Lovefeasts

The lovefeast — the shared meal of the early Christian assembly — appears by name only in Jude, where it is described as compromised by men who join the fellowship and use it for their own ends. A parallel scene in 2 Peter describes the same kind of intruder at the same kind of meal, though the term "love-feasts" itself does not appear there in this rendering.

The Shared Meal of the Assembly

Jude names the love-feast directly when he warns the readers about the men who have crept into the fellowship: "These [men] are the ones who are hidden rocks in your⁺ love-feasts when they feast with you⁺ without fear, shepherding themselves; clouds without water, carried along by winds; autumn trees without fruit, twice dead, plucked up by the roots" (Jude 1:12). The metaphor controls the whole verse — they are submerged hazards in the assembly's meal, fearless, taking the meal for themselves and shepherding only themselves. The cluster of figures around them — waterless clouds, fruitless autumn trees, twice-dead and uprooted — sets the love-feast against everything that should be present at it: rain, fruit, life, rooting.

Parasites at the Fellowship Meal

2 Peter's parallel describes the same kind of intruder, eating with the assembly while serving their own appetites. The verse names them as "spots and blemishes, reveling in their deceptions while they feast with you⁺" (2 Pet 2:13). The picture matches Jude's — outsiders who have crossed into the meal, openly self-indulgent, identified as defects on the body of the company they sit with — though the verse itself names their behavior as deception rather than calling the meal a love-feast.