Reading 34—Jude 4
1) θεον 025 044
028 018 020 1 5 104 181 201 206 223 319 378 424 479 483 489 522 623 876 917 920
927 928 945 999 1022 1242 1244 1245 1247 1250 1251 1319 1505 1522 1611 1637
1725 1732 1734 1735 1738 1751 1768 1799 1827 1854 1855 1874 1876 1877 1890 1891
1896 1897 2085 2086 2298 2401 2412 2433 2492 2494 2495
2) OM P72
01 03 02 04 6 33 216 307 323 440 467 642 1243 1563 1739 1845
1894
Including
an inclusion or omission of θεον in this verse raises the issue of whether
or not Jude intended to refer to God as the only despot, or Jesus as the only
despot. Thus the phrase would read τον μονον δεσποτην Θεον, και Κυριον ημων Ιησουν Χριστον
αρνουμενοι or τον μονον δεσποτην και Κυριον ημων Ιησουν
Χριστον αρνουμενοι. Bauckham observed that δεσποτην was widely used for
God in Judaism and early Christianity. Christianity, he noted, took over the
formula and used it almost always for God the father. He referenced Luke 2:29;
Acts 4:14; Rev 6:10; 1 Clem 7:5; 8:2; 9:4; 11:1; 20:8, 11; 24:1, 5; 33:1, 2; 36:2
4; Barn. 1:7; 4:3; Diogn 8:7 and Justin, 1 Apol 61:3 as evidence (Bauckham, Jude,
2 Peter, WBC, 39).
If,
therefore, God was commonly known as the δεσποτην, a scribe faced with the word δεσποτην
referring to God would have no need to omit Θεον. However, if it were
not included in the scribe’s exemplar, then he would be tempted to clarify the
text in light of the prevailing notion of δεσποτην as being God. In
other words, there would be no great reason to omit the θεον, but there would be
a far stronger motive to include it in the text.
There are also additional
evidences that Jude could have omitted θεον and thus refer to Jesus and not God as δεσποτην. Bauckham cites 2 Pet
2:1 where Peter, extrapolating from the book of Jude, understood Jesus, not
God, as the δεσποτην. Furthermore, Bauckham observed that the word οἰκοδεσπότης is used to refer to
Jesus as the master of the Christian household: Matt 10:25; Mark 13:27; Luke
13:25 (Ibid.) Here contextually (as in
the case of 2 Peter), Jesus is the master of the Christian slave, hence Jude could
have referred to Jesus as the δεσποτην and not God. A scribe failing to recognized
this inserted θεον as in the scribe’s thinking God is the despot, not Jesus.
Again, the preponderance
of evidence suggests that Jude did not include θεον originally, but that
later scribes sought to clarify the statement in light of prevailing notions of
God as the despot introduced the word of God in the text. Hence, the mixed manuscripts
are among those manuscripts which possess the earliest original in this
variation unit. (Clinton S. Baldwin, The So-Called Mixed Text: An
Examination of the Non-Alexandrian and Non-Byzantine Text-Type in the Catholic
Epistles [Studies in Biblical Literature 133; New York: Peter Lang, 2011], 155-56)
