The Path of Cain, Balaam, and Korah
2/2/202656 min
The Letter of Jude E5 — In verses 11-16, Jude continues warning his Jewish messianic audience about deceptive, immoral people infiltrating their house churches. He compares them to three characters from the Hebrew Bible—Cain, Balaam, and Korah—who choose rebellion for themselves and lead others astray. Next, he compares the corrupt church members to a series of images from Scripture, including selfish shepherds, rainless clouds, and wandering stars. In this episode, Jon and Tim continue exploring Jude’s dense prose, where he seamlessly weaves together allusions to the Hebrew Bible and Second-Temple period literature into a piercing critique of imposter...
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First 90 secondsJon Collins· Host0:00
[upbeat music] Welcome to BibleProject Podcast. We're in a short series on the New Testament letter of Jude, or as we've been calling it, the letter of Judah. Judah planned to write a letter to his Jewish messianic community about their shared salvation in Jesus, but instead, he had to drop everything and write a letter dealing with the crisis happening in the church.
Tim Mackie· Host0:26
Jude said, "I've gotta put out a fire 'cause there's these people that have come into the house church communities, and they're gonna ruin you and ruin the integrity of our witness to Jesus as a community."
Jon Collins· Host0:38
Jude doesn't pull any punches as he warns about these men, yet he writes about them in a very different way than we might. He quotes stories from the Hebrew Bible that illustrate the deep ancient patterns that these men are participating in, and then he expects us, the reader, to just understand these patterns because we've spent so much time meditating on these very stories.
Tim Mackie· Host1:01
He does what Second Temple Jewish Hebrew Bible nerds that follow Jesus would do. They see the world through the patterns and the characters and the stories and poems of the Hebrew scriptures.
Jon Collins· Host1:12
Today, we look at how these dangerous men are like three characters in the Bible. Cain, that's the firstborn of Adam who kills his brother Abel. Balaam, that's the pagan sorcerer who's hired to curse Israel, and Korah, that's the Levite who leads a rebellion against Moses and