In studying Jude and 2 Peter, we are dealing with two works that clearly have some relationship to one another, although the nature of the relationship is unclear. If we could sort this matter out, we would have a better chance of solving other questions like authenticity. 2 Peter is probably the work whose attestation in the early Church and whose canonicity is most in doubt out of all the NT documents. The Syrian Church still does not accept it. Jude has relatively good attestation, on the other hand. If Jude depends on 2 Peter, this would improve its chances at being authentic greatly. If 2 Peter depends on Jude, on the other hand, then this combines with attestation in the early Church and internal considerations to make it much less likely to be authentic. If we simply argue that, because it is in the canon, therefore it is Scripture, and cannot have been written by anyone other than the person who claims to be the author, namely Simon Peter, then we are arguing in circles. Its authenticity almost kept it from being included in the canon (and in some churches did in fact lead to its exclusion!). To argue on the basis of a decision that was finally made only centuries after the work was composed is fine if one is inclined to give authority not only to the New Testament documents, but to the traditions and creeds of the early Church. But herein lies the “Catch 22” – the authority of the “New Testament” implies the existence of just such a thing called the “New Testament” including those very books whose authority and/or authenticity is being discussed and debated.
I’ve already given you a handout with the parallels between these two letters. That the exact language converges on certain phrases so often suggests some kind of literary knowledge and relationship: the major options are (1) that 2 Peter used Jude; (2) that Jude used 2 Peter; (3) that both depend on a common source.
Ralph Martin takes as the most decisive evidence that 2 Peter 2:17 derives from Jude 12b-13 the fact that Jude uses a mixed metaphor: ‘wandering stars’ are confined to the ‘gloom of darkness’, which 2 Peter improves by comparing the false teachers to clouds of mist destined to disappear in the darkness (New Testament Foundations, vol.2, p.385). This example is perhaps less clear than the one Werner Kümmel refers to (Introduction to the NT, p.431), namely that the language of 2 Peter 2:11 seems to be a shortened form that nonetheless depends upon and presupposes the concrete example in Jude 9. Kümmel goes on to suggest that the author of 2 Peter has intentionally obscured the references to apocryphal writings in Jude. He also notes that the author of 2 Peter, although perhaps making reference to the false teachers in the future tense because he is writing under the name of Peter (2:1ff; 3:3,17), also gives away the real relationship to the things mentioned in Jude in the present tense, when he goes on to refer to the false teachers also in the present tense (2:10,12ff,20) and even at one point in the past tense (2:15,22).
On the other hand, Guthrie (NT Introduction, pp.922-923) notes the possibility that Jude 4 and 17-18 refers back to 2 Peter 3:3. It is possible on this basis to argue that Jude knew 2 Peter and regarded it as authentic and apostolic. On the other hand, the Greek word palai may mean ‘of old’ rather than merely ‘formerly’, and thus have 1 Enoch in view. If this is the case, then one could argue that 2 Peter takes up the language of Jude precisely to pass itself off as an earlier prophecy of the things described in the present tense in Jude. And so this point of contact and the reference to something written ‘earlier’ is not decisive one way or the other, since it can be interpreted in more than one way. It is striking, however, that this point is the place where one finds the closest word-for-word agreement between the two letters. But what does this indicate? That at this point Jude is quoting Peter exactly? Or that 2 Peter, in claiming to be writing prior to Jude, turns Jude’s vague words about what the apostles predicted into an exact prophecy? If Jude was quoting 2 Peter, we would have expected him to attribute the words to Peter, since he has no problem attributing words to Enoch when he quotes 1 Enoch.
2 Peter places the incidents referred to in Jude in their canonical order as found in the OT, and drops anything that is not explicitly mentioned in the Jewish Scriptures, and so this seems a more likely move, unless the author of Jude can be shown to have a theological or literary motivation for departing from the canonical order in his argument. But once again, certainty proves elusive. Certainly it seems far more likely that the author of 2 Peter dropped the references to “non-canonical” works, rather than that Jude wove references and allusions to 1 Enoch and the Ascension of Moses into what he found in 2 Peter.
In 2 Peter 2:3, a much better case can be made for the author having reworked Jude 4. The author of 2 Peter simply alludes to ‘their judgment from long ago’.
Luke Timothy Johnson, a relatively conservative scholar who is not easily swayed by a majority consensus, nonetheless writes (in The Writings of the NT, p.443): “The two Petrine letters have…so many and such great differences that a majority of scholars conclude that they come from different authors; and if not a necessary conclusion, this certainly seems plausible. Barring an amanuensis, the styles are significantly different. The Greek of 1 Peter is clear and direct; that of 2 Peter is convoluted and deliberately arcane in its vocabulary.” However, the style, while somewhat pompous and grandiose sounding from our perspective, was apparently becoming more and more popular in this period, and it is important that the letter be judged according to the standards of that time.
The reference to “your apostles” in 3:2 is strange coming from Peter, although it could mean ‘the apostles who established your church’ or something like that.
Reference to ‘the fathers’ who have died (presumably the 1st generation of Christians) in 3:4. Even if the reference is simply to the patriarchs or previous generations in general, it is still suggestive of time having passed between Easter and the recipients, who seem concerned specifically about the delay of the Parousia.
Reference to a collection of Paul’s letters, apparently already regarded as Scripture.
The false teachers are predicted as destined to come in the future, but the author then goes on to denounce them in the present tense. Bauckham takes this as a sign that the author was writing in a transparently fictional manner as Peter, and did not expect his readers to take his letter as really from Peter, but as an attempt to provide an address in the name of Peter to contemporary issues, i.e. to say what Peter would have said if he had known about what was going on.
The reference to an earlier letter, and the claim to be an eyewitness of a story recounted in the Gospels, are often taken as indications that a later author is writing pseudonymously. These points are, however, clearly inconclusive and can be interpreted in more than one way.
1 Peter has a distinctive vocabulary of 543 words and 2 Peter of 399 words; yet there are also 153 words common to both. The sheer number of different words does not decide the issue, since often differences of subject lead to major differences in vocabulary. However, stylistic comparison that focuses on the use of things like the article and particles shows major differences between the 2 letters. There is also more repetition in 2 Peter. If one is to explain these features in terms of the use of different amanuenses, then one must also explain why Paul’s letters (at least the ones universally regarded as authentic), written through different amanuenses, do not show the same marked differences of style.
The Lord’s coming in power is called parousia in 2 Peter but apokalypsis in 1 Peter. However, similar differences can be found between what are presumably equally authentic Pauline letters (1 Corinthians & 2 Thessalonians, although some question the authenticity of the latter).
The flood is an image of saving baptism in 1 Peter but of cosmic destruction in 2 Peter.
2 Peter quotes/alludes to the OT five times, all in the parts that have parallels in Jude; 1 Peter quotes and/or refers to the OT 31 times. On the other hand, Bauckham says that the use of the OT in 2 Peter is not as sparse as is sometimes claimed (see his commentary, p.138).
In 1 Peter the end is said in passing to be near, in 2 Peter there is a problem with people who feel that history simply carries on without end.
‘Lord’ is used in reference to Jesus far more frequently in 2 Peter than in 1 Peter.
“divine power” (theia dynamis); “divine nature” (theia physis); “excellence” (aretê); “piety/religion” (eusebia); “eyewitness” (epoptês).
Where Jude 6 has a reference to ‘everlasting chains and darkness’ as punishment for the angels, 2 Peter 2:4 refers to Tartarus.
The use of “eyewitness” (epoptês) in connection with the transfiguration (2 Peter 1:16) may be significant. This term was used almost as a technical term for the highest level of initiation into the mystery religions. And so the author is presumably saying that he has been initiated to the deepest mysteries of Jesus. All these considerations suggest that the author is writing in relation to, and from a deep knowledge of, the broader Hellenistic religious and cultural milieu.
The acceptance of the book and attitude to it varied from place to place. The Alexandrian church accepted it at least c.200 CE. Antioch and Constantinople disputed it until 400, but with some arguing in favor of its authenticity. It was never accepted by the Syrian churches. Hippolytus knew it, but Irenaeus, Tertullian, Cyprian, Clement of Alexandria, and the Muratorian Canon did not. Origen mentions it as ‘contested’. In the west it was accepted c.370-380. Eusebius placed it among the disputed books and considered it spurious (HE 6.25.8). Didymus of Alexandria (d.398) ranked it as a forgery and not canonical. Jerome (De viris ill. 1) explains that stylistic differences were the main reason for it being “rejected by the majority”.
Luther, Calvin, and Erasmus all had their doubts, which will be more significant to some of you than others!
The letter is clearly a bit like a ‘last will and testament’ of Peter. As such, there was good literary precedent for the writing of fictional testaments for great figures in salvation history: we have in the ‘OT Pseudepigrapha’ testaments of Abraham, the twelve patriarchs, Moses, Job, and others. And so if that is what the author wrote, and if the author was not Peter himself, then it is quite plausible to suggest that the author could have written a Jewish work in a Jewish literary genre with no expectation that his work would deceive anyone. He may merely have wished to say what he felt Peter would have said in addressing the situation in his present day. Such testamental literature as a rule contained pseudo-prophecies addressing contemporary issues in the name of past authorities.
Richard Bauckham (Jude, 2 Peter, p.134) writes about this genre as follows:
In Jewish usage the testament was a fictional literary genre…The farewell discourses in the intertestamental literature were sometimes expansions and elaborations of last words recorded in the OT (e.g. T.Mos.), but in most cases they were entirely free invention. It is highly probable that they were normally accepted as such. It is very implausible to suppose that most Jewish readers were so naïve as to read such speeches as accurate historical reports, or that their authors were so naïve as to expect them to be so read…
Second Peter bears so many marks of the testament genre…that readers familiar with the genre must have expected it to be fictional, like other examples they knew. If they knew that it came from the Petrine circle in Rome…, then they might trust its author to have made a good job of reporting the essence of Peter’s teaching, but they would not expect Peter to have written it. At any rate the presumption would be that he did not. . . Petrine authorship was intended to be an entirely transparent fiction
In a similar way, Bruce Metzger notes that the Neo-Pythagoreans attributed their writings to Pythagoras himself, even though he had lived several centuries earlier. According to Iamblichus (c. 300 C.E.), it was an honorable act to publish one’s treatises in the name of one’s master rather than one’s own name. Whether this is a helpful parallel to the possibility of NT pseudepigraphy remains to be seen.
1 Clement 23:3-4 (and 2 Clement 11:2ff) mention a writing which at least some Christians have read, which makes the following challenge: “We have already heard that in the days of our fathers, but look, we are becoming old and nothing of that has happened to us”. And so, by around 95 CE, someone had written something that expresses the same skepticism that is combated in 2 Peter.
The false teachers have often been identified as Gnostics, but with insufficient grounds. The author does not argue against any of Gnosticism’s most obvious features, such as dualism, emanations, docetism, and/or a denial that the God of the OT who created the world is the true and highest God. His main concern seems to be with a denial of the Parousia, and with moral and ethical libertinism. His reply focuses on the fact that God has consistently brought judgment on those who rebelled against him, and also on the fact that slowness in human terms does not necessarily represent slowness in God’s eyes. From the author’s use of certain elements of distinctive Hellenistic terminology, we might be justified in suggesting that the danger is that Christians from a non-Jewish background are under pressure from their non-Jewish neighbors and acquaintances. The eschatological predictions that were part of the preaching that attracted them to the faith appear to have been unfulfilled. And so the author is on the one hand arguing that God will indeed fulfill his promises, as he always has, while on the other hand the author seeks to present the Christian faith in language that will make is intelligible as something one can continue to live out in the midst of a pagan world, showing that it is in accord with the best hopes of philosophy and religion in general, while also teaching the truth more authentically and advocating a higher moral standard. Bauckham suggests that perhaps the author’s opponents are people who, like him, are attempting to ‘translate’ the Christian faith for his Hellenistic environment; but they have gone too far, essentially leaving to one side altogether the eschatological hope of the Parousia, and with it also some of the moral stringency and standards of the Christian faith as it had been proclaimed and preserved up until then.
From 2 Peter, then, we can learn about the translation of the Christian faith for a new context. The author (whether Peter or someone else) is seeking to relate his faith to one different than the Jewish one in which Christianity first appeared, yet without abandoning or losing in the process the distinctives of the Christian Gospel. From this we all have something to learn. Today, we have a tendency to read our own interests and concerns into Scriptures that do not address our problems directly. If the author of this letter was not Peter, at least he had the honesty to acknowledge that Peter had not addressed his concerns directly, and to seek to take a “WWJD” (or I should say “WWPW” – “What Would Peter Write?”) approach, asking what Peter would have said if he had addressed these issues. At the end of the day, is either approach really more honest than the other?
Before looking at other critical issues, it should be noted that the text of Jude is fraught with textual difficulties. And so the attempt to interpret the letter needs to take account of textual critical issues in Jude more than in most NT writings.
Who was ‘Jude’? Presumably the brother of James and therefore of Jesus. One usually identified oneself by mentioning whose son one was, not whose brother one was, and thus Jude 1 must mean ‘Jude, the brother of James whom you all know’. This leaves us with only one serious candidate, namely Jude brother of James and thus of Jesus too. In Luke 6:16 there is, admittedly, a ‘Jude of James’ who is one of the Twelve. But unless there were an obvious reason for doing so, the language used would be taken to mean ‘son of James’ and not ‘brother of James’. Attempts to identify the two people named Jude fails to take seriously enough the evidence that Jesus’ brothers were not his disciples during his lifetime. One other possibility is that the author was ‘Judas Thomas’, since ‘Thomas’ was primarily a nickname, ‘the twin’, and there is a later tradition that Thomas was also named Judas, as for example in the title of the Gospel of Thomas. But this may simply be a later attempt to make Thomas a brother of Jesus. At any rate, the name of all these Judes and Judases is actually ‘Judah’. That the author does not identify himself as ‘brother of the Lord’ is not particularly problematic, since neither does James in James 1:1.
The reference in v17 to the apostles as having predicted something in the past suggests that the book is relatively late, although the reference could be to a past prediction without suggesting necessarily that the apostles are no longer around. Dates from 54 to 160 have been proposed, the later dates mostly on the basis of the assumption that the letter is pseudepigraphic. The good Greek of the letter we have already noted not to be a problem for authorship by a Galilean. The fact that the author seems to know the Aramaic version of 1 Enoch and to know the Scriptures in Hebrew all favor a relatively early setting, in early Palestinian Jewish Christianity. [On these last points see below]
There is a play on the concepts of ‘keeping’ (using both têreô and phylassô) that runs throughout the letter. The recipients are ‘kept for Jesus Christ’ by God (v1). The wicked angels did not ‘keep’ their place and are punished by being ‘kept’ in chains (v6). In the same way, this punishment is ‘kept’ for the disobedience of the present generation (v13). The readers are to ‘keep’ themselves in the love of God (v21). God is the one who can ‘keep’ them from falling (v24).
Although it has often been assumed that the author used the LXX, a careful investigation in fact proves the opposite, namely that the author more likely worked with the Hebrew text, even though he wrote perfect Greek. That he used a different Greek translation is also a possibility. Compare the following:
Jude 12 and Prov. 25:14
Jude 12 and Ezekiel 34:2
Jude 13 and Isaiah 57:20
Jude 23 and Zech 3:3-4
Bauckham notes that in all these cases, Jude is closer to the Hebrew than to the LXX (Richard Bauckham, Jude and the Relatives of Jesus, pp.136-7).
Bauckham also argues (in the work just mentioned and in his commentary) that Jude is essentially a ‘midrash’, not in the technical rabbinic sense, but in the sense that it is an extended exposition of the Jewish Scriptures using the methods and interpretative techniques of his time.
That Jude quotes from 1 Enoch has been recognized since the beginning. Tertullian used this to argue for the canonicity of 1 Enoch; Jerome used it to argue against the canonicity of Jude! One of the biggest problems for readers today is not so much that Jude could quote an extracanonical work (Paul, after all, quotes a poem about Zeus!), but that he seems to take the words at face value as a prophecy of Enoch. Is this simply a way of referring to the work, which was attributed to Enoch, or did he really believe Enoch wrote it?
[Chapter 1]
1 The words of the blessing of Enoch, wherewith he blessed the elect and righteous, who will be 2 living in the day of tribulation, when all the wicked and godless are to be removed. And he took up his parable and said -Enoch a righteous man, whose eyes were opened by God, saw the vision of the Holy One in the heavens, which the angels showed me, and from them I heard everything, and from them I understood as I saw, but not for this generation, but for a remote one which is 3 for to come. Concerning the elect I said, and took up my parable concerning them:
The Holy Great One will come forth from His dwelling,
4 And the eternal God will tread upon the earth, (even) on Mount Sinai,
[And appear from His camp]
And appear in the strength of His might from the heaven of heavens.
5 And all shall be smitten with fear
And the Watchers shall quake,
And great fear and trembling shall seize them unto the ends of the earth.
6 And the high mountains shall be shaken,
And the high hills shall be made low,
And shall melt like wax before the flame
7 And the earth shall be wholly rent in sunder,
And all that is upon the earth shall perish,
And there shall be a judgment upon all (men).
8 But with the righteous He will make peace.
And will protect the elect,
And mercy shall be upon them.
And they shall all belong to God,
And they shall be prospered,
And they shall all be blessed.
And He will help them all,
And light shall appear unto them,
And He will make peace with them'.
9 And behold! He cometh with ten thousands of His holy
ones
To execute judgment upon all,
And to destroy all the ungodly:
And to convict all flesh
Of all the works of their ungodliness which they have ungodly committed,
And of all the hard things which ungodly sinners have spoken against Him.
Note also 1 Enoch 60:8, where Enoch is referred to as the seventh from Adam
The Alexandrian Fathers (like Clement and Origen) took the reference in Jude 9 to be to an apocryphal work called “The Assumption of Moses”.
In the past there was a tendency to identify the opponents as Gnostics and as the same opponents who are in view in 2 Peter. More recent study has shown that the common material shared by the 2 authors is reworked by one of them in a way that suggests it is being applied to and adapted for a different purpose. What we know from the letter is that the opponents had antinomian tendencies, rejecting the moral authority of both Christ and the Law (Jude 4,8-10). The result is that they engage in sexual immorality in particular, although presumably in other forms of immoral behavior as well (cf. vv.6-8,16,18,23). Perhaps the references to the fallen angels (or ‘Watchers’) and to Sodom and Gomorrah indicate something about the nature of their sinful practices. On the other hand, maybe the point is merely that the Exodus generation and the once good angels, if they rebelled, came under judgment, and thus one cannot appeal to one’s past status to presume on one’s acceptable status in the present. In general, Jewish tradition in this period did not focus on the sin of homosexuality as the reason for the destruction of Sodom and Gomorrah as much as later writings do. On the other hand, Jude explicitly mentions lust after ‘strange flesh’ as the reason for judgment, and so it would be hard to deny that he is accusing his opponents of something through these references, and his specific statements that they ‘defile the flesh’. But whether the sins in the passages quoted and the sins of the opponents are being identified or merely compared it is impossible to say.
The opponents are described as being ‘natural’ (psychikoi) and ‘devoid of the Spirit’ (v.19). The reference to ‘dreaming’ in v8 may indicate that they claimed visionary experiences as the basis for their teaching. Although the opponents did not originate within the community, they have entered it and been accepted. They were perhaps the sort of itinerant prophets who caused so many difficulties in early Christianity, and about whom the Didache writes quite specifically to address the issue, but whose existence is hinted at in a number of places in the NT. The readers must fight these ‘infiltrators’ for the sake of the faith. Apart from their claim to be teachers and their rejection of all moral authorities, we know little about the doctrinal beliefs of these teachers, and it appears from this that their main problem was ethical rather than doctrinal per se. The opponents could easily be some form of antinomian extremists who have taken Paul’s teaching about not being under Law to an antinomian extreme.
The reference to their apparently ‘blaspheming angels’ is difficult to interpret, and might shed some light on what the opponents believed. The reference to blaspheming the glorious ones and slandering what they do not understand, in light of what we know of the lost ending of the Assumption of Moses from other sources, may imply rather than these false teachers were slandering ‘the noble ones’, i.e. true Christian teachers, just as the Devil accused Moses for having slain the Egyptian and arguing that he therefore should not be given an honorable burial. Perhaps the opponents were bringing up the past of Christian leaders – whether Peter’s denial of the Lord, or the fact that the brothers of Jesus once thought he was out of his mind, or something else that is unknown to us, and using this to undermine the credibility of the apostles who had founded the churches being written to. The point in relation to the apocryphal story is thus not that Michael refused to bring a ‘slanderous accusation’ against Sammael (i.e. the Devil), nor even to ‘accuse him of slander’; but he refuses to pronounce judgment on his accusation of slander, simply saying ‘the Lord rebuke you’, leaving judgment to the Lord. In the same way, rather than condemn the opponents for their slander by engaging in mud-slinging, Jude is content to point out that they will be judged by the Lord himself. For this purpose, he quotes 1 Enoch, which speaks specifically of God coming to judge those who spoke against him.
Note also Korah in Numbers 16, who seeks to undermine Moses’ leadership on the basis of a claim that all God’s people are equal. Cain slew his brother out of jealousy that God accepted him and gave him priority. Balaam could not curse Israel directly, so he set out to undermine her privileged status by tempting her to sin. Presumably these examples are not chosen at random, but indicate something of the character of the opponents, and perhaps also their viewpoint and aims. We must remember, however, that polemical writings (which the Letter of Jude clearly is) do not attempt to give a balanced presentation of what the opponents thought and taught.
Also to be noted is the reference to Proverbs 25:14. The opponents claim to have the Spirit, but they are really like clouds carried by winds. They boast of a gift they do not have. Jude’s sarcasm in this allusion to Scripture is a powerful weapon. [One also thinks of Ephesians 4:14 in this context]
The following conclusions seem to be the logically possible ones that may be argued regarding pseudepigraphy and canonicity:
1) if a work is falsely attributed, then it should not be in the canon
2) if a work is pseudepigraphal and is in the canon, then not all pseudepigraphy can be wrong
3) in the case of works in the canon, factors normally considered such as style and language should be ignored, and authenticity maintained
The last option seems to be special pleading, asking to apply to ourselves standards we would probably not accept if others with whom we disagreed used them!
The Text This Week – 2 Peter
http://www.textweek.com/epistlesrevelation/2peter.htm
Stiles – Is 2 Peter Peter’s?
http://www.bible.org/docs/nt/books/2pe/2petauth.htm
Keathley – Authorship of 2 Peter
http://www.bible.org/docs/nt/books/2pe/peter2.htm
The Authenticity of 2 Peter
http://www.tyndale.cam.ac.uk/Scriptures/www.innvista.com/scriptures/compare/secpeter.htm
Terrence Callan – The Christology of the Second Letter of Peter
http://www.bsw.org/?l=71821&a=Ani06.html
The Letter of Jude
http://www.abu.nb.ca/courses/NTIntro/Jude.htm
The Letter of Jude (at Early Christian Writings)
http://www.earlychristianwritings.com/jude.html