Benjamin Wisner Bacon

“ For an appeal like that of our epistle to the authority of the past against the moral laxity and antinomian teaching of degenerate Pauline churches in the Greek world, the natural resort after Paul himself (Pastoral Epp.) would be the “kindred of the Lord” who were the “leaders and witnesses in every church” in Palestine. Doubtless the framer of Jude 1 would have preferred the aegis of “James the Lord’s brother,” if this, like that of Paul, had not been already appropriated. Failing this, the next most imposing was “Judas, the brother of James.” ”

“ JUDE, THE GENERAL EPISTLE OF, a book of the New Testament. As with the epistle of James, the problems of the writing centre upon the superscription, which addresses in Pauline phraseology (1 Thess. i. 4; 2 Thess. ii. 13; Rom. i. 7; 1 Cor. 1. 2) the Christian world in general in the name of “Jude, the brother of James” (Matt. xiii. 55; Mark vi. 3) . ”

“ On the priority of Jude see especially against Spitta Zur Gesch. u. Litt. d. Urchristenthums, ii. 409–411, F. H. Chase, loc. cit. p. 803. (On 2 Pet. see Peter, Epistles of.) Unfortunately, the date of 2 Pet. cannot be determined as earlier than late in the second century, so that we are thrown back upon internal evidence for the inferior limit.
The treatment of the heresy as the anti-Christ who precedes “the last hour” (v. 18) , reminds us of 1 John ii. 18, but it is indicative of conditions somewhat less advanced that the heretics have not yet “gone out from” the church. ”