Jude: The Letter That Quotes Enoch

At a Glance

Who wrote it: It says Jude, a servant of Jesus Christ, and brother of James (verse 1). That would make him my brother Judah, the brother of James. He does not call himself my brother. Many scholars think someone wrote it later in his name. Others think it may be his. If it is, I grew up with the man who wrote it.

When: Uncertain. Estimates run from the 50s to the early 100s. Many scholars place it late in the first century.

Written for: Believers the letter does not name, in a church where false teachers had slipped in. Jude meant to write about their shared salvation, but wrote instead to urge them to contend for the faith.

What it remembers of me: Nothing from my life. It calls me our only Master, God, and Lord, Jesus Christ (verse 4), though the oldest copies lack the word God there. It remembers the warnings of my apostles (verse 17).

How close it stays to me: Close on greed and on mercy. Far in its fury at opponents.

If you only read three chapters: It has one chapter of twenty-five verses. Read it.

Words to Know

Jude — in Greek, Ioudas, the same name as Judas. English Bibles spell it Jude to keep him apart from Judas Iscariot. In my language it was Yehudah, Judah.

Enoch — the man in Genesis who walked with God and was taken. A long book written in his name, now called 1 Enoch, was widely read in my time.

Michael — the archangel, the chief of the angels in Jewish tradition.

Love feasts — the shared meals my early followers ate together when they met.

The Book in Brief

Jude calls himself a servant of Jesus Christ and the brother of James. He had meant to write about their shared salvation, but must urge them to contend for the faith, because certain people have crept in, turning God’s grace into an excuse for indecency.

He reminds them of earlier judgments: the people saved from Egypt and later destroyed, angels who left their places, and Sodom and Gomorrah. Jude tells of Michael arguing with the devil over the body of Moses. The intruders have followed Cain, Balaam and Korah. They are reefs at the shared meals, shepherds who feed themselves, clouds without water. Jude also quotes Enoch’s prophecy of judgment.

He tells his readers to remember what the apostles foretold, to build themselves up in the faith, and to have compassion on those who doubt. He ends with praise to the God who is able to keep them from stumbling.

About these also Enoch, the seventh from Adam, prophesied, saying, “Behold, the Lord came with ten thousands of his holy ones, to execute judgment on all” (Jude 14–15).

That is a quotation, almost word for word, from the opening chapter of the book of Enoch.¹ Your Bible does not contain the book of Enoch. Jude’s did. Or at least, Jude read it as true prophecy, and so did many of my people.

My brother Judah

When my hometown turned against me, the people listed my family: brother of James, Joses, Judah, and Simon (Mark 6:3). This Judah is the man the letter claims as its writer. He calls himself only a servant of Jesus Christ, and brother of James. Perhaps he thought calling himself my brother would be presuming too much. Perhaps a later writer chose the name of a man the churches remembered with respect.

There is a story about Judah’s family that I want you to know. A Christian writer of the 100s named Hegesippus told it, and the historian Eusebius preserved it. The emperor Domitian, afraid of anyone descended from King David, had two of Judah’s grandsons brought before him. He asked them how much property they owned. They told him that all they had between them was one small piece of land, worth nine thousand denarii, which they worked with their own hands to pay their taxes and feed themselves. They showed him their hands, hard and callused from work. The emperor decided that such men were no threat, and let them go.²

That was my family. Farmers with callused hands, too poor to frighten an emperor.

Go deeperWas Judah really my brother?

Mark names my brothers: James, Joses, Judah, and Simon (Mark 6:3). Paul met James, the Lord’s brother (Galatians 1:19). The Jewish historian Josephus mentions the death of James, the brother of Jesus who was called Christ, in about the year 62. And Hegesippus, the writer who told the story of the grandsons, described Judah as my brother according to the flesh.³

The Greek word is adelphos, and it usually means a brother. But from the 100s on, many Christians came to believe that my mother Mary stayed a virgin all her life, and they looked for another meaning. Three answers have lasted.

Full brothers. This is the plain reading, and most Protestants follow it. Mary and Joseph had other children after me.

Half-brothers. A story from the 100s, the Protoevangelium of James, makes Joseph an old widower with sons when he takes Mary into his house. Epiphanius, a bishop on Cyprus, defended this view in the 300s. It is the usual view in the Eastern Orthodox churches.⁴

Cousins. In 383, Jerome argued that brothers here means cousins. The Greek version of the Hebrew scriptures calls Abram and Lot brothers, and Laban and Jacob too, though one pair was uncle and nephew in each case.⁵ This is the usual view in the Roman Catholic Church.

I will not settle it for you here. The letter itself calls its writer only the brother of James. None of the three answers changes what the letter says.

Enoch

The book of Enoch was one of the most important books of my people in my lifetime, even though it never became part of the Hebrew scriptures. It tells of angels who came down, took human wives, and taught people forbidden things, and of the judgment that would come for them. Pieces of it, in Aramaic, were found among the Dead Sea Scrolls.¹

Jude draws on it more than once. His Angels who didn’t keep their first domain, but deserted their own dwelling place, whom God has kept in everlasting bonds under darkness for the judgment of the great day (Jude 6), are Enoch’s fallen angels, the ones Genesis mentions in a few strange verses about God’s sons and the daughters of men (Genesis 6:1–4).

Then he quotes Enoch outright, by name, as a prophet.

That caused trouble. Some early Christians defended the book of Enoch partly because Jude quoted it. The writer Tertullian argued around 200 that it should be accepted as scripture. Others rejected Jude because of it. In 392, Jerome wrote that many people rejected this letter because it quoted the book of Enoch, which was apocryphal.⁶

Most churches ended up with Jude in their Bibles and Enoch out. One church tradition kept both. The Ethiopian Orthodox Church has the book of Enoch in its Bible to this day, and it is because of the Ethiopians that the whole book survives.

Michael and the devil

Jude also mentions a story you will not find anywhere in your Bible. But Michael, the archangel, when contending with the devil and arguing about the body of Moses, dared not bring against him an abusive condemnation, but said, “May the Lord rebuke you!” (Jude 9).

Deuteronomy says only that God buried Moses and that no one knows where his grave is. Early Christian writers said Jude took this story from a Jewish book about the death of Moses, whose ending has been lost.⁷ The words May the Lord rebuke you come from the prophet Zechariah, where the LORD says them to the accuser (Zechariah 3:2).

So a book of the New Testament, in twenty-five verses, draws on at least two books that never made it into your Old Testament: one that only Ethiopia’s church kept, and one whose ending is lost. The edges of scripture were softer in my world than you may have been told.

Go deeperJude and 2 Peter: who copied whom?

If Jude sounds familiar, you may have read 2 Peter. Its second chapter runs beside Jude for page after page. Both speak of angels who sinned, of Sodom and of Balaam. Both describe false teachers with the same pictures: Jude has clouds without water, carried along by winds (Jude 12), and 2 Peter has wells without water, clouds driven by a storm (2 Peter 2:17). Both warn that mockers will come: In the last time there will be mockers (Jude 18), and in the last days mockers will come (2 Peter 3:3).⁸

Look at the story of Michael. Jude says that Michael dared not bring against him an abusive condemnation (Jude 9). 2 Peter keeps the thought and drops the names: angels, though greater in might and power, don’t bring a railing judgment against them before the Lord (2 Peter 2:11). The devil, Michael and the body of Moses are all gone. 2 Peter also leaves out Enoch.

Most scholars think 2 Peter borrowed from Jude, not the other way around. It is easier to see why a later writer would drop an odd story and a quotation from a book outside the scriptures than to see why Jude would add them. A few scholars argue the other way, or that both used an older source.⁸ If 2 Peter did borrow from Jude, that shows Jude’s letter was valued early enough for another writer to build on it.

Sodom and strange flesh

Jude uses Sodom as one of his warnings. Even as Sodom and Gomorrah and the cities around them, having in the same way as these given themselves over to sexual immorality and gone after strange flesh, are shown as an example (Jude 7).

In the same way as these points back to the angels in the verse before, who went after human women. Strange flesh means flesh of another kind. In Genesis, the men of Sodom surrounded the house where two angels were staying and demanded that Lot bring them out, that we may have sex with them (Genesis 19:5). The angels crossed the line between heaven and earth one way. The men of Sodom tried to cross it the other way.

Some readers take strange flesh to mean sex between men. Many scholars read it, because of the parallel with the angels, as the attempt to violate heavenly visitors.⁹ You should know both readings. And you should know that when my prophet Ezekiel summed up Sodom’s sin, he spoke of pride and of ignoring the poor and needy (Ezekiel 16:49).

Shepherds who feed themselves

Most of the letter is a storm of images against false teachers who had slipped into the congregation. They are hidden rocky reefs in your love feasts when they feast with you, shepherds who without fear feed themselves; clouds without water, carried along by winds; autumn trees without fruit, twice dead, plucked up by the roots; wild waves of the sea (Jude 12–13).

It is fierce. It is also vivid enough that you can see each one.

Shepherds who feed themselves. That is Ezekiel, who cried out, Woe to the shepherds of Israel who feed themselves! Shouldn’t the shepherds feed the sheep? (Ezekiel 34:2). And Jude says these men show respect of persons to gain advantage (Jude 16). They flattered people with money. At the shared meal of the church, where rich and poor were supposed to eat as one, they were feeding themselves. That was what made Jude so angry, and Ezekiel before him.

Mercy at the end

For all its fury, the letter ends gently.

On some have compassion, making a distinction, and some save, snatching them out of the fire with fear (Jude 22–23).

After the reefs, the clouds and the dead trees, Jude remembers that people can be pulled back out of the fire. And then he closes with words that many churches still use as a blessing:

Now to him who is able to keep them from stumbling, and to present you faultless before the presence of his glory in great joy, to God our Savior, who alone is wise, be glory and majesty, dominion and power, both now and forever. Amen (Jude 24–25).

I told my followers to love your enemies (Matthew 5:44). Jude’s anger at the intruders is far from that. But his mercy for the doubters (verse 22) is close to my own.

Check It Yourself

Look up: Jude 14–15, then Genesis 5:21–24.

You will find: Enoch quoted as a prophet in Jude, and in Genesis only a few lines about a man who walked with God. The words Jude quotes come from the book of Enoch, which you can read for free online.

Then read Jude 12 beside Ezekiel 34:2.

The Short Version

• Jude claims to be from Judah, my brother and the brother of James.
• His grandsons were poor farmers whose callused hands convinced an emperor they were harmless.
• The letter quotes the book of Enoch as prophecy and tells a story about Michael and the body of Moses from a lost book.
• Its strange flesh at Sodom points back to angels and humans crossing the line between them.
• It attacks shepherds who feed themselves, and ends with compassion and a blessing churches still use.