[Gutenberg 48411] • Studies in the Epistle of James

This historic book may have numerous typos, missing text, images, or index. Purchasers can download a free scanned copy of the original book (without typos) from the publisher. 1915. Not illustrated. Excerpt: ... CHAPTER I James, The Servant Of God And Of The Lord Jesus Christ- 1: la 1. The Brother of the Lord. It will be well to put together the bits of information about James, or Jacob,1 as he is called in the Greek. They are not very numerous, and yet it is possible to form a reasonably clear picture of his personality. It is here assumed that the James the author of the Epistle is the James the brother of the Lord (Gal. 1:19). It is hardly conceivable that James the brother of John could have written the Epistle, since he was put to death as early as A. D. 44 by Herod Agrippa I (Acts 12:2). The matters presented in the Epistle were hardly acute in the Jewish Christian world by that date, and there is no evidence that this James had attained a special position of leadership that justified a general appeal to Jewish Christians.2 The Epistle belongs to the five "disputed" (dvritey6juevo) Epistles (James, Jude, 2 and 3 John, 2 Peter) and circulated in the east before it did in the west. It occurs in the Peshitta Syriac Version. Origen (In Johan. xix. 6) knows it as "the Epistle current as that of James" (ry