Garry W. Trompf, «The Epistle of Jude, Irenaeus, and the Gospel of Judas», Vol. 91 (2010) 555-582
A detailed case that the New Testament Epistle of Jude was written against the socalled Cainite sectaries, who were in possession of a Gospel of Judas as Irenaeus attests is presented here. Because the names Judas and Jude were the same, the good name of Iouda, especially as being that of a relative to Jesus, needed clearing, and subversive teachings — making Cain, Judas and other Biblical figures worthy opponents of the (Old Testament) god — had to be combatted. Since a Gospel of Judas has come to light, within the newly published Tchacos Codex, one is challenged to decide whether this was the gospel appealed to by the Cainites, and, if it was, to begin to grasp how they read a text which did not readily match their interests.
JUDAS 557
THE EPISTLE JUDE, IRENAEUS, GOSPEL
OF AND THE OF
liphate †7. If we are supposing the original Jude (“a servant of
Jesus Christ and a brother of James†[v. 1]) wrote the Epistle be-
aring his name, and had the Cainites in view, the consequence
would be to place the Gospel of Judas (at least as referred to by
Irenaeus) 8 very early, certainly earlier than the newly discovered
text appears to be (Jude’s death traditionally being placed just be-
fore the reign of Domitian) 9. This follows, even granted that Ire-
naeus only refers to the Judae Evangelium (as his text surviving in
Latin has it) at the end of his description of Cainite beliefs, as if
its production or use might be a later development of the general
drift of Cainite ideas.
If one dates Jude later, let us say between AD 100 and 150, the
dating of the gospel is of course alleviated, and the possibility
remains that the author of the epistle was writing in the name of
Jude/Judas to clear his name of bad associations that were never
expected to arise, because Judas Iscariot was dead. (Incidentally,
“ the clearing of the name†is one possible, rather neglected motiva-
tion for pseudonymous activity in the New Testament more gener-
ally). The debate about the provenance and dating of the Epistle of
Jude has not gone away and will not go away, but here I take seri-
ously the persuasive critical tendency to ‘push for a late date’. This
is especially because the Patristic testimonia do not leave any clear
quotation from Jude until the 170s (starting with Athenagoras), be-
cause of doubts (by Origen and then Eusebius) that the epistle was
indeed by James’ brother 10, and because the commendable move of
placing it “later†— in the second century — may well mean it can
throw light on the newly available Gospel of Judas in the Tchacos
Codex. In the latter case, as with the Nag Hammadi “library†mate-
rials, we possess a late third-century Coptic text, apparently trans-
lating a Greek original (presumably To euangelion tou Iouda,
See Hegesippus apud Eusebius, Hist. eccles. III, xx, 1-7, esp. 6. Cf.
7
R.J. BAUCKHAM, Jude and the Relatives of Jesus in the Early Church (Edin-
burgh 1990).
The identity of the text preserved in the Tchacos Codex with the Gospel
8
of Judas mentioned by Irenaeus should not be taken for granted.
Only by the implication of Hegesippus (Eusebius, Hist. eccles. III, xix).
9
Athenagoras, Supplic. ii, 15 (ca. 170); cf. Origen, Comm. in Matth. x, 17,
10
and for Eusebius Pamph., Hist. eccles. II, xxxiii, 25; III, xxv, 3.