Jude the hidden guy
It’s easy to skip past Jude on your way to Revelation. Who was Jude anyway? Jude’s letter opens with the greeting, “Jude (called Judas in his day), a servant of Jesus Christ, and brother of James” (Jude 1). This sounds specific, but it isn’t. The very description that is intended to identify him, “the brother of James,” requires that we know which James he’s talking about. The description “brother of James” is also problematic. The Greek word for ‘brother’ (ἀδελφός, adelphos), like the English slang word ‘bro,’ is ambiguous. Using The ESV English-Greek Reverse Interlinear New Testament, we can make the switch to Greek and look up the word adelphos in A Greek-English Lexicon of The New Testament (BDAG). BDAG tells us that adelphos can be a term of friendship (Phil 3:13), specify membership in an ethnic group (Rom 9:3), and metaphorically reference a “fellow believer” (1 Cor 11:1). Nonetheless, since Jude only mentions one “brother” in his opening, unlike Paul in his letters, James...