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 matters hermeneutical, postcolonial, liberationist, and African will further contribute to the conversation on how best to interpret these writings in our day and age, while paying close attention to the first century Greco-Roman context of their origin.
Jude
Authorship
Today there are essentially two primary positions on the question of Jude’s authorship: advocates for an early authorship usually arguing for Jude the brother of Jesus (“a servant of Jesus and the brother of James”),29 and in contrast, advocates for a pseudepigraphical authorship (later author writing in the name of Jude).30 The latter position rejects the authenticity of the letter’s own claim in Jude 1. These two positions are equally balanced and both have committed defenders within the guild. Arguments made by Bauckham over twenty years ago, remain at the heart of the defense for the authenticity position.31
For these defenders of authenticity, the process of elimination is used in order to arrive at one of at least eight people named Jude (Judah, Judas) in the NT as the author. The name Jude was fairly common given its origin with one of the patriarchs of Israel, “Judah,” and is one of the most common names in the NT, besides the reference to “Judas Iscariot.”32 The early church seemed to assume that the Jude in the epistle, who identifies himself as the brother of James, is one of the disciples (“Jude son of James” listed in Luke 6:15; John 14:22; Acts 1:13) or a brother of Jesus listed in the Gospels with other Jesus’ siblings (Matt 13:55; Mark 6:3). A third identification was with the apostle Thaddeus (Matt 10:3; Mark 3:18), while a fourth identified Jude with disciple Thomas (whose name means twin) who some of the Syrian church traditions identified as a “twin” of Jesus (Acts of Thomas 11; 31; 39; Book of Thomas 138. 4, 7, 19).
While there are others called Jude in the NT (Judah father of Simeon Luke 3:30; Judas the Galilean Acts 5:37; Judas of Damascus in Acts 9:11; Judas Barsabbas Acts 15:22–32) none of them is identified as having a brother called James. As for the disciple in Luke 6:15, he is called a “son of James” and not brother, making him and others mentioned above as unlikely candidates of identification with the letter’s author. The only person in the Gospels who has a sibling called James is Jude the brother of Jesus (Matt 13:55; Mark 6:3). The James mentioned here can also be identified with the one mentioned in Acts (12:17; 15:13) who is also called “the brother of the Lord” in Galatians (2:9-12). Mention by Paul (1 Cor 9:5) of “the Lord’s brothers” as traveling missionaries strengthens the idea that the Lord’s brothers (James and Jude) were well known in the early Church.33
Early acceptance of the letter by the Church was followed by challenges, primarily for its use of 1 Enoch and other biblical writings.34 The Western church accepted it early, but the Syrian church hesitated (e.g., exclusion in the fourth Syrian Peshitta manuscript together with 2 Peter, 2 and 3 John, and Revelation) for a while to include it in its canon. But it is probably Jude’s reference to the non-canonical writing of 1 Enoch in Jude 14–15, that made it suspect in the early period, rather than questions of the author’s authenticity.35 While accepting Jude as authentic, Origen (second century), Tertullian (second century), Jerome (fourth century), Dydimus of Alexandria (fourth century) all point out to the questioning raised about its use of 1 Enoch, but nevertheless defend this use even to the point of arguing for recognition of 1 Enoch as Scripture. Against this argument, Augustine (fourth century), while accepting Jude as authentic, argued against 1 Enoch’s acceptance as he recognized it to be pseudepigraphical.36
Arguments for pseudepigraphical authorship of Jude only gained prominence largely following the rise of the German biblical interpretation in the mid-nineteenth century, especially following the work of F. C. Baur and the Tübingen school who argued for a late date of the book’s authorship than had traditionally been assumed. The basis of this argument was primarily an assumption that the letter of Jude (and 2 Peter) evidenced “early Catholic” teachings that focused less on eschatological expectations and more on establishing long term Christian communities. While grouping writings together under a common theme, such as early Catholic, may be useful in highlighting similarities in such works, it unfortunately also has the tendency to obscure and eradicate the individual characteristics of each writing in the group. Combined with this was the perception that Jude’s opponents exemplified Gnostic tendencies in beliefs; available evidence, however, suggests that Gnosticism as a theological teaching did not exist until the second century CE.
Bauckham made it clear that the “early Catholic” classification was inconsistent with the letter’s internal evidence including a strong eschatological nature (14–15), his classification of the letter as what he calls “a Jewish midrash” (which reflects a Jewish Palestinian provenance for the letter), and the lack of a record of Church offices such as elders, deacons or bishops.37