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Jude

About this book

1 From Jude, a slave of Jesus Christ and brother of James, to those who are called, wrapped in the love of God the Father and kept for Jesus Christ. 2 May mercy, peace, and love be lavished on you! 3 Dear friends, although I have been eager to write to you about our common salvation, I now feel compelled instead to write to encourage you to contend earnestly for the faith that was once for all entrusted to the saints. 4 For certain men have secretly slipped in among you—men who long ago were marked out for the condemnation I am about to describe—ungodly⁠ men who have turned the grace of our God into a license for evil and who deny our only Master and Lord, Jesus Christ.⁠

Jude Reads 1 Enoch as Authoritative Scripture Consensus

Examples of Judgment

5 Now I desire to remind you (even though you have been fully informed of these facts once for all) that Jesus, having saved the people out of the land of Egypt, later destroyed those who did not believe. 6 You also know that the angels who did not keep within their proper domain but abandoned their own place of residence,⁠ he has kept in eternal chains in utter darkness, locked up for the judgment of the great Day.⁠ 7 So also Sodom and Gomorrah and the neighboring towns, since they indulged in sexual immorality and pursued unnatural desire in a way similar to these angels, are now displayed as an example by suffering the punishment of eternal fire.⁠ 8 Yet these men, as a result of their dreams, defile the flesh, reject authority, and insult the glorious ones. 9 But even when Michael the archangel was arguing with the devil and debating with him concerning Moses’⁠ body,⁠ he did not dare to bring a slanderous judgment, but said, “May the Lord rebuke you!”⁠ 10 But these men do not understand the things they slander, and they are being destroyed by the very things that, like irrational animals, they instinctively comprehend.⁠ 11 Woe to them! For they have traveled down Cain’s path, and because of greed have abandoned themselves to Balaam’s error;⁠ hence, they will certainly perish in Korah’s rebellion.⁠ 12 These men are dangerous reefs at your love feasts, feasting without reverence, feeding only themselves.⁠ They are waterless clouds, carried along by the winds;⁠ autumn trees without fruit—twice dead, uprooted;⁠ 13 wild sea waves, spewing out the foam of their shame;⁠ wayward stars for whom the utter depths of eternal darkness have been reserved.⁠ 14 Now Enoch, the seventh in descent beginning with Adam,⁠ even prophesied of them, saying,⁠ “Look! The Lord is coming with thousands and thousands of his holy ones,⁠ 15 to execute judgment on all, and to convict every person of all their thoroughly ungodly deeds that they have committed, and of all the harsh words that ungodly sinners have spoken against him.” 16 These people are grumblers and fault-finders who go wherever their desires lead them, and they give bombastic speeches, enchanting folks for their own gain.⁠

An Appeal to the Community

17 But you, dear friends—recall the predictions foretold by the apostles of our Lord Jesus Christ. 18 For they said to you, “At the end of time there will come scoffers, propelled by their own ungodly desires.”⁠ 19 These people are divisive, worldly, devoid of the Spirit. 20 But you, dear friends, by building yourselves up in your most holy faith, by praying in the Holy Spirit, 21 maintain yourselves in the love of God while anticipating the mercy of our Lord Jesus Christ that brings eternal life. 22 And have mercy on those who waver; 23 save others by snatching them out of the fire;⁠ have mercy on others, coupled with a fear of God, hating even the clothes stained by the flesh. 24 Now to the one who is able to keep you from falling, and to cause you to stand, rejoicing, without blemish before his glorious presence, 25 to the only God our Savior through Jesus Christ our Lord, be glory, majesty, power, and authority, before all time, and now, and for all eternity. Amen.

Jude Reads 1 Enoch as Authoritative Scripture

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An intertextual perspective on:

  • Jude

Consensus (well supported by the available evidence)

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In Jude 1:14–15, the author condemns his opponents with a prophecy of judgment from Enoch, “the seventh from Adam.” The prophecy comes from 1 Enoch 1:9, a text that was never included in the Hebrew Bible, and it is the only formal citation in the letter. He presents Enoch as an ancient prophet who predicted their judgment.12

The author introduces the prophecy with the verbs “prophesied” and “saying,” the formula Matthew and Mark use for a prophecy of Isaiah. In Matthew 15:7, Jesus tells the Pharisees and scribes that Isaiah prophesied rightly about them and then quotes Isaiah 29:13, and in Mark 7:6 Jesus uses the same verb before quoting that passage.34 Matthew introduces at least twelve quotations of the Hebrew Bible with these verbs instead of the word “written.” The author also calls Enoch the seventh generation from Adam, his title in 1 Enoch 60:8 and 93:3, to give special authority to the man who walked with God in Genesis 5:24.5

The author applies Enoch's prophecy directly to his opponents, as other early Jewish and Christian interpreters applied ancient prophecies to their own time. In Acts 2:16, Peter tells the crowd at Pentecost that the prophet Joel spoke about the events they are witnessing.6 The community of the Dead Sea Scrolls interpreted Habakkuk as a prophecy about its members and enemies, convinced that the ancient prophets had written about their own day.78 In 1 Enoch 1:2, Enoch says that his vision is meant for a distant generation rather than his own. The author of Jude ties the prophecy to his opponents with the word “ungodly,” which appears four times in the quotation and again for the opponents in Jude 1:4 and 1:18. In Jude 1:4, they were “marked out for this condemnation” long ago, very likely by prophecies of judgment like Enoch's.910

The prophecy quoted in Jude is itself very likely based on Deuteronomy 33:2, where Moses describes God coming from Sinai with tens of thousands of holy ones.11 The author of 1 Enoch appears to model Enoch's blessing in 1 Enoch 1:1 on the blessing of Moses in Deuteronomy 33:1 and to move God's appearance at Sinai into the future, as an image of God coming to judge the world at the end of the age.1213 In 1 Enoch 1:9, God comes to judge, while in Jude 1:14 “the Lord” comes, a title absent from every surviving version of 1 Enoch and probably added by the author of Jude.14 Elsewhere in the letter, the author uses this title for Jesus (Jude 1:4, 1:17, and 1:21), and by adding it he presents Enoch as predicting Jesus' return to judge the ungodly.15 Early Christians applied other descriptions of God coming with holy ones, such as Isaiah 40:10, Isaiah 66:15, and Zechariah 14:5, to Jesus' return in the same way, and the author of Jude may be following that practice.16

Other New Testament writers do the same with the Hebrew Bible, as when Paul identifies the rock that gave Israel water in the wilderness as the Messiah in 1 Corinthians 10:4. In that passage Paul may be putting Jesus in the place of God, whom Deuteronomy 32 repeatedly calls the rock.17 The author of Jude uses 1 Enoch in much the same way as he uses the Hebrew Bible, and he interprets Enoch's prophecy as referring to Jesus just as Paul interprets the rock in the wilderness as the Messiah.18

Later Christians disagreed over whether the quotation was a reason to accept 1 Enoch or a reason to reject Jude. Tertullian defended 1 Enoch partly by pointing to the quotation of Enoch as a prophet in Jude. Augustine accepted that Enoch prophesied, as the author of Jude says, but doubted that Enoch wrote the surviving books under his name.19 He accepted the prophecy from 1 Enoch 1 that Jude quotes but rejected the story of angels taking human wives that follows it in 1 Enoch 6–16, and he very likely never read 1 Enoch himself.20 In Jerome's time, many Christians rejected the letter of Jude for its quotation of Enoch, the same quotation Tertullian had used in support of Enoch. The Ethiopian Orthodox Church, which translated 1 Enoch in the fourth century, accepted Jude and 1 Enoch alike, and 1 Enoch remains in its Bible.21

Notes

  1. 1
    Jörg Frey, "The Epistle of Jude between Judaism and Hellenism" in Niebuhr, Karl-Wilhelm, and Robert W. Wall (eds.) The Catholic Epistles and Apostolic Tradition (Waco, TX: Baylor University Press, 2009), 319.
  2. 2
    Jeremy Hultin, “Jude’s Citation of 1 Enoch,” in Jewish and Christian Scriptures: The Function of “Canonical” and “Non-Canonical” Religious Texts, ed. James H. Charlesworth and Lee M. McDonald, Jewish and Christian Texts in Context and Related Studies 7 (London: T&T Clark International, 2010), 113, 116.
  3. 3
    Lawrence Henry Vanbeek, “The Letter of Jude's Use of 1 Enoch: The Book of the Watchers as Scripture” (ThD diss., University of South Africa, 1997), 86, 94–95.
  4. 4
    Hultin, “Jude’s Citation of 1,” 113.
  5. 5
    Bruk Ayele Asale, 1 Enoch as Christian Scripture: A Study in the Reception and Appropriation of 1 Enoch in Jude and the Ethiopian Orthodox Tewahado Canon (Eugene, OR: Pickwick Publications, 2020), 37.
  6. 6
    Vanbeek, “The Letter of Jude's,” 90–91.
  7. 7
    Richard Bauckham, Jude and the Relatives of Jesus in the Early Church (London: T&T Clark International, 2004), 152.
  8. 8
    Asale, 1 Enoch as Christian, 36.
  9. 9
    Bauckham, Jude and the Relatives, 153.
  10. 10
    Asale, 1 Enoch as Christian, 38.
  11. 11
    George W. E. Nickelsburg, 1 Enoch 1: A Commentary on the Book of 1 Enoch, Chapters 1-36; 81-108 (Minneapolis: Fortress, 2001), 143.
  12. 12
    Nickelsburg, 1 Enoch 1, 143–144.
  13. 13
    Richard Bauckham, The Jewish World around the New Testament: Collected Essays I (Tübingen: Mohr Siebeck, 2008), 276.
  14. 14
    Asale, 1 Enoch as Christian, 33–34.
  15. 15
    Frey, "The Epistle of Jude, 319.
  16. 16
    Asale, 1 Enoch as Christian, 34.
  17. 17
    Amiel Drimbe, “Paul's Use of the Old Testament in the First Letter to the Corinthians (II): Hermeneutics and Assumptions,” Jurnal Teologic 19.1 (2020): 128–130.
  18. 18
    Asale, 1 Enoch as Christian, 32, 37.
  19. 19
    Hultin, “Jude’s Citation of 1,” 115–117.
  20. 20
    Nickelsburg, 1 Enoch 1, 95.
  21. 21
    Hultin, “Jude’s Citation of 1,” 118–119.

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