Relation Of 2 Peter To Jude
RELATION OF 2 PETER TO JUDE
Most of Jude is included in 2 Peter, no less than nineteen of his twenty-five verses being represented in the longer writing. It is difficult to hold accordingly that there is no relationship, although exactly what that relationship was is not easy to determine. While the subject matter of Jude is almost all to be found in 2 Peter, the wording is rarely identical. Guthrie has done some word counts and observes that the passages containing matter common to the two letters run into 297 words in 2 Peter and into 256 words in Jude but that only 78 words are common to the two accounts. Thus if 2 Peter was the borrower, he has changed 70 percent of Jude’s words and added some of his own, while if Jude took over a section of 2 Peter, he has changed a somewhat higher percentage and has reduced the length of the excerpt. Guthrie says that of twelve parallel sections, Jude is longer than 2 Peter on five occasions, which means that neither writer is consistently more concise than the other.9 Whichever writer borrowed from the other, there was thus no slavish copying; the borrower shaped what he borrowed to make it fit his purpose.
Most writers hold that 2 Peter used Jude, largely on the grounds that it is difficult to imagine that a writer who on this hypothesis had so little to say as Jude would take an extract from the longer writing and do no more than simply add a few words. But such a procedure cannot be ruled out as impossible. Jude tells us that he wrote in a hurry (Jude 3), and it may have suited him to make use of whatever material he happened to have by him.
Most of the arguments for the priority of either writing are subjective. Thus Jude arranged his work in triplets, which means to some that his work is the earlier one, with 2 Peter adapting the form to his own needs, and to others that Jude has taken over 2 Peter and arranged it more artistically. Jude uses the Apocrypha, which some see as a mark of earliness, with 2 Peter omitting allusions to such writings as not suitable in an apostolic letter, while others argue that 2 Peter has in fact alluded to Apocryphal writings without quoting them and Jude decides to indicate the source. Other considerations are urged, but in practically every case it is possible to take up either position. Because we lack any firm indication of the relative dates of the two writings, we cannot say for certain which of the two borrowed from the other.
Actually it is not certain that either did this, for it is possible that they both made use of some earlier document. There is a good deal of common matter in Matthew and Luke, but most scholars think the explanation is not that one of them copied from the other but that they both made use of a source or sources, Mark and Q. Something of the same may have happened here. If so, the common source has been lost. Michael Green argues for a common source, 10 but the hypothesis has not widely commended itself.
It seems, then, that there is not sufficient evidence to enable us to draw a firm conclusion. The large amount of common matter shows that there is a connection between the two writings, but the reasons for preferring either as the original source or both as using a common source are largely subjective.