Book Review: Charles Landon. A Text-Critical Study of the Epistle of Jude

Abstract

"Two textual studies of the book of Jude (both incomplete investigations) have been published before (Albin 1962, Kubo 1965), but neither has approached the book from the standpoint of rigorous, or thoroughgoing, eclecticism. Following in the tradition of G. D. Kilpatrick and J. K. Elliott, Landon offers a textual study of Jude that treats ninety-five points of variation from a thoroughgoing eclectic perspective. This work is identical in content to his doctoral dissertation done at the University of Stellenbosch. 2. Landon proposes to do an "eclectic" text-critical analysis of Jude, that is, an evaluation of individual readings exclusively on the basis of internal criteria. A secondary goal of the study is to evaluate the text presented in the fourth edition of the UBS Greek New Testament (GNT4) to see to what extent it is "eclectic" (i.e., rigorously eclectic). Landon's use of the term "eclectic" throughout the book is problematic, not because of how he defines the term (he is entitled to use his own definition), but because he sometimes criticizes the work of reasoned eclectics for not being eclectic enough, that is, not rigorously eclectic (cf. his critiques of Epp [16] and the GNT4 [144])."(pg 1)