John Gill's Exposition of Jude

Image:  John Gill (1697-1771)

I listened yesterday to an audio recording of high Calvinist and old school Baptist John Gill's (1697-1771) Exposition of Jude (it's 110 minutes long but goes pretty quickly on high speed playback).  A few observation on Gill's exposition:

• Gill, like Calvin, takes the author of the book to be Jude the Apostle and not Jude, the brother of the Lord.

• Gill is fully aware of the major textual issues in Jude (e.g., whether theos should be included in v. 4).  He notes differences between the "Alexandrian" and traditonal text and makes reference to divergent readings in the Syriac.  This again affirms the fact that the Reformation, Puritan, and post-Reformation Protestant exegetes were fully aware of the textual challenges to the traditional text, and yet they affirmed it.  The rise of the modern critical text and translations based upon it, leading to the overthrow of the received text, did not primarily come about as the result of "new manuscript discoveries" in the modern era.

• Gill takes the mention of Michael the archangel in v. 9 as a reference to the pre-incarnate Christ.  He also argues that "the body of Moses" is a metaphorical refence to the OT Scripture (the law).

JTR