Rebellion against God’s authorities. 𝘕𝘰𝘵 his angels.

Jude 1.8-13.

Previously I brought up the people with whom Jude disputed in his letter: The folks who were going their own way, embracing their favorite myths instead of Christianity, going astray, and leading others with them.

And I suspect the reason Jude kept referring to Pharisee mythology throughout his letter, was because these ancient Christianists were likely also referring to Pharisee myths. Christians still do it too, y’know. I’ve lost count of the number of times I’ve heard non-biblical stories about Satan, used as proof how it behaves or what it’s up to. Preachers like to claim these stories give us insight into devilish behavior. More like insight into how little homework people do before they get behind the pulpit and claim to teach God’s word.

In my experience, when a person’s quoting myths instead of bible, not only do they take bible out of context, but usually take the myths out of context too. So what I believe Jude did here (and yeah, I admit I’m biased in favor of this interpretation ’cause it’s what I’d do—isn’t that how bias usually works?) was find out what the myths really taught, then turn ’em around on the heretics. Like so.

Jude 1.8-10 KWL

8 Of course these people who dream of flesh stain themselves.

They reject authority. They slander the well-thought-of.

9 When the head angel Michael was debating with the devil over Moses’s body,

it didn’t dare bring a charge of slander, but said, “Lord rebuke you.”

10 These people don’t understand such things, and slander them.

Nope, we don’t have a copy of where the Michael-debating-Satan story comes from. The early church father Origen believed it’s from a book called The Ascension of Moses. De Principiis 3.2.1 We think we have a copy of that book, but our copy doesn’t include that story. Maybe Origen was wrong; maybe we have the wrong book; maybe our copy of the book is missing a chapter; doesn’t matter. Plenty of Pharisee myths include heavenly courtroom cases, with Satan as adversary and other popular angels as defenders. Some of our own, too: Stephen Vincent Benét’s 1936 short story “The Devil and Daniel Webster” has a lot of parodies in popular culture.

So when these ancient misbehaving Christians claimed, “It’s okay to tear Christian leaders a new one when they’re wrong… after all, Michael ripped Satan a new one in The Ascension of Moses,” Jude came right back at ’em with, “Nope; you read that story wrong. Michael didn’t ‘rip Satan a new one.’ Satan fought dirty, but Michael behaved itself, and resisted the temptation to act like an ass. Not so much you.”

A lesson plenty of Christians nowadays have definitely not followed.

Ever read the comments on Christian websites? News sites, blogs, video sites, whatever: If nobody bothers to moderate the comments, they’re just awful. And these people claim to be Christian!

But they’ve fallen for the common false belief that all’s fair in war. That it’s okay to borrow Satan’s tactics when you fight the devil and its imps. It’s okay to treat human beings, Christians or not, with any and every way other than love. Tough love, fr’instance: Go ahead and be vicious and offensive, ’cause you’re trying to keep people away from hellfire by any means necessary.

Fact is, the works of the flesh, Ga 5.16-21 even when we claim we’re using them for good, for the kingdom’s sake, are still fleshly. Those who do them, no matter their intentions, still don’t inherit the kingdom they claim they fight for. Their lack of the Spirit’s fruit proves they’re not subjects of God’s kingdom.

Which is kind of Jude’s point as he continued through his letter.

Oh yeah… the usual misinterpretation.

The usual way Christians tend to interpret this passage is very different from mine. That is, when they bother to read Jude in the first place. And it really doesn’t help that a lot of English translations don’t help us understand it properly.

Jude referred to the δόξας/dóxas in verse 8. I translated it “the well-thought-of,” and the KJV went with “the dignities.” The word tends to refer to glory, usually God’s glory. Pp 2.11 But since it’s not describing any particular person’s glory in this verse, translators figure it’s substantive: It means glorious beings.

Which beings? Well Jude didn’t get specific. But because he referred to Michael and the devil in the next verse, interpreters immediately leap to the conclusion Jude meant angels. (Or fallen angels, like Satan supposedly is.) So while you’re gonna find some bibles which translate dóxas properly (“glorious ones” in ESV, GNT, and NRSV) you’re also gonna find some bibles which conveniently interpret it as angels (“supernatural beings” in NLT, “celestial beings” in NIV, “angelic majesties” in Amplified and NASB). Gee, thanks translators, for inserting your biases in there.

What partially throws these translators off, is the word βλασφημοῦσιν/vlasfimúsin, “they slander.” (KJV “speak evil.”) It tends to get translated more literally: “They blaspheme.” But few Christians understand what blasphemy actually is. Our culture claims it’s to say anything insulting or disparaging about God—and only God. Although sometimes they include holy beings, like angels or dead saints; but certainly not living humans, ’cause we’re not all that holy.

But blasphemy doesn’t mean lèse-majesté, i.e. treating a king as less than kingly. It only means slander: You lied, or spread malicious gossip, about someone. (In print it’s called libel.) And of course you can slander human beings. Gossips do it all the time. Those who wanna knock down the authority of Christian leaders also do it all the time. They’ll slander anyone and everyone.

“Glory” doesn’t only describe heavenly beings like Michael. Jesus used it to describe Solomon, Mt 6.29, Lk 12.27 and noted how the Judeans glorified one another (and him) instead of pursuing such glory from God. Jn 5.41-44, 12.43 Really we should seek the glory which comes from God. Ro 15.7 So of course there are such things as glorious humans. Certain Christian leaders have God’s glory upon them. They have standing with God, plus his authorization and anointing and power.

Yep, Jude wasn’t writing about glorious angels, but about divinely-appointed Christian leaders. Humans. Whom these anarchistic Christian rebels were bashing and defying. As proven by what Jude wrote next.

Examples from the actual bible.

Jude 1.10-11 KWL

10 These people don’t understand such things, and slander them.

By nature they reason like thoughtless animals, and are undone by these things.

11 How sad for them! They went down Cain’s road.

They make Balaam’s mistake, giving themselves up for a salary. They’re destroyed, repeating Korah’s dispute.

More evidence Jude wasn’t talking about angelic authorities: Only one of the examples he selected out of the bible interacted with any angels.

The authority Cain struggled with was the LORD himself:

Genesis 4.6-8 KWL

6 The LORD told Cain, “Why are you hot? Why’s your face down?

7 If you’re doing good, won’t you be lifted up? If you’re not doing good, sin sits by the gate:

It may desire you, but you take charge of it.”

8 Yet Cain spoke to his brother Abel, and while they were in a field,

Cain rose up against his brother Abel and killed him.

The authority Balaam took on was also the LORD:

Numbers 22.9-12 KWL

9 God came to Balaam and said, “Who are these men with you?”

10 Balaam told God, “King Balaq ben Chipor of Moab sent for me:

11 ‘Look, the people which came from Egypt cover the land’s eye!

Go curse them for me, and maybe I can fight them and drive them out.’”

12 God told Balaam, “Don’t go with them. Don’t curse the people, for they’re blessed.”

When God let Balaam later go with them—but ordered him to not prophesy anything other than what he decreed—likely God figured his money-hungry prophet might go rogue on him, and sent his angel to oppose him. Nu 22.22 But the instant Balaam saw an angel was involved, he submitted to the angel’s authority. Nu 22.31 It’s only later Jesus revealed Balaam finally did go rogue, and advised the Moabites to corrupt the Hebrews. Rv 2.14 Still, we don’t see angelic authority disregarded. Much less slandered.

Okay, now Korah.

Numbers 16.1-3 KWL

1 Korah ben Icher (ben Qohat, ben Levi) took Dathan and Abiram ben Eliab, and On ben Pelet, descendants of Reuben.

2 They, with other descendants of Israel, rose up against Moses’s face.

Two hundred fifty chiefs of the nation, appointed rulers, famous people,

3 assembled against Moses and Aaron, telling them, “You have too much power.

The whole nation, all of us, are saints. The LORD’s in our midst.

Why do you get to lift yourselves above the LORD’s nation?”

(By golly, that sounds an awful lot like a democratic revolution, doesn’t it?)

Moses and Aaron tried to negotiate with them, then threw it over to the LORD, who proceeded to rip open the earth and suck the ringleaders down into it, burn up the 250 chiefs, Nu 16.31-35 then inflict a plague on 14,700 other people who had a problem with the way God took out the rebels. Nu 16.41-50 ’Cause though he’s really slow to anger, God had had enough of these rebels. Their refusal to enter Canaan had already doomed their generation to die in the wild; now they were gonna overthrow Moses and Aaron?

But again: Did Korah slander any angels? No? Just Moses and Aaron? Hmm; maybe they’re the well-thought-of folks Jude meant in verse 8.

Various other things Jude slams ’em with.

Jude 1.12-13 KWL

12 They’re rocks in your stew, fearlessly having fun with you.

Waterless clouds, led by the shepherding winds. Shriveling, fruitless trees, also dying from the roots.

13 Roaring waves of the sea, dredging up their own embarrassing behavior.

Bright planets going into gloomy shadow during the age God has preserved.

Really, “rocks in your stew” is ἐν ταῖς ἀγάπαις ὑμῶν σπιλάδες/en tes agápes ymón, sipládes, “in your love[-feasts], reefs.” I was trying to unmix the metaphors. The “love-feasts” are meals the ancient church had together; nowadays we call them potlucks, but the ancients had them way more often. Jude described such people like the shipwreck-causing reefs near shore. We interact with these people, never thinking about how their lawlessness quietly corrupts us. And they never have to worry about us telling them to leave—after all, that’d be ungracious of us. Doesn’t Jesus love all sinners? Including people who rebel against him?

Sure; but if you’re gonna share pearls with pigs, be careful that once they’re done mashing them into the muck, they don’t turn round and come after you. Mt 7.6

Waterless clouds are a metaphor for fruitlessness, and even though the winds shepherd them around, kinda like how our church’s leaders try to shepherd us around, they’re not gonna do anyone any good. Fruitless trees, shriveling as if winter already here, so it’s time to hibernate—and keep all their resources to themselves—describe how really such people are spiritually dying. And Jude pointed out they’re dying a second way: Their roots are going too. ’Cause the source of life they should be tapping, they’re rebelled against.

Roaring waves might be a metaphor for the noise they make, for all the good it does. But apparently their churning also exposes αἰσχύνας/eskhýnas, “things which shame will hide.” Good Christians shouldn’t have anything to be ashamed of, Ps 119.80 but hypocrites have plenty to hide. Thing is, all the noisemaking they do tends to produce an awful lot of slip-ups, as proven when hypocritical leaders expose themselves time and again.

The ancients used to call planets ἀστέρες πλανῆται/astéres planíte, “wandering stars.” Unlike the other “stars,” as they generically called any small light in the night sky, the wandering stars moved round the constellations. And sometimes they couldn’t be seen: Like the moon, sometimes we’re facing the side which doesn’t face the sun, so all we see is its shadow. The ancients, who believed everything rotates round the earth—planets, sun, stars—sometimes realized the sun lit up the planets, and sometimes realized the planets had phases… and sometimes they assumed they were in the earth’s shadow. (Earth-centered astronomy is weird like that.) But Jude imagined planets which might never come out of the earth’s shadow—that they’d be there forever, throughout the kingdom age. After all, that was where these rebels were headed: Right into the dark.

Devilish rebellion.

Jumping back to the usual misinterpretation of verse 8. The reason Jude tends to go unread, apart from all the unfamiliar Pharisee mythology, is this idea of slandering heavenly hosts. Christians don’t understand it. Isn’t God the only being we’re supposed to worship and honor? “No other gods before me” and all that? Ex 20.3 How’re we supposed to honor other heavenly beings? We don’t get it. And we have a lousy habit of skipping the parts of the bible we don’t understand, or struggle to accept, instead of dealing with them and learning from them.

Turns out the entire letter of Jude hinges upon this concept. If Jude wrote about honoring angels, and about how these wayward, rebellious people were blaspheming them… well, we kinda don’t see what the problem is. ’Cause we don’t blaspheme angels. At least we don’t think we do. We really don’t say much for or against them. When they appear to us with messages from God, we usually pay attention. When they defend us from evil spirits, and fight the devil, we appreciate them. Beyond that, they have our own thing; we have ours. And it’s kinda okay if we ignore Jude, or treat it as a weird little obscure book of the New Testament. Kinda like the NT’s own apocrypha.

But if Jude wrote about honoring God-ordained Christian leadership, if “well-thought-of” refers to God’s apostles and prophets and authors of the bible, now we’re talking a relevant lesson—and a serious problem, since quite a lot of Christians are participating in exactly this sort of rebellion.

What difference does it really make when Christians slander angels? (Assuming we even know any.) Okay, we’d be unlikely to listen to the occasional angelic messenger. God’s got an easy workaround: He could speak to us directly, or send us a human prophet. But how does angel-bashing affect our Christian lives? Our relationship with fellow Christians? Our relationship with God? Not a whole lot.

Now, if Jude’s instruction is against bashing well-thought-of humans, Christians whom God has set up as people we oughta listen to, we recognize that’s a real problem. That’s a common hindrance to Christian growth. Bashing angels: No problem. Bashing fellow Christians: No Christianity.

Y’see how a little misinterpretation becomes a big problem? You wonder whether rebellious interpreters have anything to do with it?

Apostles.