JUDE, THE EPISTLE OF. The Epistle of Jude. one of the group of New Testament Epistles known as Catholic or General Epistles, consists of only twenty-five verses. The writer mils himself " Judas, a servant of Jesus Christ, and brother of James" (vs. 1). He is commonly taken to be the Jude or Judas mentioned in Matthew xiii. 55 as one of the brethren of the Lord. Hegesippus, as quoted by Eusebius, has preserved a tradi tion that two grandsons of this Jude were summoned before the Emperor Domitian to give an account of their faith. The emperor found their religion to be harmless. and sent them away in peace. Tradition further tells that they died at an advanced age in the reign of Trajan. If the epistle was composed by the grandfather of these men, its date would be between 60 and 70 A.D. But the name Judas was a common one. The Jude of the Epistle may have been an otherwise unknown person, as Currie Martin suggests, the description " brother of James" being an editorial insertion. In any case, the epistle can hardly be assigned to a very early date. Eusebius speaks of it as one of the disported writings, and Origen also evidently knew that its authorship was disputed. It is mentioned, however, in the Muratorian Canon, and is quoted by Clement of Alexandria and Tertullian. One of the curious features of the book is its use of apocry phal writings. Thus, in vs. 14 the Book of Enoch seems to be quoted, and In vs. 9 the Assumption of Moses. It is thought that this use of Apocrypha accounts for the tardy recognition of the book. But there is another
very curious feature. There is a close resemblance between the Epistle of Jude and the Second Epistle of Peter—so close a resemblance that one must have copied the other. " In the judgment of most scholars Jude is the original from which 2 Peter borrowed. It is in the first place curious that, if 2 Peter were the earlier, Jude should have contented himself with extracting simply the section against the false teachers. But, apart from this general improbability, when we come to place the two documents side by side and test them, it is generally easy to explain why the author of 2 Peter has altered Jude, but it is not easy to see why, if Jude had 2 Peter before him, be should have altered his original to the form that we find in his Epistle. Obscurities in 2 Peter can in some cases be cleared up by reference to Jude " (A. S. Peake). The reference to false teaching has been taken to suggest some form of antinomian Gnosticism such as became prevalent in the second century. But the false teaching was not necessarily Gnosticism. Currie Martin thinks the epistle may have originated in Egypt, " because the churches there appear to have been more generally fond of apocalypse, and also liable to the errors in teaching and practice to which this epistle refers." See the Encycl. Bibl.; J. A. M'Clymont; G. Currie Martin; Arthur S. Peake, Intr.; J. Moffatt, Intr.