The Apostleship Of Jude The Brother Of Jesus

In a post last year, I argued that Jude the brother of Jesus was an apostle in the highest sense of the term, meaning that he had seen Jesus after he rose from the dead. My focus there was on some New Testament evidence. I should add that there's some patristic evidence as well.

Tertullian refers to Jude as "the apostle" in section 1:3 of his treatise On The Apparel Of Women. Origen refers to "the apostle Jude" (in Thomas Scheck, trans., Origen: Commentary On The Epistle To The Romans, Books 1-5 [Washington, D.C.: The Catholic University Of America Press, 2001], p. 320, 5:1:29). They could be referring to him as an apostle in a lesser sense, but the higher sense is more likely in the contexts in which Tertullian and Origen were writing. They're appealing to authority and scriptural authority in particular, and apostleship in the highest sense fits best in that context.