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.
572 G.W. TROMPF
coming so by association, possibly because of their own internal
ideological development. Their libertinism primarily depended on
their support of Biblical anti-heroes, and this is where the similarity
with Jude’s subversives is very strong. It has been frustrating for
scholars trying to reconstruct the specifics of the people Jude toiled
against, whether they were “Gnostics, or maybe Essenes, or maybe
Pauline antinomians, or maybe Jewish antinomians†48. In our view
the demonstrated points of intersection between antinomian moves
addressed by Jude and those ascribed to the Cainites by Irenaeus
surely break the impasse. This, however, does not bolster (for the
most part German) scholarly propensity to make this identified
grouping — taken under the names Kaïnoi, Kaïanoi, Kaïanista, etc.
— “Gnostic†49. Such a caveat has nothing to do with the new schol-
arly penchant to read “Gnosticism†as an academic invention 50, for
in all honesty the category can and will always be rehabilitated as a
heuristic device, and there must still be room for honouring the
Patristic categorizations of heresy as foundational for the sociology
of religious movements 51 Our caution has more to do with first
explaining, as has never hitherto been satisfactorily done, the
motives and rationale for libertinism(s) as an independent (and not
necessarily prevenient) development to Gnostic strands within early
Christianity.
Part of the problem seems to have been sheer inattention toward
the sociology of “flat†or “plain†defection from early church com-
munities. The stress has been on heresy to the utter neglect of what
Max Scheler first introduced as the sociology of resentment and the
present author himself has treated as the “payback†factor in the for-
mation of disaffected coteries during processes of religious
change 52. Of course there must have been people who turned against
D.C. ALLISON, Jr, “Biblical Literature: New Testamentâ€, The Encyclo-
48
pedia of Religion (ed. L. JONES) (Farmington Hills, MI 2005) II, 918.
Cf. C.D. OSBURN, “Discourse Analysis and Jewish Apocalyptic in the
49
Epistle of Judeâ€, Linguistics and New Testament Interpretation. Essays on Dis-
course Analysis (eds. D.A. BLACK – K. BARNWELL – S. LEVINSOHN) (Nash-
ville, TN 1992) 310.
See K.L. KING, What is Gnosticism? (Cambridge, MA 2003).
50
Thus G.W. TROMPF, “Missiology, Methodology and the Study of New
51
Religious Movementsâ€, Religious Traditions 10 (1987) 96-97.
M. SCHELER, Ressentiment (Milwaukee, WI 32003) ; G.W. TROMPF, Pay-
52
back. The Logic of Retribution in Melanesian Religions (Cambridge 22005).