Living in the Apocalypse: 2 Peter and Jude

Living in the Apocalypse:
2 Peter and Jude

Sources: Willis Barnstone, ed., The Other Bible: Ancient Alternative Scriptures (HarperCollins, 1984); Bart Ehrman, The New Testament: A Historical Introduction to the Early Christian Writings, 3d ed. (Oxford, 2004); I. Howard Marshall et al., Exploring the New Testament: A Guide to the Letters and Revelation (IVP, 2002), chapter 21.

Becoming a Character
These writings narrate current events according to their community's paradigmatic stories of Israel and Jesus.
Churches and believers thus become 'characters' in the gospel story.
The narrative seems fundamental rather than just a useful literary device.

Ultimate Struggles: 2 Peter
Early Christians were often tempted to return to their old lives (2 Pet 1:5-11).
Early Christians soon developed into rival schools of Christian faith (2 Pet 2, 3:3, 3:16-17).
2 Peter reminds, encourages, and warns according to "the apostles'" tradition (2 Pet 1:12-21, 3:1-2).
The struggles of Jesus' disciples are framed in a Jewish-Christian apocalyptic context:: Rivals are false prophets and teachers of "hairesis" (2:1) as in heaven's and Israel's past (2:4-16), animals (2:12), captives and captors (2:18-19), scoffers (3:3), ignorant, unstable, and lawless (3:16-17).
Disciples are granted life, godliness, promises of deliverance, sharers in divinity, entrance into the kingdom of Jesus Christ (1:3-4, 11)
Disciples are called to virtue, preparedness, and holiness (1:5-11, 3:11-15).
The end of both groups is the last judgment of the Lord Jesus (3:1-13).
The delay in that judgment is God's mercy on those who can repent (3:8-9).
How would the rivals have understood themselves? Do we frame such struggles the same way today? Should we?

Israelite tradition about angels sinning with human women (1 Enoch 10, 12).
Michael's battle over the body of Moses (Assumption of Moses).
Sodom (Gen 19), Balaam son of Peor (Num 31), and Korah (Num 16).
(A puzzling lacuna: Why not the story of Judas Iscariot, here or in 2 Peter?)
These comprise three illustrations of God's punishment on beneficiaries of grace for their later disobedience (5, cf. 1 Enoch 1 and 5 in Jude 14-15). Readers should heed them by contending for the faith (3), waiting faithfully for eschatological judgment (17-21), and reaching out in witness (22-23). Their strength to do this comes from God and Jesus (24-25). Is Jude unacceptably polemical ("judgmental") for today's Christians? (The lectionary ignores it.)