•The authorities are: (1) »«/>4 Kb^> kBO K, L, P, cumP" oat Thphl Oec ; (2) wpik Kup'W cum^ m tot syr-harcl cum* arP"ini' ; (3)om. A 13 40 137 cur»i pi boh (-me) vg-lat syrrbodl- barcl (text) aelh ar"'P.
8pitta (u. 106) among the authorities for (2) gives ' svrP •yro'.' He has mistaken Tischciidorrs 'syrPc." and has evolved a new Syria"' version.
* Cf. .Xen. Cyrop. ii. 3. 9 (inaccurately quoted by Welstein in ioe.), /AMxn, v iyat ipi WMtrm4 ••C^mvmk firid i«irr«^i»i/<, £m/ >• mM4 tiiJkM \»tm s.r.X.
Strange that he does not in any way ca'ch the .strongly marked literary sty'-e of his master; and further, that words which would fix themselves in the mind of an attentive student of 2 P are not found in his letter. These words are such as the following l' - \Strf**c, 2^ 3" '
ttvc^Uytir, 1* 21**-20; jLffTr.ptxret, 21* 311 (cf. n.,,*J^(/r, 11*; -y/Mt, S'T); ),i, 110 la 314; „■ yi», 24. SO; . -tXi,, 2'" S» ; iwiyytXu^ , 1* SIS (iiayyiA;Liirfl«<, 2"l); i»«ylir, 21- • ; iriy,t,c-ir, l-^i-H 'i^J (verb 221 ti«; ytMfit. ISf- 3I0); ivivafiv.yu ft 1^- " ; iiirtfiitt 2*', -fifiVa^ 13. 6. 7 311 ; ;,^„V»«,, 118 213 3KI6; i^^rHtJ, 219'- ; iwifxui, 1» 21* 811 ; ci tiiiirHixi, 2"-
To sum up : If Jnde wTote nrst, then the autlior of 2 P, with the Ep. of Jude in his mind rather than actually before him, altered the sequence of its im]>erfectly remembered thoughts and expres- sions, elalior.ited and, with the aid of a phraseology peculiarly his own, made variations on phrases which clung to his memory. If, on the other hand, Jnde wrote with the express purpose of re- calling his master's letter to his readers, we must yet suppose that Avith rare skill he eliminated harsh and tortuous phrases, brought together scattered ideas, infused reminiscences of Enoch, and wrought the whole into natural compact and harmonious paragraijhs. It is not too much to say that to have composed under such conditions a letter so forcible, so clearly and neatly expressed, and so bound together "by interdependence of thought and jOirase as is St. Jude's Epistle, would have been little short of a miracle of literary skill.
These various lines of argument converge and, so far as demonstration is possible in literary questions, demonstrate the priority of Jude.
5. Date of Composition and Author.ship. — A convenient statement of the dates assigned to the Ep. by German critics is given in Holtzmann, Einleitung, p. 3'29. The <jlder critics of the Tiibingen school, regarding the letter as a forgery of the Judaists against the Paulinists, placed it late in the 2nd cent. More recent critics place it about the middle or in the first half of the 2nd cent. Thus Plleiderer (Urchristenthum, p. 83511'.) holds that it was written against the Carpocratians of .•\lexandria, and therefore not before A.D. 150. Jiilioher (Einleit. p. 147) gives the limits as 180 and 100, and urges that, since the writer's tone of wonder and anger implies that he is dealing with a new form of error, it must not be placed very late in this period. 'With this verdict llarnack (Die Chronologic, p. 466) substantially agrees.
The superior limit is fixed by the evidence as to the reception of the Epistle ; the iti/cT-ior by internal evidence. The latter turns on the following points : (1) the way in which ' the faith ' is spoken of as a foriiuilated deposit (w.*'") ; (2) the language as to the aposlles (v.") — the apostolic period is long passcfi ; (S) the use of Apocryphal writings ; (4) the existence of Gnosticism, either tliat of the Carpocratians or, as H.irnack thinks, such as Epiphanius under various names describes as in- festing Syria and Palestine, and which (apparently at a later time) found expre.ssion in the Coptic Gnostic literature edited by Schmidt ('Texte u. Untersuch.' viii. 1, 2).
These points must be briefly examined. (1) Tha use of iricTT.j in Gal l" 3» 6", Ko 10», Ejih 4», I'h 1", closely approximates to that of our Eil, while the thought does not go lu'yond that of Gal 1", Ro 61'. ('2) The language of v." implies that the recipients of the Ep. had been wont to receive ornl instruction {l\t-)oy) from the general body of the ajiosths (twk arrooT.), and that this period of inter- course was now over. It may well be that some of the aiiostleslmd been removed by death, but the requirements of the language are satisfied if we 8uppii.se that tlie ajxjstlcs were now scftttt'retl. (.■?) The argument from the use of Ajxicryphal booki is serious only when it is vaguely put, a.s by
SC4
JUDE, EPISTLE OF
JUDE, EPISTLE OF
McGiffcrt {flUt. of ChrUtiunitij in the Apnst. Age, \'. .")S7), 'He malces use of two late apocryphal works.' As a matter of fact, Enoch is assigned bv almost all scholars to a date B.C. (Schurer, HJP II. iii. p. 59 tr.). The Assumption of Moses was probably written within the first 30 years of our era (Charles, § 11; Schiirer, ib. p. 78 f., with liwald and others, places it within the first decade after Herod's death). (4) The (Jnostic character of the persons attacked in the Ep. is deduced from three passages.
(a) In v.^b the worda rit fMttt Sirvtni* a. Kvfit* iif^> *I. X^. ifr*^ fAitti are iiupposed to Doint to a denial of God u the Creator and Governor of the world, and to a docetlc view of Christ'a Person. The common article, however, together with ruvr placed after m,fi*»t proves that Christ alone is meant — a conclusion continued by T»v (^Mv iitx^ in v.-iK The combination* 2i#-TeTK xCfiit occurs several times in the LXX (^.17. Gn IS^ 8 ; cf. Is 1^'). The denial is a denial in lite (c(. Tit l'«) of Christ's sovereignty (1 Co (fw, Ko 16'", Fh 3">). (i) The l.i/».i«C«^.«i of v.8 is thought to point to visions as the source of Gnostic speculations. The word, however, in iuelf connotes nothing more than the wilfulness and falseness of their principles of conduct (cf. frag, in Cramer and Bengel, »n foe.), (c) In v. '8 it is urged that ^de retorts upon Gnostic teachers their own language of disparage* ment; they are the •i^vx'"'*' But this is to force an elaborat« cleaning into simple words. A phrase in v. 16 (flott/,tta- C**Tif w^^Miru ^tXtai x^fi") shows that the 'distinctions* they made were lorgely social (cf. Ja 2ia'-, 1 Co 111* «), The w etwoittpiXt'TK (which Jude interprets by his antithetical iTotKoitu^ZiTtt iav-raW) is equivalent to St. Paul's »i rc( 3i;^c<rTix^i'xf . . . r««v»TK in Ro 1617 (see above). The best commentary' on our passage is 1 Co Si-^, Gal b^»<-