Overview

Jude is a short letter making it easy to read entirely in one sitting. Yet the letter is rarely read, and it is not a popular text for teaching and preaching. Jude is a warning to an early Christian community about a group of itinerant teachers bearing a message that Jude considers incompatible with the apostolic gospel. The teaching and practice of these people puts them into a class of individuals who, according to Scripture, incur God's wrath and judgment. Jude stresses that there is guaranteed judgment on those who live outside the normalized instruction and teach others to do the same. The importance of a lifestyle that adheres with biblical teaching is just as crucial today as it was in the early church. This commentary highlights the oral and performative nature of the first-century Mediterranean world. Jude was situated in this oral context, and it decisively shaped the form and delivery of the epistle while also enhancing its content. One cannot separate the content of a message from how a message comes to expression. This commentary aims to show the relationship between expression and content, demonstrating that there is not only value in what Jude says but in how he says it.

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9781666730296

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Seal provides the reader with clear and fascinating insights into the rather obscure and overlooked biblical book of Jude. Seal first describes the interesting context, followed by a verse-by-verse commentary. The commentary focuses on a unique scholarly angle called performance criticism, which describes how the text, the orator, and the audience would have interacted when this book was read to an early New Testament-era church. Highly recommended for any student of the Bible. --Sharon K. Smith, coauthor of World Mythology: Human Desires, Wishes, Fears, and Foibles David Seal has written a groundbreaking commentary of Jude. He lifts this epistle out of the silent, private approach of most studies and locates Jude in an active performance with an audience. Drawing richly on ancient Greco-Roman rhetorical devices, Seal challenges conventional interpretations and helps the reader listen carefully to Jude's warnings. Seal offers exegetical insights, performance-critical notes, and practical applications that provide fresh insights to pastors and teachers. --William D. Shiell, President and Professor of Pastoral Theology and Preaching, Northern Seminary, Chicago

Author Information

David Seal is an instructor at Cornerstone University in Grand Rapids, Michigan. In addition to having written many scholarly articles, he is the author of Prayer as Divine Experience in 4 Ezra and John's Apocalypse: Emotions, Empathy, and Engagement with God (2017), and coauthor of Performing Scripture (2019) and World Mythology (2021).

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