14–15 For Enoch, the seventh
from Adam, prophesied of them, saying, ‘Look, the Lord comes amid his holy
thousands to pronounce judgment against them all.’ He does not say against all human beings
but against all the wicked, leaving none of them unpunished. There is appended
about them, ‘and to censure all the
wicked.’ He does well to say that Enoch who prophesied these things was the
seventh from Adam in order to substantiate by an example what he said
previously, that wicked persons who snuck in to undermine the faith of the
devoted had long ago been consigned to such a judgment. ‘And to censure all the ungodly, he says, for all their works of godlessness which they godlessly performed and
for all the harsh words which all the ungodly spoke against him.’ This
statement is true indeed, because when the Lord comes in judgment he will
censure and judge the ungodly not only for the works of iniquity which they
have performed but also for their iniquitous words. But nevertheless we must
know that the book of Enoch from which he took this is classed by the Church
among the apocryphal scriptures, not because the sayings of so great a
patriarch in any way can or ought to be thought worthy of rejection but because
that book which is presented in his name appears not to have been really
written by him but published by someone else under his name. For if it were
really his, it would not be contrary to sound truth. But now because it
contains many incredible things, such as the statement that the giants did not
have human beings for fathers but angels,23 it is deservedly evident
to the learned that writings tainted by a lie are not those of a truthful man.
Hence this very Letter of Jude, because it contains a witness from an
apocryphal book, was rejected by a number of people from the earliest times. Nonetheless
because of its authority and age and usefulness it has for long been counted
among the holy scriptures, particularly because Jude took from an apocryphal
book a witness which was not apocryphal and doubtful but outstanding because of
its true light and light-giving truth. (Bede, The Commentary on the Seven
Catholic Epistles of Bede the Venerable [trans. David Hurst; Cistercian
Studies Series 82; Kalamazoo, Mich.: Cistercian Publications, 1985], 249-50)
