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.
570 G.W. TROMPF
Michael was the guardian angel of Israel (as the above-
mentioned pseudepigraphical texts themselves attest) and Christ
even becomes the ‘great angel’ substituting for Michael in various
Jewish Christian post-biblical writings (from Hermas onwards) 44.
Though outside this ambience, yet nonetheless knowing about the
Cainites (Strom. VIII,1 7), Clement of Alexandria gets his exeget-
ical orientation right in the first known commentary on Jude (be-
queathed to us only in Latin fragments), when he detects a
connection with Jude’s meaning and Jesus’ affirmation of his heav-
enly authority at the trial in Mark 14,62. When Jesus will be seated
on the right hand of the virtutes (“ powers â€, rather too neatly trans-
lating the Greek dynameos), He becomes as the exalted Christ the
¯
new head of the sanctos angelos (Epist. Iud. Cath. v, 24). Taking
our cue from Clement, Jude’s point is that the nature of the prob-
lematic group’s slandering of celestial beings (doxas de blasphe- ¯
mousin), of Michael especially, poses a threat to the Church’s
originally accepted continuity between the Old and New Testament
orders ; for now an “abusive†new cosmic picture allows dangerous
dalliances with all those figures who once stood against the Lord of
Israel (vv. 10-11). Jude’s invoking of Enoch reinforces the argument
against this unacceptable construal of a Biblical discontinuity (see 1
Enoch 10,11; 20,6 on Michael’s key roles). He consciously involves
a Genesis figure with myth-historical significance for his opponents,
yet a “properly clarified†figure who is disconnected from Cain (see
supra) and is a foreseer of the Judgement of the ungodly like him
and his ilk (vv. 14-15 ; cf. 1 Enoch 22,7, regarding destruction for the
“ seed †of Cain) 45. The unusual materials utilized, of course, are not
presented as a direct confrontation with ‘heretics’ themselves but
subtly deployed as “ammunition†to aid those contending for the
faith against them (and predictably “showableâ€, let alone quotable,
to counter claims of the subversives if any occasion arose).
The anxieties of Jude and the earliest account of Cainite beliefs
à la Irenaeus therefore correlate sufficiently to present circum-
stantial evidence for a common ‘antinomian grouping’; and at the
See J. DANIÉLOU, The Theology of Jewish Christianity (London 1964)
44
121-127 (referring to Christian pseudepigraphical data in 2 Enoch 22,4-9;
Ascen. Isa. 22,6; Test. 5,6, etc.). Cf. Assum. Mos. 10,2.
See also L. GINZBERG (ed.), The Legends of the Jews (New York 21961)
45
60-61 regarding the curse on seven generations after Cain (cf. Gen 4,15a).