Sheffield/T & T Clark Bible Guides -May I have your opinion?

EDUARDO JIMENEZ

Hello!

Somebody in classes mentioned this colection. May I have some opinions about why and why not you would pay $849.45 for this? Worth it?

MJ. Smith

The Doxology

Jude’s concluding doxology (vv. 24–25) is the best known part of the letter. It is addressed to God through Jesus, which anticipates the mode of prayer to God through Christ which Christian theology would later hold correct. The hope that God would keep believers from stumbling has a history in Jewish religious discourse (see e.g. Ps. 38:16) but it receives a specific application here in respect of Christian eschatology. The passage looks forward to the time when God would bring believers through Jesus blameless into his presence, for which he was given universal and eternal worship. The converse, implied earlier in the letter, is that those who had failed to mend their ways would perish like the notorious sinners before them.


The Effect of Reading Jude

One of the great uncertainties of reading a letter like Jude (as indeed many early Christian letters) is that we can only estimate the readers’ response to it, and we do not know what happened among them after the letter was received. Nevertheless, it is possible to imagine a number of likely outcomes for the situation as it appears from the letter, and such speculation has its part to play in the interpretation of Jude.
The outcome which the author would have preferred is for the teachers to be ejected or at the very least for them to be suppressed. But the teachers may have gained the upper hand, in which case the church addressed would have experienced some kind of division or change. Such change could have had a number of aspects. It might have involved rejecting the Jewish Christian position and the turning instead to a Gentile form of Christianity where Paul’s teaching was especially valued. Divisions within the community may have resulted in secession or expulsion, hence the formation of diverse groups with different ethical views. It is not possible to decide between these possibilities in the present state of evidence, except of course to say that the author’s desired outcome must not be confused with the actual outcome, which remains hidden to us.
It is important also to resist the suggestion that Jude was written only for a group within a community, and thus for those who were already disinclined to accept what the teachers were saying. The letter seems designed to exercise a rhetorical appeal to the teachers as much as to those whom the author regarded with greater favour. The author reminded them of the error of their ways and showed that they conformed to the types of biblical sinners. Waverers, or people tempted to side with the teachers, would also have been confronted by this message. As a letter, Jude was probably designed to be read aloud rather than passed from person to person (cf. Rev. 1:3). A natural setting for this public reading would have been the communal agape, which gives an added significance to the material in v. 12. It seems likely that the teachers were confronted by the author’s rebuke on the very occasion that they chose to indulge some of their favourite vices—as the author no doubt intended that they should be.
We cannot be sure about what effect the letter might have exercised on the teachers. The author must have hoped that they would feel publicly rebuked and so become penitent. One can perhaps imagine their response if this were not the case. The teachers would presumably have caricatured the author as an interfering busybody, someone who was shackled to outmoded ideas and restricted by Judaism, while they themselves were convinced by their relation with the Spirit that more liberal behaviour was acceptable. This response may have included a sharp distinction between the old and the new covenants in which the basis of Jude’s appeal to Jewish tradition was used against him as an example of a religious position that had been superseded in Christ. Sadly, we lack the evidence to do anything but state the possibilities. The situation addressed, however, seems to have been a delicately balanced one.


Summary and Conclusion

Jude has often been neglected among the New Testament writings but this is not a true reflection of its importance. The letter has much of the immediacy of Galatians, and for those who know their Bible it is easier to follow than that text. The message is firm and unrelenting: the author says that those who followed the false teachers would perish but that those who resisted them would be saved. The hope for eschatological consummation undergirds the letter as it does most of the New Testament writings. Jude calls for a form of Christianity in which right living played as important a part as correct belief (cf. Jas. 2:24) and where claims to spiritual experience must be tested against the lifestyles of those who made them. Jude repays careful study by those wishing to discover what early Palestinian Christianity was like. Like James it reveals an early expression of Christianity, the Jewish Christian variety, which has now almost vanished from our gaze.


For Further Reading

The commentaries of Bauckham (1983) and Neyrey (1993) are both important, though the former is more detailed than the latter. One of the results of the neglect which Jude has suffered is the fact that there is not nearly so much literature available on this text as, say, on the Pauline letters. The book by Charles (1993) is a notable exception and offers an analysis of the author’s literary strategy. Bauckham’s book on the relatives of Jesus (1990b) is helpful as well. The need for readers of the Guide to consult the available commentaries must be underscored given the difficult nature of Jude’s scriptural allusions.


Jonathan Knight, 2 Peter and Jude (Sheffield: Sheffield Academic Press, 1995), 54–56.

I have been picking up individual volumes in the series as I have reason to use them ... I find them a useful introduction ... on the other hand I see them as something to purchase when I'm interested in reading the whole thing rather than a useful resource to pick tidbits out of.

GregW

ROGER JIMENEZ said:

Hello!

Somebody in classes mentioned this colection. May I have some opinions about why and why not you would pay $849.45 for this? Worth it?

Some of the individual volumes in this series are very cheap, so you might do well to buy one or two of them to see if they meet your needs. If you have good commentaries or OT/NT introductions, I think you will find most of what is in this set covered in them (that has certainly been my experience with one or two of them).