Authorship of Jude

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In Jude 1:1 the letter is identified as coming from Judas who is a brother of James.

Determining authorship is one of the challenging aspects of this book. We may look for apostolic authorship to correspond with the general trait of the New Testament Canon.

Five personages of the name of Jude occur in apostolic sub-apostolic times,

1. Judas Iscariot.
2. The Apostle Joudas, Lk 6:16; Acts 1:13; Jn 14:22; this "son of James" is commonly identified with Lebbaeus or Thaddaeus.
3. Judas, Jesus' brother, brother also of James, Mt 13:55 ; Mk 6:3, where he is named last or last but one.
4. Judas Barsabbas, Acts 15:22ff.
5. Judas, the last Jewish bishop of Jerusalem in the time of Hadrian, Eus. H. E. iv. 5. 3.

The author of our Epistle gives two descriptions of himself — (i) Iesou Christou doulos: (2) adelphos de Jakobon. The first does not mean that he was an apostle (see note on 2 Pet 1:1), and Jude 1:17 is generally understood to mean that he did not so regard himself. His brother James also was not an apostle. The second identifies our Jude with the brother of Jesus.

But why does he not call himself the brother of the Lord ? Clement of Alexandria in his commentary, which still exists in a Latin version, answered the question thus — "Judas, qui catholicam scripsit epistolary frater filiorum Joseph exstans ualde religiosus et cum sciret propinquitatem domini, non tamen dicit se ipsum fratrem eius esse, sed quid dixit? Judas seruus Jesu Christi, utpote domini, frater autem Jacobi." Zahn (Einleitung, ii. p. 84) adopts this explanation, which is probably correct. The sense is, "Jude, the slave, I dare not say the brother, of Jesus Christ, but certainly the brother of James."

The description, "brother of James," cannot have been needed as an introduction or recommendation, for the brethren of the Lord were all held in high esteem (Acts 1:14). Certainly Jude must have been well known to the people whom he is addressing. Nor can the description be taken to show that he is writing to Churches of Palestine or to Jewish Christians, by whom St. James was held in special honour. For, apart from the fact that St. James would not need his help, the brethren of the Lord were known to the Gentile Churches, for instance, to the Corinthians (1Cor 9:5), and may quite possibly have visited and preached in Corinth.

Among the apostles there were two who bore this name,

1. Judas Iscariot (Mt 10:4; Mk 3:19). Judas Iscariot did not live past the crucifixion of our Lord (Mt 27:5; Acts 1:18). Therefore, he is not a candidate for authorship.
2. Judas Lebbaeus (Mt 13:55; Jn 14:22; Acts 1:13), called also Thaddaeus (Mt 10:3; Mk 3:18);

He who is called "the brother of James" (Lk 6:16), may be the same with the Judas surnamed Lebbaeus. The only thing recorded regarding him is in Jn 14:22.

Jude was sometimes called Lebbaeus Thaddeus (Mt 10:3, Mk 3:18) or Judas, brother of James, to distinguish him from Judas Iscariot (Lk 6:16).

He was the author of the Book of Jude and identifies himself as James' brother (Jude 1:1). He was included in the brothers of the Lord who were known to the Galatians and the Corinthians. Several of them were married and they were not true believers in Christ until after the resurrection (1Cor 9:5; Gal 1:10; Jn 7:3ff; Acts 1:14).

From Hegesippus, as related by Eusebius of Cæsarea, we learn that Jude was said to have been the brother of the Lord according to the flesh and that two of his grandsons lived till the reign of Roman Emperor Trajan. Legend has it that he evangelized Armenia and died there.

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Editorial note: the following is the ICC article intact, kept for reference for the time being.'

In the Address the author styles himself "Jude, the slave of Jesus Christ, but brother of James." "Slave of Jesus Christ" means "faithful Christian," or "labourer in the Lord's vineyard" (see note); the second qualification marks him out as brother of that James who appears in Acts 15:21 as president of the Church at Jerusalem, who is called "the Lord's brother " by St. Paul, Gal 1:19, and is commonly regarded as the author of the Epistle of James.

We may identify him with that Jude or Judas of whom we read in the Gospels as one of Jesus' brethren. The list, as given by Mt 13:55, is James, and Joseph (v.l. Joses), and Simon, and Judas; as given by Mk 6:3, James, and Joses, and Judas, and Simon. Both evangelists tell us that there were also sisters, and place Judas last, or last but one; and as the order which they follow is not an order of honour, for Joseph or Joses is unknown, we may probably infer that Jude was third or fourth of the sons in respect of age. What was the position of the daughters in the family sequence we cannot ascertain.

Jude is first expressly called "brother of the Lord" by Hegesippus, and it is probable that neither he nor James used this title themselves. But it was freely given to them by the Church, as we see from 1Cor 9:5. From this passage we gather also two important facts, that the brethren were well known in Corinth, a Gentile city, and that more than one of them were married. Hegesippus tells us that two grandsons of Jude were brought before Domitian, the authorities having taken alarm at their claim of descent from David, and of relationship to Christ; but that when they had showed their horny hands, described the little farm which they held in common, and explained that the kingdom: which they looked for was not of this world, they were scornfully dismissed (Eus. H. E. iii. 20). Hegesippus further related that both these descendants of Jude lived on into the reign of Trajan, and seems clearly to imply that they were old men when they died (Eus. H. E. iii. 32. 5). Beyond this we have no knowledge of Jude, except what we can gather from the Epistle itself.

It is perhaps possible to draw an important inference from this narrative. If these grandsons of Jude were middle-aged men in the time of Domitian, and old men in the time of Trajan, when was Jude himself born? Suppose that the grandson died in 105 A.D., about the middle of Trajan's reign, at the age of 70. He would have been born in 35 A.D. ; his father could hardly have been born after 13 A.D., or his grandfather after 9 B.C. On the other hand, if we suppose Jude to have been one of the younger children of Joseph and Mary, he can hardly have been born before 1 A.D. ; his son hardly before 24 A.D., or his grandson before 47 A.D. In this case the elder grandson would only have been 70 in the year of Trajan's death, and there would have been nothing surprising, if he or his younger brother had lived on well into the reign of Hadrian. If, then, we may regard the narrative of Hegesippus as based on fact, the natural conclusion seems to be that Jude was older than Jesus, —in other words, that he was the son of Joseph by an earlier marriage. Further, Hegesippus clearly believed that Jude himself was no longer alive in the reign of Domitian, who assumed the purple in 81 A.D. When Jude died we do not know, but, if he was born nine or ten years before the Christian era, we can hardly suppose that he retained the full enjoyment of his faculties much after 65 A.D. For further information on the complicated problems involved in the term "Brethren of the Lord," the reader must be referred to Bishop Lightfoot's well-known Excursus, or to the article in Hastings' Dictionary of the Bible.

It is probable, as has been already said, that Jude did not call himself "Brother of the Lord." But, then, why does he call himself "Brother of James"? James was the special patron of the Jewish Christians. Now, the Epistle of Jude is not Jewish in any special sense, either in language or in thought, nor is there any reason for imagining that the Churches to which it was addressed were com. posed, to any marked extent, of Jewish converts. The writer, therefore, can hardly have intended to conciliate his readers by putting himself, as it were, under the wing of his great brother, Those to whom the letter was sent must have known perfectly well who he was, and what was his authority. The true explanation is probably that suggested long ago by Clement of Alexandria. Though Jude was not in the habit of calling himself "Brother of the Lord," he knew that others were, and he deprecates this usage. "I am Jude," he says, in effect, "whom you call brother of Christ. Call me slave of Christ, but brother of James" "Brother of the Lord" was not an official designation, and, if used by Jude himself, might seem to imply a claim to an authority above that of an apostle. There is no affectation of humility in its avoidance.

Most of the commentators, whether they regard the Epistle as genuine or not, would accept the foregoing explanation of the Address. There have, however, been other opinions.

Keil and others thought that the writer might be Jude the Apostle. Ioudas Iakobon, Lk 6:16; Acts 1:13, may possibly mean "Judas the brother of James" (Blass, p. 95); and it is conceivable that if "James, the son of Alphaeus," was the same person as "James, the Lord's brother," his younger and less distinguished brother might be known as "James' Jude." But this identification is extremely doubtful; and if in St. Luke's list of the apostles we must translate Iakobon Alphaion, "James, son of Alphaeus," it is almost or quite certain that Ioudas Iakwbon must mean "Jude, son of James." Further, it cannot be shown that any of Jesus' brethren, even James, was reckoned among the Twelve. Again, the author of our Epistle does not call himself an apostle in the Address, and appears clearly to imply in ver. 17 that he was not one. Tertullian, indeed, calls him so (see above, p. 307), and he is so called also in the Latin translation of Origen's works, but not in Origen's Greek text, and not by Clement.

Grotius conjectured that 2 Peter was written by Symeon the second, and Jude by that Judas who, according to Eusebius, was fifteenth and last of the Jewish line of bishops of Jerusalem. Before anyone can adopt this view he must persuade himself either that the words adelphos de Iakobon are an interpolation, or that they form a standing title borne by all the successors of James in his episcopal chair; and no reason can be given in support of either alternative. It may be noticed, however, in passing, that this Judas, the fifteenth bishop of Jerusalem, is probably a real personage. It is true that the list of bishops given by Eusebius (H. E. iv. 5. 3) seems to have been unknown to Hegesippus, who says that Symeon, son of Clopas, the second bishop, lived to a great age, and suffered martyrdom in the reign of Trajan (Eus. H. E. iii. n, 32. i). But in the Codex Marcianus there is a note which professes to be derived from the fifth book of the Hypotyposes of Clement, and gives the places of sepulture of certain apostles and apostolic men (the text will be found in Zahn, Forschungen, iii. 70). Here we read "Simon Cleophas, qui et Judas, post Jacobum episcopus, cxx annorum crucifixus est in Jerusalem Traiano mandante." It seems clear that Clement had combined the statement of Hegesippus with another that made Judas bishop in Trajan's time. Hence we may infer that the eggrapha from which Eusebius drew his list of bishops were older than 200 A.D.

The conjecture of Grotius has been recently revived with some modification by Julicher (quoted by Harnack, Chronologic, p. 467), who thought at one time that Judas was probably the real name of the author of the Epistle, and that "brother of James" meant nothing more than bishop. But in his Einleitung (1901, i. p, 182) Julicher has abandoned this view, and now thinks it most probable "that the author belonged by birth to that circle in which the memory of James was held in special honour; that he did not venture to foist his well-meant work on James himself, but contented himself with a member of his family. Perhaps Judas lived on after his brother, down to a time at which none of the apostles of the Lord survived in Palestine, and therefore could most easily be selected out of the men of the first generation as the announcer of the appearance of the prophesied abominations." But there is, as we have seen, some reason for thinking that Jude did not long outlive James.

Dr. Harnack thinks (Chronologic, p. 468) that the author was possibly named Judas, and that the words adelphos de Iakobon were inserted in the Address at some date between 150 and 180 A.D. "in order to set this unknown Judas back into the apostolic time, and to secure respect for his piece, which, in days when Gnosticism nourished, must have appeared especially valuable." He was not the Bishop of Jerusalem, "for it is difficult, if not impossible, to suppose that such Jewish-Christian bishops gave anything to the Church at large." A bishop, though circumcised, may have been an eminent man, but the Epistle is certainly not what we should expect to have been written by an author of pronouncedly Jewish tendencies. Harnack's theory, however, would require us to believe that the Address was falsified in a very glaring way within the lifetime of Clement of Alexandria.

All these theories rest upon the presupposition that Jude must have been written in the second century, because it is directed against Gnosticism, and have no value for those who hold the opposite belief. The sum of the matter is that, if Jude belongs to Gnostic times, we know nothing whatever about the author, except that he was not what he calls himself.

The place of composition is unknown. Egypt or specially Alexandria, Palestine or specially Jerusalem, have been suggested. There is no reason whatever for selecting Alexandria, beyond the fact that the Epistle was known to Clement and Origen, who collected books from every quarter. Of any specially Egyptian or Alexandrine ideas it exhibits not the faintest trace. The other locality seems equally improbable. The death of James occurred probably in 62 A.D., and Jude, if he took any active part in the affairs of the Church, can hardly have lived in Jerusalem before this date. Even after his great brother's martyrdom he was not Bishop of Jerusalem, and can scarcely have had a fixed abode in the sacred city. Nor should we be inclined to look for him in one of the smaller towns of Palestine. The brethren of the Lord were known to the Galatians and to the Corinthians. Who can say where they were not known, what places they had visited, or where they were usually to be found? We need not suppose that they stuck like limpets to the rock of Zion. Such little information as we possess gives quite a different idea.

Again, as to the Churches to which the Epistle was directed, we are left absolutely to conjecture. The only points which give us any kind of hold are the similarity of Jude to 2 Peter, and the similarity of the evils denounced to those of the Corinthian Church. But what conclusion can be built upon this slender basis? Corinth was a seaport town within a short sail of many places. In a limited number of hours an Antinomian missionary would find himself at any harbour in the Eastern half of the Mediterranean, at Thessalonica, or on the Asiatic shore, or at Alexandria. People were constantly going to and fro.

Dr. Chase thinks it probable that the Epistle was sent to the Syrian Antioch, and possibly to other Churches in that district. The reader will find his argument in Hastings' Bible Dictionary. Dr. Chase relies chiefly upon three points: that the Christians addressed were mainly Gentiles, that they were men among whom St. Paul had worked, and that they had received oral instruction from the apostles generally, and, therefore, probably lived at no great distance from Jerusalem. We may say that no better conjecture can be proposed; but even this is far from certain. It seems most probable that the Churches addressed were mainly Gentile, though this is disputed ; that they were acquainted with St. Paul's form of teaching is most likely, but St. Paul had laboured in many places; they knew the apostles also, but how many of them or in what way is doubtful. For it is not necessary to understand elegon in ver. 18, of oral instruction alone, and in any case we need not imagine that more than one or two of the Twelve had visited the district in question. But there is really no clear light. We might be tempted to infer from the resemblance between the two Epistles that the Churches addressed in 2 Peter and in Jude lay in proximity to one another; but even this is perilous. Jude may have been addressed to almost any community in which Greek was spoken. The two Epistles must have been written at nearly the same time, but they may have been sent in very different directions.

As to the personal characteristics of Jude something has already been said, and what little remains will be found in the notes. Compared with 2 Peter he exhibits a certain hastiness and tendency to take things at their worst, compared with either 1 or 2 Peter a certain hardness. No document in the New Testament is so exquisitely tender and pastoral as the First Epistle of St. Peter, and even in the Second Epistle, in the midst of the anger and indigna¬tion so naturally excited by the cruel wickedness of the false teachers, there are still beautiful phrases, steeped in sympathy and fatherly affection. Jude is undoubtedly stern and unbending. On the other hand, Jude is in closer intellectual sympathy with St. Paul. St. Peter commends the Apostle of the Gentiles in high terms, yet with qualifications. St. Jude speaks Pauline language, and inclines towards the Pauline mysticism, though to what extent it is impossible to say. The notable word ψυχικος is used also by his brother James in the same sense, and, though it belongs to the Pauline psychology, in which ψυχηwas sharply distinguished from pneuma or nous, does not necessarily involve the Pauline conceptions of law or of justification. St. James was probably as mystical as St. Paul, yet he was a strong legalist. Like St. Paul, he held that whoever breaks one article of the law breaks the law as a whole (Jam 2:10; Gal 3:10). This view (it was held also by the Stoics) is highly metaphysical or mystical, but it led the two apostles to very different conclusions, the one to the necessity of perfect obedience, the other to the idea of a righteousness which was not of law at all. It is possible that Jude also belonged to the same type of Pharisaic mysticism as his brother. But in any case his ideas and language differ noticeably from those of St. Peter.

But here we touch upon a question which is unhappily among the obscurest of all the problems that surround the history of the early Church. Who can enumerate the countless modes in which the relation of law and gospel presented itself to the first believers? Many writers content themselves with the rough and unintelligent distinction between Jewish and Gentile Christians, but this rests upon the mere accident of birth. The most Gentile of all teachers, St. Paul himself, was a Jew, and on either side there are endless shades and gradations. On the one extreme there are certain sects which we may call exclusively Jewish, or rather Oriental, but a Gentile Christian might be anything. Certainly there can be no greater error than that of using "Pauline" and "Gentile" as if these words were coextensive.