A. J. MATTILL, Jr.
According to believers, the Epistle of Jude is and will be of lasting value to Christians so long as time shall last. —Adapted from Matthew Henry (1662-1714), Jude, in his Commentary on the Whole Bible, p.2459. Jude is a short letter, containing only twenty-five verses. We shall examine thirteen of these verses. Such an examination should help us to judge whether or not Jude will be of lasting value to thoughtful people.
Verse 1. Jude gets off to a rough start by calling himself a slave of Jesus Christ, one who is forever at the disposal of Jesus for service in his cause. The truth of the matter is that the Jesus of the Gospels is not worthy to be the Master of slaves, for he himself held too many untenable beliefs and had too many character flaws. For example, he called sensitive human beings “dogs,” the supreme insult (Matthew 7:6). He promoted pitiless packinghouse piety/brutal butcher-shop religion/senseless slaughterhouse spirituality (Matthew 17:24-27). He destroyed the property of pig owners, two thousand pigs (Matthew 8:28-34). He approved slavery (Matthew 6:24, etc.). For much, much more on Jesus’ false beliefs and character flaws see my Sweet Jesus, Volume One (2002), Volume Two (2004), and Volume Three (2006), published by The Flatwoods Free Press, 750 Lum Fife Road, Gordo, AL 35466-3357.
Verse 3. You “should earnestly contend for the faith which was once delivered unto the saints” (King James Version). In other words, it is the faith to which nothing may be added, from which nothing may be subtracted, in which nothing may be altered. That is the faith we must defend.
The “judge” says, No! God did not give faith to anybody. On the contrary, the Christian faith is something we humans discovered all by ourselves. No God created it and passed it on to us. Rather, we humans created it and passed on our own creation from person to person for two millennia.
Since the Christian faith is a false faith, 100% manmade, we rationalists should criticize it, repudiate it, and substitute for it a creed of basic beliefs which are tenable today, beliefs which can be adopted, defended, and promoted by people who have a sensitized conscience, seasoned experience, and sound reason. Here is my creed: “I believe in the evolving universe as the supreme reality, and in the authority of truth, known or to be known. I believe in the power of people to work together to establish a more humane society in which all that have life are more and more delivered from suffering. I believe in the moral leadership of everybody who embodies reverence for truth, for beauty, for life, and for the mystery of the universe. And I believe in the common origin and destiny of everything.” See my A Cosmic Creed for the Current Century (Gordo, Al: The Flatwoods Free Press, 2007).
Verse 4. False teachers “even deny that we must obey Jesus Christ as our only Master and Lord” (Contemporary English Version). How many people obey Jesus’ command not to swear any oaths at all (Matthew 5:33-37)? Who obeys Jesus’ command not to judge others (Matthew 7:1-6). Note that this whole paper is judging Jude and calling upon others to do so too. Who obeys Jesus’ command to execute children who curse their parents (Matthew 15:4)? Who will stop laughing because Jesus says to (Luke 6:25)? Who obeys Jesus’ command to give to everyone who asks and to lend without expecting to be paid back (Luke 6:30,35)? Who will hate his father, mother, wife, children, brothers and sisters in order to be a disciple of Jesus (Luke 14:26)? How can anyone obey the Jesus who says, “You cannot be my disciple unless you give away everything you own” (Luke 14:33)? Note that many wealthy people are recognized as Jesus’ followers. This judge says that if Jesus’ disciples must obey him, then Jesus has few, if any, disciples.
Verse 5. “Don’t forget what happened to those people that the Lord rescued from Egypt. Some of them did not have faith, and he later destroyed them” (Contemporary English Version). Here Jude refers to the events described in Numbers 13 and 14. The Lord had brought the Israelites out of Egypt and safely across the desert to the borders of the Promised Land. Moses sent twelve spies to spy out the land before the invasion was to take place. All of the spies, with the exception of Caleb and Joshua, reported that the dangers ahead were so formidable that it was hopeless for Israel to try to conquer the Promised Land. Because of their lack of faith in God, God sentenced the people, with the exception of Joshua and Caleb, to wander forty miserable years in the wilderness until they died.
Jude approved of this scenario, insensitive to the suffering it caused the Israelites during forty long, hot years in the desert. Jude also was unconcerned about the bloodshed a military conquest of Canaan would cause, namely, the deaths of 21,000,000 Canaanites, according to Exodus 12:37 and Deuteronomy 7:1-6.
Verse 6. “You also know about the angels who don’t do their work and left their proper places. God chained them with everlasting chains and is now keeping them in dark pits until the great day of judgment” (Contemporary English Version). Jude accepts the reality of angels instead of recognizing that angels are only figments of our imagination. Here Jude may be referring to the account in Genesis 6:1-2: Some angels in heaven so lusted after the beautiful women on earth that they left heaven, came down to earth, and seduced these mortal women. For this sin, God put them in chains and is still holding them in dark pits until the end of time. Anybody, including Jude, who can believe this story can believe anything!
Verse 7. “We should also be warned by what happened to the cities of Sodom and Gomorrah and the nearby towns. The people became immoral and committed all sorts of sexual acts. Then God made an example of them and punished them with eternal fire” (Contemporary English Version). See Genesis 19. The sexual sins to which Jude refers surely include homosexual intercourse. However objectionable that may be, it is still a finite sin and does not deserve the infinite punishment of eternal fire.
Verse 9. Here Jude tells us that the archangel Michael (the greatest of the good angels) argued with the devil (the greatest of the evil angels) about the body of Moses (the greatest of the good leaders of Israel). Jude seems to be alluding to a book of the Pseudepigrapha, the Assumption of Moses, which relates that God commissioned Michael to bury the body of Moses. But while Michael was digging the grave, Satan appeared, opposed the burial, and claimed the body for two reasons: 1) Matter is evil; therefore Michael should hand over Moses’ evil body to Satan; and 2) Moses was a murderer, having slain an Egyptian (Exodus 2:11-12). Hence Moses was unworthy of an honorable burial. Michael, however, finally outargued Satan, buried Moses’ body in the recesses of the mountains, and carried his spirit to heaven.
Stop to think for a moment. To believe this tall tale a person must believe eleven things, any one of which is most unlikely: 1. Believe there is a God. 2. Believe that this God was concerned about the burial of Moses. 3. Believe that there are angels. 4. Believe that one of these angels was an archangel named Michael. 5. Believe that Satan exists. 6. Believe that Satan had nothing better to do than to argue with Michael about the body of Moses. 7. Believe that Satan claimed Moses’ corpse. 8. Believe that Michael and Satan argued about who should have Moses’ body. 9. Believe that Michael outargued Satan. 10. Believe that Michael dug Moses’ grave and buried him. 11. Believe that Michael somehow laid hold of Moses’ spirit (whatever that may be) and carried it to heaven. It goes without saying that Jude 9 and the Assumption of Moses are absurdly fanciful. For more on the burial of Moses, see my “A Fantastic Funeral,” Freethought Perspective, Volume 3 (No. 5 July 2002), p. 2.
Not only are Jude 9 and the Assumption of Moses creations of overheated pious imagination but so is the Assumption of Moses 10:9-10 which states in all seriousness that Israel will be exalted to heaven, whence they shall look down and see their enemies suffering in Gehenna, recognize them, and rejoice over their suffering. This is the ultimate insensitivity!
Now ponder this: Jude’s use of the Assumption of Moses indicates that Jude regarded the Assumption of Moses as inspired Scripture. Yet the church has disagreed with Jude on this point, for the Church does not accept the Assumption of Moses as inspired. Jude, then, erred. But an inspired writer could not err. Therefore the Epistle of Jude is not an inspired writing and should not be in the New Testament. If Jude was wrong about the value of the Assumption of Moses, he may have been wrong about other things too. Also, if the Church erred in accepting Jude as a part of its collection of inspired writings, then the Church may err in other matters too.
Verse 11. Jude declares that the false teachers are in for real trouble because they followed Cain’s example. According to Genesis 4:1-15, Cain was the world’s first murderer. That, indeed, was a horrible crime. But Jude may also be condemning Cain for being a skeptic. In the Jerusalem Targum, Cain remarks, “There is neither judgment nor judge, there is no other world; no good reward will be given to the good, and no vengeance taken on the wicked; nor is there any pity in the creation or the government of the world.” Instead of condemning Cain for being a skeptic, nontheists would condemn him for recognizing, accepting, and correctly interpreting the harsh realities of life. Cain, if there ever was such a person, was light years ahead of his time.
Jude goes on in verse 11 to condemn the false teachers for rebelling against God, just as Korah did (Number 16:1-35; 26:9,10). Like Korah, the false teachers will be destroyed by God. Korah rebelled against Moses. Therefore God caused a huge crack to appear in the ground and Korah and his family and others, plus everything they owned, fell in the hole and were buried alive. What a horrible way to die! What cruel punishment! Yet Jude believed in this mean-spirited God.
Verse 14-15. Here Jude says, “Enoch in the seventh generation from Adam prophesied about false teachers when he said: ‘Look! The Lord is coming with thousands and thousands of holy angels to judge everyone. He will punish all those ungodly people for all the evil things they have done. The Lord will surely punish those ungodly sinners for every evil thing they have ever said about him.’” See Enoch 1:9. By the way, Enoch is a book of the Pseudepigrapha, which is a group of Jewish religious writings of the period 200 BC/BCE to AD/CE 200. The Pseudepigrapha are not included in any canon of Scripture.
Are we to regard the Book of Enoch as sacred Scripture because Jude quotes it as he does the Old Testament? Or are we to conclude that Jude cannot be Scripture because he errs in using as Scripture a book which is not Scripture? The Book of Enoch is full of such things as visions, angels, (Enoch gives us the names of 150 angels), demons, resurrection, judgment, books of life, the New Jerusalem, the tree of life, punishments for the wicked, rewards for the righteous, and the end of the world. Angels conduct Enoch on journeys throughout the earth, to Sheol, to the place of the final punishment of the fallen angels, to the tree of life, to Jerusalem, and to the Garden of Righteousness.
Note that here again Jude accepts the existence of angels, those figments of human imagination. Jude fantasizes that ten thousands of these imaginary beings will accompany the Lord when he comes to judge people. Rationalists, on the contrary, would agree with George Beer, an authority on the Book of Enoch, who said: “The Book of Enoch contains a great deal of stupid gibberish.” Jude, however, had no problem with Enoch’s gibberish. For more on angels, see my Sweet Jesus, Volume Three, pp. 98-106.
Verse 23. “And others save with fear, pulling them out of the fire” (King James Version). In the words of Matthew Henry (1662-1714), whom some Christians yet today regard as the greatest devotional commentator who ever lived: “Endeavor to frighten them out of their sins. Preach hell and damnation to them” (Jude, in his Commentary on the Whole Bible, p. 2463). But now in the twenty-first century it is high time that people of conscience declare that since even the worst of us humans can cause only finite torment, no one deserves the infinite punishment of eternal torment for causing finite torment. Infinite torture is infinitely cruel, evil, and immoral. No decent human could stand the thought of one animal being tormented forever, let alone the bulk of mankind.
Verses 24-25. “Now unto him that is able to keep you from falling, and to present you faultless before the presence of his glory with exceeding great joy, To the only wise God our Saviour, be glory and majesty, dominion and power, both now and ever. Amen” (King James Version). Jude 24-25 is one of the most impressive and widely used of all benedictions. I myself have often repeated it at the close of a worship service. But now I would like to offer as a substitute for Jude 24-25 and other theistic benedictions a slightly revised form of a non-theistic benediction which I wrote in 1989: “And now may the faith that makes us strong, and the hope that never dies, and the love that binds us together into one union of all who love in the service of all who suffer, lead us forward, onward, and upward, until all of us are more and more magnetized by mystery, fascinated by life, enraptured by beauty, and obsessed by truth; Amen.” Adapted from my A New Universalism for a New Century (Gordo, AL: The Flatwoods Free Press, 1989), p. 66.
Conclusion. In my opinion, our critical examination of thirteen verses of Jude has given us sufficient evidence to judge Jude and conclude that Jude will not be of lasting value to thinking people. Now you be the judge. What is your verdict?