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 565
THE EPISTLE JUDE, IRENAEUS, GOSPEL
OF AND THE OF
as a matter of real interest that when turning to Irenaeus’ account of
the Kaïnoi (and the Carpocratean-like Hysteran sectaries discussed
immediately after them) their proclivities do offer certain simi-
larities with positions we see detectable among the subversives in
Jude. Thus the Cainites, according to Irenaeus (Adv. Haer. I, xxviii,
9), allegedly appeal to opponents in the Bible as their “affiliatesâ€,
because the “Maker†(ho poietos) of this world, who — by im-
¯
plication the Old Testament “god†— is evil in Cainite eyes and
must be opposed. And Sophia is portrayed as the power bringing the
coalition of such opponents to herself 29. Hence Cain, Esau, Korah,
the Sodomites in that listed order (most being mentioned in Jude),
and “all such like personsâ€, are on the right side, together with
Judas, coming last, who “knew the truth as no others did†(Lat.:
solum prae caeteris = the other disciples, cognoscentem veri-
tatem) 30 To the list, Epiphanius (Panar., XXXIX, ii, 4) can add the
names of Dathan and Abiram, Korah’s rebel supporters against
Moses (cf. Num 16), all three making up a wayward group already
significantly implied in Jude v. 5 (me pisteusantas) as the first ‘case
¯
scenario’ in the author’s instancing of subversions.
This identification with the Biblical anti-heroes (all those just
named except one from early Old Testament contexts) is not only
justified by their siding with the true One Above (Irenaeus’ Greek:
anothen authentias) against the false Creator, but by a boasting, as it
¯
were, that, in taking their apparently anomalous position, they had
not “taken damage†or “been paid back†by the “God†they flouted
(medemian de Blaben eisdexasthai). This is the kind of arrogance
¯ ¯
that one can now fairly deduce was being countered by Jude’s letter,
which thus confronts a matter of special sensitivity in a world of
“ competing retributive logics†in the Last Times, when divine pu-
nishments were supposed to befall conspicuous violators of the
divine commands 31. In this light, it may well be asked whether a
In contrast, note how Sophia is basically responsible for the Demiurge’s
29
creations in Valentinian and related forms of Gnostic cosmology, see esp. Ire-
naeus, Adv. Haer. I, i, 7-9; Tertullian, Adv. Valent.; Ptolemais, Epist. ad Flor.,
apud Epiphanius, Panar., XXXIII, iii-vii. Cf. G. FILORAMO, A History of Gnos-
ticism (Oxford 1990) 70-72.
As with the rest of Irenaeus’ text, we are indebted to a Latin version of
30
Theodoret’s Haeret. Fabul. Compend. I, 15) for reconstructing the Greek.
See G.W. TROMPF, Early Christian Historiography. Narratives of Retri-
31