What about the noncanonical books quoted in Jude?

Question

The book of Jude contains many quotes and references to the Old Testament. However, there are two quotes which seem to be from elsewhere.

The first is attributed to The Assumption of Moses.

Jude 9 But even when Michael the archangel was arguing with the devil and debating with him concerning Moses’ body, he did not dare to bring a slanderous judgment, but said, “May the Lord rebuke you!” [NET Bible]

However, no surviving copy of Assumption contains this quote. Origen is the first on record to attribute it this way. Some say it is an allusion to Zechariah 3:1,2.

The second is a direct quote from 1 Enoch 1:9.

1:14-15 Now Enoch, the seventh in descent beginning with Adam, even prophesied of them, saying, “Look! The Lord is coming with thousands and thousands of his holy ones, to execute judgment on all, and to convict every person of all their thoroughly ungodly deeds that they have committed, and of all the harsh words that ungodly sinners have spoken against him.” [NET Bible]

First Enoch is only considered canonical by the Ethiopic Orthodox Church.

Did the author of Jude consider these works to be authentic Scripture in the same vein as the Tanakh? Do these quotations demonstrate the early Christians and their Jewish contemporaries had established a larger canon that was later reduced? In short, why did Jude quote from these materials?

Answer 1

NT authors quoted works they considered authoritative, and works they did not. For example it would be a big leap from Titus 1:2 to claim that Paul regarded Epimenides as fully reliable:

One of the Cretans, a prophet of their own, said, “Cretans are always liars, evil beasts, lazy gluttons.”_ESV

Therefore we cannot tell by whether something is regarded as authoritative just by whether it is quoted and other reasoning must be applied. As an example of other reasoning, consider the case when sources are explicitly endorsed or even called into question, for example 2 Peter:

¹⁵And count the patience of our Lord as salvation, just as our beloved brother Paul also wrote to you according to the wisdom given him, ¹⁶as he does in all his letters when he speaks in them of these matters. There are some things in them that are hard to understand, which the ignorant and unstable twist to their own destruction, as they do the other Scriptures._ESV

and conversely, Galatians 2:

¹¹But when Cephas came to Antioch, I opposed him to his face, because he stood condemned_ESV

In this case it is up to our own judgement to reason that Paul does not intend us to reject Peter's writings and authority on the basis of his account of their clash, and to reason whether Peter's endorsement of Paul's letters applies to all those we attribute to him.

My reasoning about 1 Enoch would be that there is nothing in Jude's letter to indicate that Jude considers the writing to be scripture, because of the combined weight of the following (none of which is anywhere near conclusive on it's own):

1. Authority is not implied simply by the presence of a quote
2. The quote is not attributed
3. The quote is not part of a pattern of quotes that might indicate general acceptance of the authority of a writing (like the many NT quotes of Isaiah and other OT books for example)
4. There is no explicit endorsement
5. The authority of the source is in no way central to the argument Jude is making (cf. Matthew 19:4-6)