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Georges de la Tour's impression of St. Jude.
History of Christianity is a six part survey designed to stimulate your curiosity by providing glimpses of pivotal events and persons in the spread of the church.
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t is very observable of this apostle that
the evangelists commonly call him, not Jude, but Thaddeus or Labbaeus;
the reason of which, in all human probability, is from the particular
dislike they had to the name, which was so nearly similar to that of the
base and perfidious Judas Iscariot, who treacherously sold and betrayed
his Master.
Jude was brother to James the Less, afterward bishop of Jerusalem. It
is not known when or by what means he became a disciple of our blessed
Saviour, there not being any thing said of him till we find him in the
catalogue of the twelve apostles; nor afterward until Christ’s Last Supper,
when discoursing with them about his departure, and comforting them with
a promise that he would return to them again, meaning after his resurrection
from the dead.
The sacred records are so very short in their accounts of this apostle,
that we must be beholden to other ecclesiastical writers for information
relative to his conduct after the ascension of our blessed Lord in heaven.
Paulinus tells us that the part which fell to his share in the apostolic
division of the provinces was Lybia; but it does not tell us whether it
was Cyrenian Lybia which is thought to have received the gospel from St.
Mark, or the more southern parts of Africa. But, however that be, in his
first setting out to preach the gospel, he traveled up and down Judaea
and Galilee; then through Samaria into Idumaea, and to the cities of Arabia
and the neighboring countries, and afterward to Syria and Mesopotamia.
Nicephorus adds, that he came at last to Edessa, where Agarbus governed,
and where Thaddeus, one of the seventy, had already sown the seeds of
the gospel. Here he perfected what the other had begun; and having by
his sermons and miracles established the religion of Jesus, he died in
peace: but others say that he was slain at Berites, and honorably buried
there. The writers of the Latin church are unanimous in declaring that
he traveled into Persia, where, after great success in his apostolic ministry
for many years, he was at last, for his freely and openly reproving the
superstitious rites and customs of the Magi, cruelly put to death.
St. Jude wrote only one epistle, which is placed the last of those seven
styled catholic in the sacred canon. It has no particular inscription,
as the other six have, but is thought to have been primarily intended
for the Christian Jews in their several dispersions, as were the epistles
of the apostle Peter. In it he informs them that he at first intended
to write to them concerning the “common salvation” in order to confirm
them in their belief; but, finding the doctrine of Christ attacked on
all sides by heretics, he thought it more necessary to exhort them to
stand up manfully in defence of the “faith once delivered to the saints,”
and to oppose those false teachers who so earnestly labored to corrupt
them; and that they might know these the better, he describes them in
their proper colors, and foretells their future if not impending danger;
but, at the same time, he endeavors to exhort them, by all gentle methods,
to save them, and to take them “out of the fire” into which their own
folly had cast them.
It was some time before this epistle was generally received in the church.
The author indeed, like St. James, St. John, and sometimes St. Paul, does
not call himself an apostle, but only the servant of Christ.” But he has
added what is equivalent, Jude “the brother of James,” a character which
can only belong to himself; and surely the humility of a follower of Christ
should be no objection to his writings.
Resources: This story is adapted from John Kitto's 1870 History
of the Bible and represents the commonly accepted views about this
apostle among rank and file believers in the late 19th century.
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