Page:Lives of the apostles of Jesus Christ (1836).djvu/446



"a shoot or scion, springing out of the root or side of the stock," and the expression in this passage may therefore be translated, "The Nicolaitans are a slip or sprig of the old stock of the Gnosis." And as Gesner happily explains it, "One sect, as it were, sprouted up from another."

The word "scientia" in this wretched Latin translation, is quoted along with the adjacent words from Paul's second epistle to Timothy, (vi. 20.) where he is warning him against the delusions of the Gnostics, and speaks of "the dogmas of the ," ([Greek: gnôsis],) translated "science," but the word is evidently technical in this passage. Irenaeus no doubt quoted it in the Greek, but his ignorant translator, not perceiving the peculiar force of the word, translated it "scientia," losing all the sense of the expression. The common translations of the Bible have done the same, in the passage in 2 Timothy vi. 20.

Another circumstance in this epistle which has attracted a critical notice, and which has occasioned its condemnation by some, is the remarkable coincidence both of sense and words between it and the second chapter of the second epistle of Peter. There are probably few diligent readers of the New Testament to whom this has not been a subject of curious remark, as several verses in one, seem a mere transcript of corresponding passages in the other. Various conjectures have been made to account for this resemblance in matter and in words,—some supposing Jude to have written first, and concluding that Peter, writing to the same persons, made references in this manner to the substance of what they had already learned from another apostle,—and others supposing that Peter wrote first, and that Jude followed, and amplified a portion of the epistle which had already lightly touched in some parts only upon the particular errors which the latter writer wished more especially to refute and condemn. This coincidence is nevertheless no more a ground for rejecting one or the other of the two writings, than the far more perfect parallelisms between the gospels are a reason for concluding that only one of them can be an authorized document. Both the apostles were evidently denouncing the same errors and condemning the same vices, and nothing was more natural than that this similarity of purpose should produce a proportional similarity of language. Either of the above suppositions is consistent with the character of the writings;—Peter may have written first, and Jude may have taken a portion of that epistle as furnishing hints for a more protracted view of these particular points; or, on the supposition that Jude wrote first, Peter may have thought it worth while only to refer generally, and not to dwell very particularly on those points which his fellow-apostle had already so fully and powerfully treated.

The particular churches to which this epistle was addressed, are utterly unknown; nor do modern writers pretend to find any