Biblical commentary on the New Testament - The Christian ...

THE EllSTLES OF JAMES AND JUDE. CVll
him sometimes Thaddeus, and sometimes Lebbeus. It was not at
all uncommon among the Jews for one man to bear several names ;
and, therefore, we may admit the validity of the prevalent opinion
that Lebbeus or Thaddeus, and Jude, the son of James, are the
same individuals. In John xiv. 22, a second Jude among the twelve
is expressly distinguished from Jude (Judas) the traitor, who is
termed Iscariot ; and hence the name Jude may have been the one
by which the former was most commonly designated.
Now did we know with perfect certainty that the authors of the
Epistles under consideration were of the number of the twelve, it
would be easy to fix upon the individuals ; James, the son of Al-
phasus must have written the Epistle of James, and Jude, the son
of James, that of Jude. But as Jude (v. 1) calls himself the brother
of James, he must either mean another man of this name
known to his readers, or we must suppose the term brother to signify
step-brother or cousin, as indeed the word is often used in He-
brew. For the opinion of some, that in the catalogues of the apos-
tles (see Luke's Grospel and his Acts of the Apostles), Jude is not
called the son but the brother of James, must be totally rejected,
because, though it is true that sometimes the word h^otlier is to be
supplied for the genitive following a proper name, this is only the
case when it is clear from the connection what is to be supplied. In
the apostolic catalogue, however, son is everywhere else to be supplied
for the genitive ; and hence it is incredible that in the case of
Jude alone brother must be added.
But that the authors of these two Epistles of James and Jude
were among the number of the twelve is very uncertain (indeed,
as we shall show hereafter, improbable), and on that account we
have still to determine the difficult question, what persons of these
names wrote the Epistles.^ The following reasons show the uncer-
tainty of the idea that the authors of the Epistles were apostles.
In the first place, the fathers of the church speak of another James,
the brother of our Lord, and first bishop of Jerusalem, and another
Jude, likewise the brother of our Lord, as the authors of the Epis-
tles ; and, moreover, these were disputed by many, and reckoned
among the Antilegomena, clearly for this reason alone, that it was
supposed perfectly correct to regard them as not apostolical. Thus,
in the opinion of the fathers, there were beside the two Jameses and
Judes among the twelve, two other persons of these names, called
brothers of our Lord. These are mentioned in the passage Matt,
xiii. 55, with two other brothers of our Lord, Simon and Joses, and
with sisters of his whose names are not given. They are also men-
tioned in the later history of the apostolic age (Acts xv. 13 seq.;
Gal. i. 19 ; ii. 9), particularly James, who is designated with Peter
and John as a pillar of the church. According to the fathers of the