Jude 5

I will therefore put you in remembrance, though ye once knew this, how that the Lord, having saved the people out of the land of Egypt, afterward destroyed them that believed not. [KJV]

and to remind you I intend, you knowing once this, that the Lord, a people out of the land of Egypt having saved, again those who did not believe did destroy; [YLT]

versus:

Now I want to remind you, although you once fully knew it, that Jesus, who saved a people out of the land of Egypt, afterward destroyed those who did not believe. [ESV]

Mistranslation or (extra) evidence for the Trinity?

 

Charles Landon, A Text-Critical Study of the Epistle of Jude, 70:

That's more than just two options, but the gist is we have four options on who the actor is: 'the Lord', 'Jesus', 'God', and 'God Christ'.

Gene Green, Jude and 2 Peter, 65:

Ruth Anne Reese, 2 Peter and Jude, 42 fn 25:

Lewis Donelson, I & II Peter and Jude: A Commentary, 178:

In my opinion, 'the Lord' is the correct reading.

The first is the diversity of the manuscript evidence, and I think Lewis Donelson (the final quote I provided) makes the best sense of how the variant readings came about. The original was 'Lord', and one scribe interpreted 'the Lord' as 'Jesus', while another scribe interpreted 'the Lord' as 'God', and yet a third scribe (with a highly developed theology) interpreted 'the Lord' as 'God Christ'.

No other NT text attributes any action to a pre-existent Jesus, other than the act of creation itself (e.g. John 1.1; 1 Cor 8.6; Col 1.16). The closest anyone gets is Paul in 1 Cor 10.4,9, but here 'the Christ' is acted upon, not the one who acts. Paul is here, conveniently, talking about the same event as Jude 5, but in 1 Cor 10.5 he nevertheless says it was 'God' (not 'the Christ') who 'struck [them] down in the wilderness'. Given that this is the only other example out of the entire NT, Jude 5 would be very anomalous. Except, 1 Cor 10.4 has no textual variance on 'the Christ' (verse 9 does), while Jude 5 has a lot of textual variance. It seems preferable to follow a reading that is more coherent with the general direction of NT theology: God (that is, 'the Lord') did what the OT attributes to God (Hebrew 'Yahweh', LXX 'the Lord').

Adding to this, nearly all of Jude is reused by 2 Peter, but edited and expanded. Jude 5-7 becomes 2 Pet 2.4-10.

In Jude 5-7, the actor (the one we're trying to determine the identity of) is not just the one who 'saved a people out of the land of Egypt' (Jude 5). This actor is also the one who 'has kept in eternal chains' the angels who abandoned heaven (Jude 6), and this same actor is implicitly the one who punished Sodom and Gomorrah (Jude 7).

In 2 Pet 2.4-10, the actor is explicitly identified as 'God': he is the one who 'committed to chains' the angels who abandoned heaven (4), he is the one who 'did not spare the ancient world' (5), he is the one who 'condemned to extinction' Sodom and Gomorrah (6), he is the one who 'rescued Lot' (7), and he is identified as 'the Lord' (9). If Jude 5 originally said 'Jesus', we would not expect 2 Pet 2.4,10 to change that to 'God' and 'the Lord' without clarifying that Jesus was meant (especially since Jesus is not identified as 'God' anywhere else in the NT, except for maybe two verses in John). But if Jude 5 originally said 'the Lord', then it is easy to understand why 2 Peter 2.4,10 would say 'God' and 'the Lord'.

 

Another hard one.

1 Peter 4:6 - For this is why the gospel was preached even to those who are dead, that though judged in the flesh the way people are, they might live in the spirit the way God does.

Questions:

1. Does Peter refer the previous chapter (3:19) during the same 3 days Jesus proclaiming the Gospel to the spirits in prison and if he does, did he speak of the same event or 2 separate events?

2. Does the word "was" mean it was a one time event, or still ongoing?

3. Can it mean those who die but never heard the Gospel are proclaimed the Gospel and are given a chance to believe?

 

In my opinion, a minor scribal error (with major consequences) crept into 1 Pet 3.19 very early in the transmission process.

First Peter is a message about enduring suffering, and contains a series of smaller thoughts that contribute to that overall point. These smaller units are staggered in a way that the author makes a point, moves forward with a new thought, but ties the new thought back to earlier ones with catchwords. The text currently reads ΕΝΩΚΑΙΤΟΙΣΕΝΦΥΛΑΚΗΠΝΕΥΜΑΣΙΠΟΡΕΥΘΕΙΣΕΚΗΡΥΞΕΝ, translated in the NRSV as 'in which also he went and made a proclamation to the spirits in prison'. Right now, the text of 3.17-20 makes the point that Christians must be willing to suffer for doing the right thing, just as Jesus suffered to reconcile sinners to God, for his body was killed but he was resurrected in the spirit, by which spirit he went to proclaim a message to imprisoned spirits who disobeyed God during Noah's time.

So, Jesus was resurrected 'in the spirit', then proclaimed a message? This can't be the Harrowing of Hell, because that's supposed to have happened before he was resurrected. Next, the author specifies that the spirits Jesus preached to were from Noah's time. Why specifically that time period? Why not spirits before Noah? Why not spirits after Noah? First Pet 3.19 seems like it should be a point of transition between two different thoughts, but as it stands now, it lacks coherence with either what leads up to it and what follows from it.

First Enoch 6-16 is an expansion on Gen 6.1-4: a group of Watchers (angels / 'sons of God') sin against heaven by marrying human women ('daughters of men'), and the Watchers father children, the Giants (Nephilim), who bring great violence against humanity (1 Enoch 6-8). The four archangels protest to God about this sin (ch 9), and God assigns each archangel to a task: the first, to warn Noah about the coming flood (10.1-3); the second, to imprison the leader of the Watchers (10.4-8); the third, to kill the 'half-breed' Giants (10.9-10); the fourth, to imprison the rest of the Watchers (10.11-11.2). God then sends Enoch to make a proclamation to the spirits in prison regarding the reason for their condemnation and their future punishment (chapters 12-16).

It appears to me that an early copyist of 1 Peter accidentally dropped the letter Chi, Χ, just before the word 'and', ΚΑΙ, in verse 3.19. (This could have happened if the scribe was looking at the page and his eyes skipped over ΧΚ as just Κ, or if he was listening to someone read as he copied and so misheard ΧΚ as just Κ). If this is correct, the verse should read ΕΝΩΧΚΑΙΤΟΙΣΕΝΦΥΛΑΚΗΠΝΕΥΜΑΣΙΠΟΡΕΥΘΕΙΣΕΚΗΡΥΞΕΝ. With just this one letter emendation, 1 Pet 3.19-22 now reads with a chiastic structure where the first half prefigures the second half:

The author has switched to a new thought, unrelated to the previous one (except as far as they both contribute to his larger message about suffering). Now it makes much more sense why he specified spirits from Noah's time: he was summarizing 1 Enoch 6-16. His reason for bringing up Enoch preaching to fallen angels and Noah passing through the flood is to argue they prefigured Christian practices and beliefs related to what he had mentioned in the previous paragraph: the flood prefigured baptism, the symbol of Jesus' death in the flesh, but Jesus' resurrection in the spirit led him to God's throne in heaven and now those fallen angels are subjected to him.

So, to your questions:

In my opinion, the two verses — 1 Pet 3.19 and 4.6 — are not the same thing.The latter suggests the 'Harrowing of Hell' concept, but 3.19 is not related to that. The author's reference to 'the dead' in verse 6 only refers back to 'the dead' in verse 5, though the very end of verse 6 does tie the whole thing back to 3.16. (Each verse uses a different verb for 'proclaim', as well... 3.19 uses the generic κηρύσσω, 'to herald, to announce', while 4.6 uses the specific εὐαγγελίζω, 'to evangelize'. In English at least, both verbs are usually translated as just 'preach' or 'proclaim'.)

Consider what the author says in the very next sentence, verse 4.7.

The wording 'is near' is just the verb form of the adverb ἐγγύς, which means exactly what it says: 'near, nigh, at hand'. The author of 1 Peter believed 'the end of all things' was right on humanity's doorstep, so very likely 'was' in verse 4.6 is meant to imply a one-time event, as you asked. In his eschatology, 'the end of all things' was almost upon the world, so those who had died in the past (i.e. before the crucifixion) had the Gospel preached to them, to prepare them for the imminent judgment, mentioned just a moment before, in verse 4.5.

This probably isn't what the author meant in verse 4.6. He probably didn't expect that many more people to die before 'the end of all things' arrived, and it's likely he believed the Gospel had already reached everyone on the earth. (Remember, Paul believed much the same thing.)