Other Issues

Issues with Jude: Dispensing with Jude

Josiah E. Verkaik

Among the twenty-seven books of the traditional New Testament, the Epistle of Jude occupies an anomalous position. Comprising just twenty-five verses (roughly 460 words in Greek), it contains no narrative of Jesus’ ministry, no independent dominical sayings, no exposition of the apostolic kerygma, and no identifiable historical or geographical destination. Instead, it is a brief, fierce polemical tract directed against unnamed antinomian teachers, constructed largely by weaving together warnings from the Hebrew Scriptures with explicit citations and midrashic traditions drawn from Second Temple Jewish pseudepigrapha.

Within the framework of the Apostolic Proximity Principle set forth in The Case for the Core New Testament, New Testament writings are evaluated along a spectrum of historical and canonical authority based on their demonstrable connection to the original apostolic witnesses, their earliest reception across the church, their literary independence, and their fidelity to foundational apostolic teaching.¹ Even when the seven Catholic Epistles are grouped broadly as secondary authorities alongside the core foundation of Luke-Acts and the Pauline corpus, closer inspection reveals that the seven do not stand on equal footing. Whereas 1 Peter and 1 John enjoyed early, widespread, and uncontested recognition across the second-century church, Jude—along with 2 Peter, which borrows nearly its entire second chapter from Jude—remained on the fringes of Christian consciousness for centuries.

Three converging lines of historical and philological evidence call into question whether Jude belongs in a critically vetted New Testament canon at all:

1. Internal non-apostolic posture and certification of pseudepigrapha: The author explicitly distinguishes himself from the apostles, looks back on the apostolic era in the past tense, and treats two non-canonical pseudepigraphical works—1 Enoch and the Assumption of Moses—as authentic historical narrative and genuine antediluvian prophecy.
2. A centuries-long contested reception (Antilegomena) and a canonical double standard: Jude lacks any verifiable quotation in the entire second century, was classified among the disputed writings (antilegomena) by Eusebius, was excluded from the Syriac Peshitta and the Antiochene school, and was explicitly rejected by many early Christians—as Jerome, Didymus the Blind, and later Martin Luther documented—precisely because of its reliance on apocryphal literature. Moreover, the church’s exclusion of First Clement for certifying the Greco-Roman myth of the Phoenix exposes a striking canonical inconsistency when compared with the retention of Jude despite its certification of First Enoch.
3. A uniquely troubled manuscript transmission and textual instability: The earliest surviving Greek copy of Jude, the Bodmer composite codex Papyrus 72 (P72), is not a canonical New Testament collection at all, but an early fourth-century private miscellany binding Jude alongside apocryphal and hagiographical tracts, copied by a scribe whose linguistic limitations and theological alterations produced what Kurt and Barbara Aland classified as a “free” text. Nowhere is Jude’s textual instability clearer than at Jude 1:5, where the manuscript and patristic tradition fractures into four competing subjects (“the Lord,” “Jesus” / “Joshua,” “God,” and “God Christ”), and where the recent decision of NA28 and UBS5 to replace “the Lord” with “Jesus” illustrates the methodological pitfalls of relying on global algorithmic coherence (CBGM) at the expense of internal stylistic uniformity and local transcriptional probability.

Internal Evidence: Non-Apostolic Posture and Literary Dependence

Before consulting external canon lists or patristic testimonies, the internal evidence of the letter itself establishes that its author did not write as one of the Twelve Apostles. The opening salutation identifies the writer in terms of familial association rather than apostolic commission:

“Jude, a servant of Jesus Christ and brother of James, to those who are called, beloved in God the Father and kept for Jesus Christ:” (Jude 1:1, AICNT)

Had the author been the apostle “Judas of James” (traditionally identified as Judas Thaddaeus in Luke 6:16 and Acts 1:13), claiming the title “apostle of Jesus Christ” would have carried obvious weight in a sharp disciplinary polemic against false teachers. Instead, the writer styles himself simply “a servant of Jesus Christ and brother of James”—identifying himself with Judas, one of the brothers of Jesus mentioned in the Gospels (Matt 13:55; Mark 6:3) and the brother of James the leader of the Jerusalem church (Acts 15:13; Gal 1:19).²

Even more decisive is the author’s retrospective appeal to the apostles in verses 17–18, where he addresses his readers as a generation looking back on the foundational preaching of the apostles and places himself outside the apostolic college:

“But you, beloved, remember the words which were spoken beforehand by the apostles of our Lord Jesus Christ, how they said to you, ‘In the last time there will be scoffers, following after their own ungodly desires.’” (Jude 1:17–18, AICNT)

In both tense and pronoun (“remember the words which were spoken beforehand by the apostles... how they said to you”), the author treats the apostolic preaching as an established past deposit and distinguishes himself from “the apostles of our Lord Jesus Christ.” As numerous commentators from Desiderius Erasmus and Martin Luther to modern critical scholars such as Richard Bauckham and Bart Ehrman have observed, this retrospective formula is the natural idiom of a post-apostolic writer appealing to an earlier authoritative generation—or of a later pseudepigrapher adopting the persona of James’s brother while inadvertently betraying a late first- or early second-century historical horizon.³

The letter also lacks any specific geographical, ecclesial, or pastoral setting. Unlike the genuine letters of Paul, which address concrete congregations in Rome, Corinth, Galatia, Philippi, and Thessalonica with identifiable coworkers, travel plans, and local circumstances, Jude’s address—“to those who are called”—is entirely generic. Nothing in the text links the tract to a verifiable first-century church or documents how it entered circulation.

Finally, Jude’s literary relationship with 2 Peter confirms that even within the post-apostolic era, Jude’s handling of its sources provoked unease. Modern source criticism has reached a virtual consensus that 2 Peter 2:1–3:3 is literarily dependent upon Jude 4–18.⁴ What makes this redactional relationship canonically revealing is not merely what the author of 2 Peter borrowed, but what he systematically excised. While incorporating Jude’s denunciations of the false teachers, the fallen angels, Sodom and Gomorrah, and Balaam almost verse by verse, the author of 2 Peter deliberately stripped out Jude’s explicit quotation of 1 Enoch (compare Jude 14–15 with 2 Pet 2:17) and softened Jude’s citation of the dispute between Michael and the devil over the body of Moses from the Assumption of Moses into a vague generalization (compare Jude 9 with 2 Pet 2:11). Even the earliest known Christian writer to use Jude recognized that its overt reliance on pseudepigraphical legends was a liability that needed to be sanitized.

Certification of Second Temple Pseudepigrapha as History and Prophecy

The central internal difficulty of the Epistle of Jude is not that its author was familiar with non-canonical Jewish literature, nor that he employed a passing literary allusion. Rather, Jude explicitly certifies two Second Temple pseudepigraphical compositions as authentic historical reportage and genuine prophetic speech.

The Explicit Citation of 1 Enoch 1:9 in Jude 14–15

In verses 14–15, Jude introduces a verbatim quotation from the Book of Enoch (1 Enoch 1:9) with an unmistakable chronological and prophetic validation:

“Now Enoch, the seventh from Adam, also prophesied about these men, saying, ‘Behold, the Lord came with ten thousands of his holy ones, to execute judgment upon all, and to convict all the ungodly of all their ungodly deeds which they have committed in an ungodly way, and of all the harsh things which ungodly sinners have spoken against him.’” (Jude 1:14–15, AICNT)

Compare Jude’s Greek text with the opening oracle of 1 Enoch 1:9 as preserved in the Ethiopic version, the Greek Codex Panopolitanus (Akhmim fragment), and the Aramaic Dead Sea Scrolls fragments from Qumran Cave 4 (4Q201 / 4QEna ar I iv 6–9), here rendered in R. H. Charles’s standard translation:

“And behold! He cometh with ten thousands of His holy ones to execute judgement upon all, and to destroy all the ungodly: and to convict all flesh of all the works of their ungodliness which they have ungodly committed, and of all the hard things which ungodly sinners have spoken against Him.” (1 Enoch 1:9, trans. R. H. Charles)⁵

Three features of Jude’s citation warrant close attention:

1. Historical attribution to the antediluvian patriarch: Jude does not say, “As it is written in the book attributed to Enoch,” nor does he frame the quotation as a literary parable. By specifying “Enoch, the seventh from Adam” (ἕβδομος ἀπὸ Ἀδάμ, hebdomos apo Adam—itself a phrase drawn from 1 Enoch 60:8 and 93:3, counting Adam, Seth, Enosh, Kenan, Mahalalel, Jared, and Enoch in Gen 5:3–24), the author affirms that the historical seventh patriarch before the Flood personally uttered these words.
2. Prophetic formula (προεφήτευσεν): Jude uses the verb proephēteusen (“prophesied”), the standard early Christian verb for inspired prophetic prediction (compare Matt 11:13; 15:7; 1 Pet 1:10).
3. The actual date of 1 Enoch: Archaeological and philological evidence demonstrates beyond dispute that the Book of the Watchers (1 Enoch 1–36), from which Jude quotes 1:9, was not written by an antediluvian patriarch thousands of years before Abraham. It is a composite Jewish apocalyptic work composed in Aramaic during the Hellenistic period, between the third and second centuries BCE.⁶ Eleven Aramaic manuscripts of 1 Enoch were recovered at Qumran (4Q201–4Q212), with the oldest copy (4Q201) paleographically dated to the early second century BCE.⁷

When a writer attributes a Hellenistic pseudepigraphon from the third century BCE to the historical seventh patriarch from Adam and declares that this patriarch “prophesied” those words, the writer has mistaken a Second Temple literary forgery for authentic primordial prophecy.

Dependence on the Watchers Mythology (1 Enoch 6–19) in Jude 6

Jude’s reliance on 1 Enoch is not confined to the direct quotation in verses 14–15. Earlier in the letter, verse 6 summarizes the core myth of the Book of the Watchers (1 Enoch 6–19)—an elaborate folkloric expansion of Genesis 6:1–4 in which two hundred rebel angels descend to Mount Hermon, take human wives, sire giant offspring, and are subsequently bound by the archangels in subterranean darkness until the final judgment:

“And the angels who did not keep their own domain, but abandoned their proper dwelling, he has kept in eternal bonds under darkness for the judgment of the great day;” (Jude 1:6, AICNT)

The verbal and conceptual dependence on 1 Enoch 10 is direct and specific:

“And again the Lord said to Raphael: ‘Bind Azazel hand and foot, and cast him into the darkness: and make an opening in the desert, which is in Dudael, and cast him therein... And on the day of the great judgement he shall be cast into the fire... And when their sons have slain one another, and they have seen the destruction of their beloved ones, bind them fast for seventy generations in the valleys of the earth, till the day of their judgement and of their consummation, till the judgement that is for ever and ever is consummated.’” (1 Enoch 10:4–6, 12, trans. R. H. Charles)⁸

Nowhere in the Hebrew Bible are rebel angels bound in subterranean chains of darkness awaiting “the judgment of the great day.” Jude presents this Enochic myth directly alongside the biblical accounts of the Exodus (v. 5) and Sodom and Gomorrah (v. 7) as an undifferentiated sequence of historical judgments.

The Assumption of Moses in Jude 9

In verse 9, Jude narrates a confrontation between the archangel Michael and the devil over the corpse of Moses:

“But Michael the archangel, when he disputed with the devil and argued about the body of Moses, did not dare to bring a judgment of blasphemy against him, but said, ‘May the Lord rebuke you!’” (Jude 1:9, AICNT)

The Hebrew Bible records only that Moses died in the land of Moab, that the Lord buried him in a valley opposite Beth-peor, and that “no one knows the place of his burial to this day” (Deut 34:5–6). Where, then, did Jude obtain the story of Michael debating the devil over Moses’ corpse? Early patristic scholars who still had access to the complete Greek text of the Assumption of Moses (also known as the Testament of Moses, a first-century Jewish apocryphon whose surviving sixth-century Milan palimpsest breaks off before the ending) unanimously identified it as Jude’s source.⁹

Clement of Alexandria (c. 150–215 AD), in his surviving Latin Adumbrationes (comments on the Catholic Epistles), noted succinctly on Jude 9:

“Here he confirms the Assumption of Moses (Hic confirmat Assumptionem Moysi).” (Clement of Alexandria, Fragments on the Epistle of Jude)¹⁰

Origen of Alexandria (c. 185–253 AD), in On First Principles (De Principiis), explicitly named the little treatise from which Jude drew the scene:

“And in the first place, in the book of Genesis, the serpent is described as having seduced Eve; regarding whom, in the work entitled The Ascension of Moses—a little treatise, of which the Apostle Jude makes mention in his Epistle—the archangel Michael, when disputing with the devil regarding the body of Moses, says that the serpent, being inspired by the devil, was the cause of Adam and Eve’s transgression.” (Origen, De Principiis 3.2.1)¹¹

Didymus the Blind (c. 313–398 AD), head of the catechetical school at Alexandria, likewise recorded that Jude’s critics pointed directly to this verse as proof that the epistle relied on apocryphal fabrication.¹²

The Patristic Dilemma: Tertullian and Augustine on Jude’s Apocryphal Source

Jude’s explicit endorsement of 1 Enoch created an acute theological dilemma for the early church: if Jude is canonical Scripture, must 1 Enoch also be accepted as inspired prophecy? Conversely, if 1 Enoch is a post-diluvian apocryphal fabrication, how can an epistle that certifies it as authentic antediluvian prophecy retain canonical authority?

In early third-century North Africa, Tertullian of Carthage embraced the first horn of the dilemma. In On the Apparel of Women (De Cultu Feminarum 1.3), Tertullian argued that 1 Enoch must be received as Scripture precisely because Jude—along with the Enochic explanation of cosmetic arts and fallen angels—attested it, even while conceding that the book was excluded from the Jewish scriptural chest (armarium) because no antediluvian book could plausibly have survived Noah’s Flood:

“I am aware that the Scripture of Enoch, which has assigned this order of action to angels, is not received by some, because it is not admitted into the Jewish chest, either. I suppose they did not think that, having been published before the deluge, it could have safely survived that world-wide calamity, the abolisher of all things. If that is their reason for rejecting it, let them recall that Noah, the great-grandson of Enoch himself, survived the deluge... Could he not have renewed it under the inspiration of the Spirit, after it had been destroyed by the violence of the deluge, just as, after the destruction of Jerusalem by the Babylonian storming of it, every document of the Jewish literature is generally agreed to have been restored through Ezra? But since Enoch in the same Scripture has preached likewise concerning the Lord, nothing at all must be rejected by us which pertains to us; and we read that ‘every Scripture suitable for edification is divinely inspired.’ By the Jews it may now seem to have been rejected for that very reason, just like almost all the other portions which speak of Christ... To these considerations is added the fact that Enoch possesses a testimony in the Apostle Jude.” (Tertullian, On the Apparel of Women 1.3)¹³

Tertullian’s special pleading—conjecturing either that Noah memorized 1 Enoch across the Flood or that Enoch’s text was miraculously reconstructed—underscores the historical impossibility that ancient readers immediately recognized.

Two centuries later, Augustine of Hippo rejected Tertullian’s attempt to canonize 1 Enoch, acknowledging that the books circulating under Enoch’s name were filled with fabulous tales and lacked any verifiable chain of transmission from antiquity. Yet because the Western synods of Hippo and Carthage had by then included Jude in the canon, Augustine was forced to conjecture that the historical Enoch must have written some genuine divine truths alongside the apocryphal fables:

“We cannot deny that Enoch, the seventh from Adam, left some divine writings, for this is asserted by the Apostle Jude in his canonical epistle. But it is not without reason that these writings have no place in that canon of Scripture which was preserved in the temple of the Hebrew people by the diligence of successive priests; for their antiquity brought them under suspicion, and it was impossible to ascertain whether these were genuinely his words, and they were not brought forward as genuine by those who were found to have carefully preserved the canonical series of books.” (Augustine, City of God 15.23.4)¹⁴

And again in Book 18 of The City of God:

“What then of the writings which are brought forward under the name of Enoch, the seventh from Adam? Seeing that the Apostle Jude testifies in his epistle that Enoch prophesied of such things, why are those writings not held as canonical, unless because they lack the authority which comes from a verified transmission, and because the things which he did write have been swollen by false additions?” (Augustine, City of God 18.38)¹⁵

With the discovery of the Aramaic Dead Sea Scrolls at Qumran, Augustine’s harmonization is no longer historically tenable. The exact sentence quoted in Jude 14–15 (1 Enoch 1:9) is an organic part of the opening introduction to the Book of the Watchers (1 Enoch 1–36)—the very Hellenistic pseudepigraphon composed in the third or second century BCE. It is not an isolated primordial fragment preserved from before the Flood; it is the literary frame of a Second Temple pseudepigraphical apocalypse.

Apologetic Evasions vs. Literary Genre: Paul’s Pagan Poets and Jude’s Prophetic Formula

Defenders of Jude’s canonical status frequently compare Jude 14–15 to the Apostle Paul’s citations of Greek poets in Acts 17:28 (Aratus’s Phaenomena 5 and Cleanthes’ Hymn to Zeus), 1 Corinthians 15:33 (Menander’s comedy Thais), and Titus 1:12 (Epimenides of Crete). The comparison fails on every philological and historical count:

When Paul tells the Athenians on the Areopagus, “as even some of your own poets have said, ‘For we are also his offspring’” (Acts 17:28), he accurately identifies Aratus as a Greek poet and uses a Stoic commonplace to establish a point of contact with his pagan audience. He does not mistake a Hellenistic forgery for a primordial patriarch, nor does he place mythological angelology on the same historical plane as the Exodus.

The Canonical Double Standard: First Clement’s Phoenix vs. Jude’s First Enoch

The anomaly of Jude’s inclusion in the traditional twenty-seven-book canon becomes even sharper when we compare Jude with the earliest surviving non-canonical Christian epistle: First Clement (1 Clement), the letter sent by the church of Rome (traditionally drafted by Clement of Rome) to the church of Corinth around 95–96 AD.

First Clement’s Superior Early Attestation and Ecclesiastical Standing

Measured by every external historical criterion—date, geographical provenance, second-century attestation, liturgical reading, and inclusion in major biblical codices—First Clement possessed a far stronger claim to early ecclesiastical recognition than the Epistle of Jude:

1. Verifiable first-century origin and destination: First Clement was written in Rome around 95–96 AD to the church at Corinth, addressing a specific presbyterial crisis in continuity with Paul’s Corinthian correspondence (1 Clem. 47:1–3). Jude has no known provenance, date, or addressee.
2. Continuous second-century attestation: Whereas Jude is never once quoted or named by any writer in the first half of the second century, First Clement is echoed extensively by Polycarp of Smyrna (c. 110–135 AD), praised by Hegesippus (c. 160 AD), attested as read publicly in the Corinthian church by Dionysius, Bishop of Corinth (c. 170 AD), cited by Irenaeus of Lyons (c. 180 AD) as a powerful witness to apostolic tradition (Against Heresies 3.3.3), and repeatedly quoted by Clement of Alexandria (c. 190–210 AD) under the title of “the Apostle Clement” (Stromata 4.17.105).¹⁶ As the great Cambridge textual critic Brooke Foss Westcott observed regarding Jude’s second-century silence:

“The history of the Epistle of Jude is characterized by a remarkable silence in the earliest age. No clear reference to it is found in the Apostolic Fathers... Throughout the second century its history is a blank until its close.” (Brooke Foss Westcott, A General Survey of the History of the Canon of the New Testament)¹⁷

3. Public liturgical reading across the churches: Eusebius of Caesarea, writing around 325 AD, contrasted the disputed status of Jude with the nearly universal public reading of First Clement:

“There is extant an epistle of this Clement which is acknowledged to be genuine, of great length and of remarkable merit, which he wrote in the name of the church of Rome to the church of Corinth, at a time when a sedition had arisen in the latter church. We know that this epistle has been publicly used in very many churches both in former times and in our own.” (Eusebius, Ecclesiastical History 3.16)¹⁸

4. Inclusion in fifth-century New Testament codices and Syriac Bibles: In the fifth-century Codex Alexandrinus (A / 02), one of the four great pandect uncial Bibles of antiquity, First Clement and Second Clement are bound directly inside the New Testament after the Book of Revelation and listed in the codex’s table of contents as part of the New Testament. In the sixth-century Syriac New Testament manuscript Add. 14470 (University Library, Cambridge), 1–2 Clement are placed immediately after the Catholic Epistles and before the Pauline Epistles, while Didymus the Blind in Alexandria and the Ethiopian Orthodox Tewahedo broader canon likewise reckoned Clement among canonical writings.¹⁹

Why Was First Clement Excluded? The Myth of the Arabian Phoenix (1 Clement 25–26)

If First Clement had earlier attestation, clearer provenance, wider liturgical reading, and a place in Codex Alexandrinus, why do modern Protestant, Catholic, and Orthodox scholars universally agree that it belongs outside the New Testament canon?

Beyond the fact that Clement wrote in the name of the Roman church rather than as one of the Twelve Apostles, First Clement contains an unmistakable internal marker of sub-apostolic fallibility: in chapters 25–26, Clement solemnly presents the Greco-Egyptian legend of the Phoenix—a mythical bird said to live five hundred years in Arabia, build a nest of frankincense and myrrh upon its death, generate a worm from its decaying flesh that grows wings, and carry its parent’s bones to the altar of the Sun in Heliopolis—as literal biological and historical fact proving the resurrection of the dead:

“Let us consider the marvellous sign which is seen in the regions of the east, that is, in the parts about Arabia. There is a bird, which is named the phoenix. This, being the only one of its kind, liveth for five hundred years; and when it hath now reached the time of its dissolution that it should die, it maketh for itself a coffin of frankincense and myrrh and the other spices, into the which in the fulness of time it entereth, and so it dieth. But, as the flesh rotteth, a certain worm is engendered, which is nurtured from the moisture of the dead creature and putteth forth wings. Then, when it is grown lusty, it taketh up that coffin where are the bones of its parent, and carrying them journeyeth from the country of Arabia even unto Egypt, to the city called Heliopolis; and in open day, in the sight of all men, flying unto the altar of the sun, it layeth them thereupon; and this done, it setteth forth to return. So the priests inspect the registers of the times, and they find that it hath come when the five hundredth year is completed. Do we then think it to be a great and marvellous thing, if the Creator of the universe shall bring about the resurrection of them that have served Him with holiness in the assurance of a good faith, seeing that He showeth to us even by a bird the magnificence of His promise?” (1 Clement 25:1–26:1, trans. J. B. Lightfoot)²⁰

In sharing this credulous belief in the Phoenix, Clement was repeating a widespread natural-history error of the Greco-Roman world endorsed by Herodotus (Histories 2.73), Pliny the Elder (Natural History 10.2), Tacitus (Annals 6.28), and later echoed by Tertullian (On the Resurrection of the Flesh 13) and Cyril of Jerusalem (Catechetical Lectures 18.8). Yet later Christian scholars recognized that an inspired canonical document cannot certify a pagan mythological fable as a historical work of the Creator. In the ninth century, Patriarch Photius of Constantinople highlighted this exact defect in his critical review of First Clement:

“Nevertheless, in this epistle a few things may be found worthy of censure: first, that he asserts there are other worlds beyond the ocean; second, that he introduces the story of the phoenix as a true fact...” (Photius of Constantinople, Bibliotheca, Codex 126)²¹

The Inconsistency Exposed

Here the canonical double standard stands in full view. Every scholar recognizes that First Clement’s endorsement of the Arabian Phoenix as a literal biological sign demonstrates that Clement, however devout and close to the apostolic age, was a fallible post-apostolic writer capable of mistaking popular ancient folklore for factual reality.

Yet what First Clement 25–26 does with Greco-Roman natural folklore, Jude 6, 9, and 14–15 does with Second Temple Jewish folklore:

• First Clement certifies the Arabian Phoenix as literal biological fact; Jude certifies the Enochic Watchers myth (1 Enoch 6–19), the dispute over Moses’ corpse (Assumption of Moses), and a third-century BCE Hellenistic apocalypse (1 Enoch 1:9) as literal historical fact and authentic antediluvian prophecy.
• Both works were written by non-apostles who explicitly distinguish themselves from the original apostles (1 Clem. 42, 44, 47; Jude 1, 17–18).
• Of the two, First Clement actually possesses vastly stronger second-century attestation and a known historical setting, whereas Jude was widely rejected across the ancient church precisely because of its apocryphal citations.

To exclude First Clement while elevating Jude to foundational canonical status is a clear breach of historical consistency. Both writings belong in the same category of early, historically informative, but non-canonical post-apostolic literature.

Contested Reception in the Early Church and the Reformation (Antilegomena)

Far from enjoying unanimous recognition in antiquity, the Epistle of Jude was one of the most persistently contested writings in Christian history. Across North Africa, Egypt, Palestine, Syria, Asia Minor, and sixteenth-century Europe, church fathers, canon lists, and translators either expressed explicit doubt about Jude or excluded it outright.

Origen of Alexandria: “If Indeed One Were to Accept the Epistle of Jude”

Although Origen of Alexandria (c. 185–253 AD) admired Jude’s compact phrasing and cited it in several works, he was acutely aware that its canonical standing was disputed across the churches. When quoting Jude 1 in his Commentary on Matthew (10.17), Origen praised the epistle as “filled with vigorous words of heavenly grace,” yet seven books later in the very same commentary (17.30), when appealing to Jude 6 alongside Paul’s epistles, he added an explicit canonical hedge:

“And if indeed one were to accept the Epistle of Jude, let him consider what will follow from the statement: ‘And the angels who did not keep their own principality, but abandoned their proper dwelling, he has kept in eternal chains under darkness until the judgment of the great day.’” (Origen, Commentary on Matthew 17.30)²²

Origen does not attach “if indeed one were to accept” (Εἰ δὲ καὶ τὴν Ἰούδα προσίετό τις ἐπιστολήν) to Luke, Acts, Romans, or 1 Corinthians. That conditional clause is the unmistakable signature of a disputed book whose authority could not be assumed in debate.

Eusebius of Caesarea: Classified Among the Antilegomena

In his Ecclesiastical History (c. 325 AD), Eusebius of Caesarea—who had access to the great library of Pamphilus and Origen at Caesarea—twice recorded Jude’s contested standing. At the conclusion of Book 2, reviewing the origin of the seven so-called Catholic Epistles, Eusebius wrote:

“Such is the story of James, whose is said to be the first of the ‘catholic’ epistles. However, it is to be observed that it is considered spurious; at least, not many of the ancients have mentioned it, as is also the case with the epistle that bears the name of Jude, which is also one of the seven called catholic; nevertheless we know that these also, with the rest, have been publicly used in most churches.” (Eusebius, Ecclesiastical History 2.23.25)²³

In his formal canonical catalogue in Book 3, Chapter 25, Eusebius excluded Jude from the universally acknowledged writings (homologoumena) and placed it squarely among the disputed writings (antilegomena):

“Among the disputed writings (antilegomena), which are nevertheless recognized by many, are extant the so-called epistle of James and that of Jude, also the second epistle of Peter, and those that are called the second and third of John, whether they belong to the evangelist or to another person of the same name.” (Eusebius, Ecclesiastical History 3.25.3)²⁴

Didymus the Blind and Jerome: Rejected Because It Quotes the Apocryphal Book of Enoch

Why did so many early Christians refuse to accept Jude? Two fourth-century patristic scholars state the reason in plain terms. In his Commentary on Jude (Enarratio in Epistolam Judae), Didymus the Blind (c. 313–398 AD) recorded that opponents of the epistle challenged its canonical authority specifically because of its reliance on apocryphal tradition regarding Moses’ body in verse 9:

“In reference to the content of this passage, some contradict the present Epistle and say that it is not canonical, because what is written here about the body of Moses is found nowhere in the ancient Scriptures, but is handed down in an apocryphal work.” (Didymus the Blind, Enarratio in Epistolam Judae, on Jude 9)²⁵

Even more famous is the testimony of Jerome (c. 347–420 AD), compiler of the Latin Vulgate. In chapter 4 of his biographical catalogue On Illustrious Men (De Viris Illustribus, 392–393 AD), Jerome acknowledged that Jude was “rejected by many” (a plerisque reicitur) for the exact reason modern textual and canonical scholars highlight today:

“Jude, the brother of James, left a short epistle which is reckoned among the seven catholic epistles, and because in it he quotes from the apocryphal book of Enoch, it is rejected by many; nevertheless by age and use it has gained authority and is reckoned among the Holy Scriptures.” (Jerome, On Illustrious Men 4)²⁶

Jerome’s candid admission exposes the mechanism by which Jude eventually entered the fourth-century Western canon: not because the historical objection to its apocryphal source was ever refuted, but because sheer custom (“by age and use,” vetustate iam et usu) overrode the critical objection.

Regional Exclusions: North Africa, Antioch, Asia Minor, and the Syriac Peshitta

The patristic reservations recorded by Origen, Eusebius, Didymus, and Jerome correspond directly to regional canon lists and biblical translations that omitted Jude altogether:

• The North African Cheltenham List (Mommsen Catalogue, c. 360 AD): This stichometric list of the Old and New Testaments from fourth-century North Africa enumerates the four Gospels, thirteen epistles of Paul, Acts, Revelation, three epistles of John, and two of Peter, while completely omitting James, Jude, and Hebrews.²⁷
• The School of Antioch (John Chrysostom and Theodore of Mopsuestia): As Bruce Metzger documented, John Chrysostom (c. 347–407 AD)—the most prolific Greek homilist of antiquity—makes approximately 11,000 quotations from the New Testament across his vast corpus without a single quotation from Jude, 2 Peter, 2–3 John, or Revelation. His contemporary Theodore of Mopsuestia (c. 350–428 AD) rejected the minor Catholic Epistles outright, and Severus of Antioch (d. 538 AD) likewise excluded Jude.²⁸
• Asia Minor (Amphilochius of Iconium, c. 395 AD): Writing his metrical catalogue Iambi ad Seleucum, Amphilochius noted regarding the Catholic Epistles: “Some say seven must be received, others say only three should be accepted—one of James, one of Peter, and one of John.”²⁹
• The Syriac Peshitta and the Church of the East: The earliest Syriac canon (represented by the fourth-century Doctrine of Addai and Aphrahat) contained no Catholic Epistles at all. When the standard Syriac Peshitta New Testament was established in the early fifth century, it admitted only three Catholic Epistles (James, 1 Peter, and 1 John) and permanently excluded Jude, 2 Peter, 2–3 John, and Revelation, resulting in a twenty-two-book New Testament that remains the official canon of the Assyrian Church of the East to the present day.³⁰ In the sixth century, Junilius Africanus (c. 551 AD), transmitting the teaching of Paul of Nisibis from the Syrian school at Nisibis in his Instituta Regularia Divinae Legis (1.6–7), explicitly placed Jude, 2 Peter, James, 2–3 John, and Revelation in a separate category of “middle authority” (mediae auctoritatis) added by only some to the foundational canon.³¹

The Sixteenth-Century Reassessment: Luther, Erasmus, and Cardinal Cajetan

When the revival of Greek philology and patristic studies in the sixteenth century allowed European scholars to re-examine the New Testament canon behind the late medieval Latin Vulgate, the ancient objections to Jude immediately resurfaced across both Protestant and Roman Catholic scholarship.

In his 1522 Preface to the Epistles of St. James and St. Jude in the Septembertestament, Martin Luther removed Hebrews, James, Jude, and Revelation from the numbered sequence of his German New Testament, placing them in an unnumbered appendix at the back of the volume. Luther laid out four specific, text-based arguments explaining why Jude cannot be reckoned among the foundational books that establish Christian doctrine:

“Concerning the Epistle of St. Jude, no one can deny that it is an extract or copy of St. Peter’s second epistle, so very like it are all the words. He also speaks of the apostles like a disciple who comes long after them and cites sayings and incidents that are found nowhere else in the Scriptures. This moved the ancient fathers to exclude this epistle from the main body of the Scriptures. Moreover, the Apostle Jude did not go to Greek-speaking lands, but to Persia, as it is said, so that he did not write Greek. Therefore, although I value this book, it is an epistle that need not be counted among the chief books which are supposed to lay the foundations of faith.” (Martin Luther, Preface to the Epistles of St. James and St. Jude, 1522)³²

Even though modern source criticism reverses the direction of literary dependence between Jude and 2 Peter (holding that 2 Peter 2 expanded Jude rather than Jude abbreviating 2 Peter), Luther’s remaining observations are incisive: (1) Jude 17–18 speaks of the apostles as a disciple coming long after them; (2) Jude cites sayings and incidents (1 Enoch and the Assumption of Moses) found nowhere in canonical Scripture; and (3) these exact defects moved the ancient church fathers to exclude the epistle from the primary Scriptures.

Luther was not alone. Six years earlier, in his landmark Annotationes in Novum Testamentum (1516), the Dutch humanist Desiderius Erasmus called attention to Jerome’s testimony that Jude was rejected by many on account of its apocryphal Enoch citation.³³ And on the Roman Catholic side—prior to the Council of Trent’s dogmatic decree of April 8, 1546—Thomas de Vio (Cardinal Cajetan), the foremost Thomistic theologian of the sixteenth century, argued in his 1529 Commentary on the Epistles that because Jerome recorded the ancient doubts regarding Jude, James, 2 Peter, 2–3 John, and Hebrews, these disputed books possess “less authority” (minoris auctoritatis) than the universally acknowledged books and cannot be used independently to establish articles of faith.³⁴

Textual Criticism of Jude, Part I: The Bodmer Miscellany (P72) and the Habits of Its Scribe

When we turn from canonical history to the Greek manuscript transmission of Jude, the evidence becomes even more problematic. Because Jude was so brief, contested, and liturgically neglected, its early manuscript base is extraordinarily narrow. And when we examine the single earliest surviving Greek copy of the complete epistle—Papyrus 72 (P72, Papyrus Bodmer VII–VIII)—both its physical codicology and the work of its copyist reveal a text transmitted in an apocryphal environment by an erratic hand.

Codicological Context: An Early Fourth-Century Apocryphal Miscellany

Discovered in Upper Egypt in 1952 as part of the Dishna / Bodmer find and published by Michel Testuz in 1959, Papyrus 72 (P72) is paleographically dated to the late third or early fourth century (c. 300–350 AD; the Münster Kurzgefasste Liste assigns III/IV, while Eric G. Turner, Pasquale Orsini, Willy Clarysse, and Brent Nongbri emphasize the early fourth-century codicological and paleographical features of the composite book).³⁵

Popular apologetic treatments frequently cite P72 as if it were an early “New Testament manuscript” testifying to the canonical status of Jude and 1–2 Peter. In reality, P72 is merely the modern Gregory-Aland catalogue number assigned to the three New Testament tracts extracted from a single eleven-tract composite papyrus codex (Bodmer Miscellaneous Codex, measuring roughly 16 × 14.5 cm), bound together in antiquity and sharing the same scribal hands, pagination patterns, and liturgical/ascetic compilation history.³⁶ The complete contents of this composite codex in their physical order are:

1. The Nativity of Mary (Protevangelium of James — a 2nd-century infancy apocryphon)
2. The Apocryphal Correspondence of Paul and the Corinthians (3 Corinthians — extracted from the apocryphal Acts of Paul)
3. The Eleventh Ode of Solomon (an early Christian pseudepigraphical ode)
4. The Epistle of Jude (P.Bodmer VII, paginated pp. 1–68 continuously with the preceding tracts!)
5. Melito of Sardis’s Homily on the Passover
6. A Fragment of a Christian Hymn
7. The Apology of Phileas (a martyr act of Phileas, Bishop of Thmuis, who was executed under Diocletian c. 304–307 AD—providing a firm terminus post quem for the final compilation of the codex in the fourth century!)
8. Psalms 33 and 34 (LXX)
9. First and Second Peter (P.Bodmer VIII)

Notice two critical codicological facts documented by Tommy Wasserman in his definitive monograph on the text of Jude:³⁷

First, the inclusion of the Apology of Phileas (martyred c. 304–307 AD) inside the composite codex confirms that the collection was assembled in the early fourth century, more than two hundred years after the apostolic age.

Second, within the codex, Jude is not even grouped with 1 and 2 Peter. Instead, the scribe who copied Jude (Scribe A, who also copied the Apocryphal Correspondence of Paul and the Corinthians and the Eleventh Ode of Solomon) copied Jude as the fourth tract in a continuous pagination sequence (pp. 1–68) alongside the Nativity of Mary, 3 Corinthians, and the Odes of Solomon, separated from 1–2 Peter by four non-biblical texts:

“Thus, in this ancient codex the Epistle of Jude was actually grouped together with the Nativity of Mary, the Apocryphal Correspondence of Paul to the Corinthians and the Eleventh Ode of Solomon, sharing the same pagination (1–68), whereas 1–2 Peter are found at the very end of the codex, copied by another scribe (B), who had however copied Jude previously in the collection.” (Tommy Wasserman, “Papyrus 72 and the Bodmer Miscellaneous Codex,” New Testament Studies 51, 2005)³⁸

Far from proving that Jude circulated inside a settled, canonical New Testament collection, the earliest surviving manuscript of Jude physically places it inside a private fourth-century Egyptian miscellany sandwiched between the Protevangelium of James, 3 Corinthians, the Odes of Solomon, and fourth-century hagiography.

The Scribe of P72: Carelessness, Coptic Interference, and “Free” Transmission

What of the textual quality of Jude inside P72? Every major papyrologist and textual critic who has examined the scribe of Jude and 1–2 Peter in P72 has remarked on the copyist’s defective command of Greek, high rate of mechanical blunders, and freedom in altering the text.

In his landmark 800-page study Scribal Habits in Early Greek New Testament Papyri, James R. Royse analyzed the singular readings and corrections of the six major early extensive papyri (P45, P46, P47, P66, P72, and P75). Regarding the scribe of P72, Royse noted that Greek was clearly not the copyist’s native tongue—evidenced by Coptic phonetic interference and wild orthographic substitutions—and that the manuscript contains a remarkably high rate of unintelligible nonsense readings and hasty self-corrections (52 in scribendo corrections out of 86 total corrections):

“The scribe of P72 makes a high percentage of orthographic singulars, as well as a high percentage of nonsense readings... It has often been observed that the scribe of P72 was probably a native Coptic speaker whose command of Greek was far from perfect. In many places the scribe writes what is strictly speaking nonsense, or commits blunders that betray haste and a lack of attention to the grammar of the text being copied.” (James R. Royse, Scribal Habits in Early Greek New Testament Papyri, 2008)³⁹

Cardinal Carlo Maria Martini, one of the editors of the UBS Greek New Testament committee who conducted a specialized study of P72, delivered an equally blunt assessment of the copyist:

“The examination of the singular readings of P72 leads us to recognize in the copyist a scribe of mediocre diligence and a quite uncertain knowledge of the Greek language.” (Carlo Maria Martini, Il problema della recensionalità del codice B alla luce del papiro Bodmer XIV, 1966)⁴⁰

Sakae Kubo, in his monograph P72 and the Codex Vaticanus (1965), demonstrated that while the underlying exemplar from which P72 was copied shared an ancient Alexandrian ancestor with Codex Vaticanus (B), the scribe of P72 himself introduced so many careless singular variants, omissions, additions, and harmonizations that Kubo had to systematically strip away all of P72’s singular readings before its underlying textual relationship to Vaticanus could even be evaluated:

“When the singular readings of P72 are set aside—readings which in large measure reflect the carelessness, orthographic peculiarities, and individualistic tendencies of its scribe—the underlying text of P72 reveals a close affinity with Codex Vaticanus (B).” (Sakae Kubo, P72 and the Codex Vaticanus, 1965, p. 25)⁴¹

Even more striking is the difference in textual quality within P72 between 1–2 Peter and Jude. Kurt Aland and Barbara Aland, in the standard reference manual The Text of the New Testament, classified the text of P72 as markedly wilder and freer in Jude than in 1–2 Peter:

“P72 (Papyrus Bodmer VII and VIII)... represents at least a ‘normal’ text in 1 and 2 Peter and a ‘free’ text in Jude.” (Kurt Aland and Barbara Aland, The Text of the New Testament, 2nd ed., 1989, p. 100)⁴²

Concrete Examples of P72’s Corruptions and Theological Alterations in Jude

A brief inspection of P72’s text across Jude’s twenty-five verses—including the exact lines surrounding Jude 5—shows why the Alands labeled its text of Jude “free” and why its uncorroborated readings cannot be trusted:

Furthermore, as Bart D. Ehrman and Tommy Wasserman have demonstrated, the scribe of P72 repeatedly altered divine titles at three parallel loci across the three Catholic Epistles in his codex—1 Peter 5:1, 2 Peter 1:2, and Jude 5—in order to heighten Christological identification with θεός (“God”) against third- and fourth-century doctrinal controversies:

“It is no accident that all three of these changes occur in the same manuscript, P72. In 1 Peter 5:1 the scribe changes ‘the sufferings of Christ’ (τῶν τοῦ Χριστοῦ παθημάτων) to ‘the sufferings of God’ (τῶν τοῦ θεοῦ παθημάτων). In 2 Peter 1:2 he omits the conjunction καί so that ‘knowledge of God and of Jesus our Lord’ becomes ‘knowledge of God, Jesus our Lord.’ And in Jude 5 he writes the unique conflation ‘God Christ’ (θεὸς Χριστός). These three singular or sub-singular alterations reflect the theological tendencies of the scribe who produced the manuscript.” (Bart D. Ehrman, The Orthodox Corruption of Scripture, 1993, pp. 85–86)⁴³

When a manuscript is physically an early fourth-century miscellany of apocryphal and hagiographical tracts, copied by a scribe whose command of Greek grammar was defective and who demonstrably rewrote three divine titles across his codex, it provides a vivid window into the fluid, poorly controlled textual environment in which the Epistle of Jude was transmitted.

Textual Criticism of Jude, Part II: The Jude 1:5 Variant Nexus and the Flawed NA28 / UBS5 Reversal

Nowhere do the textual instabilities of Jude converge more dramatically than in Jude 1:5. In his opening triad of historical warnings (vv. 5–7: the wilderness generation after the Exodus, the rebellious angels of 1 Enoch, and the cities of Sodom and Gomorrah), the author reminds his readers that the one who saved a people out of the land of Egypt afterward destroyed those who did not believe. Yet when we consult the surviving Greek manuscripts, ancient versions, and Church Fathers to determine who is named as the subject of the participle σώσας (“having saved”) and the verb ἀπώλεσεν (“destroyed”), the manuscript tradition splinters into four major competing readings, alongside multiple word-order permutations of the adverb ἅπαξ (“once for all”):

The Four Competing Subjects of Jude 1:5

The Earliest Extant Witness (c. 200 AD): Clement of Alexandria Reads “God” (ὁ θεός)

Discussions of Jude 5 often begin with fourth-century manuscripts (P72, Vaticanus, Sinaiticus) while overlooking the single earliest Greek witness to the verse in existence. Around 200 AD—more than a century before P72, Codex Vaticanus, or Codex Sinaiticus were copied—Clement of Alexandria quoted Jude 5–6 in Book 3 of his Paedagogus (The Instructor). In Clement’s Greek text, the subject of Jude 5 is neither “Jesus” nor “God Christ,” but ὁ θεός (“God”):

“For I would have you know, writes Jude, that God (ὁ θεός), having once saved a people out of the land of Egypt, afterward destroyed those who did not believe; and the angels who did not keep their own principality, but abandoned their proper dwelling, he has kept in eternal chains under darkness until the judgment of the great day.” (Clement of Alexandria, Paedagogus 3.8.44, c. 200 AD)⁴⁴

Clement’s citation proves two vital historical points:

1. In Alexandria itself around the year 200 AD—the very geographical region that later produced P72 and Codex Vaticanus—the earliest documented Greek text of Jude 5 read ὁ θεός (“God”), not Ἰησοῦς.
2. This early Alexandrian reading (ὁ θεός = Ο ΘΣ) directly explains how the erratic scribe of P72 a century later produced his singular conflation θεὸς Χριστός (ΘΣ ΧΣ): working from an exemplar or memory of ΘΣ (“God”) alongside a Christological gloss (ΧΣ), the scribe of P72 combined them into ΘΣ ΧΣ.

How Ancient Readers Understood Ἰησοῦς in Jude 5: Joshua Son of Nun (Ἰησοῦς = Yehoshua)

What of the manuscripts (A, B, 33, 81, 1739, vg) that read Ἰησοῦς (Latin Iesus)? In Koine Greek—both in the Septuagint (LXX) and throughout the New Testament—the Greek name Ἰησοῦς (Iēsous) is the exact, standard spelling of the Hebrew name Joshua (Yehoshua), the son of Nun who led the Israelites through the wilderness and into Canaan (compare Acts 7:45 and Hebrews 4:8, where the Greek text reads Ἰησοῦς and modern translations render “Joshua”).

Furthermore, in the wilderness rebellion narrated in Numbers 14, the two faithful spies who stood against the unbelieving Israelites who perished in the desert were Caleb and Joshua (Ἰησοῦς in the LXX), and it was Joshua who led the surviving people out of the wilderness into the Promised Land while the unbelievers died in the desert (Num 14:6–38; 26:65).

Crucially, we do not have to guess whether ancient readers who had Ἰησοῦς (Iesus) in their copies of Jude 5 understood it to mean Joshua son of Nun. In 393 AD, Jerome—the very scholar who produced the Latin Vulgate that reads Iesus at Jude 5—explicitly quoted Jude 5 in Against Jovinianus (Adversus Jovinianum 1.21) as a proof-text about Joshua son of Nun contrasted with Moses! Expounding why Moses (representing the Law) died in the land of Moab while Joshua (Ἰησοῦς / Iesus, representing the leader who brought the people across the Jordan) succeeded him, Jerome wrote:

“Know, moreover, that before they were married they were both equal; after marriage one was set below the other. And at the same time look at the meaning of the names: Moses was buried in the valley of the land of Moab; Joshua [Iesus], on the other hand, was buried in the hill-country of Ephraim... And in the Epistle of Jude we read: ‘Now I desire to remind you, though you once knew all things, that Joshua [Iesus], having saved the people out of the land of Egypt, the second time destroyed those who did not believe.’” (Jerome, Against Jovinianus 1.21)⁴⁵

Notice the significance of Jerome’s exegesis: the translator of the Latin Vulgate himself read Iesus (Ἰησοῦς) in Jude 5 as Joshua son of Nun! In modern scholarship, Allen Wikgren (one of the five editors of the UBS Greek New Testament committee) likewise argued in a dedicated study on Jude 5 that the variant Ἰησοῦς originated or was understood in connection with Joshua (Iēsous), the hero of the Exodus-wilderness narrative.⁴⁶

The Verdict of UBS1–UBS4 and NA26–NA27: Why Bruce Metzger and the Committee Printed [ὁ] κύριος

For most of the twentieth century—across the first four editions of the United Bible Societies’ Greek New Testament (UBS1–UBS4, 1966–1993) and the 26th and 27th editions of Nestle-Aland (NA26–NA27, 1979–1993)—the international editorial committee (Kurt Aland, Matthew Black, Carlo Maria Martini, Bruce M. Metzger, and Allen Wikgren) rejected Ἰησοῦς and printed [ὁ] κύριος (“the Lord”) in the main text of Jude 5.

In A Textual Commentary on the Greek New Testament (2nd ed., 1994, pp. 657–658), Bruce M. Metzger summarized the textual dilemma at Jude 5, reproducing both the majority decision for [ὁ] κύριος and the dissenting minority note:

“Despite the weighty attestation supporting Ἰησοῦς (A B 33 81 322 323 424^c 665 1241 1739 1881 2298 2344 vg cop^{sa, bo} eth Or^lat Cyril Jerome), a majority of the Committee was of the opinion that the reading was difficult to the point of impossibility, and explained its origin in terms of transcriptional oversight (ΚΣ being taken for ΙΣ), perhaps reinforced by the preceding mention of Ἰησοῦν Χριστόν at the end of ver. 4, or by typological comparison with Joshua (Ἰησοῦς), who led the people out of the wilderness into the promised land. The unique reading of P72 (θεὸς Χριστός, ‘God Christ’) is probably a blunder of the scribe, who showed a tendency toward theological reflection (compare 1 Pet 5.1 where he substituted θεοῦ for Χριστοῦ). Since the three other readings (κύριος, Ἰησοῦς, θεός) were widely current by the end of the fourth century, the Committee judged that the least unsatisfactory solution was to print [ὁ] κύριος (ℵ C* Ψ 307 436 453 614 1505 2412 Byz Lect syr^{ph, h}).” (Bruce M. Metzger, A Textual Commentary on the Greek New Testament, 2nd ed., 1994, p. 657)⁴⁷

Even Fenton John Anthony Hort (1881), although printing Ἰησοῦς because of his programmatic reliance on Codex Vaticanus (B), was so troubled by the internal incongruity of Ἰησοῦς in Jude 5 that he wrote a lengthy appendix note arguing that Ἰησοῦς was a primitive scribal blunder for an original ΟΤΙ Ο (“that He who saved...”).⁴⁸

Why Did NA28 (2012) and UBS5 (2014) Switch to Ἰησοῦς? A Critique of the CBGM Decision

In 2012 (NA28) and 2014 (UBS5), the text of the Catholic Epistles was revised to adopt the reconstruction of the Münster Institute’s Editio Critica Maior (ECM), which introduced a new computer-assisted methodology known as the Coherence-Based Genealogical Method (CBGM), developed by Gerd Mink.⁴⁹ As one of the thirty-four textual changes introduced in the Catholic Epistles of NA28/UBS5, the editors removed [ὁ] κύριος at Jude 5 and printed Ἰησοῦς.

Why did the ECM / NA28 / UBS5 editors reverse the judgment of NA26–NA27 and UBS1–UBS4, and why does that reversal fail under rigorous textual-critical scrutiny?

The ECM editors appealed to two primary considerations: (1) global genealogical coherence calculated by the CBGM software (because Codices A, B, and minuscule 1739 rank among the highest-scoring witnesses across the Catholic Epistles as a whole, the CBGM treats their agreement at Jude 5 as genealogically weighty); and (2) a mechanical application of the maxim lectio difficilior potior (“the more difficult reading is to be preferred”), arguing that since “Jesus” saving the people out of Egypt is unexpected, scribes must have changed a difficult Ἰησοῦς into the easier κύριος or θεός.

When examined closely, however, both pillars of the NA28/UBS5 decision collapse:

1. Unbroken Internal Authorial Style: Jude Writes Ἰησοῦς Χριστός 6 out of 6 Times and Never Bare Ἰησοῦς

The first fundamental flaw in the NA28/UBS5 decision is that it violates one of the most rigid, unbroken stylistic patterns in the entire New Testament. Across Jude’s twenty-five verses, the author refers to Jesus six undisputed times, and in every single instance (6 for 6 — 100%) he uses the full compound designation Ἰησοῦς Χριστός (“Jesus Christ”), never once the bare name Ἰησοῦς:

• Jude 1:1a: Ἰησοῦ Χριστοῦ δοῦλος (“a servant of Jesus Christ”)
• Jude 1:1b: Ἰησοῦ Χριστῷ τετηρημένοις (“kept for Jesus Christ”)
• Jude 1:4: τὸν μόνον δεσπότην καὶ κύριον ἡμῶν Ἰησοῦν Χριστὸν ἀρνούμενοι (“denying our only Master and Lord, Jesus Christ”)
• Jude 1:17: τῶν ἀποστόλων τοῦ κυρίου ἡμῶν Ἰησοῦ Χριστοῦ (“the apostles of our Lord Jesus Christ”)
• Jude 1:21: τὸ ἔλεος τοῦ κυρίου ἡμῶν Ἰησοῦ Χριστοῦ (“the mercy of our Lord Jesus Christ”)
• Jude 1:25: διὰ Ἰησοῦ Χριστοῦ τοῦ κυρίου ἡμῶν (“through Jesus Christ our Lord”)

Conversely, whenever the author of Jude refers to divine judgment or prophetic action in Old Testament or Enochic narratives, his standard noun is κύριος (“the Lord”):

• Jude 1:9: Ἐπιτιμήσαι σοι κύριος (“May the Lord rebuke you!”)
• Jude 1:14: Ἰδοὺ ἦλθεν κύριος ἐν ἁγίαις μυριάσιν αὐτοῦ (“Behold, the Lord came with ten thousands of his holy ones”)

In classical textual criticism (as Hort, Metzger, and J. K. Elliott emphasized), intrinsic probability asks what the author himself was most likely to write based on his established vocabulary and grammar. For an author who writes Ἰησοῦς Χριστός six out of six times when naming Jesus and κύριος when describing Old Testament judgment suddenly to drop Χριστός in verse 5 and call the actor of the Exodus by the bare name Ἰησοῦς—a usage that never occurs anywhere else in his letter or anywhere else in the New Testament—is completely contrary to Jude’s own idiom.

2. Paleographical Assimilation of Nomina Sacra (ΚΣ → ΙΣ) Triggered by the End of Verse 4

Why, then, did Ἰησοῦς (ΙΣ) arise in an early Alexandrian ancestor of A, B, and 1739? The answer lies in the physical layout of Greek manuscripts and the psychology of scribal copying. In ancient Greek manuscripts, divine names were not written out in full (plene); they were contracted into two-letter nomina sacra with a supralinear stroke above them:

• ΚΣ = κύριος (“Lord”)
• ΙΣ = Ἰησοῦς (“Jesus” / “Joshua”)
• ΘΣ = θεός (“God”)
• ΧΣ = Χριστός (“Christ”)

Look at the exact sequence of words across the boundary between the end of Jude 4 and the subject of Jude 5:

End of Jude 4: ...τὸν μόνον δεσπότην καὶ κύριον ἡμῶν Ἰησοῦν Χριστὸν ἀρνούμενοι.
(In manuscript nomina sacra: ...ΚΝ ΗΜΩΝ ΙΝ ΧΝ ΑΡΝΟΥΜΕΝΟΙ)
Jude 5: Ὑπομνῆσαι δὲ ὑμᾶς βούλομαι, εἰδότας ὑμᾶς πάντα, ὅτι [ὁ] κύριος ἅπαξ λαὸν ἐκ γῆς Αἰγύπτου σώσας...
(In manuscript nomina sacra: ...ΟΤΙ Ο ΚΣ ΑΠΑΞ ΛΑΟΝ...)

Only one short clause separates the emphatic closing words of verse 4 (κύριον ἡμῶν Ἰησοῦν Χριστόν — ΚΝ ΗΜΩΝ ΙΝ ΧΝ) from the subject of verse 5 (Ο ΚΣ). In ancient copying, scribes held a short phrase of text in auditory and visual working memory while transferring their eyes from exemplar to page. Having just copied Ἰησοῦν Χριστόν (ΙΝ ΧΝ) as the climax of verse 4, a scribe encountering the single-letter difference between Ο ΚΣ and Ο ΙΣ—especially in a sentence about leading Israel out of Egypt into the wilderness, where Joshua (Ο ΙΣ) was the famous biblical leader alongside Moses—easily wrote Ο ΙΣ (ὁ Ἰησοῦς) by perseveration (backward assimilation to v. 4) or typological association with Joshua.

3. The Methodological Blind Spot of the CBGM at Locus-Specific Paleographical Corruptions

This exposes the central methodological weakness of the Coherence-Based Genealogical Method (CBGM) as applied in NA28 and UBS5. The CBGM is a powerful statistical tool for mapping overall textual flow across hundreds of variation units, but it operates with a well-known algorithmic bias: when two or three high-ranking Alexandrian witnesses (B, A, 1739) share an error that entered their common regional hyparchetype early, the CBGM’s global coherence metrics automatically assign massive weight to their agreement and treat that reading as the Ausgangstext (initial text), even when:

1. An even earlier Alexandrian witness (Clement of Alexandria, c. 200 AD) proves that Alexandria at the end of the second century read ὁ θεός (Ο ΘΣ), not Ἰησοῦς (Ο ΙΣ);
2. Another fourth-century Alexandrian uncial (Codex Sinaiticus, ℵ) and fifth-century Codex Ephraemi (C*) independently preserve ὁ κύριος (Ο ΚΣ), agreeing with the entire Byzantine and Syriac Harklean traditions;
3. The reading Ἰησοῦς violates the author’s 100% invariant compound naming habit (Ἰησοῦς Χριστός); and
4. A transparent one-letter nomen sacrum slip (ΚΣ → ΙΣ) immediately following Ἰησοῦν Χριστόν in v. 4 accounts for the origin of ΙΣ without attributing a stylistic and historical anomaly to the author himself.

As Bruce Metzger and the UBS1–UBS4 / NA26–NA27 committee rightly recognized, the rule lectio difficilior potior (“the more difficult reading is stronger”) does not mean that scribal blunders, nonsense readings, or paleographical assimilations should be promoted into the critical text simply because they are jarring. When a reading is both transcriptionally explicable as a nomen sacrum slip (ΚΣ → ΙΣ) and intrinsically alien to the author’s unbroken style, printing [ὁ] κύριος (“the Lord”)—as the AI Critical New Testament (AICNT) does, while supplying a full apparatus note on the Ἰησοῦς (“Jesus” / “Joshua”) and ὁ θεός (“God”) variants—remains the soundest judgment of reasoned eclecticism.

Conclusion: Why Jude Belongs Outside the Foundational Canon

When all the evidence—internal, literary, canonical, patristic, codicological, and textual-critical—is weighed together without dogmatic presuppositions, the case for dispensing with the Epistle of Jude as canonical Scripture is cumulative and compelling:

1. Non-apostolic origin: The author makes no claim to be an apostle, identifies himself only as the brother of James (v. 1), and looks back on the preaching of “the apostles of our Lord Jesus Christ” as a past generation distinct from himself (vv. 17–18).
2. Certification of pseudepigrapha as history and prophecy: Jude explicitly validates 1 Enoch 1:9—a Hellenistic pseudepigraphon composed in the third or second century BCE—as genuine prophecy uttered by the historical “Enoch, the seventh from Adam” (vv. 14–15), while treating the Enochic Watchers mythology (v. 6) and the apocryphal Assumption of Moses (v. 9) as literal historical events on par with the Exodus.
3. Canonical inconsistency with First Clement: If First Clement (c. 96 AD)—despite its vastly superior second-century attestation, known Roman provenance, widespread public reading in the churches, and inclusion in Codex Alexandrinus—is rightly excluded from the canon because chapters 25–26 treat the myth of the Arabian Phoenix as literal fact, then Jude cannot consistently be retained as canonical Scripture when it treats First Enoch and the Assumption of Moses as literal history and prophecy.
4. Centuries of ancient and Reformation rejection: Jude is unattested throughout the first eighty years of the second century, hedged by Origen, classified among the disputed antilegomena by Eusebius, excluded from the North African Cheltenham List, the Antiochene school (Chrysostom and Theodore of Mopsuestia), and the Syriac Peshitta, and explicitly reported by Didymus the Blind and Jerome as “rejected by many” because of its apocryphal citations—a judgment echoed at the Reformation by Martin Luther, Erasmus, and Cardinal Cajetan.
5. Textual transmission in an apocryphal miscellany and severe variant instability: Its earliest Greek manuscript (P72) is an early fourth-century miscellany binding Jude with the Nativity of Mary, 3 Corinthians, and the Odes of Solomon, copied by an erratic scribe whose work in Jude the Alands classified as a “free” text and whose theological and mechanical corruptions culminate in the four-way variant fracture at Jude 1:5.

Declining to treat the Epistle of Jude as canonical Scripture does not mean discarding it from the study of early Christian history. Like First Clement, the Didache, and the Epistle of Barnabas, Jude remains a valuable historical artifact illustrating how certain Jewish-Christian circles in the late first or early second century adapted Second Temple apocalyptic traditions to combat antinomian teachers. But historical interest is not canonical authority. Under the Apostolic Proximity Principle, the foundation of Christian faith and doctrine rests securely on the primary apostolic witnesses—above all Luke-Acts and the Pauline corpus—not on a twenty-five-verse disputed tract whose apocryphal sources and fractured text moved the ancient church itself to place it outside the core canon.