BibleProject - Jude: A Family Legacy and a Short Letter

Episode Date: January 5, 2026

The Letter of Jude E1 — Jude is one of the shortest writings in the New Testament. It comes from one of Jesus’ own brothers (or cousins, or stepbrothers, depending on the tradition). Written in the early years of the Jesus movement, the letter addresses a Jewish community in Jerusalem or Galilee, made up of disciples who likely grew up with Jesus and knew his family. Jude (or Judah in Hebrew or Judas in Greek) is deeply rooted in the Hebrew Bible. His writing shows these roots through consistent biblical language and tons of hyperlinks. But who was Jude, and what do we know about his family and ancestors? In this episode, Jon and Tim introduce the background of this short letter and the larger world surrounding its author.FULL SHOW NOTESFor chapter-by-chapter summaries, referenced Scriptures, and reflection questions, check out the full show notes for this episode.CHAPTERSJude’s Identity and the Brothers of Jesus (0:00–8:29)Jesus’ Brothers in the Gospels and Early Church (8:29–24:01)James, Jude, and Their Descendants (24:01–44:15)OFFICIAL EPISODE TRANSCRIPTView this episode’s official transcript.BIBLEPROJECT JUDE TRANSLATIONView our full translation of the Letter of Jude.REFERENCED RESOURCESPanarion by Epiphanius of SalamisThe Perpetual Virginity of Blessed Mary: Against Helvidius by JeromeProto-Gospel of JamesCommentary on Matthew by OrigenAntiquities of the Jews by Flavius JosephusThe Church History by Eusebius of CaesareaCheck out Tim’s extensive collection of recommended books here.SHOW MUSIC“afternoon reads.” by Lofi Sunday, PAINT WITH SOUND.“date night” by Lofi Sunday, Cassidy GodwinBibleProject theme song by TENTS SHOW CREDITSProduction of today’s episode is by Lindsey Ponder, producer, and Cooper Peltz, managing producer. Tyler Bailey is our supervising engineer, who also edited today’s episode and provided the sound design and mix. JB Witty writes the show notes. Our host and creative director is Jon Collins, and our lead scholar is Tim Mackie. Powered and distributed by Simplecast. Hosted by Simplecast, an AdsWizz company. See pcm.adswizz.com for information about our collection and use of personal data for advertising.

Welcome to Bible Project podcast. Today we're starting a short series on a New Testament letter. You might not have read a lot. It's the letter of Jude. One page of the New Testament. Pure dynamite. This is one of the most unique documents out of early Christianity. We call him Jude, but that's the English version of the Greek version of his Hebrew name.

In Greek, it's Eudas, the... a Greek-ified version of the Hebrew name, Yehuda, which is Judah, who was identified elsewhere in the New Testament as the brother of the Lord. In this episode, we'll explore what it means to be a brother of Jesus. Were they actual brothers? Were they stepbrothers, cousins? We'll get into it. But regardless, in the Gospels, they don't think highly of Jesus.

His relatives thought he was crazy. He's lost his mind. He's like claiming he's the son of man bringing the kingdom of heaven to earth. We grew up with him. But then something remarkable happens, and the brothers of Jesus become some of the first missionaries, planting churches and spreading the news that their brother is the ruler over heaven and earth. And this letter, the letter of Jude, is one of the only records we have of their ministry, giving us a unique look into their faith.

The scriptural text in his library will surprise us, how he makes connections and hyperlinks, how did they worship Jesus, how did they talk about him? It's all on display. and it's so fascinating. Judah reads the Bible a lot like we do here at Bible Project. He sees it as one unified story that leads to Jesus, and he meditates on it, and he finds God's wisdom in it for his own circumstances.

This Judah was a Bible nerd. He writes in this kind of Tanak code speak, and his language is saturated with hyperlinked language and images from the Hebrew scriptures. Today we begin to explore the literary nerdiness of the letter of Jude, and we'll begin by looking at who Jude was and what it meant that he was a brother of Jesus. Thanks for joining us. Here we go. Hey, Tim.

John Collins. Hello. Hello. Hi. Here we go. Here we go. What's happening? Man, we're doing something kind of different, but kind of cool. The Letter of Jude in the New Testament. One page of the New Testament. that is pure dynamite, like firework display kind of dynamite.

This is one of the most unique documents out of early Christianity in the New Testament. So what I'd like to do is take this for a few minutes and give my explanation for why I think this is such an amazing privilege that we have this document, period. And then we're just going to take the next episodes to read and talk our way,

through it. That's the goal. Read through Jude. Yeah. Great. You ready? I'm ready. You ready? Nope. Not really. It's just like, what's about to happen? So, first things first. Jude, in Greek, it's Judas. It's actually Judas. It's spelled exactly the same way as the character in the Gospels. That's one of Jesus'

disciples named Judas. But the Greek name Yudas is the Greek-ified version of the Hebrew name, Yehuda, which is this Judah, Judah, one of the 12 sons of Jacob, Judah, the fourthborn. So what I'm going to do in our conversations just to kind of de-familiarize us with this, just call him Judah. By his Hebrew name, not Judas, Judah. Well, I know. He probably was known by both names. You know, this is totally the case. Those of you listening who have grown up with a bicultural or maybe triculture identity. You're used to this of kind of your name shifting based on what group of people you're based. He was Jewish, so his name was Judah,

but in Greek circles, they would say Judas. They would say Judas. Yehuda? Yehuda? And Judas. But we'll say Judah. We'll say Judah. I know. I know. Yeah, I know. I get it now. Okay. So Judah identifies himself from three ways in the opening of this letter. Judah, a slave of Jesus Messiah, and a brother of James in our English translations. In Greek, it's Jacob, which reflects in Hebrew, Yaakov. Jacob, yes. And then as it went into translation history in a number of European languages, the B shifted to an M in how people pronounce.

it, and the K of Yaakov went away. So it's a dramatic transformation in the pronunciation of the name for how you get from Jacob to James. There's a popular myth that it was King James, who in the English King James translation. Oh, he's like, I want my name in there. Right, and that he flexed his muscle to get his name in there. That's not true?

I want to believe that that's true, but there's no evidence for that being true. Oh, that's too bad. Okay. Three designations. He names himself as Judah, a slave of Jesus Messiah, brother of Jacob. So Judah and Jacob were among the most popular male names in first century Judaism, Jewish culture. So what kind of community in first century Judaism could you write a letter to a group of people? And they know that Jacob. Yeah, they know that Judah.

And they know that, Jacob. Yeah. Okay. So what are we talking about here? Yeah. So this document is one of two windows that we have in the New Testament into a separate subculture stream from the early Christian movement that was uniquely connected to, as we're going to see, the brothers of Jesus and their missionary movement in Jerusalem and then up in Galilee. This is the Judas who was identified elsewhere in the New Testament as the brother of the Lord. Yeah. And so this is just a precious little window into the life and language, the thought, the theology of a either Jerusalem or up in Galilee-based Jesus community entirely Jewish people who would have grown up around Jesus. And it just feels different than the rest of the New Testament. It reads exactly like the kind of

a literature you find in the Dead Sea Scrolls and in other Second Temple Jewish literature. This Judah was a Bible nerd. He writes in this kind of Tanak code speak, and his language is saturated with hyperlinked language and images from the Hebrew scriptures, and he assumes his readers will know exactly what he's talking about. It's a very Jewish audience. Yeah. So basically, Here's what's awesome about this letter. This text comes to us by someone who grew up with Jesus. He grew up with Jesus. Yeah.

And he went back to the towns where Jesus grew up. And he went back there after he became a disciple of his brother. And he became a church planter and a church leader. And that's the crew that he's writing to. It's a very unique document. and it just feels and sounds like, whoa, this is an under-explored version of early Christianity. Cool. So let's talk about what it means to be a brother of James, and then why am I saying that he's the brother of the Lord?

Yeah. What does this mean? Yeah, it comes me of that. All right. So Paul, traveling missionary, riding to a group of Christians in the city of Corinth, which is over like in Greece. Right. And in the section, he is talking about how he works and makes leather

tents in the marketplaces to, like, fund his own life so that he doesn't have to take money from churches that he plants and then teaches in. But he says, actually, the apostles and other traveling missionaries from the early church, they don't do that, and that's fine. He's like, that's cool. They don't have to do it the way I do it, but I do it for my reasons. And then he just mentions in 1st Corinthians chapter 9, verse 5, he says, listen, even some apostles take along like their wives and their families who are also believers on the road. And he said, like the rest of the apostles, and also the brothers of the Lord, and also Cephas, that is Peter. The brothers of the Lord. So he mentions that there's the apostles, which in Paul's mind,

isn't just the 12. It's actually the 12. And anybody who encountered the risen Jesus and was commissioned by him to go spread the goodness. That's what apostle seems to me in Paul. And notice how he separates out of the apostles a couple subgroups, as it were. He mentions Simon Peter, well, actually he is one of the 12, but he singles him out. That's Seifus. That's Seifus, that is Simon Peter. And then he mentions the brothers of the Lord, plural. Yeah. She's like, whoa. They were known as traveling missionaries in the early church. And Paul can just throw that out there like, yeah, you know, those guys, we all like know about them. So what he's referring to here, this phrase, brothers of the Lord, is referring to the same group that appear also

in the Gospels. In the Gospel of Matthew, there's a scene where Jesus's teaching, and we're told that his mother and brothers were standing outside wanting to talk to him. They're just called brothers. And in both Matthew and Mark, there's a list given of their names. In Mark, here's the list. Okay. It's four. Jacob, Josis. Judah, and Simon. There's the four. And then when you look at the list, Matthew, in the same story, the parallel story in Matthew chapter 13, he gives the same list, and he lists four brothers, Jacob, Joseph, Simon, and Judah. There's a couple differences between these two lists. Yeah, Joseph is Joseph. Exactly. Yep. That's the short and nickname. So Matthew,

It changed it back to the original full name. Okay. So Jacob and Joseph. And then he switched the order of the names. Mark had Judah and Simon. Judah's in the third spot. Matthew has shifted it from Simon to Judah. And there's lots of ink spilled on like,

why is that because Matthew knew the birth order. Judah's the youngest son. You know, we don't know. Okay. But there's the four brothers. Mark also names Jesus' sisters, plural. And their names are not found in the New Testament. their names are preserved in a fourth century early Christian historian source,

a guy named Epiphanius, who claims that he has a source where he's seen the names of the sisters, that there were two sisters, named Mariam and Salome, which were among the most popular girl names in the first century Judaism. What's Salome? It comes from Shalom. Yeah, peace. So we got four brothers And they're just called the brothers

The brothers. The brothers of the Lord. Now, in Catholic tradition These are considered stepbrothers? Yeah. One of actually the oldest views It goes back to the fourth century. I believe the first source was a Christian scholar named Jerome,

who was one of the few Christians in the fourth century who cared to learn Hebrew so we could read the Bible in Hebrew. But he translated the Bible into Latin. And he puts together that list, and that this is naming Jesus' cousins. Okay, but they get the designation of brother. But they're called brother in the broader sense, which is totally true. In Hebrew Bible and early Judaism, brother didn't technically mean biological brother.

You could use it for that, and you could use it for a cousin. You could use it for a nephew and uncle could call each other brothers. So he reads these two passages that have the list of brothers. and he thinks the people are saying, isn't this the son of Mary, that is, you know, mom, and isn't he the brother, in quote marks, in Jerome's mind, the cousins of Jacob, Josie, Judah, and Simon? Okay.

So that's one view. Okay, that's one view. They're cousins. Yes. Here's what's super interesting. Actually, the oldest view that we have on record is that these are Jesus' stepbrothers. and that they are children of Joseph who adopted Jesus,

the Joseph who features in like the famous Christmas stories. The oldest view do we have from the second century sources is that Joseph was married to another woman. Previously? Previously. And that that woman died. And that his marriage to marry the mother of Jesus was his second marriage. This view appears in a number of

second century sources. One is from an early post-New Testament Christian work called the Gospel of James, or Bible nerds call it the proto-gospel of James. Super fascinating document from the mid-second century. And it's kind of a fan fiction, like retelling the stories of the New Testament with lots of gaps filled and so on. It records a conversation that a priest in Jerusalem is having with Joseph. But Joseph in this story says, that he has children, that he's an old man, and that Mary, you know, who's pregnant with Jesus, is a very young girl.

And he says that he doesn't want to, like, get engaged to her so that he doesn't become, he says, a laughingstock to the sons of Israel. This would be like a late middle-aged man who already has four sons and two daughters, and he's marrying, like, a 14-year-old girl, Jesus' mom. Who's already pregnant? Who's already pregnant. Yeah.

So this story is imagining that. But it also says that Joseph is the one who found a cave. In the Gospel of James, it mentions that they found a cave for Jesus to be born in. And that when Joseph went to find a midwife, for when Mary went into labor, he left two of his sons with Mary. And the birth story, the kids are there. Yep. So these would be older brothers. Now, this doesn't feel like a super reliable document.

Totally. Yeah. Yeah, I'm with you. But what I'm saying is this is a second century document where this idea is already in the air. Right. That's what I'm saying. So in the late 2nd century, there's a biblical scholar named Origin down in Alexandria, Egypt. And he says that he has a book in his library called the Gospel of James.

It's the same document that I just read to you from, and he says that he reads in this document that the brothers of Jesus were sons of Joseph by a previous wife that he married before Mary. And then he goes on, and he says, listen, there is a dispute, an issue going on in our midst. But he says there are people, and it's a very prominent view, that people believe Mary and Joseph didn't have sex to produce Jesus, and that they didn't have sex then afterwards either, and so that her virginity was ongoing. So that is an idea that many people might know today, the perpetual virginity of Mary, as a doctrine, you know, that's really important in Catholic tradition still today.

But it's really old. Like it has roots in first and second century literature. There's another early Christian bishop from the second century Clement of Alexandria, who it was actually for him, Theologically very important that Mary never had sex with Joseph before or after. And then, oh, this is interesting. That guy, Epiphanius, he was a historian of early Christianity who lived in the 300s. He had a big library of like sources that he talks about.

So he gives some background data on Joseph. He says that Joseph took his first wife from the tribe of Judah. And she bore him six children, four boys. two girls, just like in the gospel of Mark and John, his firstborn son was James, his Jacob, whose nickname was Oblias, that is, wall, like a strong defensive wall. He was also surnamed the righteous one, or the just one, James the Just. And he was a Nazarite, a holy man. He was also the first to receive the seat of bishop.

or in this translation, the Episcopal throne, that is the seat of leadership in the Jerusalem Church. He was also called the Lord's brother as the apostles agree by saying, and then he quotes from the Apostle Paul, by saying he went up to Jerusalem and didn't meet with any other apostles, he went to James, the brother of the Lord first. That's something Paul says in Galatians. And then he goes on, he says,

but he's called the brother of the Lord not by nature but by grace because he was brought up with him and then he goes on to retell the gospel stories of Jesus' birth but Joseph was already married that is her first wife have died

and then he brought six children into the marriage with Mary so I guess all that to say is this is not a later theological idea of Mary's perpetual virginity but it is actually rooted in like early second century material.

Here's what we also know about the relatives of Jesus. Other than Mary, the rest of his relatives thought he was crazy. There's an important story in Mark chapter 3, where one day Jesus is by a house up in Galilee, a crowd is around him, and there's so many people that can't get out of the crowd. In fact, they can't even sit down and have a meal, Jesus and his disciples. So when his family heard about this, this is Mark, chapter 3, verse 21, they went to take charge of him, for they said, Jesus is out of his mind.

He's lost his mind. He's like claiming he's like... Yeah, the son of man. The son of man bringing the kingdom of heaven to earth. The time is fulfilled. That's like, we grew up with him. Yeah. He's out of his mind.

So clearly they don't have a very faith. or trusting view of like Jesus' claims. Jesus latering in the Gospel of Mark, Chapter 6, after he gets rejected in this hometown of Nazareth, what he says, this famous saying, a prophet is not without honor except in his own town and among his own relatives and in his own home. Your family was going to call you crazy.

Yeah. Jesus himself experienced estrangement from his relatives in those days. This is reflected also in the gospel according to John. There's a story in John 7 where Jesus had already been down to Jerusalem. He was up in Galilee at the beginning of John chapter 7, and it was in the fall festival of Sukkot, tabernacles. And everybody goes down south to Jerusalem. And so in John 7, verse 3, his brothers say to him,

hey, let's go down to Judea and Jerusalem. So all your followers can see, you know, your miracle show. And they say, listen, nobody does what they do in secret if they want to get publicly recognized. So if you're, you know, doing this thing, Jesus, go show yourself to the world. And then John pauses the story and whispers in the ear of the reader and says, his brothers did not believe in him. Okay. Go prove yourself, basically.

Yeah, and on either reading of what you think his brothers are, you know, stepbrothers, cousins, they would be older than him. So this would be like the, you know, the little stepbrother, the little cousin. Because he would go out outside of Nazareth, do miracles, have a following, come back and they'd be like. They're like fishing and farming. Yeah. And he comes back, and they're just like, what, that kid?

Yeah, they're like, what are you doing out there? Yeah, and so you hear they're kind of mocking him. They're like, listen, we're all about to go down to Jerusalem for the feast. Why don't you go down there and do your show down there if you're so big? You know, that kind of thing. So that's the two windows we get from John and Mark is that his brothers are not down. Skeptical, yeah. Not down to follow him.

Something changed. And it's one of the most fascinating, untold stories in the New Testament. estimate. Something changed. In 1 Corinthians chapter 15, the Apostle Paul is passing on like an oral memorized tradition about the resurrection appearances of Jesus, that Jesus was buried, that he was raised on the third day according to the scriptures. And then he has this list of resurrection appearances. The risen Jesus appeared to Cephas, that's Simon Peter, then to the 12, then to more than 500 of our siblings at one time the majority of whom are alive right now

but some of them have died that has fallen asleep then Paul says he appeared to Jacobus to James the eldest brother then to all of the apostles like a whole bunch of other more people then as it were to someone born at the wrong time me he appeared to me That is Paul.

So there's some moment that is in wide circulation now a memory that Jesus appeared to James, that is one of the brothers of the Lord, who's the leader of the Jerusalem Church. That has to be who he's mentioning here in 1st Corinthians 15. So speaking of that, James, here's what's interesting. That James was so influential in the early Jesus movement, he's actually mentioned in other historical sources. There's a Jewish historian named Josephus, pretty well-known historian, was not a follower of Jesus.

He knew about James, that is Jacob, the brother of Jesus, who was the leader of the Jerusalem Church and actually was executed and put to death by the temple leaders. And that is mentioned in the Book of Acts. There is, okay, here's the historian of all historians for the church,

a guy named Eusebius, who wrote a massive five-volume work that is one of our most, most important sources for the history of early Christianity. It's so cool. It's so interesting. I'm not familiar with that. It's epic. I had read it in snippets, but earlier this spring, I just sat down and worked through the whole thing. You did? Oh yeah. And dude, he goes from right before the time of Jesus, all up through Jesus, and then he has all these historical sources from the first century, second century, and he gives you right up to his own time, which is the time of

Emperor Constantine, who was the first Christian emperor. And so he provides, like, lists of leaders in the Jerusalem Church, and it's sort of like a little window that we don't have from elsewhere. So he actually remembers all this stuff in his sources about James, the brother of the Lord, leader of the early Jerusalem Church. I'll just highlight the fact that he was known as having calluses on his knees so that his knees were hard like those of a camel. He was known as camel knees because he prayed so much. Come on. Yeah. What an amazing reputation.

to have your knees because you pray so much because that's how you pray you pray on your knees of course

of course of course of course yeah also he took on the life of a Nazarite that is the life

of one of the priests he took on a priestly life and then the account of his murder and execution he was thrown off a building

tall building in Jerusalem and then he lived for a little bit longer like minutes and then there are memories of him repeating the words of his brother, saying, Father, forgive them.

They don't know what they're doing. Then Eusebius tells us who became the leader of the Jerusalem Church after Jesus' brother, and it was Jesus' cousin, a guy named Simeon, who was the son of Jesus' uncle Clopis, he tells us, or Cleopis. Okay. So he says, after the martyrdom of James, and then, And then also after the fall of Jerusalem in 70 AD, actually, this is interesting, it said that those of the apostles and the disciples of the Lord who were still living came together with those related to the Lord according to the flesh, because most of them were still alive. They took counsel as to who was worthy to succeed James, and they all, with one consent, pronounced Simeon, son of Clopas, of whom the gospel mentions, to be worthy of.

the Episcopal throne, that is the seat of Bishop Leader in Jerusalem. He was a cousin, as they say, of the Savior. Okay. And then Eusebius names his source for all things second century, a guy named Hegesippius, whose book we don't have, we just have his long excerpts of it. Okay. Okay. Dude, this gets even more interesting. So those are the memories of James.

Okay. And then of the leadership of the Jerusalem Church. But what about Judah? Yeah. Like, where did he go? Well, if James was based in Jerusalem, and if Paul knows that the brothers of the Lord, back to 1st Corinthians 9, were among the early missionaries, then we've got three other brothers, Josie, Simon, and Judah, who were known as traveling missionaries. It is so interesting. This is from Eusebius' church history, too. This is in book 1, chapter 7. For the relatives of our Lord, according to the, flesh, whether with the desire of boasting or simply wishing to state the facts, they have

handed down to us the following account. And what he goes into is he's trying to solve the riddle of the two genealogies in the New Testament, Luke's genealogy and Matthew's genealogy, that are different, and how do you account for their difference? So Eusebius goes to that guy, Hegesipius's work. Okay. And Hegesipius says, yeah, I wanted to sort this out. So I went on a field trip to Galilee.

And I went and I interviewed all, like, the relatives of Jesus. And he provides this whole account for, like, why the two genealogies are different. It's super cool. I won't get into the details, but it's super interesting. And that account is preserved by Eusebius? Yes. Okay. It's in book one, chapter 7.

Then he goes and says this. He says, listen, a few of these people were really careful having obtained private records. either by remembering the names or by getting them in some other way from registers. And this group of Christians up in Galilee pride themselves on preserving the memory of their noble lineage, their noble extraction. And among them are those, I already mentioned, who are called the Desposini. Desposini. So this is a Greek term. It comes from the Greek word despos or despot, which means.

means like a master or a ruler. And then Desposigny is a little term, meaning those who belong to a master. So there's a crew of Christians up in Galilee, Eusebius Sizerlang, who call themselves those who belong to the Lord or the master. And they call themselves this on account of their connection with the family of the Savior.

They come from Nazareth, is Nazareth, and Kokoba, villages of Judea, and they went into other parts of the world. And they drew the genealogy that he was discussing from memory and from the book of daily records as faithfully as possible. So, this is Eusebius, saying this guy,

Hagasipius, went, and he met all these relatives of Jesus. And they have a unique term for themselves. And that they all still live in the town where Jesus grew up. And he says that from there, they actually launched a missionary movement out into other parts of Galilee and beyond.

Okay. So what do we know about the early missionary movement in Galilee and beyond, messianic Jewish relatives of Jesus going to other synagogues? What do we know about this? Yeah.

Nothing. Okay. Nothing. But we know they existed. Luke mentions one time in Acts chapter 9, verse 31, Galilee and Sumeria, had peace and was strengthened.

And he doesn't ever tell a story. He just doesn't recount it. So this little quote from Eusebius quoting Hegsypius is one of the few pieces of evidence we have. They had their own identity and they were out there spreading the church in their own way. And then there's this. This is the crown jewel right here. This is so cool.

What's this? All right. So this is Eusebius, quoting again from this, second century Christian historian named Hegesippius. Okay. And he recounts this story. So think after 70 AD Jerusalem was destroyed by the Romans.

And you had Jewish communities that had given their allegiance to Jesus. They would have had a kind of precarious situation there in and around Jerusalem. Yeah. And also, the Roman government would have been watching, and we know did watch Jewish leadership circles with an eagle eye had them under the microscope

because they're like, never again will a rebellion happen like what led to the destruction of Jerusalem? So we have this record here. This is in Eusebius' Church history, Book 3, Chapter 20. And he remembers, he has this record of the Emperor Domitian. He was the Roman Emperor around 95 AD, 25 years after the disaster.

and Domitian had commanded that all the descendants of David should be found and executed. So that just mean Jewish people? Jewish people who claim or come from the lineage connected all the way back to King David. Okay. So just that tribe? Why would that be relevant? Okay, because that's the Messianic tribe.

Yes, yeah, and that's connected as a political threat. Basically, you're killing off your... The line of the kings. You're killing off anybody who could say, I'm from David. out with Rome gather to me everybody rebels in the hills

so this is a very shrewd Roman emperor who's trying to root out anybody that could even say they're related to the kings of ancient Israel find them, put him to death so

there's a tradition that says there were heretics which is people opposed to anything to do with Jesus and his people who brought an accusation against the descendants of Judah. So we're like, whoa, this is like talking about the kids of Judah,

the brother of the Lord, which is what he says, the Judah who has said to have been a brother of the Savior according to the flesh. So they were accused on the grounds that they were of the lineage of David and related to the Messiah, that is Jesus himself. So this is fascinating. this is either the sons or grandsons of Jude who's mentioned as a brother of Jesus in the Gospels whose letter we're going to finally read

in the next episodes that he had sons or grandsons who got arrested. So Hegesippius tells us that these were the grandsons of Jude who was the Lord's brother according to the flesh and they belong to the family of David. So notice they're not accused of being Christians They're accused of being Jewish descendants of David.

Right. And so they get brought before the emperor. So this is so interesting. He tells this whole story, and as, you know, whether you believe it's testimony, how would he have known the conversations and so on. But this is cool. What he says is the emperor asked them how much property they had or how much money they owned. Both of them answered they had about 9,000 dinari, half of which belonged to each of them. and the property that they owned

didn't consist of silver but a piece of land about 39 acres from which they raised their taxes and supported themselves by their labor then they showed their hands exhibiting the hardness of their bodies and the calluses produced on their hands by continuous toil evidence of their labor

then they were asked about Christ in his kingdom what sort it was and you could see why they would want to know about that question. Like, hold on, you say your descendants, right? Like siblings of that guy who 40, 50 years ago said he was the Messiah. And what they said was it was not a temporal or earthly kingdom, but a heavenly and angelic one. And that would appear at the end of the world, when he, that is their grand uncle, Jesus, would come in glory to judge the dead and give everyone according to his works. Upon hearing this, demission did not pass judgment.

Rather, despising them as of no account, he let them go. He even put out a decree to stop the persecution. He's like, these guys are harmless? Yeah, he's basically like, well, these guys are no threat whatsoever. Okay, interesting. And when they were released, they went out, and he says they led or ruled the churches because they were witnesses and relatives of the Lord. So interesting.

So this is, truly, this is all we have in terms of early evidence of the memory of the relatives of Jesus. But you can put together this picture of the relatives of Jesus as traveling missionaries among whom were Judah, going back to the towns where they grew up, out of which they begin telling all their relatives

and their fellow Jewish brothers and sisters using synagogue networks to spread the good news, and that Judah emerged as one of these leaders, and here are two of his grandsons who are still like leaders of house church networks up there in Galilee. And what I'm showing you is the only evidence we have of this network of Messianic

Jewish communities connected to the Disposini, the family of the master. And this is the context out of which the letter of Judah and the letter of James in the New Testament

come. And you're saying that how remarkable it is that in the gospel accounts, they're always skeptical, and then there's some sort of shift. There's some shift. They see the resurrected Jesus. they experience something, and then they're just all in,

and they take the church to Galilee, and they start missionary journeys in that general area. Yeah, you got it. And there's just so much we don't know. But it's beautiful to imagine. There's so much from early Christianity that we'll have to meet them in the new creation and hear their stories. And maybe this is not as interesting to anybody else as it is to me, but we're talking about the relatives of Jesus

and the role that they played in that first couple generations of the Jesus movement. The people who grew up with Jesus. Yes. The Gospels paint them as being kind of snarky. Super snarky. And just skeptical. And then something happens, transformation.

And they started leading the Judaism. They were among the people that Jesus chose to specially appear to, the risen Jesus. Imagine that. And Paul mentions James, but it would have been, has to have been for the others. Right. Whoa.

Imagine that moment for them. The kid you grew up with that you saw was crazy gets executed by the Romans. Yeah. And then he appears to you in glory. And you're just the conversion of the imagination just in that experience right there. Yeah.

And then, of course, they were then compelled to go start telling their family, members and friends and synagogue networks about Jesus, Messiah. Yeah. Yeah. Yeah, they would need something remarkable to go back to the people who are like, we know this guy, we grew up this guy, we've been skeptical of this guy from the beginning, go back and be like, no, this is happening. Yeah, exactly. This is legit. Yeah, yeah. And then do we have any firsthand evidence then of how they thought, what they would have talked about? How did they

teach? And this is the broader context for this one page of the New Testament. It's a window in the early messianic Jewish Christianity that one of the teachers was the brother of the Lord. And the scriptural text in his library will surprise us, how he interprets them, how he makes connections and hyperlinks.

It's all on display. Yeah. And it's so fascinating. I see. Yeah. So you're creating this little world. I'm trying to create a little story world. It's like these guys were doing the Jesus thing

in their own special way. Yeah. And we don't know a lot about it, but we have this letter. Yeah. How did these early Jewish Christians, relatives of the Lord and their house church networks, how did they worship Jesus? How did they talk about him? How did they talk about the good news? How did they read the scriptures? And all of this is on full display in this short letter. Short letter. Yeah. Okay, and then just to go back to that first sentence then, he introduces himself, Judah, slave of Jesus Messiah, brother of James. He

doesn't call himself the brother of Jesus Messiah, which is interesting, but he does call himself brother of Jacob, that is of James. So I think if I discovered that my, is their cousin, stepbrother, biological brother, whatever view you take was the incarnation of the creator of the universe, I think I would probably just call myself servant as well. I think that's what's going on here. Yeah. So what we're going to do in the handful of episodes that follow is just work our way through this fascinating letter that does not feel or sound like Paul or Peter or Hebrews. It's just different. This little letter breathed a different air from early Christianity. Thanks for listening to Bible Project podcast. Next week, we begin reading the letter of Jude, where he refers to a little bit. his audience with three special words rooted in the Hebrew Bible, loved by the Father, kept by

Messiah Jesus, and called. Those words kept love and called. It's vocabulary that was used to describe the whole covenant community of Israel here in Jude. That vocabulary is getting applied to the followers of Jesus, Messiah. Bible Project is a crowdfunded nonprofit, and we exist to help People experience the Bible as a unified story that leads to Jesus. And everything that we create is free because of the generous support of thousands of people just like you. Thank you so much for being a part of this with us. Hello, my name is Carl. I'm from Winter Park, Florida.

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