NOTES for Jud 1:9

In his letter Jude mentions a certain dispute between the head of the angelic hierarchy, the archangel Michael, and Satan over the body of Moses. What dispute is he talking about? The biblical books make no mention of any such dispute. Nor does the Bible mention the body of Moses. Evidently, in this case the apostle is appealing not to Holy Scripture but to certain popular traditions preserved in Jewish tradition. The biblical books really do say nothing about where Moses was buried; they mention only his death somewhere in Transjordan. The absence of a tomb, especially in the case of religious leaders of such stature, was an extremely rare thing in antiquity.

Popular memory could not come to terms with the idea that Moses' tomb had been lost in the Transjordanian steppe. That is why, no doubt, the legend arose that Moses, like Elijah, did not die but was taken up alive into heaven. And, it was supposed, he would return together with Elijah shortly before the coming of the Messiah, in order to testify that the day of Judgment was near. The dispute over the body of Moses, of which Jude speaks, was presumably connected with one episode in that popular tradition: unlike Elijah, Moses was taken into heaven at the moment of death and after that was raised by God, just as all the dead will be raised on the day of Judgment. Satan resisted this in every way, so the archangel Michael himself had to come to Moses' defense. Incidentally, one may note that the biblical books also say nothing about an angelic hierarchy, though it is described in detail in the Old Testament apocrypha. Evidently, these apocrypha too are largely the fruit of Jewish popular religious creativity in the Hellenistic period.

But Jude evidently feels completely free in this respect: in his letter he refers to popular traditions just as he refers to sacred books. That is not surprising, for what mattered to the apostle was to convey to his readers the thought he considered important. The illustrative material played a supporting role in this case. What mattered was only that it be well known to the addressees of the letter and not contradict Holy Scripture. The tradition about the dispute over the body of Moses met these criteria. And the apostle uses it, of course, without making such use an end in itself. For every tradition is only a source from which we may draw something important for understanding one or another pattern of spiritual life.

Dangers to the Church can come not only from outright persecutors, but also from among those who would seem to be our own brothers. It is true that the Apostle Jude calls such false brothers people long ago designated for condemnation, thereby noting their dependence on the forces of evil already condemned. This is so, but it makes sober rejection of the temptations that have penetrated the Church all the more necessary.

The seducers laid bare the problem of a right and a distorted understanding of Christian freedom. Christians have often faced this problem, especially in our own time, when people of very different convictions and beliefs regard freedom as an essential value. It still prompts many different ways of resolving it, including shameful ones. But the freedom brought by Christ is not arbitrary license or lawlessness; it is liberation from every form of slavery, especially from the power of sin, which is harder to eradicate than social slavery.

The reminder that those who have been saved can choose to take the road to perdition and thus reject the salvation granted to them sounds severe. Hopes that a fall can be avoided are illusory. Could it be that the false brothers are called dreamers precisely because their calculations for a favorable outcome, however carefully considered they may seem, are bound to collapse?

In his letter, Jude speaks of certain people who ‘reject authority’ and ‘revile glory’. Judging by the meaning of these words and their particular usage, he is referring not to earthly authorities but to God's authority and to His glory, which in the language of the Yahwist and Jewish traditions denotes God's presence. They do all this while ‘defiling their bodies on the basis of dreams’.

It is not very clear what is meant here. One thing is clear: the people mentioned by the apostle claimed to follow some tradition or certain ‘teachers’ who based their teaching on certain ‘dreams’ (or perhaps simply ‘visions’—the corresponding Greek word has more than one meaning). What exactly does Jude mean when he says that they ‘defiled’ their bodies? Some commentators thought he was referring to self-castration, and that the movement mentioned in the letter must have resembled the later sects of the Skoptsy.

Yet, judging by the indulgence of their own lusts and the excesses at the meals accompanying the breaking of bread that the apostle mentions, he is hardly speaking of ‘defiling the body’ in the sense in which one might apply that expression to the Skoptsy. He is more likely referring to a movement of a peculiar kind of ‘Christian spiritualists’, convinced that the body means nothing for spiritual life. What matters, they said, is the soul; the body is merely a shell and plays no part in spiritual life. Its condition is of no importance whatsoever: it has no effect on a person's spiritual life, and if it does, that means the person is not yet sufficiently ‘spiritual’.

On the basis of such ideas, the people mentioned by the apostle considered any ascetic practice connected in one way or another with the body unnecessary. Apparently they rejected even the most elementary restraint, regarding excess in eating as a trivial matter from the standpoint of spiritual life as they understood it. In practice, this peculiar speculative spiritualism led to a situation in which the commandments could be broken and spiritual life thrown completely out of balance, on the false premise that the body plays no part in a person's spiritual life.

It is hardly surprising that Jude strongly objects to such ‘spirituality’. The issue is not only the possibility of breaking a commandment. Above all, it is that God created human beings as creatures not only of spirit but also of nature, and they are to enter the Kingdom not only with their souls but also with their bodies. Any attempt to ‘correct’ ourselves by excluding our own nature from our lives merely leads to an imagined life taking the place of genuine life. A life that cannot lead to the Kingdom.