the core of the faith was delivered by Jesus rather than a process of long evolution and ultimately, human force

In the most recent Touchstone, Donald Williams notes that Jude starts with an exhortation "to contend for the faith that was once for all entrusted to God’s holy people." Since this was written in the 60s, his inference:

"In much NT scholarship today, you will find an unquestioned and unsupported assumption underlying the whole enterprise: that Jesus brought no theology with him...but his followers, in a long process, evolved many understandings of him which were reduced to one by arbitrary power at the Council of Nicea in 325. Yet here is a voice...saying that the faith was not evolved from scratch but that there was a substantial and recognizable core of it that was delivered to the saints."

He closes by quipping that he trusts Jude more than Bart Ehrman-- "someone who was actually there" rather than "a scholar speculating about it 2000 years later". If one is going to believe in the creation of legends, it's much easier to see Ehrman's work as "legendary".