Hey Jude

Dan McClellan The word Baal, which is the name of the Northwest Semitic storm deity, and so God is saying, "Get those nasty Baal's names out of your mouth." Hey, everybody. I'm Dan McClellan.

Dan Beecher And I'm Dan Beecher.

Dan McClellan And you're listening to the Data Over Dogma podcast, where we increase public access to the academic study of the Bible and religion, and we combat the spread of misinformation about the same. How go things today, Dan?

Dan Beecher It's a beautiful day in the neighborhood. Life is good. It's funny, I'm kind of excited about today's show.

Dan McClellan All right.

Dan Beecher I'll be honest with you. When you suggested that we just talk about the Book of Jude, which is one of the single-chapter books, you know they're my favorite- Yep ...

Dan McClellan in the Bible.

Dan Beecher I didn't know what to expect because I don't know anything about Jude. So I read it, and woof, I found a lot of things that I was eager to talk to you about.

Dan McClellan Yeah. It is dense.

Dan Beecher It is. So that's our chapter and verse up front, and then at the end, we're going to get back into monotheism as a concept and- Mm-hmm ... and the pushback that you have gotten- Mm-hmm ... because you keep saying that there isn't monotheism, like a liar. And other people are totally getting you with good verses. So, you will be defending yourself, sir.

Dan McClellan Yes. I will be talking about some passages from mainly Deutero, Isaiah, and a couple other scattered locations that people always immediately say, "You're wrong because of these passages." And I'm going to talk about what those passages are saying in the view of, I would say, maybe not the majority, but an increasing number of scholars are endorsing, and I think will be the majority within the next few years.

Dan Beecher Okay.

Dan McClellan Yes.

Dan Beecher Dude, bold predictions coming out. We're coming in hot, baby.

Dan McClellan And I'm editing a volume based on a conference that we had last, yes, last year.

Dan Beecher Right.

Dan McClellan That will be one of the main volleys in this back and forth.

Dan Beecher Yeah.

Dan McClellan I don't say this lightly.

Dan Beecher We talked about that- Yeah ... a number of times. So yes, I'm excited about all of that. But first, before we get into all of that, we got Jude to get into. So let's do a- Yes ... chapter and verse. And this chapter and verse. So, okay, it is a letter.

Dan McClellan Uh-huh.

Dan Beecher It is a letter from Jude, a servant of- Somebody named Jude.

Dan McClellan Yeah.

Dan Beecher Which, by the way, in the NRSVUE, I click on the footnote, and it says the Greek is Judas, and I'm like, "Why is it just not Judas then?"

Dan McClellan Yeah, that is a little peculiar, isn't it? So, Judas is the Greek, and this is actually a Greek transliteration of the Hebrew name Judah. So, one of the sons of Jacob, one of the 12 tribes of Israel.

Dan Beecher Yeah.

Dan McClellan And in the Greek transliteration, it's just spelled a little bit differently because of their naming convention, so we get- ... Judas in Greek, which gets changed to Jude in English.

Dan Beecher It's so maddening to me. Can I just say, the naming thing, it's just frustrating because, okay, any of those would've been acceptable, but there's so many other versions of the same name, and why are they getting translated differently or transliterated differently? And then the naming problem doesn't end there because right after that, "Jude, a servant of Jesus Christ and brother of James." But not that James, apparently.

Dan McClellan A different James. Or is it? Well, one would think that if he were a brother of that James, he would've said, "A brother of Jesus Christ" also. One would think, and there's a lengthy debate- Is there?

Dan Beecher ...

Dan McClellan about that within the scholarship.

Dan Beecher Yeah.

Dan McClellan Because what other James is he talking about? He seems to be wanting to try to arrogate some authority- Yeah ... based on this other James, and if you're talking about- Because why mention him otherwise?

Dan Beecher Yeah.

Dan McClellan If you're talking about Jameses with authority, there's the main one.

Dan Beecher Yeah.

Dan McClellan The guy is James, the brother of Jesus, which would make this guy the brother of Jesus, which would be an odd omission. You could trump- Yeah ... James, the brother of Jesus, by just going straight to Jesus. But there is an indication that Jesus maybe had another brother named Jude, and to go back to why transliterate differently, I think traditionally the idea is you don't want to confuse this Jude with the other one who betrayed Jesus. So if this is- Right ... the Epistle of Judas, suddenly it gets a little wonky.

Dan Beecher I understand that, but we haven't had that problem with so many other- ... confusing the names. I get, yeah, you don't want this guy to be confused with the dude who actually did Jesus dirty. That's probably true.

Dan McClellan Yeah.

Dan Beecher El Juderino, as he prefers to- If you're not into the whole brevity thing.

Dan McClellan Jude-er, yeah.

Dan Beecher So, okay. He starts off the letter, he's just like, "Hello, this is me." And then says- "This is me you're looking for."

Dan McClellan Right.

Dan Beecher Yeah. And then says, "Hey, I was going to write to you about salvation and how great it is that we're all getting saved, but I can't because I need to write to you about this other thing that's really, really important."

Dan McClellan "We've been trying to contact you regarding your vehicle's warranty."

Dan Beecher Your extended warranty.

Dan McClellan That would be quite the slow play.

Dan Beecher Yeah.

Dan McClellan Well, I do want to talk briefly about- Oh ... date and authorship, though, because there's more to the question, because that- Whoever James is, whoever Jude is claiming to be, I think the majority of scholars suggest that's not actually who they were.

Dan Beecher Oh.

Dan McClellan Because this letter was probably written closer to the end of the first century CE or the beginning of the second century CE.

Dan Beecher Sure.

Dan McClellan It was probably not written contemporaneous with the life of James, the brother of Jesus. And, so it's probably pseudepigraphic, meaning that the person was probably writing in someone else's name, falsely arrogating their identity and thus their authority. And there have even been debates about this. Obviously, folks who are committed to the inerrancy and the inspiration of the entire Bible are going to want to defend traditional authorship.

Dan Beecher Yeah. There's not an- I could see that.

Dan McClellan Yeah, you could see that? That would make sense.

Dan Beecher Yeah.

Dan McClellan There's not an incredibly strong argument to make, and there are some peculiarities about this that we're going to get into- Hmm ... that make it seem like maybe this is somebody who's a little outside of the central hierarchy of the followers of Jesus. And so I personally think we're probably looking at the '90s or maybe the 100s, the aughts of the second century CE. There are parts of this that seem to be referred to in the Epistle of II Peter.

Dan Beecher Oh, okay.

Dan McClellan And so, most scholars think that II Peter is probably referencing parts of Jude, and so it has to have come before II Peter. However, II Peter is agreed by the majority of scholars to have been written between 120 and 150 CE.

Dan Beecher Oh.

Dan McClellan So that was probably the last text that was written in the whole New Testament. So Jude is probably later than the majority of the gospels, probably much later than Paul, but not quite as late as II Peter. So, sorry, I just thought the table needed to be set a little bit regarding that piece.

Dan Beecher No, totally. So what you're saying is that this whole thing should be ignored as bunk, as baloney. Well, at least- As a forgery ...

Dan McClellan in terms of-- It's probably a forgery or pseudepigraphic. Now, it probably was an actual letter that was sent to a group that- Yeah, that makes sense ...

Dan Beecher I mean.

Dan McClellan Yeah, it wasn't like this guy needed to come up with an artifact and so scribbled this down and was like, "Aha, I got this thing." It probably was written in the name of this other person and probably sent. But yeah, probably not by the actual Jude, the brother of James and the brother of Jesus. The brother of Jesus.

Dan Beecher Yes. So- And also, unlike many of the other epistles that we've encountered, this does not have a to line. We don't know who this was written to, do we?

Dan McClellan Yes. I think there's a greeting, "To those who are called, who are beloved in God the Father and kept safe for Jesus Christ," which is a pretty broad- Yeah ...

Dan Beecher designation.

Dan McClellan It's not like the people who are saved who are in Thessaloniki.

Dan Beecher Right.

Dan McClellan Or it's just sent out broadly. Yeah, it just seems like, oh, this is an open letter to everybody, sort of- Yeah ...

Dan Beecher almost.

Dan McClellan Yeah. This is Jude's Sub Stack.

Dan Beecher Yeah, exactly.

Dan McClellan And it's just, this is for anybody who cares, but mostly for my subscribers. And, yeah, sending out a letter to everybody would've been a phenomenally difficult thing to do in antiquity because- Yeah ... you can't just go down to the corner store to Kinko's and be like, "Give me 300 copies of this."

Dan Beecher Right.

Dan McClellan Exactly. You had to pay somebody to scribble it out by hand and transcribe these things. And so to make copies of this is a phenomenally difficult thing to do. And generally, what happened is somebody would get ahold of it, and then they would have a couple of copies made.

Dan Beecher Yeah.

Dan McClellan And then those copies would be disseminated, and someone who got ahold of one of them might have a couple copies made, and then those would go on. So it was a slow process, but yeah, pretty ambitious.

Dan Beecher But clearly it took off. This was an important one to them.

Dan McClellan Yeah.

Dan Beecher This one- Which- ...

Dan McClellan kind of went viral ...

Dan Beecher baffles me because it doesn't feel like there's that much in it. There's a lot for us to talk about, but in terms of when I put myself in the shoes of people in that time, other than it feels like you send it to all of your friends who have a problem with grumblers- Yeah ... in their midst. Because it does seem like that's the issue at hand.

Dan McClellan Yeah. It's a bit of a queja. It is complaining about these opponents, these other folks who are-- And most of the letter seems to be kind of quoting scriptures and referring to traditions in an effort to drag these folks.

Dan Beecher Yes.

Dan McClellan Yes.

Dan Beecher And it also feels-- We'll get to it. It feels very from a particular perspective. It feels like- Mm-hmm ... this is designed and aimed entirely at squashing one perspective or squashing a new idea, and you guys all have to adhere to the way I'm thinking about things. Anyway, we'll get to that. And in verse- Well, that's-- And are you going to read verse four? I wasn't. Oh, yes.

Dan McClellan Oh.

Dan Beecher We should read verse four. Yeah, because the reason for the letter isn't the salvation, which it was going to be, but rather verse four, "For certain intruders have stolen in among you, people who long ago were designated for this condemnation as ungodly, who pervert the grace of our God into debauchery and deny our only Master and Lord, Jesus Christ." So there you go.

Dan McClellan Ouch.

Dan Beecher Yeah. Now, I was looking at another version of this.

Dan McClellan Okay.

Dan Beecher And verse four ends with, "And denying the only Lord God and our Lord Jesus Christ." So that's in the KJV. But in another version, it sounded like, and I have one app that will read the Bible to me when I'm busily doing other things.

Dan McClellan Uh-huh.

Dan Beecher So I was listening to it, and I don't know what version that was because I'm using my phone to do our video, so I can't look it up on my phone right now. But it made it seem like it was, "And denying the only Lord God, Jesus Christ."

Dan McClellan Mm-hmm.

Dan Beecher Conflating them as the same thing.

Dan McClellan Yes.

Dan Beecher So I did have a question about that, but I don't have that version in front of me. Anyway, is there a reason why it might be translated that way, or?

Dan McClellan Well, that's just going to have to do with the manuscripts that we're looking at. So the King James Version says, "Turning the grace of our God into lasciviousness, and denying the only Lord God and our Lord Jesus Christ."

Dan Beecher Right.

Dan McClellan And so let me just-- That will be the Textus Receptus that the King James Version will be based on. Opening that up. And yeah, it looks like despótēn theón, kai kýrion hēmōn Iēsoun Christon. And so the definite article is not being used for any of these. And so this could be interpreted to refer to one and the same entity- Hmm ... that is described by both of those things.

Dan Beecher But- So when the KJV adds the word and.

Dan McClellan Well, and is there.

Dan Beecher So kai.

Dan McClellan Okay. So theón kai kýrion hēmōn.

Dan Beecher Okay.

Dan McClellan That's and, but normally, we would look at the definite article. There's this rule about how you don't repeat the definite article if you want the designation to kind of extend over, to be distributed. And I've explained that horribly. But I'm actually pulling up Bruce Metzger's New Testament textual commentary, which goes through all of the verses that have textual variations that are considered at all significant, and talks about them and why they would or would not support those readings. And it looks like verse four, it doesn't really have.

Dan Beecher Okay.

Dan McClellan Okay. So it says, "In order to avoid the ambiguity of whether despótēn," which means master, despot- Hmm ... "refers to Christ, as in 2 Peter 1:1, or to God, as elsewhere in the New Testament. The Textus Receptus, following a handful of manuscripts, appends theón." So adds that on the end. "The shorter reading without the interpolation is decisively supported by," and then lists a bunch of manuscripts, including like P72, Sinaiticus, Alexandrinus, Vaticanus.

Dan Beecher So those are the most authoritative.

Dan McClellan Right. So no other commentary, but it sounds like, yeah, whatever the request, or whatever the case, that is a secondary addition. So the King James Version should not be considered the authoritative one.

Dan Beecher Right.

Dan McClellan Okay. But yeah, it sounds like somebody later on is looking for an opportunity to throw something Trinitarian in there.

Dan Beecher Yeah. Which- And deny our only master and Lord. Okay, so master and Lord Jesus Christ is probably the best way of looking at it.

Dan McClellan Yeah.

Dan Beecher Okay, good. Man, see, this is the reason why people get-- I can see why lots of people pick a version and then just will not stray from it because- Mm-hmm ... you get into the weeds with this stuff.

Dan McClellan All right.

Dan Beecher Yeah.

Dan McClellan But we do have, in verse five, something that raises the specter of the Trinity all over again, so.

Dan Beecher Yeah. And that's kind of why I was hung up on the first thing is because now we get into verse five, and it says, "Now I desire to remind you, though you are fully informed, once and for all, that Jesus, who saved a people out of the land of Egypt, afterward destroyed those who did not believe." That is the first time I personally, and I have not read this book cover to cover, but that is the first time that I have read a scripture and thought, "Oh, that's a problem." And I see why the Trinitarians had to contend with it because I did not understand Jesus to be the one who had done that.

Dan McClellan Hmm.

Dan Beecher Presumably, we're talking about the Exodus. We're not talking about- Yes ... that time when Jesus lived in Egypt and happened to save a bunch of people out there, and we just don't know that story.

Dan McClellan Yeah. There was a fire, and he had to get everybody out.

Dan Beecher Yeah.

Dan McClellan And yeah, no, this is peculiar, but there are, again, we've got manuscript variations here. There are some that read the Lord.

Dan Beecher Okay.

Dan McClellan And then there are some that read God.

Dan Beecher Oh.

Dan McClellan And then there's at least one that reads God Christ. And so it's peculiar. It's obviously a little confusing because it's a difficult reading to say, "Wait, Jesus did this? Wait a minute, the Hebrew Bible says God did this." But- And so, there's a principle within textual criticism called lectio difficilior. It's not like a hard and fast rule, but most of the time, the trend is in the direction of making text easier to understand. If you're going to mess up the text, it's going to be in the direction of making it easier to understand. And so, whichever reading is less easy to understand tends to be the earlier reading. And that is a bizarre reading, that Jesus did this.

Dan Beecher So the- Yeah ...

Dan McClellan the attempts to change it to Lord or God or something like that are probably the secondary readings.

Dan Beecher Okay.

Dan McClellan So I think most scholars today would say, "Yeah, it probably says Jesus." Now, we have, in the Book of Exodus, God being the one who is doing this, kind of, because you also have another entity that is involved, and that is the messenger of the Lord. Because who appears- Okay.

Dan Beecher Right ...

Dan McClellan to Moses in Exodus 3? A lot of people, well, in verse six, whoever appears to Moses says, "I am the God of your father, the God of Abraham, the God of Isaac, the God of Jacob." But in verse two, the entity that appears to Moses in the flame of fire amidst the burning bush is explicitly said to be the angel of Adonai. And so, this is one of those examples that we see in Judges, that we see in Genesis, that we see here in Exodus, maybe in Joshua, where the identity of the angel of God is kind of mixed up with the identity of God themselves. So you have- Yeah ... the angel saying, "I am the God of your father." And then in Exodus 23, in verse 20, this is right after the Ten Commandments, and the Covenant Code, you have God tell the Israelites, "Hey, look, I'm sending an angel before you to guide you on the way. Don't disobey him. Don't piss him off, because he does not have to forgive your transgressions because my name is in him."

Dan Beecher Mm.

Dan McClellan And this is a bizarre verse, but one of the things that I have argued, and others, I think this has been... Actually, no. Now that I think about it, if someone else has argued it, it's not in a very prominent publication. But, I think this makes the most sense of things. What's going on here is this is probably trying to account for why we have these other passages where the angel of the Lord is identifying as the Lord. And that last part of it, "My name is in him," the idea is that the angel does things that only God is supposed to be able to do because they are endowed with the divine name. They're the authorized bearer of the divine name. And incidentally, the whole, "He does not have to forgive your transgressions," there's only one other place in all the Bible where that occurs, and that's in Joshua 24:19, where Joshua tells the Israelites, "Oh, no, you can't worship God. He's a jealous God. He does not have to forgive your transgressions." The Hebrew is exactly identical.

Dan Beecher Mm.

Dan McClellan And so, what the author of Exodus, I argue, is doing is alluding to that, suggesting, "Oh, the angel is doing the thing that Joshua says God does, and how can that be? Well, my name is in him." And what this results in in early Christianity, as a result of other influences from Greek philosophy about the immateriality of God and that kind of stuff, is a very early tradition within Christianity that Jesus was the angel of the Lord. Because Jesus- Okay ... is God, in some sense, and the angel of the Lord is God, in some sense, and so the premortal, or the pre-incarnation appearances of God are actually appearances of Jesus. And so, when it says that Jesus saved a people out of the land of Egypt, if Jesus is the angel of the Lord, then the angel of the Lord is one who saved the people out of Jesus. So I think what it's doing is identifying Jesus as the angel of the Lord- Right ... who was the one who appeared to Moses in Exodus 3, who's the one who is going to lead everybody out of Egypt, according to Exodus 23.

Dan Beecher So- And then destroy the people who did not believe.

Dan McClellan Well, and yeah, hilarity ensues.

Dan Beecher Yeah, exactly. There's all kinds of things that happen as a result of that, but- What's fascinating to me is that this isn't some sort of third-century CE innovation or whatever. This must have developed quick, this idea that Jesus was the angel of God or somehow was conflated with God in, like, Old Testament-y kind of God.

Dan McClellan Yeah.

Dan Beecher I think that that's really interesting that that had already come about by this time.

Dan McClellan Well, and I think, yeah, that it was already in circulation when the New Testament was being written, because according to the argument that I've published in a couple different places and will be publishing in a couple more within the next year, the template that is provided by the angel of the Lord, this not God, but also can claim to be God template, that conceptual template, was one of the things that facilitated this kind of, "Oh, Jesus is God, but also not God." So I think that is what contributed to the conceptualization of Jesus's identity and mission- Mm ... was this idea of one of a few different contributions. Because you also have the Son of Man tradition that is going on there. You have a few different traditions going on. But I think the idea of Jesus as patterned after this angel who bears God's name and so exercises God's authority, yeah, pops up very, very early and is in the Gospels. And it might even be in Paul In Philippians, the Christ hymn, Philippians 2:6-10, Paul Holloway's got a wonderful Hermeneia commentary on that, which is right here. And, for those who are watching on the video. Those listening, that doesn't mean anything. But, I'm getting used to the fact that people can't see me most of the time.

Dan Beecher Yeah. Most of the people who are getting this message are only hearing it. That's true.

Dan McClellan And he talks about how this Christ hymn seems to reflect this Second Temple Jewish idea about a name-bearing angel.

Dan Beecher Mm.

Dan McClellan And so, if that's already present in Paul, then that's present in our various, very earliest New Testament texts.

Dan Beecher Yeah.

Dan McClellan So yes, I think it is very early.

Dan Beecher That's interesting.

Dan McClellan Okay.

Dan Beecher Yeah. I also wanted to get... We're only five verses in. We got to get through this thing. But then I got hung up on verse seven.

Dan McClellan Okay.

Dan Beecher And part of that is because we've talked about Sodom and Gomorrah, and we've talked about how many people assume, and use the destruction of Sodom and Gomorrah as a reason to justify saying that God is against homosexuality. Now, we've done a whole episode about that, and one of the things that we concluded was that, and you'll have to remind me what verse this comes from, but there's a verse somewhere in the Old Testament, I think, that says that the sin of Sodom was inhospitality.

Dan McClellan Yes. Well, that's in Ezekiel.

Dan Beecher Okay.

Dan McClellan And I'm for some reason blanking. Ezekiel 16:49. I got it right.

Dan Beecher Okay.

Dan McClellan Okay. One of the most difficult things about being a Bible scholar is remembering verses- Yeah ... because it's like, oh, man, they get messed up in your head real easy, at least in mine, but that's probably because I am neurodivergent in a lot of ways. But, it says, "This was the guilt of your sister Sodom. She and her daughters had pride, excess of food, and prosperous ease, but did not aid the poor and needy. They were haughty and did abominable things before me. Therefore, I removed them when I saw it."

Dan Beecher So- Okay ...

Dan McClellan yeah, according to Ezekiel, never says anything about same-sex attraction or even same-sex intercourse. And so- Right ... at least for the earliest witnesses to this tradition, that doesn't seem to be the issue.

Dan Beecher Well, Jude takes issue with you, sir- ... and says in verse seven, "Likewise, Sodom and Gomorrah and the surrounding cities, which in the same manner as they indulged in sexual immorality and pursued unnatural lust, serve as an example by undergoing a punishment of eternal fire."

Dan McClellan Yes.

Dan Beecher So- Now, first of all, can I just say, the fire of Sodom and Gomorrah was not eternal. It went out.

Dan McClellan No. This was not burning an eternal flame. So I'm sorry, I'm going to have to go back to the... That was my favorite song when I was in elementary school. And I don't know why. I don't know why, but I love that song.

Dan Beecher Who is that? Pat Benatar?

Dan McClellan The Bangles?

Dan Beecher I don't know.

Dan McClellan I want to say it's The Bangles, but I could be- I don't remember.

Dan Beecher Yeah.

Dan McClellan But yeah. Yep, it's The Bangles.

Dan Beecher Okay.

Dan McClellan There we go.

Dan Beecher Yeah.

Dan McClellan Used to love that song.

Dan Beecher Anyway.

Dan McClellan So we've got to contextualize this a little bit- Yeah ... as one must do. Now, when apologists say context, what they mean is canonical context.

Dan Beecher Mm.

Dan McClellan You have to make it fit with everything else in the Bible, which presupposes that univocality. I want to talk about literary context, particularly in light of the first word of verse seven, which was what?

Dan Beecher Likewise.

Dan McClellan Likewise to what? Likewise- What are we talking about here?

Dan Beecher Okay, so we got to go back to verse six.

Dan McClellan Verse six. "And the angels who did not keep their own position but deserted their proper dwelling, he has kept in eternal chains in deepest darkness for the judgment of the great day."

Dan Beecher Right.

Dan McClellan This is a reference to 1 Enoch. This is a reference to the Enochic tradition, the idea that angels came down, and they did the hibbidy-dibbidy with the human women, and that resulted in these giants, who resulted in the Nephilim, who resulted in the demons who taught the evils of warfare and of makeup to humanity. So what happened? Angels had sex with human women.

Dan Beecher "Likewise- Yeah ... Sodom and Gomorrah and the surrounding cities, which in the same manner as they- Okay ... indulged in sexual immorality and pursued unnatural lust."

Dan McClellan Now, here's the problem. Unnatural lust is an awful translation of sarkos heteras- Okay ... which in Greek means flesh other or other flesh.

Dan Beecher Right.

Dan McClellan Now, if it's translated unnatural lust, people will think, what's more unnatural than two men doing what is unseemly?

Dan Beecher Only very uninformed people- Yes ... would think that that's unnatural.

Dan McClellan It's- But, and I'm talk- ...

Dan Beecher kind of the most natural thing if you look at the animal world. But that's okay.

Dan McClellan And I'm talking about the folks who are coming to this with- Right ... the idea that same-sex intercourse and attraction is icky.

Dan Beecher Right.

Dan McClellan But when it says other flesh, there's not really a case to make based on first-century or early second-century Greek, that this is a reference to same-sex intercourse.

Dan Beecher Right.

Dan McClellan What it's a reference to is other flesh, angelic flesh, human flesh. They are pursuing other flesh. In the Book of Enoch, it was angels who had sex with humans. In Genesis 19, it was the humans who threatened to sexually assault the angels.

Dan Beecher Right.

Dan McClellan And so the sexual immorality and the unnatural lust here is Human men wanting to, or at least threatening to, sexually assault, engage in sexual intercourse with angelic beings. And if you look this up in critical commentaries, this is what they will say. This seems to be about human-angelic intercourse, and this was a controversy at the time. In fact, you can look in later rabbinic literature, and they're talking about this because they're looking at Genesis 6 and they're going, "What's up with these bene Elohim, these children of God? These must be angels." And a bunch of rabbis were like, "Angels aren't sexually compatible with humans." And then others were saying, "Well, they transformed into flames of fire, and that allowed them to physically and sexually interact with humans." Others were like, "No, no, the angels just showed up while the women were having sex with their husbands." And they were just- ... yeah, the creep factor goes up.

Dan Beecher Yeah.

Dan McClellan So there were debates about the sexual compatibility of humans and angels. And so this is just reflecting that idea. Hey, it happened in 1 Enoch. That's what was so gross about what happened at Sodom and Gomorrah. And so again, this is not about same-sex attraction. This is about something entirely different.

Dan Beecher Interesting.

Dan McClellan Okay.

Dan Beecher Got it. I like it.

Dan McClellan Okay.

Dan Beecher And it does make sense. You're absolutely right. That verse seven absolutely is referencing verse six right before it, which is about angels not keeping their proper dwelling- ... as it were.

Dan McClellan Yes. Not keeping things where they belong. Zipped up- Yeah, exactly ... where they belonged.

Dan Beecher Right.

Dan McClellan Okay. So- And- Oh, go ahead.

Dan Beecher Go on.

Dan McClellan Well, I was just going to say, and a good indication that the book of 1 Enoch is influential for the author of Jude is the fact that the author of Jude explicitly quotes from the book of 1 Enoch- Yeah ... in verses 14 and 15. And something interesting here, I want to say, verse 14, it says, "It was about these that Enoch in the seventh generation from Adam prophesied, saying, 'See, the Lord is coming with ten thousands of his holy ones to execute judgment on all and to convict all the ungodly of all the deeds of ungodliness that they have committed in such an ungodly way, and of all the harsh things that ungodly sinners have spoken against him.'" So he's belaboring the ungodly point- Yeah ...

Dan Beecher I think.

Dan McClellan But this is directly quoting 1 Enoch 1:9.

Dan Beecher Okay.

Dan McClellan And so this is straight out of Enoch.

Dan Beecher Which makes it-- When I read that and saw that it was literally, it's not just the words from Enoch, but literally name-checks Enoch himself and sort of gives provenance to where it's all coming from by saying- Yeah ... seventh generation from Adam and stuff.

Dan McClellan Yeah.

Dan Beecher That made it kind of shocking to me that Enoch didn't make it into the final cut when they were deciding what was going to be canon.

Dan McClellan Yeah.

Dan Beecher That feels genuinely shocking. Well, it's- That this made it and that didn't. You know what I mean?

Dan McClellan And for a long time, it was considered inspired and authoritative scripture. The author of Jude, whoever they were, their text ends up in the New Testament. Their text is inspired- Right ... in authoritative scripture. And we have authors, like Tertullian was an early Christian writing around 200 CE, who seems to acknowledge that people are questioning the authenticity, the authority, the inspiration of 1 Enoch. And he swings into Enoch's defense and says, "Nope, this is 100% inspired scripture." And his closing volley, after he's made all of his points about how it could be historical, it can be all these things, he ties it all off by saying, "And it's quoted by the inspired author of Jude, so case closed."

Dan Beecher And it's not on- That feels like case closed to me.

Dan McClellan Yeah.

Dan Beecher And it's not- That feels totally real.

Dan McClellan Yeah. And it's not only that it's quoted. You will have apologists today who will be like, "Ah, Paul quoted some Greek philosophers in the Book of Acts."

Dan Beecher Sure.

Dan McClellan Just because he quotes something doesn't mean that he's endorsing its inspiration or its authority. But he doesn't just say Enoch said this. He said, "Enoch prophesied."

Dan Beecher Yeah.

Dan McClellan And what is inspired scripture if not the work of prophecy? This is how people understood the scriptures to be scriptures, because they are spirit-led prophecy. And so the author of Jude quite explicitly calls this prophecy.

Dan Beecher Yeah.

Dan McClellan If that's not scripture, nothing can qualify as scripture. And so, yeah, this is pretty clearly the author of Jude asserting the inspiration, the authority, the scriptural nature of the book of 1 Enoch. And what happened with Enoch is, by the time you get into the third and the fourth centuries, you get people who are like, "Well, man, it's weird. Have you read it?" And then they're like, "There are inconsistencies within it." You get the same story being told three or four different ways, and the names change, and all that kind of stuff. And then they're like, "Well, doubt this survived the flood," because it would had to have been written before the flood. And the whole Pentateuch is supposed to, by this time, the tradition arises that it was all written by Moses.

Dan Beecher Right.

Dan McClellan So they're like, "The oldest stuff we have is from Moses," who's well after the flood.

Dan Beecher Right.

Dan McClellan So they just felt it was not likely that this originated all the way back with Enoch. And so it falls out of favor in the fourth century, but not before some missionaries take Greek translations of it down to the Kingdom of Aksum, which would become- What we now know of as Ethiopia. So it is officially part of the canon of the Ethiopian Orthodox Tewahedo Church to this day.

Dan Beecher So- Right ... so yeah, the first Enoch got the shaft by the Europeans, but- I mean, that pre-flood, surviving the flood, that also is pretty smart. That makes a lot of sense, too.

Dan McClellan Yeah. They made some good points. But they made those points over and against their dogmas about inspiration.

Dan Beecher Right. Yeah, exactly.

Dan McClellan And other things, like Jude, happened to slip in without people- Yeah ... thinking very critically about what's going on here.

Dan Beecher About the origins and authorship sort of thing.

Dan McClellan Yeah.

Dan Beecher All right. We got to get through this. Oh, my gosh.

Dan McClellan Oh, gosh.

Dan Beecher We're deep into this thing.

Dan McClellan All right.

Dan Beecher So basically, as Enoch is warning us, he says, "These are grumblers and malcontents." He's referring to the ungodly sinners that have spoken against him.

Dan McClellan Yes.

Dan Beecher "And they indulge their lusts, their mouths utter bombastic nonsense, flattering people to their advantage. But you, beloved..." This is the final thrust of the letter. "But you, beloved, must remember the words previously spoken by the apostles of our Lord Jesus Christ. For they say to you, 'In the last time, there will be scoffers indulging their own ungodly lusts.' It is these worldly people, devoid of spirit, that are causing divisions." I did want to just quickly say, it very much seems to me like Jude is saying that the time that they are in, the time of the writing of Jude- Mm-hmm ... is the last time. They said unto you, "In the last time, there will be scoffers." Is he saying that that is the last time, the end times? Because it seems like that's what he's saying. "In the last time."

Dan McClellan Let me see what the Greek is there.

Dan Beecher In verse 18?

Dan McClellan Yeah. There we go.

Dan Beecher Eschatou chronou.

Dan McClellan So eschatou would be of the end. Eschaton is where that comes from.

Dan Beecher Right.

Dan McClellan Yeah. So that would be the last days, the last time.

Dan Beecher Yeah, so- So it does seem like he's claiming that that is the end time. That they are living- Yeah ... in the end times, right?

Dan McClellan Yeah. And this is where we have an overlap with 2 Peter. We have 2 Peter, I think it's 3.

Dan Beecher Yeah.

Dan McClellan 2 Peter 3:3. And so some folks say that this is quoting 2 Peter.

Dan Beecher Oh.

Dan McClellan And then others would suggest maybe 2 Peter is actually turning around and quoting this.

Dan Beecher So- Right ...

Dan McClellan the relative chronology there is a little tricky. But yeah, this is the last days. And this seems to me to harmonize with what we have in some other pseudepigraphic literature where they're talking about how, "Oh, we're going to have the falling away. The man of lawlessness, the man of sin, will be revealed." And these are ways to kind of rationalize why Jesus does not seem to have been on time- ... for his own second coming.

Dan Beecher Right. And so I- Which was supposed to be this generation will not pass away before he returns, right?

Dan McClellan Right.

Dan Beecher So it was supposed to have happened in a generation or two.

Dan McClellan Yeah. So I think this is probably another indicator that this is coming later in the development of the New Testament.

Dan Beecher Sure.

Dan McClellan Yes.

Dan Beecher Okay. "But you, beloved, build yourselves up on your most holy faith. Pray in the Holy Spirit, keep yourselves in the love of God, look forward to the mercy of our Lord Jesus Christ that leads to eternal life, and have mercy on some who are wavering." That's an interesting little moment. "Save others by snatching them out of the fire, and have mercy on still others with fear, hating even the tunic defiled by their bodies." So if they're really nasty, just- Well, yeah.

Dan McClellan And the idea is don't even touch their clothes.

Dan Beecher Yeah.

Dan McClellan Yeah, you don't even... So it's a pretty thin line, is telling these people they get to try to walk.

Dan Beecher Yeah.

Dan McClellan It's like, "Have mercy on some, but don't even touch the clothes of the others."

Dan Beecher Figure out which ones are the nastiest, and then hate even their garments. That's interesting.

Dan McClellan Yeah.

Dan Beecher Yeah.

Dan McClellan All right.

Dan Beecher Well, wow. We've taken plenty of time on Jude. Congratulations to them, to Jude, for getting himself into the Bible when- ... Enoch couldn't make it.

Dan McClellan It was quite the coup, yeah.

Dan Beecher It was. It was good.

Dan McClellan All right.

Dan Beecher Let's move on to Taking Issue.

Dan McClellan All right.

Dan Beecher And the issue that we are taking today, Dan, is an issue that people are taking with you. People are taking issue with you saying, and we hinted at this before, that no part of the Bible... You have, in the past, said no part of the Bible is really monotheistic.

Dan McClellan Yes.

Dan Beecher And we've talked about that on the show before, that even though there's one god for this people, or for this land, or for this zone, or whatever, there's no point at which they don't also believe that there are other gods. Those are just- Right ... other gods that aren't for us.

Dan McClellan Right.

Dan Beecher So the issue that people take with that, people have come up with many verses that they say proves you wrong.

Dan McClellan Yeah. I get quite a bit of that, and I've addressed these verses many times, but that's kind of the The nature of social media is every time I make that video, there's somebody who has not seen the dozen videos before- Right ... where I say, "By the way, this is not an exception." And they will be like, "You idiot, don't you know about this exception?" And then I have to be like, "Ah, I've talked about this ad nauseum."

Dan Beecher But- Okay. Well, let me pull up a couple of these scriptures and just- Yeah ... and just let you have at it. Because I will admit, a lot of them sound pretty definitive.

Dan McClellan Okay.

Dan Beecher Let's see. "Declare and present your case." This is Isaiah 45:21.

Dan McClellan Mm.

Dan Beecher "Take counsel together. Who told this long ago? Who declared it of old? Was it not I, the Lord?

Dan McClellan There is no other God besides me, a righteous God and a Savior. There is no one besides me."

Dan Beecher Yes.

Dan McClellan Boom. Boom, indeed. And this phrase, this idea, "Besides me, none other besides me," is repeated a bunch of times- Mm ... particularly in Deutero-Isaiah, but we also see it in Deuteronomy, Deuteronomy 32, and we also see it once in Hosea 13, which is a little peculiar.

Dan Beecher Hmm.

Dan McClellan But when you look at the Hebrew, there are a few different phrases that can be rendered, "Besides me." One is mibaladai, which is basically, from without me, and there are a handful of others. The idea is basically the same. Besides me, spatially- Oh ... with me. It's not a universal, apart from me, none other exist. It is, there is none other beside me. There is no other with me.

Dan Beecher In the room.

Dan McClellan Yeah, because you can find occurrence, the use of very similar phrases, using the same words where somebody says, "Do you have a sword?" And he says, "There is no sword besides me." And the idea is not nowhere in the universe, the idea is within the rhetorical scope of the context.

Dan Beecher Right.

Dan McClellan If somebody says, "Do you have a sword?" And you go, "There's no sword besides me," you're saying that I can get to conveniently.

Dan Beecher Right. You're not claiming that there are no swords in the world.

Dan McClellan Right. And so the idea here is that, hey, you and me, we're having a discussion. In this discussion, there's nobody else besides me.

Dan Beecher Yeah.

Dan McClellan Don't look at him.

Dan Beecher Look at me. Don't look around. You look at me.

Dan McClellan Yeah.

Dan Beecher Yeah.

Dan McClellan And there are a few reasons that I think this is clearly what is intended. Already gave you one. We can see the use of similar terminology where the statements are limited to the rhetorical scope, the context. In Isaiah, we also have a couple places where the same statement is put into the mouths of personified cities, like Babylon and Nineveh. So, for instance, in Isaiah 47:8, "Now therefore hear this, you lover of pleasures, who sit securely, who say in your heart, 'I am, and there is no one besides me. I shall not sit as a widow or know the loss of children.'" So, this is supposed to be about Babylon.

Dan Beecher And so- So, that's not the Lord talking. That is Babylon talking.

Dan McClellan Right. The Lord says, "Who say in your heart," and then the Lord is quoting Babylon. Basically saying, "Babylon, you silly Billy, you think there's no one besides you."

Dan Beecher Okay.

Dan McClellan And the idea is not that Babylon is represented as thinking they're the only city that exists.

Dan Beecher Right.

Dan McClellan The idea is they think they're the only city that matters- Yeah ... to their constituents. And I've used this metaphor a lot. This would be like me saying, "You silly..." What are they now? Las Vegas Raiders. Uh-huh. "You think there's no one besides you."

Dan Beecher Yeah.

Dan McClellan The reality is that there's no one besides the Denver Broncos. At least, that's what I could get away with back in the late '90s. No longer. But anyway, it's rhetoric.

Dan Beecher Right.

Dan McClellan You're speaking to your own constituency saying, "Hey, nobody else matters but me. I am the main character." And so you have that same statement put into the mouth of a couple other personified cities. So again, not a philosophical denial of the existence of other gods. It's just saying, "I'm the only one that matters."

Dan Beecher And- Is it possible that it would be better translated as beside me rather than besides me?

Dan McClellan Yeah.

Dan Beecher Is it?

Dan McClellan Yeah, I think that's better.

Dan Beecher Okay.

Dan McClellan Because what we're going to look at is a bunch of this is the immediate context is God's deliverance of Israel.

Dan Beecher Hmm.

Dan McClellan "Thus says the Lord, the King of Israel, and his Redeemer, the Lord of hosts," meaning the Redeemer of Israel, "I am the first and I am the last. Besides me, there is no God. I am the Lord, there is no other. Besides me, there is no God. I arm you, though you do not know me." And then you get the word Savior brought into this as well. "There is no other God besides me, a righteous God and a Savior." And the idea seems to be that God, Savior, there's only one for Israel.