Jude Fragments: Recent Scholarship on Addressees

Richard Bauckham in 1983 put Jude scholarship back on the map. According to Peter Davids in his Theology of Jude, Bauckham wrote to an audience already familiar with apocalyptic literature during the twentieth century and there was enough material by then to make various conclusions about Jude’s context. Once his commentary was produced a host of others came into the scene (252).

The dating of Jude has always proved complex. Bauckham dates him late in the first century creating a myriad of complications. Among them is the tricky business of whether Jude was addressing present concerns, future concerns, like Gnostics in the second-century, or catholic concerns of the church in general. In my estimation, late dating offers more problems than solutions.

For Davids, the addressees are familiar with Second-Temple literature since Jude seems to assume much in the letter. He further asserts that Jude’s concerns are primary of a Second Temple source and that his details cannot be all traced to Old Testament literature (259). For Jude, his assumptions are that his rhetoric will be persuasive for those whom he addresses. After all, these are people who “meet around meals” (Jude 12), so that a certain familiarity is expected fro moral tradition.

A favorable element of this Theology of Jude is that Davids breaks any consensus that Jude is directly speaking against false teachers. In fact, Jude “never refers those he critiques as teachers.” (260) There are references to the way they speak, but this can be applied generally to other groups as well. The focus for Jude seems to be on their behavior, even “verbal grumbling” (260), and not their teaching necessarily.

If this is the case, the reader will have to contend for another interpretation of whom Jude was rebuking and warning against. The “false-teacher” narrative is all too common, especially in the context of “contending for the faith.” Some commentators assume that Jude picks up similar motifs in Peter’s writing and continue in that trajectory, but what seems more evident is that Jude is addressing a different concern altogether. Davids offers no alternative, except to say that Jude is addressing the “others.” Namely, those who do not share Jude’s sympathies for the cause of Messiah.