JUDD, SYLVESTER (1813-1853) American Unitarian clergyman and author, was born in Westhampton, Massachusetts, on the 23rd of July 1813. He bore the same name as his father and grandfather; the former (1789-1860) made an especial study of local history of the towns of the Connecticut valley, and wrote a _History of Hadley_ (1863). The son lived in Northampton after his tenth year, was converted in a revival there in 1826, graduated from Yale in 1836, and taught in 1836 at Templeton, Mass., where he first met Unitarians and soon found the solution of his theological difficulties in their views. He entered the Harvard divinity school, from which he graduated in 1840. In the same year he was ordained pastor of the Unitarian church of Augusta, Maine, where he died on the 26th of January 1853. His widest reputation was as the author of _Margaret, a Tale of the Real and the Ideal, including Sketches of a place not before described, called Mons Christi_ (1845; revised 1851), written to exhibit the errors of Calvinistic and all trinitarian theology, and the evils of war, intemperance, capital punishment, the prison system of the time, and the national treatment of the Indians. This story, published anonymously, attracted much attention by its true descriptions of New England life and scenery as well as by its author's earnest purpose. _Richard Edney and the Governor's Family_ (1850) is in much the same vein as _Margaret_. A poem entitled _Philo, an Evangeliad_ (1850) is a versified defence of Unitarianism. He published, besides, _The Church, in a Series of Discourses_ (1854). As a preacher and pastor he urged the desirability of infant baptism. He lectured frequently on international peace and opposed slavery.
See Arethusa Hall, _Life and Character of the Rev. Sylvester Judd_ (Boston, 1857) published anonymously.
JUDE, THE GENERAL EPISTLE OF, a book of the New Testament. As with the epistle of James, the problems of the writing centre upon the superscription, which addresses in Pauline phraseology (1 Thess. i. 4; 2 Thess. ii. 13; Rom. i. 7; 1 Cor. 1. 2) the Christian world in general in the name of "Jude, the brother of James" (Matt. xiii. 55; Mark vi. 3). The historical situation depicted must then fall within the lifetime of this Judas, whose two grandchildren Zoker and James (Hegesippus _ap._ Phil. Sidetes) by their testimony before the authorities brought to an end the (Palestinian) persecution of Domitian (Hegesippus _ap._ Eus. _H. E._ iii. 20, 7). These two grandsons of Judas thereafter "lived until the time of Trajan," ruling the churches "because they had (thus) been witnesses (martyrs) and were also relatives of the Lord." But in that case we must either reject the testimony of the same Hegesippus that up to their death, and that of Symeon son of Clopas, successor in the Jerusalem see of James the Lord's brother, "who suffered martyrdom at the age of one hundred and twenty years while Trajan was emperor and Atticus governor," "the church (universal) had remained a pure and uncorrupted virgin" free from "the folly of heretical teachers"; or else we must reject the superscription, which presents the grandfather in vehement conflict with the very heresies in question. For the testimony of Hegesippus is explicit that at the time of the arrest of Zoker and James they were all who survived of the kindred of the Lord. True, there is confusion in the narrative of Hegesippus, and even a probability that the martyrdom of Symeon dated under Trajan really took place in the persecution of Domitian, before the arrest of the grandsons of Jude, for apart from the alleged age of Symeon (the traditional Jewish limit of human life, Gen. vi. 3, Deut. xxxiv. 7), the cause of his apprehension "on the ground that he was _a descendant of David_ and a Christian" (Hegesippus _ap._ Eus. _H. E._ iii. 32, 3) is inconsistent with both the previous statements regarding the "martyrdom" of Zoker and James, that they were cited as the only surviving Christian Davididae, and that the persecution on this ground collapsed through the manifest absurdity of the accusation. But even if we date the rise of heresies in the reign of Domitian instead of Trajan,[1] the attributing of this epistle against corrupting heresy to "Jude the brother of James" will still be incompatible with the statements of Hegesippus, our only informant regarding his later history.