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18. ὑπέρογκα κ.τ.λ. ἐν ἐπιθυμίαις σαρκός. This is the last case of borrowing from Jude for some time. It answers to Jud 1:16 κατὰ τὰς ἐπιθυμίας αὐτῶν πορευόμενοι καὶ τὸ στόμα αὐτῶν λαλεῖ ὑπέρογκα.
ἐν ἐπιθυμίαις σαρκὸς ἀσελγείαις. σαρκός is best taken with ἐπιθυμίαις. The whole phrase is rather pleonastic to our ideas. ἀσελγείαις serves perhaps to define ἐπιθ. σαρκ. The general meaning is that the false teachers proclaimed to their followers the lawfulness of indulgence in passions, under the name of Christian liberty, and so converts who had been nearly drawn away, and with great difficulty, from the licence which prevailed in heathen society were now slipping back. Their first teachers had preached to them the importance of purity: these new ones told them that it was of no consequence. The havoc which such teaching must have wrought upon the morals and upon the very being of young Christian communities amply justifies the tremendous denunciation which we find here.
τοὺς ὀλίγως ἀποφεύγοντας κ.τ.λ. For ὀλίγως (AB, a corrector of א, and Syriac, Latin and Egyptian) a group including אCKLP reads ὄντως. For ἀποφεύγοντας (אABC) the aorist participle ἀποφυγόντας is read by KLP.
ὀλίγως is rendered in the Vulgate by paululum, for a little time: it is an uncommon word, but is found meaning “in a slight degree” and (inapplicable here) “quickly.” The escape is recent or incomplete.
τοὺς ἐν πλάνῃ ἀναστρεφομένους: almost certainly the heathen.