Tip:
Highlight text to annotate it
X
SECOND PETER AND JUDE A HYPOTHETICAL TEXT
Biblical scholars have long noted that there is a great deal of similarity between the
letters of 2 Peter and Jude. In fact, there are only 7 verses in the entire letter of
Jude that do not have a noticeable parallel in 2 Peter. (vss.3,4,14,15,16,22,&23) This
means that fully 72% of the verses in the letter of Jude have been incorporated into
the structure of 2 Peter. The question then becomes: why? What could
Peter be trying to communicate to us by incorporating so much of Jude's letter into his own? The
answer may be surprisingly simple: what we are supposed to do is finish the job. We may
easily combine the two letters in such a way that a third letter can be produced.
If, indeed, it can be demonstrated that the two letters "fit together" then what significance
is there in doing so? Before I get into the deeper issues, I will attempt to establish
that there are many passages in Peter's letter that make a great deal of sense if seen in
this light. In 2 Peter 1:12, the Apostle tells us that he will "always remind [us] of these
things..." as if to let us know that we (in the future) will need to be reminded about
something that we were once firmly established in. Again, in verse 13 he uses the words:
"I think it right that I refresh your memory". In verse 15, Peter even goes so far as to
say: "And I will take the necessary steps to ensure that after I am gone you will forever
be able to call these things to mind." This statement strongly implies that there will
be a need to be reminded about something, and Peter will see to it that we are able
to remember whatever it is he is talking about. In verse 16, Peter says: "We were not devisers
of cunningly concocted stories when we related to you the power and coming of our Lord Jesus
Christ,". Unless he thought he might be attacked on the grounds that his stories were somehow
"cunningly concocted", it would have been pointless to include such a statement. It
seems likely that there is some clever design behind his letter, but he makes it clear in
verses 20 & 21 that this cleverness would not have its origin with him, but rather with
the Holy Spirit. Another key point in Peter's letter is knowledge.
What knowledge is he talking about? In 2 Pet 2:20 the author says: "If they have escaped
the corruption of this world through the knowledge of our Lord and Savior Jesus Christ and are
caught up again in it and overwhelmed, they are ultimately worse off than they were prior
to knowing anything." Whatever this knowledge may be, not having it seems to allow us to
be entangled in worldliness. The answer is implicit in verse 2:21: "It would have been
better for them not to have had knowledge of the righteous path, than to have known
it and turned away from the holy ordinance that was passed on to them." We seem to have
lost the "way of righteousness" when we turned our backs on the "holy ordinance that was
passed on to [us]." Was there any point in the history of the Church when we rejected
any "holy ordinances? The answer will become obvious as this letter unfolds.
Peter tells us plainly in chapter 3 verses 1 & 2 that "...by this time, my beloved, this
has become my second letter to you. I have written two of them in order to restore you
to your earlier thinking and to stimulate you to wholesome thought." It is normally
understood that his first letter to us was 1 Peter, which is true enough, but it is possible
in light of the fact that another letter can be produced between this second letter and
Jude, that this verse may have a double meaning--which would serve the purpose of "stimulating [us]
to wholesome thinking." Verse 2 tells us what this "wholesome thinking" is: "I want you
to call to mind the words spoken in the past by the holy prophets, as well as the command
of our Lord and Savior given through your apostles." The emphasis on the prior way of
thinking seems to underscore the fact that this is an antidote for a people who will
have abandoned the original understanding of the Scriptures as a result of entanglements
in worldly affairs. Let us now move on to Jude. Jude's stated
purpose for writing to us is very much the same as Peter's. Verse 3 reads: "Dear friends,
although I was very eager to write to you about the salvation we share, I felt I had
to write and urge you to contend for the faith that was once for all entrusted to the saints."
In other words, there is some kind of teaching that was handed down to us that we must fight
for. This would tie in nicely with Peter’s desire for us to "call to mind the words that
were spoken in the past by the holy prophets as well as the injunction given us by our
Lord and Savior through his apostles." What is this teaching, then, that was lost? What
was entrusted to us? What commands did the Church reject? Why did Peter (or rather the
Holy Spirit) choose to structure his whole letter around the book of Jude?
The reason is that Jude is unique. Jude has one feature which distinguishes it from all
other books in the Bible. Jude deliberately and openly uses apocryphal books in his argument
to illustrate why we need to "contend for the faith that was once for all entrusted
to the saints." One of these books, called the Book of Enoch, was very popular and widely
read among early Christians. It was, nevertheless, rejected by the early Church Fathers. The
problem is: how can it be that Jude is authentic, and Enoch apocryphal? In verse 14, Jude says
"Enoch, the seventh from Adam, prophesied about these men." Evidently, Jude not only
believes that Enoch is a prophet, but also that that document is very ancient, because
he calls him the seventh from Adam. In verse 9, Jude quotes another apocryphal source,
which we do not currently have, but is believed by some to be a work called the Assumption
of Moses. Peter alludes to this verse in 2 Peter 2:11, but falls short of quoting it
explicitly. This has led biblical scholars to conclude that Peter did not approve of
apocryphal sources. The fact that he omits Enoch's prophecy probably was the one thing
that allowed the book to be lost to the entire Western world until it was found in Ethiopia
in the eighteenth century, where it had been in the canon of the Ethiopic Church all along.