:22 Judas the Galilean in Acts 5. 37 Judas who owns a house in Acts 9. 11 Judas who is called Barsabbas in Acts 15:22.
[00:01:55] There are solid reasons for thinking that the author of this letter is claiming to be one specific and arguably the best known Jude of the early Church. The brother of Jesus mentioned in Mark 6. 3 Along with James, Joseph and Simon.
[00:02:09] The author identifies himself as the brother of James in verse 1, and Mark 6. 3 provides us with the only James Jude brother relationship in the New Testament.
[00:02:20] Moreover, one would normally identify oneself in relation to one's father, not one's brother. The brother in this case must be an unusually well known person to serve as an identity marker for the author in this case a well known Christian.
[00:02:34] By far the best known James of the early church, of course was James the brother of Jesus, head of the church in Jerusalem. The author of this short text, therefore, is almost certainly claiming to be a brother of both James and and Jesus.
[00:02:53] Later we will see why the author may have wanted to identify himself in relation to James rather than Jesus.
[00:02:59] Some scholars have objected that Jude was too obscure a name for an author to choose as a pseudonym. The objection has more rhetorical than substantive force, however. On the one hand, how many non obscure figures were there to choose from in the early church?
[00:03:15] The objection seems to assume that everyone writing pseudepigraphically would choose the names Peter or Paul.
[00:03:22] On the other hand, and more pressing still, how could Jude be thought of as obscure? Leaving Hardy out of the equation, he was widely known as extraordinarily well connected. His one brother was the leader of the earliest Christian community.
[00:03:38] His other brother was the savior of the world.
[00:03:41] Not bad credentials for an early Christian author.
[00:03:45] More than that, as Jay Fry and others have shown, the author is claiming not just to be a brother of James and thus a brother of Jesus, but also to be closely connected to the letter written by this brother, the New Testament Book of James.
[00:03:59] The connection to this earlier letter is suggested already by the author's use of the same identifying formula, Slave of Jesus Christ.
[00:04:09] J. Darrell Charles has noted the inordinately large number of verbal parallels between the two books. 93 cases of verbal agreement out of 227 different words used, 27 of these terms occurring two or more times in both letters.
[00:04:25] Astonishingly, each of the 25 verses of Jude averages approximately four words found in the Epistle of James, an extraordinary rate of verbal correspondence.
[00:04:37] His conclusion Aside From Jude to 2 Peter and Colossians to Ephesians comparisons, the verbal correspondence in James and Jude, considering the brevity of the letter, is unmatched anywhere else in the New Testament.
[00:04:53] From Literary Strategy in the Epistle of Jude, University of Scranton Press, 1993.
[00:04:59] The writer of the Letter of Jude, then, is claiming a derived authority, as Voeckl has put it, Jude's reference to his literary predecessor gives him a status as Einensweiten Jacobus, that is a second James in Anton Vugtal, Das Judisbrief der Petrus Brief, published by Betzinger Verlag in 1994, Jude as a forgery Like James, Jude was rejected by some proto orthodox and orthodox writers. Eusebius indicates that, like the book of James, it was thought by some to be be forged, although it was publicly read in many churches and thus probably canonical, to quote Eusebius. 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 Judes, which is also one of the seven called general Catholic. But the fact remains that These two, like the others, have been regularly used in very many churches from ecclesiastical history to 2325.
[00:06:10] Jerome voiced a more specific doubt about the book. Since it quotes from first Enoch, it was regularly regarded by many as non scriptural and rejected.
[00:06:20] 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.
[00:06:32] Nevertheless, by age and use it has gained authority and is reckoned among the Holy scriptures in Diveris Illustribus. 4.
[00:06:42] I will continue from this point in my next post.
[00:06:45] The online blog follows with three footnotes.
