Recovering Jude’s Jewish Fight for Faithfulness
“Beloved, although I was very eager to write to you about our common salvation, I found it necessary to write appealing to you to contend for the faith that was once for all delivered to the saints.” — Jude 1:3
This is not the gospel you’ve heard in Sunday School.This is not the gentle epistle of encouragement. This is war literature.
The Epistle of Jude, short and stormy, has long been marginalized in Christian preaching. It doesn’t fit the typical mold. It is filled with warnings, polemics, veiled allusions, and references to texts many no longer even consider biblical (1 Enoch, Assumption of Moses, midrashic tropes). But in its very strangeness lies its power—especially when seen through the eyes of Jesus’ own family.
According to Richard Bauckham, Jude “has long been neglected by interpreters because of its brevity and its apparently bizarre use of apocryphal traditions.” But Bauckham is also among those who insist that Jude is deeply rooted in the Jewish world of Second Temple eschatological hope. It is not merely a Christian letter using Jewish language—it is a Jewish letter defending a messianic movement from collapse.
A Brother with Fire in His Bones
Jude was not a neutral observer. He was not a Pauline spiritualizer. He was Jesus’ brother (Judas of James), one of the Netzarim—those “watchers of the Way” rooted in northern Israel. His letter emerges not from a post-Easter triumph but from a family under siege.
Jude was not a neutral observer. He was not a Pauline spiritualizer. He was Jesus’ brother (Judas of James), one of the Netzarim—those “watchers of the Way” rooted in northern Israel. His letter emerges not from a post-Easter triumph but from a family under siege.
Richard Bauckham, in his pivotal Jude and the Relatives of Jesus, asserts that Jude was writing to a community under internal threat. While Bauckham resists identifying the opponents as proto-Gnostics, he does note their distortive grip on grace and licentiousness (v. 4), their denial of Jesus as Lord (v. 4), and their use of “dreams” to defile flesh, reject authority, and blaspheme the glorious ones (v. 8).
And here’s where it gets interesting.
Gnosis vs. Notzri: A Crisis of Names
Though Gnosticism as a formal movement developed later, its seeds were already sprouting in the 1st century. The Greek term gnōsis (knowledge) sounds strikingly similar to Notzri—the Hebrew designation for the followers of Yeshu HaNotzri and most likely a diminuative. This phonetic overlap—though perhaps coincidental in origin—has led to profound theological confusion. But what if it’s more than a linguistic accident? What if it represents a corruption of lineage?
Though Gnosticism as a formal movement developed later, its seeds were already sprouting in the 1st century. The Greek term gnōsis (knowledge) sounds strikingly similar to Notzri—the Hebrew designation for the followers of Yeshu HaNotzri and most likely a diminuative. This phonetic overlap—though perhaps coincidental in origin—has led to profound theological confusion. But what if it’s more than a linguistic accident? What if it represents a corruption of lineage?
Ironically, in modern Hebrew, the word Notzri—once denoting the Nazarene community rooted in Israel’s prophetic hope—now carries a tone of foreignness and estrangement. It reflects the very inversion this series seeks to correct: what was once a faithful branch (Netzer) is now treated as a severed offshoot. Just as Gnostic deviation obscured the original light, the name itself has become a witness to the distortion of lineage.
The Gnostic label, far from neutral, became a vessel through which early Church Fathers unconsciously (or consciously) distanced Jesus from his Jewish context. They mixed half-truths with deep departures—transforming the Messiah of Israel into a disembodied symbol of enlightenment. In doing so, they didn’t just blur doctrine—they assaulted the authoritative revelation of Judaism and severed the mission of Israel from its covenantal root.
Jude’s Epistle resists this—he sees through it. The infiltration he describes isn’t just moral laxity—it’s Gnostic before Gnosticism, anti-Notzri beneath the surface. And it’s precisely this distortion that Torat Edom aims to expose and correct.
Jude warns that certain people have “crept in unnoticed” (v. 4), twisting the grace of God into license. The same kind of infiltration that Paul laments in 2 Corinthians 11:4—“another Jesus,” “another gospel,” “another spirit.” Paul calls them “super-apostles.”
Bauckham on Jude’s False Teachers
Jude calls them hidden reefs (spilades), shepherds feeding only themselves. Richard Bauckham (e.g. Jude and the Relatives of Jesus, WBC commentary, etc.) emphasizes that Jude’s opponents were not Gnostic pagans but itinerant, charismatic Jewish prophets gone astray. They “claimed prophetic revelations” and were “evidently accepted as prophets in the church(es)” to which Jude writes. In other words, these false teachers styled themselves as spiritually enlightened super-apostles, but they used their “prophecies” to justify license.
Bauckham (and the WBC on Jude) notes their motto was “freedom,” but in a perverted sense. These men exaggerated Christian liberty into antinomianism. They “felt free to indulge in sexual immorality, drunkenness and sensual excesses” , claiming to be freeing people from fear of divine judgment. They twisted Paul’s gospel (cf. Rom 6:1–15; Gal 5:13) into a license to sin. In Jude’s language, they are those who “abandon themselves…for the sake of gain” – just as Balaam did. They introduce defilement into the community for profit.
Crucially, Bauckham sees the Cain–Balaam–Korah triad as diagnosing the motives of these teachers. Cain’s example warns of pride and envy: Jude’s false prophets are like Cain, fostering a spirit of dishonesty and hatred (cf. John 8:44). Balaam’s story reflects greed: the heretics “ran greedily” after sin as Balaam ran after profit. Korah’s example embodies conspiracy against God’s order: the false teachers’ attacks on gospel authority recall Korah’s sedition. Thus Bauckham notes that by invoking these figures, Jude isn’t just condemning individual vices – he’s indicting the entire attitude of the heretics: their entitlement to flout God, their love of gain, and their rebellion against God’s appointed system .
In sum, Jude’s use of Cain, Balaam, and Korah forms a cohesive “trinity of rebellion” against God’s order. Cain’s despairing curse, Balaam’s deceitful counsel, and Korah’s open revolt illustrate the spectrum of defiance and impiety. Jewish tradition indeed saw Cain as hiding his guilt, Balaam as corrupt to the core, and Korah as the paradigmatic schismatic. Jude holds up these ancient exemplars to show that his own age has not changed human sinfulness – the false teachers are the latest heirs of Cain, Balaam, and Korah. As Bauckham observes, the apostle’s point is that if these historical rebels incurred irrevocable judgment, so will those who imitate them now. In Jude’s stark view, there is no difference between sin then and sin now – it is the same vicious “way” that leads inevitably to doom.
They rely on dreams, Jude says, like the figure in the Toledot Yeshu tales who declared divine visions in the wilderness and seduced followers with signs. Jude’s rebuke isn’t to external heretics—it’s to those inside the community, rewriting Torah from within.
The Books of Enoch: As Device, Not Doctrine
Jude’s quoting of 1 Enoch (vv. 14–15) isn’t a canon claim. It’s rhetorical warfare. He invokes a popular text—respected among Jews of the time—to show that this threat had long been foreseen. “The Lord comes with myriads of His holy ones” isn’t meant to establish Enoch as Scripture, but to signal judgment on those who corrupted the faith. Like modern preachers quoting Tolkien or Lewis, Jude is invoking imagery that resonated.
Yet we must be careful. The Enochian corpus, especially its Watcher mythology, must not become a new mythology of fear. It’s a device, not a doctrine. We can affirm its resonance while still rejecting its cosmology which is behind so much of the prophecy & conspiracy theory industry. Jude uses it to indict the seducers, not to endorse their theology.
Why This Matters Now
Because we have sanitized Jude.Because we have forgotten that early Jewish-Christian resistance was not theological quibbling—it was existential defense.Because there is a counterfeit gospel still operating under the name of Christ.
And because Jude’s brief letter is a flare shot over the battlefield—an urgent call not to retreat but to contend.
Let us now turn to several baraitot—Talmudic teachings outside the Mishnah—that preserve a robust and often overlooked narrative. These sources offer vital insight into the world of the early Notzrim and the Jewish response to distortions that would later be canonized under the guise of “Patristics.” Where many Christian commentaries bypass the tension in favor of Church Fathers, these baraitas preserve the voice of a tradition still wrestling with truth, fidelity, and infiltration.
