"We are travellers…not yet in our native land" – St. Augustine
So, I’ve been ill in bed all day. To take my mind off the glorious weather outside, I’ve been working on my commentary of the Epistle of Jude. I’ve recently been reviewing it at Bible Study and thought that it’d be a good time to tidy up my initial notes:
A couple of months ago I hung out with the Eastern Orthodox young adults of San Diego and attended a talk by Dr. Jeannie, who also happened to have taught one of my friends theology at USD. Her website has a tremendous wealth of free MP3s which are well worth checking out:
A while ago, I listed the questions and answers which I run through at the beginning of every Bible study, all of which relate to the New Testament. Since writing that series of posts, we have read through more books of the Bible: Jude, Colossians and Ephesians. It is therefore time to supplement the list of questions. Today I’d like to cover the questions surrounding Jude:
53. Who wrote Jude?
Jude, the brother of James (probably the bishop of Jerusalem) and kinsmen of Jesus.
54. When was Jude written?
Probably sometime in the 50s or 60s
55. With what other New Testament book is does Jude have a literary relationship?
Second Peter
56. What are themes of Jude?
There are two main themes:
1. Warning against false teachers
2. Exhortations to hold fast to the faith.
57. Jude gives lots of examples to drive home his points. From where does Jude draw these examples?
They come from three sources:
1. Old Testament stories
2. Stories found in non-canonicals works:
(a) The Assumption of Moses
(b) 1 Enoch and Jubilees
3. Apostolic Teaching
Over the next couple of weeks I’ll be adding questions for Ephesians and Colossians too. When those are done I’ll produce a vlog entry going through all of them 🙂
1-16 | 17-27 | 27-42 | 43-52 | 53-57 | 58-67 | 68-71
All Questions
In the previous episode we read all of Paul’s accolades and achievements. In today’s text he speaks about how he now views them since coming to Christ…
But whatever gain I had, I counted as loss for the sake of Christ. Indeed I count everything as loss because of the surpassing worth of knowing Christ Jesus my Lord. For his sake I have suffered the loss of all things, and count them as refuse, in order that I may gain Christ and be found in him, not having a righteousness of my own, based on law, but that which is through faith in Christ, the righteousness from God that depends on faith; that I may know him and the power of his resurrection, and may share his sufferings, becoming like him in his death, that if possible I may attain the resurrection from the dead. – Philippians 3:7-11
Here’s my reflection…
For an audio-only version of this video, please click here.
I recently came across the Catholic Contrast video channel. It’s rather good. Here’s their response to the question “Are religious debates pointless?”…
Something beautiful to begin the weekend…