earth, wherein dwelleth righteousness (10-13). With this in view, men should seek for fitness for that new world. Their own teacher, Paul, whom the writer owns as a beloved brother, would tell them that the long-suffering of God was leading them to repentance (14, 15). If they found some things hard to be understood in his Epistles, they must remember this was the case also with the other Scriptures, which, like his writings, were liable to perversion (16). Lastly, the writer ends he began, by calling on his readers to grow in grace and knowledge,

CHAPTER VI.

INTRODUCTION TO THE EPISTLE OF ST JUDE.

I. The Writer. The writer of the Epistle describes himself in a manner altogether exceptional in the Epistles of the New Testament. He is "the servant of the Lord Jesus Christ and the brother of James." The use of the former term would be, as we find from St Paul's description of himself in Phil. i. I and St Peter's in 2 Pet. i. 1, compatible with his holding the position of an Apostle, but there is, to say the least, a primâ 'facie improbability in the thought that one who could claim attention on the higher ground of being an Apostle of Christ should claim it on the lower ground of being the "brother of James," whoever that James might be.

This antecedent probability may perhaps seem, at first, to be balanced by the fact that in our English version, a "Judas the brother of James" appears in the lists of the Twelve Apostles in Luke vi. 16 and Acts i. 13. It has, however, to be noted that the word "brother" is, as the italics shew, interpolated by the translators, and that the Greek combination would, according to the rule followed in all other cases, be naturally rendered as "Judas, the son of James" (Ioúdas 'lakáßov), the relationship of brotherhood being elsewhere indicated by the use of the proper word (ådeλpós). It may safely be said that this would have been the rendering here, had not the translators been led by the impression made on them by the opening words

of this Epistle, and the desire to bring St Luke's list of the Twelve into harmony with them1. So far therefore the description “Judas the brother of James" is adverse to the view that we have before us the writing of an Apostle. There were, however, two bearing the names of Judas and James, or Jacobus, of whose relationship as brothers there is not the shadow of a doubt. "James and Joses and Judas and Simon" are named in Mark vi. 3 as the brethren of our Lord. The first-named, and therefore probably the eldest of the four, came into prominence in the history of the Apostolic Church, as in Gal. i. 19, and an almost uniform tradition identifies him with the James who presides in the council of Jerusalem in Acts xv. and who receives St Paul with much kindness in Acts xxi. 18-25. Assuming him to be in some sense the Lord's brother, it follows that Judas shared that distinction, and it has been shewn, it is believed, beyond the shadow of a doubt, that there is no adequate ground for identifying them with James the son of Alphæus, and Judas, the son (or brother ?) of James in the company of the Twelve.

It would scarcely be suitable, here, to re-open the discussion which the reader will find in the Introduction to the Commentary on the Epistle of St James in this series, as to the precise relationship of "the brethren of the Lord." It will be enough to state that of the three alternative hypotheses, (1) that the brethren were the children of Joseph and Mary, (2) that they were the children of the sister of the Virgin and of Clopas (assumed by some to be identical with Alphæus), and (3) that they were the children of Joseph by a former marriage, possibly of the levirate character, the last seems to commend itself as most probable in itself, best fitting in with all the data of the case, and best supported also by external testimony. On this view, Judas

1 It may be well to note the fact, as this suggestion may seem to some readers a somewhat startling proposal, that it has the sanction of two, at least, of the earlier English versions. Tyndale (1534) and Cranmer (1539) both give "Judas, James' sonne." Wyclif and the Rhemish version simply reproduce the Greek, "Judas of James.' The Geneva gives "Judas, James' brother." Luther, too, gives "Judas, Jakobi Sohn," and is followed by Bengel and Meyer.

must have been born some few years before B. C. 4, and, if we are right in assigning his Epistle to nearly the same date as those of St Peter, he must have been not far from seventy at the time of writing it. There is, perhaps, no writer in the New Testament of whose life and character we know so little. We can but picture to ourselves, as in the case of his brother James, the life of the home at Nazareth, the incredulous wonder with which they saw Him whom they had known for so many years in the daily intercourse of home-life, appear first in the character of a teacher, and then of a prophet, and then of the longexpected Christ. So it was that they sought to stay His work (Matt. xii. 46, Mark iii. 31-35, Luke viii. 19—21), and were yet in the position of those who believed not when they went up to the Feast of Tabernacles six months before the close of our Lord's Ministry (John vii. 5). They were, however, converted to a full acceptance of His claims between the Crucifixion and the Ascension; probably, we may believe, by His appearance to James after the Resurrection (1 Cor. xv. 7), or by their sharing in the manifestation which was made to five hundred brethren at once (1 Cor. xv. 6).

Beyond this we know absolutely nothing. Tradition is absolutely silent, and his name does not appear even in the legends of the Apocryphal Gospels. One conjecture may, however, be mentioned, as having at least some show of probability. The names of Joses and Judas appear in the history of the Apostolic Church on two memorable occasions. In the first, "Joses (or Joseph), who is called Barsabas" and distinguished by the further name of Justus, was put forward by the hundred and twenty brethren who were assembled after the Ascension as a candidate for the vacant Apostleship (Acts i. 23), and it seems not improbable, looking to the position subsequently occupied by James the brother of the Lord, that he also may have been one of the brethren, who was able to bear his witness of the fact of the Resurrection. If the name Barsabas were simply a patronymic, it would, of course, be fatal to this hypothesis. The analogy of Barnabas however (Acts iv. 36) makes it not unlikely that it may be an epithet descriptive of character. Of five possible

meanings, "son of conversion," "son of quiet," "son of an oath," "son of an old man," "son of wisdom," the elder Lightfoot (on Acts i. 23) gives the preference to the last. Accepting this, we have two noticeable points of agreement with James the brother of the Lord. Both are characterised by their love of wisdom, both are known as being conspicuously "just," or righteous. That St Luke should give the Latin and not the Greek form of that epithet suggests the inference that this character was recognised by Latin-speaking disciples, the "strangers of Rome, Jews and proselytes," at Jerusalem (Acts ii. 10).

In the second instance, we have "Judas surnamed Barsabas" mentioned as a prophet, who was sent with Silas to Antioch as the bearer of the encyclical letter which conveyed the decree of the Apostles and Elders at Jerusalem (Acts xv. 22, 32). He and his companion are described as "chief men" (ävdpes youμevo)1 among the brethren. After his visit to Antioch, where he and Silas exhorted the brethren with "many words," he returned to Jerusalem: we hear no more of him.

The hypothesis with which we are now dealing has at all events the merit of fitting in with these facts, and throwing light both on them and on the character of the Epistle. It explains the prominence of this Judas in the Church at Jerusalem, and the tone of authority in which he writes, and his selection by his brother James to be the bearer of the letter to the Church of Antioch. It gives a more definite application to St Peter's reference to the commandment of the prophets and Apostles (2 Pet. iii. 2) and explains his own reference to Apostles only and not to prophets (Jude, verse 17). If we were to assume that he was with St Peter at the time when the Second Epistle was written, it would explain the use of the exceptional form of Symeon as in the speech of James in Acts xv. 14.

1 The description is, I think, fatal to the view, which the elder Lightfoot and some others have adopted, that Joses and Judas Barsabas were sons of Alphæus, and that the latter was therefore an Apostle. The assumption of one writer that Sabas was a contracted form of Zebedæus, and that they were therefore brothers of the Apostles James and John, scarcely calls for more than a passing mention.

The silence which rests over the name of Judas, the writer of the Epistle, is, however, in itself significant. It indicates a life passed in comparative quiescence, like that of his brother, the Bishop of Jerusalem. The story told by Hegesippus (Euseb. H. E. III. 18) that the grandchildren of Judas who "after the flesh was called the brother of the Lord" were sought out by the delatores or informers, under Domitian, and brought before the Emperor, who was disturbed by fear of the "coming" of the Christ, and were dismissed by him when they shewed him their hands hardened with labour and told him the tale of their inheritance of poverty, indicates a humble, but not an ascetic life, and agrees with the statement of St Paul that the brethren of the Lord were married (1 Cor. ix. 5). Reading between the lines of the Epistle, we can trace something of the character of the man. We miss the serene calmness which distinguishes the teaching of his brother, but its absence is adequately explained by the later date of the Epistle, by the presence of new dangers, by the burning indignation roused by the sensual impurities of the false teachers with whom he had to do. What strikes us most, in some sense, as an unexpected difficulty, is the reference to narratives and prophecies which we find nowhere in the Canonical Scriptures of the Old Testament and which are found in spurious and unauthentic Apocrypha. Had he read, we ask, the Book of Enoch, and the Assumption of Moses, or some similar book? (See notes on Jude verses 9 and 14.) It can scarcely be doubted that, but for antecedent prepossessions in favour of an arbitrary à priori theory of inspiration, we should answer this question in the affirmative. We can scarcely think it probable that he and his fellow-workers read no books but those included in the Hebrew Canon of the Old Testament. The Epistle of St James shews, beyond the shadow of a doubt, that he was familiar with the Wisdom of Solomon, and the Ecclesiasticus of the Son of Sirach. (See Introduction to St James, p. 33.) St Paul, in mentioning Jannes and Jambres (2 Tim. iii. 8), clearly refers to some other history of Moses than that which we find in the Pentateuch. And if we once admit the possibility of an acquaintance with the then current literature