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Begin Typing VigilAfter the address (1-2) the writer explains that his reason for communicating with his friends (3f) is to warn them against a body of errorists within the church, a set of loud, arrogant, and poisonous characters, whose doom (τοῦτο τὸ κρίμα, proleptic) is violently and vividly described as that of their older angelic and human prototypes (5-11) in vice. The writer especially recalls a prediction of their fate in the book of Enoch (14f), and urges his readers to adhere (17-18, 20f) steadfastly to the primitive, apostolic tradition of the faith against plausible innovations (compare verse 3 τῇ ἅπαξ παραδοθείσῃ). With a brief doxology (24-25) the letter closes.
Religious conservatism is its keynote. The pretensions of the ἀσεβεῖς are contrasted with the fixed and final Christian tradition (compare 1 John 2:20f, 4:1f, 5:6f). Their very methods and fate are no new thing; long ago (πάλαι) this had been foreseen by prophets and apostles alike. The writer disclaims originality even for his own warnings; all he requires to do is to remind orthodox Christians (5, 17) of the principles and prophecies of that faith which they already know (compare 1 John 2:20-21)—a plea for orthodoxy which is curiously bound up with belief in several superstitions drawn from what the author of Titus (1:14) would have sharply denounced as 'Jewish myths.'
Included here are the Catholic Epistles, Hebrews, and the formerly canonical works of the Second Testament.