Peter H. Davids - The Letters of 2 Peter and Jude

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THE LETTER OF JUDE

THE LETTER OF 2 PETER

INDEXES

Commentaries have specific aims, and this series is no exception. Designed for serious pastors and teachers of the Bible, the Pillar commentaries seek above all to make clear the text of Scripture as we have it. The scholars writing these volumes interact with the most important informed contemporary debate, but avoid getting mired in undue technical detail. Their ideal is a blend of rigorous exegesis and exposition, with an eye alert both to biblical theology and the contemporary relevance of the Bible, without confusing the commentary and the sermon.

The rationale for this approach is that the vision of "objective scholarship" (a vain chimera) may actually be profane. God stands over against us; we do not stand in judgment of him. When God speaks to us through his Word, those who profess to know him must respond in an appropriate way, and that is certainly different from a stance in which the scholar projects an image of autonomous distance. Yet this is no surreptitious appeal for uncontrolled subjectivity. The writers of this series aim for an evenhanded openness to the text that is the best kind of "objectivity" of all.

If the text is God's Word, it is appropriate that we respond with reverence, a certain fear, a holy joy, a questing obedience. These values should be reflected in the way Christians write. With these values in place, the Pillar commentaries will be warmly welcomed not only by pastors, teachers, and students, but by general readers as well.

The two epistles treated in this volume, 2 Peter and Jude, present peculiar challenges to the twenty-first-century commentator. Their strong denunciations seem out of tune with the times; their allusions to nonbiblical Jewish sources raise some eyebrows; their transparent interdependence (one of them is borrowing from the other) raises the kinds of issues faced by those commenting on the Synoptic Gospels or on i and 2 Chronicles. Morever, historical criticism has sometimes left us with a legacy of suspicion about these two brief contributions to the NT. So I am grateful for the work of Peter Davids, whose lifelong interest in the General Epistles is well known and widely respected, and whose mix of service, in both academic and ecclesiastical settings, has doubtless contributed to his ability, on the one hand, to form sharp, independent judgments, and, on the other, to apply them to the contemporary church. In epistles so controverted, no commentary, including this one, will win universal agreement. But all of us will happily acknowledge how much we stand in debt to Dr. Davids.

D. A. CARSON

When Don Carson presented me with the opportunity to write the present volume, I was both humbled and thankful. Humbled, because I realized that he was trusting me to complete the job of exegeting some difficult literature. Thankful, because, having written commentaries on James (NIGTC, 1982) and 1 Peter (NICNT, 1990), I had wanted to complete my work on the General Epistles. I had thought that having given away the 2 Peter-Jude NICNT volume (to Robert L. Webb), I might never get to finish my coverage of these letters.

What I did not realize at the time I accepted the invitation to write was that life would take me from Langley, British Columbia, where I could foresee having time to do significant writing, to Mittersill, Austria, where I had little time at all to write, to Innsbruck, Austria, where Jude and half of 2 Peter were finished, and finally to Meadows Place, Texas, where the work was completed. A project I had expected to complete in three to five years has taken more than ten. I appreciate the patience of the editors and the publishers for waiting all of that time.

While I was not actively writing all of that time, I was certainly learning. Parts of this volume could not have been written as well as they are without various experiences along the way, ranging from what I learned from Ralph P. Martin, Daniel Reid, and the many contributors during the editing of the Dictionary of the Later New Testament and Its Developments (Downers Grove, IL: InterVarsity Press, 1997) to what I learned from colleagues in seminars of the Studiorum Novi Testamentum Societas and Colloquium Biblicum Lovenienses and the four-year-long Bard College James project chaired by Bruce Chilton and Jacob Neusner and sponsored by Frank T. Crohn. I also must not forget the Facharbeitsgemeinschaft fur Neuen Testament of Arbeitsgemeinschaft fur evangelikale Theologie (AfeT), the members of which encouraged me by their collegial friendship and example during my time in Austria.

The Pillar commentaries aim to combine good scholarship with application to church life. Here again our time in Austria was helpful. During much of this time Martin Buhlmann, the leader of the Vineyard movement in the German-speaking world, allowed me to advise and teach the leaders of the movement that he led. His friendship and support allowed us to remain in Europe, his interest in scholarship goaded me to continue to write, and his opening of the movement to me, a foreigner, kept me in contact with real churches with real problems, enriching my insights into the text. Among these churches one stands out, Vineyard Innsbruck, whose leader, Gernot Kahofer, was the reason for our move to Innsbruck. That church provided us with friendship, financial support, and a place to study - much of this material was written in my office under the stairs of that church. It is to Martin Buhlmann and Gernot Kahofer that I dedicate this book.

I am also thankful to my wife, Judith, who has continued to believe that I would eventually complete this book. Furthermore, for the past two years it has been her salary as a pastoral counselor that has enabled me to continue to write here in Meadows Place, Texas.

PETER H. DAVIDS