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Home , 2 Peter 1, 2 Peter 2, Korah

AND :15: ‘THEY HAVE FOLLOWED IN THE STEPS OF BALAAM’ ( JUDE 11)

Tord Fornberg

1. Balaam in Jude and 2 Peter

The Letter of Jude only briefly refers to Balaam.1 The very short note in verse 11 mentions him as follows: ‘they . . . abandon themselves to Balaam’s error for the sake of gain’.2 His name occurs in a combination of three frightening examples of sinners from times long ago: Cain, Balaam and Korah (cf. Tosefta Sotah 4:19).3 The false teachers attacked by the author of Jude are presumed to show the same qualities as these three sinners in the past history of humanity. Cain (Genesis 4) was often described as an Epicurean,4 an atheist or at least as one who denied the existence of divine justice, for we are never told why did not accept his sacrifice. Balaam is singled out as someone who did not preach his message because he honestly believed in it, but because of , saying what people wanted to hear and thus were prepared to pay him for saying. Korah (Numbers 16), finally, rebelled against God’s servant and perished suddenly and unexpectedly when the earth swallowed up him and his two companions and . There is a broad consensus today that the author of 2 Peter5 had access to the letter of Jude and used that letter extensively when he

1 On Balaam and his reception history see, e.g., L. Schmidt, ‘Bileam I. Altes Testament’, in: Theologische Realenzyklopädie 6 (Berlin/New York 1980), 635–9; P. Schäfer, ‘Bileam II. Judentum’, in: Theologische Realenzyklopädie 6 (Berlin/New York 1980), 639–40; many authors, ‘Balaam’, in: Encyclopaedia Judaica 4 ( 1971), 120–4; H. Karpp, ‘Bileam,’ in: Reallexikon für Antike und Christentum 2 (Stuttgart 1954), 362–74; and G. Vermes, Scripture and Tradition, Leiden 1961, 127–77. 2 Biblical texts are quoted according to The Holy : New Revised Standard Version with Apocrypha, New York/Oxford 1989. 3 E.g., R. Bauckham, Jude, 2 Peter, Waco 1983, 78–84. 4 J.H. Neyrey, ‘The Form and Background of the Polemic in 2 Peter’, Journal of Biblical Literature 99 (1980) 407–31. 5 R. Bauckham, ‘2 Peter: An Account of Research’, Aufstieg und Niedergang der römischen Welt II.25.5 (Berlin/New York 1988), 3713–52 summarizes the history of research of the letter.

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addressed his own readers,6 and I will take for granted in what follows that this is the case. We see at once that 2 Peter has added the well- known episode with Balaam’s speaking donkey in 2:16. In that way he downplayed even more Balaam’s prophetic gifts, a donkey being far superior. Cain and Korah have both disappeared, and we may guess that Balaam has now been credited also with the sins that Jude ascribed to these two figures. It is clear that at least vv. 15–16 in 2 Peter 2 deal with Balaam. The question may now be asked, if we can find Balaam hidden behind the wordings in the immediate context. Much of 2:13–14 lacks parallels in Jude and is thus added by our author. There we may find additional material alluding to Balaam, if not the Balaam of the Bible so the Balaam of later tradition. I propose that already the expres- sion ‘irrational animals’ (aloga zōia) at the beginning of 2:12 is such an allusion to Balaam and his donkey. Consequently, I will argue that 2:12–16 as a whole centre on the figure of Balaam (see §2) and show us how this enigmatic figure functions as a typos pointing forward to the heretics in the church. We may add the introductory description of the false prophets in 2 Pet 2:1–3. While this passage has several words in common with Jude 4, others are special material, certainly phrased by the author himself. It seems to be worthwhile to examine this passage to find pos- sible allusions to the Balaam story (see §3). In addition, the passage 2 Pet 1:19–21 about prophecy and its inspi- ration and interpretation is thematically relevant for our study. The prophecy about the ‘morning star’ ( fōsforos) was confirmed for Peter when he experienced how was transfigured on ‘the holy mountain’ (2 Pet 1:16–18).7 It has been proposed that the word ‘morning star’ points back to Balaam’s words that ‘a star shall come out of ’ (Num 24:17).8 If so, the picture painted of Balaam in our text is not totally dark (as it was in Jude); he was inspired by God when he spoke about the star. Then, but that is another matter, he fell victim to his greed, and was killed like the ‘irrational animals’.

6 T. Fornberg, An Early Church in a Pluralistic Society: A Study of 2 Peter, Lund 1977; J. Neyrey, 2 Peter, Jude, New York 1993; and R. Bauckham, Jude, 2 Peter. See also T. Callan, ‘Use of the Letter of Jude by the Second Letter of Peter’, Biblica 85 (2004) 42–64. 7 See J.H. Neyrey, ‘The Apologetic Use of the Transfiguration in :16–21’, Catholic Biblical Quarterly 42 (1980) 504–19. 8 E.g., Bauckham, Jude, 2 Peter, 226.

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