Many believe that Jewish Apocalypticism, early Christianity, and Gnosticism represent three stages in a continual religio-historical development in which Gnosticism became the logical conclusion. Were there any leaders among the early stages of the church that would evidence such a theory? In this volume, Boyd asserts that the author of the epistle of Jude experiences the phenomena. Jude may be the most perceptive of New Testament writers in responding to the crisis. He is the portrait of an early church leader grounded in Jewish Apocalypticism and facing the beginnings of a new "heretical"...