the apostolic writings, which is highly interesting to the inquirer into the darker portions of the earliest Christian history.
Several very remarkable circumstances in this epistle, have, from the earliest ages of Christian theology, excited great inquiry among writers, and in many cases have not only led commentators and critics to pronounce the work very suspicious in its character, but even absolutely to condemn it as unworthy of a place in the sacred canon. One of these circumstances is, that the writer quotes apocryphal books of a mystical and superstitious character, that have never been received by Christians or Jews, as possessing any divine authority, nor as entitled to any regard whatever in religious matters. At least two distinct quotations from these confessedly fictitious writings, are found in this brief epistle. The first is from the book of Enoch, which has been preserved even to the present day, in the Ethiopic translation; the original Hebrew having been irrecoverably lost. Some of the highest authorities in orthodoxy and in learning have pronounced the original to have been a very ancient writing;—a forgery, indeed, since it professed to be the writing of Enoch himself,—but made up in the earliest ages of Rabbinical literature, after the Old Testament canon was completed, but before any portion of the New Testament was written,—probably some years before the Christian era, though the means of ascertaining its exact date are wanting. Another quotation, equally remarkable, occurs in this epistle, without any mention being made, however, of the exact source from which the passage has been drawn; and the point is at present a subject of dispute,—as references have been made by different authorities, ancient and modern, to different apocryphal Jewish books, which contain similar passages. But the most valuable authorities, both ancient and modern, decide it to be a work now universally allowed to be apocryphal,—"the Ascension of Moses," which is directly quoted as authority on a subject altogether removed from human knowledge, and on which no testimony could be of any value, except it were derived directly and solely from the sources of inspiration. The consequence of these references to these two doubtful authorities, is, that many of the critical examiners of this epistle, in all ages, have felt themselves justified in condemning it.
Tertullian (A. D. 200) is the earliest writer who has distinctly quoted this epistle.
He refers to it in connection with the quotation from the book of Enoch. "Hence it
is that Enoch is quoted by the apostle Jude." (De cultu feminarum, 3.) Clement of Alexandria
also repeatedly quotes the epistle of Jude as an apostolic writing. Origen (A.
