The
Epistle of Jude.
The Epistle of Jude is a letter of
exhortation to a Christian assembly somewhere in the Hellenistic east, written
principally to warn against certain intruders who are characterized by
debauchery, the interpretation of dreams, a denial of Jesus Christ and
denunciation of angelic authorities (Jude 4-16). Whereas much of the polemic
against the intruders trades in stereotypical tropes to describe their godlessness;
nonetheless, the allegation of rejecting lords and blaspheming glorious ones in
vv. 8, 10 has a degree of specificity that is not stereotypical. This explains
why the latter includes an unusual focus on angels compared to other New
Testament writings. The intruders disparage angelic beings perhaps on account
of a Hellenistic skepticism towards the invisible, because of ecstatic
visionary experiences of the heavens with no angels, to denigrate the angels
who gave the Torah, because of a prejudicial view of heavenly powers compared
to Christ, to curse angels as wicked beings (4Q280 I 1-7), or to invoke the
manipulate angels through magical spells (PGM VII.795-85).
Jude retorts: (1) “Jesus” himself was
the angel of the exodus, thus to disparage angels is to disparage the
preexistent Jesus (Jude 5 alluding to Exod 23.20-23 and Num. 14.26-38). (2)
Angels are part and parcel of cosmic reality and redemptive history, as evil
entered the world with evil angels and evil will finally be defeated at the
judgment of the wicked angels; thus the intruders have abandoned Jewish
theodicy and a theocentric heavenly hierarchy (Jude 6 alluding to 1 En.
10.4-5, 11-15). (3 Those who denigrate angels will suffer the same fate as
Sodom and Gomorrah, who tried to violate angels (Jude 7-8). (4) Even the
archangel Michael did not slander the Devil, the epitome of rebellious angels,
but left judgment to God (Jude 9 alluding to Zech. 3.2 and Assumption of
Moses according to Clement of Alexandria, frag. 2 and Origen, Princ.
3.2.1). (5) These debauched dreamers and angel-deniers will ironically be
judged when the Lord comes with his angels (Jude 14-15 quoting 1 En.
1.9). Jude urges respect for angelic mediators as, dare I say, “guardians of
the galaxy,” the heavenly custodians of the cosmic order, and supernatural
servants of the people of God. Jude, much like Justin, believes “This God we do
venerate and worship, and also the Son who came from him and taught us these
things, and the company of other good angels who follow him and are like him,
and also the prophetic spirit” (1 Apol. 6.2)
The author notably mentions how “Jesus
once saved for all a people from Egypt and afterwards destroyed those who did
not believe” (Jude 5). Here we must observe that there are significant textual
variants in Jude at this point, as the earliest papyrus containing Jude as
“God’s Messiah” (Theos Christos) saved a people from Egypt (P72),
the majority of manuscripts read “Lord” (kyrios; א and many minuscules),
while two prominent majuscules read “Jesus” (Iēsous; B A), with a
combination of Lord, Jesus, God, and Christ in other witnesses. The evidence is
thin and disputed, yet recent critical editions of the Greek New Testament have
all savored “Jesus” (Iēsous) as the more original reading (ECM, NA28,
UBS5, SBLGNT, THGNT). If “Jesus” is original in v. 5, then Jude
would be explicitly identifying Jesus with the “angel of the Lord” in Exod.
23.20-23 and be engaging in a typological argument similar to Paul’s remark
about Christ as the rock that accompanied Israel in the wilderness (1 Cor 10.4). Of
course, even if kyrios is original in v. 5, the description of Jesus as
“master and lord” in v. 4 would permit a christological interpretation of kyrios
in v. 5.
In this vein, Jarl E. Fossum believes
that Jude, much like Justin some decades later, identified the pre-incarnate
Jesus with the angel of the Lord, who, in Jewish tradition, was associated with
the exodus, the punishment of the Israelites in the wilderness, the
imprisonment of the fallen angels, and the destruction of Sodom and Gomorrah as
we find in Jude 5-7. Fossum concludes: “Jude 5 implies that the Son is modelled
on an intermediary figure whose basic constituent with the Angel of the Lord.”
(Michael F. Bird, Jesus Among the Gods: Early Christology in Greco-Roman
World [Waco, Tex.: Baylor University Press, 2022], 207-8)
