Jude: Becoming a Reader

Sources: Karl Barth, "The Strange New World of the Bible," in The World of God and the Word of Man (Harper, 1957); 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; John O'Keefe and R.R. Reno, Sanctified Vision: An Introduction to Early Christian Interpretation of the Bible (Johns Hopkins, 2005).

Reading: Jude.

I. What's in These Lectures
Highlights and important takeaways from the biblical books themselves.
A range of critical issues and considerations when interpreting the New Testament.
These lectures supplement your other sources rather than replacing them.

II. The Life of a Text: Reading
It is one thing to read, but another thing to be a reader.
Reading (or interpretation, or exegesis) is not just a technique but a skill, and ultimately a form of wisdom.
Reading is hard! The frustration and exhilaration of reading owe to the demands it makes on us.
This course is a pilgrimmage through the New Testament church to the Kingdom of God.

How do you read well? Some pointers:

1. Be observant. Look for details of grammar, vocabulary, and tone.
2. Treat the Bible as ordinary language, of ordinary people writing in the Spirit to ordinary people.
3. Know what the words mean. Look up unfamiliar vocabulary.
4. If you're lost, go back and start again carefully.
5. Don't let experts explain everything. Keep them in the background and the text in the foreground.
6. Don't just read verses in isolation.
7. The text means what it means, not what you want it to mean.
8. The text might not mean what you expect it to mean.
9. These writings were originally read aloud, so 'read orally.'

III. The Family of a Text: Genre
Genre is the literary class of a text. A genre's conventions structure a text and guide proper interpretation,

like the legend of a map.
There are 'family resemblances' among genres.
Jude's genre is an encyclical letter.
Our communications adapt genres, combine them, and subvert them.

IV. The Goal of a Text: Occasion and Audience
People write for specific reasons (goals) under specific circumstances, often unstated.

So good readers want to gather a writing's occasion and purpose as best we can.
Clues in Jude: 3-4.

People write to specific, or 'implied', audiences.

Clues in Jude: 1, 12.
Jude's readers are 'insiders' who share knowledge of their situation. We outsiders must draw inferences.
Jude also seems to expect its readers to know what to do with literary references that are both biblical and nonbiblical.

Yet texts overflow their original occasions and audiences, sometimes intentionally.

As an encyclical, Jude is an 'open letter' from a church leader to more than just its target community.
The misbehaviors it lists are classic (5-13, 16-19), calling for classic responses (14-15, 20-23).
So Jude focuses on specific circumstances of apostolic churches, yet offers an expansive view beyond.

This overflow is fundamental to the character of Holy Scripture.

The Bible is for the one, whole, universal, original Church of Jesus Christ.
So Christians today read Jude as in some sense to and for us
(so 24-25's popular benediction).

V. Jude's Message: Fight Opposition with Mercy
Written by James' brother, thus Jesus' brother?
Jude is addressing faithlessness and apostasy.

Warnings like these occur throughout the NT. The problem is endemic, perennial, not just recent nor just old-covenant.

Jude puts it in 'biblical' perspective using many earlier sources:

Israelite tradition about angels sinning with human women (Gen 6:1-4, Enoch 10:13-16, 12:5),
a story of Michael battling over the body of Moses (Assumption of Moses?),
Sodom (Genesis 19), Balaam son of Peor (Numbers 31), and Korah (Numbers 16).
(A puzzling lacuna: Why not the story of Judas Iscariot, either here or in 2 Peter?)

The 'problem Christians' are fakers or deniers: dreamers opposed to reality, defilers of what's pure, insubordinate of lordship, blasphemers of glory (8).

These are decent ways to characterize sin:
a futile stance against what C.S. Lewis called "the Tao," the way things are.

These stories from Israel's Torah and its extrabiblical 'apocrypha'

illustrate God's, i.e. Jesus' (not our), punishment on beneficiaries of grace for their later disobedience (5, cf. Enoch 1 and 5 in Jude 14-15; 1 Cor 10:1-5 is similar).

In such a situation, his readers should

contend for the faith (3), wait faithfully for God's final judgment (17-21), and reach out in mercy to those at risk (22-23).

After all the vitriol, this is a gracious follow-up!

Has Jesus inspired it?
Assurance and strength to do this come from God and Jesus (24-25).
Jude's 'happy ending' is confident that his audience will meet the challenge.

VI. The Ripples of a Text: Application
Application goes beyond gathering the text's meaning to explore its deeper significance.

Wisdom is called for, not just skill.

Texts ripple outward: they matter beyond their original contexts.

Two opposite interpretative failures are 'overinterpretation' (eisegesis, false positive) and 'underinterpretation' (false negative).

Jude writes "of our common salvation" (3) that's shared with his audience, with earlier Israel (5), with all of the 'once-for-all' faith.

Applying this passage is about discerning those significant connections.
Jude thinks its source material applies to the churches' situation. Do we think it applies to ours? Why?

Becoming a reader and applier of the Bible demands and confers wisdom regarding those ripples:

What are our identities as members of Christ's fellowship, intended members, and/or opponents?
What's the identity and character of God who created and redeems and perfects us for that eternal fellowship?
What are our roles in that fellowship, perhaps when our situation is like the church here in Jude?
What is scripture's place in God's household and mission, especially our corner of it?

The New Testament writers exemplify that wisdom.

Read them to learn not just what they want to tell you,
but also how to think like them!

More simply, here are four great Bible study questions from missionary friend Jim Yost:

What does this passage say about God?
What does it say about me?
What will I do with what I've learned?
Whom will I tell?