HistoricalChristian.Faith

Does the Epistle of Jude’s knowledge of the obscure Palestinian Testament of Moses (Jude 9) support the letter’s authenticity — that it was written by Jude the Lord’s brother?

Type: historical / literary-critical argument (off-timeline) · Assessment: contested — in Jude 9 the letter alludes — without explanation, assuming his readers already know it — to the dispute of the archangel Michael and the devil over the body of Moses, a story Richard Bauckham reconstructs from the lost ending of the Testament of Moses, a Palestinian Jewish work so little known that it “is never referred to by name in any document of the early church outside the lists of apocryphal books,” and that the early Christian writers who tried to explain Jude 9 (Clement, Origen, the catenists) did not have access to — reaching instead for a different, later, probably Egyptian “Assumption of Moses,” while 2 Peter 2:11, rewriting Jude 9, simply eliminates the story it did not know. Jude’s easy, allusive familiarity with an obscure Palestinian apocryphon locates the letter in first-century Palestinian Jewish Christianity — “the Palestinian Jewish Christian circles from which an authentic letter of Jude the Lord’s brother would come.” That the letter is early and Palestinian is well-grounded; but the payoff presupposes the authenticity it is offered for — a skilled Palestinian Jewish-Christian pseudepigrapher of the same circle could allude to the same source, so the evidence fixes the letter’s milieu more securely than its author, and the authorship of Jude is a genuinely disputed question. And even granting authenticity, the point is neutral between the Helvidian and Epiphanian readings and does not by itself touch Mary’s virginity · argued from Richard Bauckham

Related arguments: the authenticity of Jude — see also Does Jude’s learned Palestinian exegesis support the letter’s authenticity? · Does Jude’s christological vocabulary (the title despotēs) support the letter’s authenticity? · Does the Lukan genealogy’s origin in Jude’s circle support the letter’s authenticity?

The claim

Like the argument from Jude’s learned exegesis, this one reaches the literal-kinship case for the brethren through the letter’s authenticity: its author names himself “brother of James” (Jude 1), so a genuine Jude who could write it is a real member of the family group the Gospels name — James, Joses, Jude, Simon (Mark 6:3). Where the exegesis argument reads authenticity off Jude’s method, this one reads it off Jude’s knowledge of a specific, obscure source. The case is Richard Bauckham’s — himself holding the perpetual virginity on the Epiphanian reading.

Jude 9 alludes to a story his readers are assumed to know. Jude 9 reads: “When Michael the archangel, in debate with the devil, disputed about the body of Moses, he did not presume to condemn him for slander, but said, ‘May the Lord rebuke you!’” Bauckham observes that “clearly Jude is here referring to a story well-known to him and presumably also to his readers, but his source is no longer extant as such.” From four later witnesses (a passage of the Palaea Historica, the Slavonic Life of Moses, and catena fragments) he reconstructs the story and assigns it to the lost ending of the Testament of Moses — the incomplete Latin work of the sixth-century Milan manuscript, “universally agreed… [to] predate Jude,” a Palestinian Jewish work of the early first century. Decisively for the identification, only this version turns on the devil’s slander (blasphēmia) against Moses — “it is that catchword… which Jude picks up (vv 8, 10) and which accounts for his use of this story in verse 9.”¹

The source Jude knew was genuinely obscure — the Fathers did not have it. Bauckham distinguishes two distinct stories of the dispute over Moses’ body: the one Jude knew (the Testament of Moses) and a later, second-century, anti-Gnostic, probably Egyptian “Assumption of Moses” — whose earliest attestation is Clement of Alexandria — in which the devil claims to be lord of matter and Michael refutes him. The Alexandrian Fathers (Clement, Origen, Didymus) who cite “the Assumption of Moses” for Jude 9 knew only this later, wrong story. Of the two works, “the Assumption was at least popular in Alexandria, whereas the Testament is never referred to by name in any document of the early church outside the lists of apocryphal books”; “very few early church writers, attempting to explain Jude 9, seem to have had access to the story Jude actually knew.”²

2 Peter confirms the different milieu — and Jude’s priority. When the author of 2 Peter comes to rewrite Jude 9 at 2 Peter 2:11, “he eliminates the story of the contest for the body of Moses and substitutes a generalized reference to the way angels behave towards evil angels.” Bauckham argues the suppression “has nothing to do with an objection to apocryphal literature” — 1 Enoch “was consistently popular with Christian writers throughout the second century” — but “must reflect his and his readers’ ignorance of the story. His own ignorance of it is clear from the fact that he misunderstands Jude 9 in exactly the same way as some modern commentators, not knowing the story… have misunderstood it.” This both marks 2 Peter’s milieu as distinct from Jude’s and bears on the direction of dependence: Jude, who knows the Palestinian source, is the earlier document.³

On this footing Bauckham reaches the chapter’s closing sentence:

That Jude knows and can assume his readers’ familiarity with the Testament of Moses suggests, therefore, a different milieu from those from which most extant early Christian literature comes. This Palestinian Jewish work would have [been] best known in the Palestinian Jewish Christian circles from which an authentic letter of Jude the Lord’s brother would come.

— Jude’s intimate, unexplained familiarity with an obscure Palestinian apocryphon taken as evidence for the letter’s authenticity, and so against the pseudepigraphy reading. The interpretation weighed here is the one this datum is adduced to support: the Epistle of Jude’s easy knowledge of the obscure Palestinian Testament of Moses shows that it was really written by Jude, the brother of James and of the Lord — a genuine artifact from within Jesus’ family — and not a later pseudepigraph.⁴

What the argument establishes

1. The letter is early and Palestinian — and its source-knowledge is an insider’s. This is the solid core, and it is largely independent of who wrote the letter. Bauckham’s reconstruction, the catchword (blasphēmia) tie to the Testament version rather than the later Assumption, the demonstrable ignorance of the story in the wider early church (the Alexandrian Fathers reaching for the wrong work), and 2 Peter’s elimination of it together fix the letter in a specific milieu: a circle in which this obscure Palestinian apocryphon was current and could be alluded to without explanation. That last feature is telling. A writer does not glance at a source his readers do not share; Jude assumes theirs. The unexplained allusion is thus a genuine mark of an insider document written for an in-group that possessed the source — which is exactly what one would expect of an early Palestinian Jewish-Christian letter, and exactly what a late, Hellenistic, Gentile-Christian forgery is not. The argument rules that class of hypothesis out.

2. It corroborates Jude’s priority over 2 Peter. The way 2 Peter handles the Moses material — eliminating a story it evidently did not know, and misreading Jude 9 in the process — is coherent with (and mild independent support for) the majority view that Jude is the earlier, more Palestinian document and 2 Peter the later reworking. That, in turn, keeps Jude close to the first Christian generation.

What it does not establish

3. Knowledge of a Palestinian source fixes the milieu, not the man. Here the argument outruns its evidence, in the same way its exegetical companion does. That the letter belongs to a circle possessing the Testament of Moses shows the kind of person and community that produced it; it does not show that the person was Jude the Lord’s brother in particular. A skilled Palestinian Jewish-Christian writer of the next generation — drawing on the same living stock of apocryphal traditions, writing in the name of a revered member of the Lord’s family, and addressing readers who still shared the source — could allude to it exactly as Jude does. The obscurity of the source narrows the milieu impressively; it does not, by itself, single out the author within that milieu. Bauckham’s closing inference is sound if the letter is authentic — and it is offered within a study that argues authenticity on other grounds (its survey of the pseudepigraphy debate; the author’s conspicuous refusal of the title “brother of the Lord”) — but the source-knowledge weighs toward authenticity by removing the objection that Jude is too late or too Hellenistic to be genuine; it does not carry the author’s identity on its own. The authorship of Jude remains a genuinely disputed question in the scholarship.

4. The case rests on Jude 9 alone. Bauckham himself keeps the argument honest here. In §V he examines and rejects R. H. Charles’s claim that Jude 16 and Jude 3 contain further allusions to the extant text of the Testament of Moses: the parallels “appear less impressive when… examined in detail” (standard apocalyptic phrasing from Daniel 7, common early-Christian usage), and he concludes “with Laperrousaz against Charles” that the case for such allusions “is not proven.” So Jude’s dependence on the Testament of Moses rests on Jude 9 by itself, not on a thick web of allusion — a single (if striking) datum, and the strength of the whole argument should not be overstated as if it rested on many.⁵

5. Even granting authenticity, it is neutral for the doctrine. Suppose the argument succeeds and the letter is Jude’s own. Like its companion literal-kinship and authenticity arguments, it fixes only that Jude was a real brother of James and reputed brother of the Lord — a flesh-and-blood member of the family group — not whose son he was. On the Helvidian reading he is Mary’s own later son; on the Epiphanian reading he is Joseph’s son by a former wife, Jesus’ elder stepbrother; on both he is a genuine brother of James, fully capable of writing the letter. So authenticity presses against any picture of the brethren as unreal or merely figurative, but it lends the perpetual virginity no direct weight and says nothing of Mary’s childbearing.

Assessment

Contested. The argument has two parts, and they fare differently. Its foundation — that Jude 9 alludes, without explanation, to the lost ending of the Palestinian Testament of Moses, a source so little known that the early church at large (the Alexandrian Fathers, the author of 2 Peter) did not possess it — is well-grounded and locates the letter securely in first-century Palestinian Jewish Christianity; it genuinely excludes the picture of Jude as a late, Hellenistic, Gentile forgery, and the unexplained allusion is a real mark of an insider document. But the conclusion the argument is offered for — that this establishes authorship by Jude the Lord’s brother — does not follow from the source-knowledge alone: it fixes the letter’s milieu more securely than its author, and a skilled Palestinian Jewish-Christian pseudepigrapher of the same circle, writing for readers who shared the source, fits that milieu as well as the historical Jude does. Authorship of Jude is a genuinely disputed question, strong scholars ranged on both sides, and Bauckham’s payoff — “the Palestinian Jewish Christian circles from which an authentic letter of Jude the Lord’s brother would come” — presupposes the authenticity it is adduced to support rather than demonstrating it. Weighed honestly, the datum is positive but not decisive evidence for authenticity: it removes a leading objection without settling the identity of the author, and (as Bauckham grants in §V) it rests on Jude 9 alone. Because the reading it serves — the letter’s authenticity — is itself unresolved on the wider evidence, with no clear winner, the honest verdict is contested.

Two limits keep the finding modest for this doctrine, and both are limits on what is shown. First, the argument bears on the letter’s authenticity, and touches Mary’s virginity only at second hand — through the reality of a Jude who could name himself “brother of James.” Second, even at full strength it is neutral between the Helvidian and Epiphanian readings, so it decides nothing between the literal readings of the brethren. What it contributes — alongside its exegetical companion and the grandsons of Jude and married-missionary brothers — is that the Lord’s brethren, and the letter one of them left, belong to real first-century Palestinian history, not to a figure of speech; the choice among the readings, and so the perpetual virginity itself, is left to be settled on other grounds.

Sources