In teaching the letter of James, one should walk to the front of the room and write these words in big letters on a chalkboard:
Read James!
Under that the person then needs to write:
First, read James in light of James!
Scholars today are obsessed by the “historical James” and his place in Jewish Christianity, obsessed by Jewish and Roman and Greek parallels, and impressed by those who find the most parallels or parallels no one has noticed before. Indeed, reading James in comparison with his contemporaries and sources and—not to be forgotten—the earliest Christian documents, aids the interpreter, sometimes dramatically. Sometimes, however, reading James in light of another text leads the reader to see James in light of that text and to conclude that they are related … which is, of course, what we call circular reasoning. “Indeed,” the one at the front of the room might say, “it’s fine to compare James with others as long as you read James in light of James first.” Which is just what we intend to do in this commentary because thus we will discover the particular messianic profile James gives to anything he has acquired from his cultural environments. In this way the historical work gives way to exegesis, or perhaps it is better to say that exegesis sheds light on historical work. Having set a stake now in the ground, I stand next to Margaret Mitchell’s sagacious warning: Yes, she argues, read James on his own terms, but if Paul happens to be one of the terms in James’s world, then read James in interaction with Paul.1 We ought not, in other words, pretend that James lived alone in his world. In what follows we will cite parallels throughout to texts connected in some way to James. But we do need to learn to read James on his own terms in that world—in that order—and to learn that studying this letter is not simply reconstructing the “historical James” or “Jewish Christianity.”
James is a one-of-a-kind document. At the literary level, there is no real parallel among ancient letters, essays, and homilies. At the historical level, there is nothing quite like it among the early Christian documents, even if its connections and origins are deeply disputed.2 James is, at least in a traditional sense, the earliest Christian document we have and in many ways anticipates or precedes theological developments. We suggest, but cannot prove, that James is in part a response to early reports of Paul’s missionary work in Asia Minor, perhaps even Antioch (see Acts 11:19–30; Gal 2:11–14). That is our ballpark speculation on the Jewish Christian context of James. In fact, many today see the shape of the Christian faith in this letter as a form of Judaism.3 And yet, it needs to be observed that James fails to mention so many central ideas and institutions of Judaism, such as “Israel,” Temple, and Sabbath.4 Within Judaism this letter fits with texts like Sirach, it also shows some remarkable correspondences to the Greco-Roman rhetorical and literary world, and it surprises at times in its connections to Paul, Peter, and John and to texts like Didache and Barnabas, the Sentences of Sextus and the Teachings of Silvanus, but especially 1 Clement and the Shepherd of Hermas and the much terser Sentences of Pseudo-Phocylides. But it is the substance of James, combining as it does Torah observance in a new key with both wisdom and eschatology in a Jewish-Christian milieu, that forms its special character.5
James strikes in many directions at once: historians, theologians, pastors and Christians discover challenges. As a document emerging from an author who is somehow embedded in one community and ostensibly directed at another community or set of communities, James remains an enigma: in spite of the best efforts of many scholars, its Sitz im Leben remains elusive. While it seems most likely that James emerges from Jerusalem or at least a Judean-based setting, the audience might be at any number of locations across the disaspora.6 When we move into the church world today, James pushes back against Christians who are too Reformed. In fact, this commentary will hope to demonstrate that the more uncomfortable Christians are with James in a Luther-like way,7 the less they really understand Paul! At the pastoral level, James offers both wisdom and potent, harsh rhetoric. The wisdom dimension of James attracts modern and postmodern readers; the rhetoric makes many today wary, and yet others are duly impressed by the skill of this writer.
Anabaptist scholar Ronald Sider tells the story that in the happy days of hippies Upton Sinclair once read James 5:1–5 aloud to a group of ministers and attributed the words to Emma Goldman. That Sinclair had socialist leanings and that Goldman was an anarchist explains why the ministers immediately called for Goldman’s deportation. What is not clear is why a group of ministers would not have recognized the memorable, if unsettling, prose of James 5!8 Elsa Tamez might provide the answer to pastoral ignorance. She opens her prophet-like study of James with these words: “If the Letter of James were sent to the Christian communities of certain countries that suffer from violence and exploitation, it would very possibly be intercepted by government security agencies. The document would be branded as subversive.”9 Which leads to this: even if we cannot reconstruct the historical context with confidence, the voice of James has some potent words about economic injustice and even public policy, and it makes many of us feel uncomfortable in our comforts.10 That voice falls uncomfortably silent among many who are empowered. But that same voice of James delights the ears and transfigures the hopes of the unempowered.11 To ape the famous words of Mark Twain, it is not the lack of clarity of context of James that bothers me; it is the words in the text that bother me.12
Many today advocate reading the Bible as Story, as a macroscopic plot that puts the whole Bible together and that, with proper nuances and differences, animated the ideas of each biblical author. In so putting the Bible together as Story, the Hebrew Bible or Tanakh becomes the “Old Testament.” There is no reason to enter into the technical discussion here,13 except to point out the “chapters” of this plot. There are (in our scheme) five: creation of Eikons14 (Gen 1–2), cracking of the Eikons (Gen 3), the covenanted community of Eikons (Gen 12; 17; 22; Exod 19–24; Jer 31; Mark 14:12–26; Acts 2; 1 Cor 11:17–34), the redemption through the perfect Eikon, Christ (Matt 1–2; John 1; Rom 8:29; 1 Cor 15:49; 2 Cor 3:18; 4:4; Col 1:15), and the consummation of the union of Eikons with the triune God (Rev 21–22).15 It is wise to see this plot from the angle of mission, and to see that mission as the missio Dei.16
James’s letter understands God’s Story as the Story of Israel. In fact, each book of the Bible tells this single Story, even if each author configures that Story in its own way. James knows the breach by God’s covenanted community and he finds the breach mended or fulfilled in the “twelve tribes in the Dispersion” (1:1). James reads the Bible (intertextually)17 as Story with a plot that comes to a new chapter in Jesus Christ. Yet, James’s reading of the Story is not one of replacement so much as of fulfillment: his letter summons the twelve tribes to live out the Mosaic Torah as God’s enduring will.18 But even here James has touched the Story with singular impact: James reads and renders the Torah in the way Jesus taught it, namely through the combination of loving God (1:12) and loving others (1:25; 2:8–11). In other words, when it comes to ethics James reads and interprets and applies the Torah through the lens of the Shema (Deut 6:4–9) and the command to love our neighbor as ourselves (Lev 19:18).19 That James interprets ethics in the key of Shema is telling for how to comprehend his relationship to Judaism and for how we are to read his Story. From a different angle, but one that nonetheless complements our point about James and Shema, Jacob Neusner has demonstrated that the typical Jewish/rabbinic pattern of sin, repentance, atonement, judgment, and eternal life emerges in James naturally so that his theology emerges from within the world of Judaism.20
James tells this one true Story of God’s redemption in moral, wisdom,21 and prophetic keys22 rather than in the more didactic, soteriological keys one finds in Paul, Peter and Hebrews.23 Hence, James’s eschatology appears to focus on the act of God’s judgment, whether on the plane of history as in the Babylonian captivity and the destruction of Jerusalem or at the final judgment (4:11–12; 5:7–11).24 What drives James then is an ecclesial, eschatological ethics of wisdom25 and not what many have taken to be the “normal” early Christian method, namely that of (Pauline) soteriology. And his focus on ethics is on doing good, speaking the right way, and expressing the gospel in the socio-economic ways of compassion and mercy. Hence, he targets prophetic barbs at the (compassion-less) rich, at the unloving work-less, at the unmerciful abuse of power, and at teachers who unlovingly divide and murder. There is nothing in this letter that surprises with regard to what we know of the early churches or the behaviors of early Christians.26 Those who compare James to other writers in the New Testament end up somehow spending most of their energies on the relationship of faith and works in James in comparison with Paul, and frequently enough James comes up short to the evaluators. Ulrich Luck cleverly speaks of James, mistakenly we believe, as having “eine Sprachkompetenz ohne Sachkompetenz,” a competency with language but not with substance.27 Our conclusion is that James fits into the early churches in ways other than this soteriologically-driven manner. It is fashionable to plot James at one end of the spectrum—at the rightist end—and put Paul at the leftist end, but more careful analysis reveals that James was a mediating influence in the larger picture of the first churches.28 In fact, one common typology of the earliest Jewish messianic communities had a spectrum from full observance—with circumcision or without circumcision—to observance of the Ten Commandments and festivals to a cutting of ties with the Jewish laws more or less completely. In this typology, James belongs to the observance-without-circumcision group, and Peter is with him but leaning to a more minimal observance group with Paul, who was most likely more conservative than the Hellenists.29 All such typologies never fit the rugged realities but they at least remind us of the varieties of earliest messianic faith.
Which is to say that James tells the Story in a context where other (Story) options were available and clawing for the same attention.30 It would be easy to list those options—Sadducees, Pharisees, Essenes, Zealots, and proto-rabbinism come to mind. But one needs also to factor in varieties of each dimension of Judaism, not ignoring distinctions like Galilean Judaism or Judean Judaism, and to consider the varieties of the earliest forms of messianic Judaism or Jewish Christianity.31 Many today would press in another direction and contend that James must be read in a Roman or Greek context, which gives the letter yet other resonances. All agree that the “story” James tells is to be read in context. James, in effect, is fashioning a wiki-version of the Story of Jesus as Messiah and the Twelve Tribes as a voice in conversation with other Jewish (and early Christian, Roman, Greek) voices. The voices in this conversation, we perhaps need to remind ourselves, are personal and not just intellectual views and theological positions. Theology, in the thrashing about and surfacing of ideas in the emerging shape of earliest Christianity, was far more connected to powerful leaders—apostolic, prophetic, and pastoral—than to intellectual, theological, or philosophical options. Hence, the voice of James as he tells his version of the Story is a voice that blended with and stood out from other voices—like Peter’s and Paul’s and Barnabas’s and Stephen’s.32 The authorship of this letter is disputed, but few doubt that the “James” of this letter is either the real or pseudonymous brother of Jesus, and this raises the question of how significant it was to be a “brother” or “sister” or “mother” of Jesus in the emerging leadership of Jerusalem-based and Galilean-based messianism. If one concludes that James, brother of Jesus, was responsible for this letter, then the questions are worthy of historical consideration.33
Yet, we have an irony when it comes to James: he has become the ignored leader. We will say more than once in this commentary that James was a “towering figure in the earliest church” and “the first bishop of the leading (mother) church of the growing Christian movement.”34 Many forget and have now forgotten James; in fact, he is sometimes said to be part of the “junk mail” of the New Testament.35 Famously, Dibelius, in that old Teutonic style, simply announced that James had no theology, and Rudolf Bultmann, fascinated as he was with Lutheran and Pauline theology, completely ignored James in his Theology of the New Testament.36 John Dominic Crossan, hardly a friend of Christian orthodoxy or Reformation theology, skips James in his recent study of the contours of earliest Christianity.37 David Aune barely stops to consider James in his examination of early Christian letters,38 and a couple recent New Testament theologies relegate James’s letter to last place and shape his “theology” mostly as it relates to Paul.39 For others James’s voice is only rarely heard or seen as untheological or even anti-theological.40 The man and the letter have suffered the same fate: oblivion or close to it. The reason seems obvious to many: as Jewish messianic communities faded so also did the theology connected to them, including what we now find in James.41 James has become the one significant leader of the earliest churches who is now mostly ignored. I make this observation knowing full well that there is a serious resurgence, if not a renaissance, of scholarship on James. But like James in the history of the church, this resurgent scholarship is mostly ignored when it comes to Christian theology and gospel preaching.
We might lift our heads in the hope of seeing another day by returning to the place James had in the beginning.42 We can begin with Eusebius, who provides a list of the bishops of the first-century church of Jerusalem that begins with James:
The first then was James who was called the Lord’s brother, and after him Simeon was the second. The third was Justus, Zacchaeus was the fourth, Tobias the fifth, the sixth Benjamin, the seventh John, the eighth Matthias, the ninth Philip, the tenth Seneca, the eleventh Justus, the twelfth Levi, the thirteenth Ephres, the fourteenth Joseph, and last of all the fifteenth Judas (Church History 4.5.3; cf. 7.19.1).
Those of us in the Reformed, Lutheran, or evangelical traditions perhaps need to be warned that James may have had a louder voice than Paul’s at times and that his letter is not a relic from that quaint era before theologians got everything figured out. The famous episode of Paul, Peter, and the “men from James” in Galatians 2:11–14 illustrates our point. Even if the “James” in the “men from James” reflects not an authentic message from that James but a borrowed, exaggerated authority assumed by a factional group, one cannot dispute that for some there was a perception of difference among the apostles James, Peter, and Paul with James exercising enough clout to push Peter away from Paul. Still, within a generation or two James disappeared from influence for many of the orthodox, and it is all too well known how mightily the Reformation struggled with the theology of James. Only by digging back to the earliest days will we see clearly enough to rescue James from behind the scenes of orthodoxy’s theological focal points and discover, as if all over again, the inner vibrations of the earliest tellings of the Christian Story. At the heart of that Story was Torah.
But there is another story at work behind James which seems implicit in nearly every line of the letter and breaks forth from the water in the opening lines of the letter when James writes to people who are not in the Land. This is the Story of the Land of Israel. At the center of the biblical promises to Abraham, David, and the prophets, and a center that still has not moved from observant Jews, is God’s word that they will have a place, the sacred Land of Israel, as their inheritance. Though even many today think Jesus transferred this land promise into new creation, the fact remains that many Jews and many Christians continued to rely on the Land promise. It lurks behind the promise that the meek would inherit the Land (Matt 5:5) and is possibly at work in the salt of the Land (“earth”) in contrast to the light to the world (the Gentile mission, Matt 5:13–16).43 Whether one agrees with these suggestions, the fact remains that the Jews like James believed God was faithful to his Land promise. Jerusalem was at the center of that promise; as Jerusalem went, so went the Land.44 Judgment on Jerusalem was judgment on the Land and on God’s people. Early Jewish Christians did not immediately say, “The promise has changed. Forget the Land. Let’s take over the Roman Empire and then the world!” No, they saw the Land as sacred.
The messianic community that formed in Jerusalem saw itself, then, as more than just one of the many churches of Jesus followers. They saw themselves at the epicenter of God’s work in the world, as the church of churches, the mother church. James was the heralded leader of the Jerusalem messianic community, to whom even Paul gave his reports. He is the first listed among the “pillars” in Galatians 2:9, the one who speaks the final, discerning words in Acts 15, and the first one Paul meets when he arrives in Jerusalem for the last time (Acts 21:18). I am a Protestant and not in direct fellowship with the See of Rome, but if asked who was the “first pope,” I would choose James.45 He was at the center of the church, the whole church, because the whole church had its start in Jerusalem. What was said in Jerusalem mattered everywhere. Until 70 AD. But that gets ahead of our Story, a Story that involves the Land and Jerusalem and James as the center at the center.
Like every other book in the Bible, James crafts his chapter in this Story in the crucible of a concrete context. That context, in part, was competing versions of the Story of Israel. Sadducees, Pharisees, Essenes, and Zealots—to name the four big versions of the Story—each told their own version of the Story. Each also drew up what Thomas Holmén called “covenant path markers,” particular practices that were vested with symbolic significance as what best represented faithfulness to the covenant.46 Pharisees, for instance, vested significance in purity and food laws.47 Just how James fit into those competing circles is not entirely clear, but a good start is offered in Craig Evans’s synoptic comparison:
In sum, we could say that if we drew three circles to represent the Judaisms of Qumran, the Rabbis, and James, the circles would overlap. But the centers of these circles, centers which represent the essence of the respective Judaisms, would not.… The Judaism of Qumran is focused on the renewal of the covenant, with great emphasis on cultic reform. The Judaism of the Rabbis is focused on studying and obeying the Torah, the key to life in this world and in the world to come. The Judaism of James is focused on faith and piety centered on Messiah Jesus.48
Finally, the letter of James is not the kind of speculative theology that one will find later in Athanasius, Augustine, or Aquinas. James writes paraenesis,49 in fact a “paraenetic encyclical,”50 to the twelve tribes in the Dispersion about concrete problems like testing, faith, wisdom, anger, compassion, the poor, envy, the rich, and praying for the sick. Letters, even if not close to James in tone or style or substance, are not uncommon in Judaism.51 Breathing in and out of this context is James’s gospel and theology, which give rise to his sharp answers.52 But what can we make of James’s historical situation?53
The first word of our letter creates a problem: “James, a servant of God and of the Lord Jesus Christ” (1:1). Who is this James? He assumed that his readers would know who he was and recognize his authority,54 and perhaps even the term “servant” as specially characteristic of him. What are our options?55
Someone named “James”56 is mentioned more than forty times in the New Testament. It is useful then to trot out the presumably separable Jameses57 and evidence for each, and we will present them in an ascending order of probabilities, leaving the last two as the only real possibilities.
First, James the father of Judas (Luke 6:16; Acts 1:13).58
Second, James the Less or Younger, son of Mary wife of Cleopas (Mark 15:40; Matt 27:56; Mark 16:1; Luke 24:10).
Third, James the son of Alphaeus, one of the Twelve (Mark 3:18; Matt 10:3; Luke 6:15; Acts 1:13).59
Fourth, James the son of Zebedee and brother of the apostle John and also one of the Twelve (Mark 1:19; 3:17; Luke 6:14; Acts 1:13). This James, according to Acts 12:2, was beheaded by Herod Agrippa I.
Fifth, James the brother of Jesus, son of Mary (Mark 6:3; Matt 13:55; Gal 1:19; 2:9, 12; Acts 12:17; 15:13; 21:18; Jude 1; John 7:3–5; 1 Cor 9:5).60
Because of his premature death and a total lack of early Christian connection to the letter, nearly everyone agrees that James the son of Zebedee, brother of apostle John, did not write this letter. The evidence for one of the other Jamese’s being the author is nonexistent. There are really only three possibilities for “James” the author of this book:
(1) the brother of Jesus wrote this letter;61
(2) the brother of Jesus, though the letter was written by someone else in his name;62
(3) someone else whom we do not know about.
What we can do at this point is sketch the evidence we do have to see what the brother of Jesus looks like and then ask if this person could be the author.63 If not, then the second or third option would claim our conclusion.
JAMES, BROTHER OF JESUS, IN THE NEW TESTAMENT
James the brother of Jesus belonged to a large pious (Torah-observant) family under stress. Whether one takes the Helvidian, Hieronymian, or Epiphanian view,64 the “brother” of Jesus would have been part of a large family. According to Mark 6:3, the male children of the family included, and here I give rough transliterations of the Hebrew names: “Yakov and Yosef and Yehuda and Simeon.” Add to this “Yeshua” and there are five boys with traditional names. Mark also mentions “sisters,” though he gives them no names. That means there were at least seven children. If there is any truth to the tradition that Joseph died and left Mary a widow, James would have been part of a family in stress, and that might help explain why James sees pure religion as caring for the poor and widows (James 1:26–27).
Second, James perhaps came to faith only after Jesus’ death and as a result of the resurrection.65 The Gospel of John seemingly observes that the brothers of Jesus did not believe in him during his lifetime, and alternative explanations fail to convince (cf. John 7:3–5). It is often argued that, because at the crucifixion Jesus hands his mother over to the apostle John (19:25–27) and not to one of his brothers, the brothers had not yet come to faith in Jesus. But by the Day of Pentecost the brothers are in the middle of the inner circle of disciples (Acts 1:13–14; cf. Jude 1). The shift from John 19 to Acts 1, that is, from apparent unbelief at the cross to faith by Pentecost, is sudden, but neither should one discount the historical value of 1 Corinthians 15:7 as evidence that the resurrected Jesus appeared to James.66 The evidence is not completely clear, but it leans in the direction of James having become a believer after the death of Jesus and perhaps as a result of encountering the resurrected Jesus.
We know neither whether Peter’s departure from Jerusalem (Acts 12:17) reflected tensions within the Jerusalem community over the Law and the Hellenists nor whether it led to a deeper conservatism there.67 Nonetheless, another remembered feature of James emerges: he was a peace-seeking68 leader of the church in Jerusalem.69 Sometime around the early to mid-40s, probably after the early dispersion of the apostolic leaders from Jerusalem, James became a mediating leader of the church in Jerusalem70 and was called—scholarly nuances aside—an “apostle” (Gal 1:19;71 2:9, 12; 1 Cor 15:7; Acts 12:17; 15:2; 21:18). Most notably, he was the peacemaker of the controversy—precipitated by the missional visions72 of various leaders—over whether or not Gentile converts ought to be circumcised, and it brought him into direct contact with the apostle Paul.73 This may shed light on James 3:18, where wisdom and peacemaking are connected. According to Acts 15, James argues for peace on the basis of the eschatological restoration of the house of David; and this could be behind his “twelve tribes of Israel” statement in 1:1. That restored house includes a vision for Gentiles (Acts 15, especially vv. 13–21; cf. Amos 9:11–12).
But James’s theory of peace comes at a (perhaps minimal?) cost for Gentiles: he advocated in his ruling and letter that they, perhaps classified legally now as resident aliens, show respect for some Mosaic mitzvot (cf. Acts 15:19–21 with Lev 17–18). Some see here only major concerns with Gentile temples.74 James argued this on the basis of the universal knowledge of the Mosaic Torah: “For in every city, for generations past, Moses has had those who proclaim him, for he has been read aloud every Sabbath in the synagogues” (Acts 15:21).75 This James, then, is a Torah-observant Jew who expects Gentile converts to observe the Torah at a minimal level and Jewish believers to continue to observe Torah. We would observe also that when Paul arrives in Jerusalem for the last time he meets with James (21:18), who exhorts him to make visibly clear (in a vow) his commitment to Torah observance (21:20–26).76 Clearly, James is a Torah-observant leading presence in Jerusalem. One can infer, for the moment, that James wrote this letter from Jerusalem, a point that has been exploited in the careful work of Richard Bauckham.77
James’s leadership was potent, perhaps leading to the misuse of his name. It is very difficult to know his precise contribution to the table fellowship problems in Antioch, but Galatians 2:12 puts it this way: “for until certain people came from James, [Peter] used to eat with the Gentiles. But after they came, he drew back and kept himself separate for fear of the circumcision faction.” We need not resolve the issues here, whether they concern eating too frequently with Gentile Christians or eating with them at all or actual dispensing with dietary rules and just what role “Antioch” played in the discussions.78 What matters for us is that James is connected, whether accurately by the “men from James” or the “circumcision faction” or not, to Torah observance and at least its minimal observance by Gentile converts.79
JAMES, BROTHER OF JESUS, OUTSIDE THE NEW TESTAMENT
This view of James as a Torah-observant leader of some stature in the Jerusalem church also comes up outside the New Testament. In fact, his leadership was a growing legend.80 Josephus tells us that the younger, rash Ananus (Annas II) was a follower of the “heartless” Sadducees and convened the Sanhedrin to try “James, the brother of Jesus who was called the Christ, and certain others.” Ananus tried to take advantage of the interregnum between Festus and Albinus, but Albinus was made aware of the situation by the Pharisees, who took the opportunity to score points against the Sadducees. Ananus nonetheless accused James and the others of “having transgressed the law and delivered them up to be stoned” (Ant 20.199–200).
The details of the stoning of James in 62 AD were clarified, or elaborated if you will, by Clement of Alexandria and Hegesippus, whose accounts are embedded in Eusebius and, alongside these texts, one must also consider the Second Apocalypse of James and the Pseudo-Clementines, though their value diminishes for detecting reliable information.81 Clement wrote, “Now there were two Jameses, one James the Just [brother of Jesus], who was thrown down from the pinnacle of the temple and beaten to death with a fuller’s club, and the other [son of Zebedee] he who was beheaded” (Eusebius, Eccl Hist 2.1.5). Eusebius’s account of Hegesippus is more complete and fascinating (2.23) while the account in the 2 Apoc. Jas. imagines (in Gnostic tone) what James said to those gathered around. In Eusebius we “learn” more about the precise setting of James’s martryrdom: “When Paul appealed to Caesar and was sent over to Rome by Festus, the Jews were disappointed of the hope in which they had laid their plot against him and turned against James, the brother of the Lord, to whom the throne of the bishopric in Jerusalem had been allotted by the Apostles” (2.23.1). The specifics of the cause against him are also clarified: “They brought him into the midst and demanded a denial of the faith in Christ before all the people” (2.23.2). And James’s response: “With a loud voice and with more courage than they had expected, [he] confessed before all the people that our Lord and Savior Jesus Christ is the son of God” (2.23.2). The Jewish mob was enraged: “They could no longer endure his testimony, since he was by all men believed to be most righteous [dikaiotaton] because of the height which he had reached in a life of philosophy and religion [ton bion philosophias te kai theosebeias]” (2.23.2). So they killed him at an opportune moment, “using anarchy as an opportunity for power since at that moment Festus had died in Judea, leaving the district without government or procurator” (2.23.2). 2 Apoc. Jas. adds also that the crowd did not respond positively to his claims (61).
Eusebius uses some critical judgment in comparing Clement’s account with Hegesippus’s. To begin with, Hegesippus “belongs to the generation after the Apostles” (2.23.3) and gives the most accurate account. He informs us that James was charged to look after the church. He was holy from his mother’s womb.
He drank no wine or strong drink, nor did he eat flesh; no razor went upon his head; he did not anoint himself with oil, and he did not go to the baths. He alone was allowed to enter into the sanctuary, for he did not wear wool but linen, and he used to enter alone into the temple and be found kneeling and praying for forgiveness for the people, so that his knees grew hard like a camel’s because of his constant worship of God, kneeling and asking forgiveness for the people. So from his excessive righteousness82 he was called the Just and Oblias, that is in Greek, “Rampart of the people and righteousness,” as the prophets declare concerning him (2.23.6–7).
Behind the word “Oblias” we are to see the vision of the eschatological Zion and the Temple in Isaiah 54:11–12:83
O afflicted one, storm-tossed, and not comforted,
I am about to set your stones in antimony,
and lay your foundations with sapphires.
I will make your pinnacles of rubies,
your gates of jewels,
and all your wall of precious stones.
Along with texts like Isaiah 3:10 and Psalm 118,84 James himself was found in Scripture along with his role as the wall—protective, plumb line, rampart—which God used to build the eschatological temple. With such a prominent role in the Jerusalem church, the leaders of Judaism—Hegisippus calls them “Jews and the Scribes and the Pharisees” (2.23.10)—attempted to persuade James to reroute the people’s belief in Jesus as Messiah toward safer ground (2.23.10–11). So, they got him to mount the “battlement” of the Temple at Passover to persuade the crowds.85
“What is the gate of Jesus?” they asked James to answer publicly, to set him up for a safe confession (2.23.12). His answer reverses their wishes: “Why do you ask me concerning the Son of Man? He is sitting in heaven on the right hand of the great power, and he will come on the clouds of heaven” (2.23.13). We are told that many responded to James in faith and that this led the offended and worried leaders to mount the same battlement, toss him down, and, in accordance with sacred texts (Wis 2:10; Isa 3:10), stone him (2.23.14–16; see 2 Apoc. Jas. 61–62). James then prayed nearly the same prayer Jesus did for his persecutors: “forgive them, for they know not what they do” (2.23.16). The 2 Apoc. Jas. expands the prayer (62–63). He died, according to Eusebius, from a blow to the head by a club (2.23.18) and was buried on the spot.
Luke Timothy Johnson observes, without argument and with robust assertion: “The fictionalizing tendency in such accounts is patent.”86 Perhaps, but where does one draw the line? Richard Bauckham, hardly a gullible historian, finds “Oblias” to be a bona fide scrap of historical information.87 Hagiographical details creep into such accounts, especially when it comes to details of piety, but they can be seen as ornamental decoration of an otherwise credible account, and I find the same here. In general, we have a James who is pious, with a focus on the word “just” or “righteous.” I find that credible, consistent with messianic Judaism, and coherent with the letter itself. We also have a James who is a leader in Jerusalem, a development that seems to have followed the dispersion of the apostles in the early forties for which we find evidence in Acts 12, 15, and 21. This, too, makes sense of the evidence. What remains are two facts: that James was martyred and how he was martyred. I suspect the latter, along with clarification of the cause against him,88 grew in detail, though the differences between Clement and Hegesippus are not as great as one might suggest. I see no reason to doubt the stubborn tradition that James, brother of Jesus, was a martyr. I doubt we will ever know if he was pushed off an embattlement, but death by stoning or from the wound of a club is not farfetched.89
JAMES, BROTHER OF JESUS, AND THE LETTER
The evidence suggests that the “James” of James 1:1 is the brother of Jesus, whether the writer was he or someone writing in his name.90 One way of saying this can be found in W. H. Wachob’s question: “Is it possible that the text is here setting up James of Jerusalem as the broker for God and Jesus, and the benefits they espoused (wisdom, justice, social status, self-status)?”91 We probe deeper now into this James of Jerusalem question by considering connections between what we know of an obviously very Jewish James and the letter itself.
Few dispute the Jewishness of this letter, though we perhaps still need to remind ourselves that “Judaism” is not separate from “Hellenism.”92 It appeals to the Tanakh often (1:11; 2:8–10, 23; 4:6; 5:4, 5), alludes to it constantly (e.g., 1:13–15, 27; 2:20–26; 3:9; 4:7–10, 11–12; 5:10–11, 17), and breathes throughout the spirit of biblical Judaism as it came to expression in diverse ways by the first century AD. The author chooses to call his audience something thoroughly biblical—“the twelve tribes in the Dispersion” (1:1)—and he calls God “the Lord of hosts” (5:4). He frames theology at times in nomistic categories (2:8–10; 4:11–12) and clearly reveals a penchant for the Shema in the form taught by Jesus (cf. 1:12; 2:5, 8–11; Mark 12:28–32).93 It is this Jewish James we seek, and the simplest search is to ask if the brother of Jesus fits the evidence of the letter.
Some detect similarities between the James of Acts 15 (and his letter there) and the James of the letter. Whether or not one thinks the letter is pseudonymous, the following parallels are worthy of attention and require a reasonable explanation:94
1. The letters have similar beginnings:
• James 1:1–2: James, a servant of God and of the Lord Jesus Christ, to the twelve tribes in the Dispersion: Greetings. My brothers [and sisters] …
• Acts 15:23: The brothers, both the apostles and the elders, to the believers of Gentile origin in Antioch and Syria and Cilicia, greetings.
• See also James 1:16, 19, 25; Acts 15:25 on the word “brothers.”
2. The letters each express the need to “keep” oneself from sins:
• James 1:27: to care for orphans and widows in their distress, and to keep oneself unstained by the world.
• Acts 15:29: that you abstain from what has been sacrificed to idols and from blood and from what is strangled and from fornication. If you keep yourselves from these, you will do well.
3. The letters each connect “listen” to “brothers”:
• James 2:5: Listen, my beloved brothers [and sisters].
• Acts 15:13: My brothers, listen to me.
4. The letters each use the name invoked upon the believers:
• James 2:7: Is it not they who blaspheme the excellent name that was invoked over you?
• Acts 15:17: so that all other peoples may seek the Lord—even all the Gentiles over whom my name has been called.
5. The letters use some distinctive vocabulary:
• “Care for” pastorally (James 1:27; Acts 15:14), “turning” as conversion (James 5:19–20; Acts 15:19).
An honest analysis admits these connections do not represent the most important terms in James, that some vary both in substance and form, and that each can be explained in other ways. But it must also be admitted that in a letter the length of Acts 15:23–29 the parallels to James are noteworthy if not remarkable.95 At the minimum, these interesting coincidences cannot be forgotten in this discussion.
Even more significant is the substantive relation of James to the Jesus traditions and teachings of Jesus, who in a traditional explanation was the “brother” of our letter’s author. Scholars have produced and reproduced such lists many times and in many ways, but at least the following deserve consideration:96
The theme of joy in trial/testing is found in 1:2 and Matthew 5:10–12 par. Luke 6:22–23.
The word “perfection” in 1:4 finds an important parallel in Matthew 5:48 (contrast Luke 6:36) and 19:21 (contrast Luke 18:21).
The generosity of God for those in need is found in 1:5 and Matthew 7:7–9 par. Luke 11:9–11.
The call to suspend anger in 1:20 connects to Matthew 5:22.
The important theme of being a doer of the word, not just hearing the word, as seen in 1:22–25 reminds one of Matthew 7:24–27 par. Luke 6:47–49.
The demand to do all the Law in 2:10 is matched in part by a similar demand in Matthew 5:19.
The paramount significance of mercy in 2:13 finds something similar in Matthew 5:7.
The call to peace in 3:18 is also matched by a Beatitude in Matthew 5:9.
James’s concern with the either-or of love/friendship with God or the world finds something similar in Matthew 6:24 par. Luke 16:13.
The connection of humility and eschatological exaltation in 4:10 finds a substantive connection with yet another Beatitude in Matthew 5:5.
The theme of not judging in 4:11–12, which in many ways brings to completion what has been said in 3:1–4:10, not to mention other subtle connections in other parts of James, is also important to the Jesus traditions, as seen in Matthew 7:1–5 par. Luke 6:37–38, 41–42.
The hostile reaction to rich oppressors in 5:2–6 finds close associations with Matthew 6:24, 25–34 par. Luke 16:13; 12:22–31.
The patience of the prophets in 5:10 matches Matthew 5:12 par. Luke 6:23.
Most notably, the statement about oaths in 5:12 must be connected to Matthew 5:33–37.97
The debate over the precise form of the Jesus traditions to which James is connected does not erase the reality of that connection because the connections are more remarkable even than those to the letter in Acts 15. As Hartin has concluded, “There is nothing in the Letter of James that does not conform to the vision, teaching, and mission of Jesus.”98 One needs to factor such a conclusion into not only the “christology” but also the theology and rhetoric of James. The letter is comprehensively Christian. It is especially connected to the Sermon on the Mount,99 Q (material found in Matthew and Luke but not in Mark),100 and Matthew apart from Luke, even where our present Matthew’s version is not identical to what we see in James. Therefore, it is safer to conclude that James is more connected to Matthew101 than to Q, or perhaps to a pre-Matthean form of Q or to the community tradition connected to Matthew’s Gospel. Some would drop further back and suggest that what we can discern with plausibility is that James is somehow connected to the Synoptic tradition.102 We hasten to observe that explicit citation by James is rare, and we stand on sure footings when we conclude that James has made Jesus’ teachings his own. It is entirely appropriate to describe these observations with the words that James is “emulating” Jesus’ words.103
The point needs to be underlined. The more common form of connection between most early Christian texts and their predecessors, and this has been frequently observed for the early church up to the middle or late second century, is one of allusion (or even “emulation”) rather than explicit citation.104 One of the notable features of the earliest Christians was not only their use of traditions before them but even more was that the mode of use was to recapture, allude to, and carry on what had been said before.105 This mode chafes against the all-too-common drive by contemporary historians and tradition critics to search exclusively for explicit quotations as a sign of dependence. Perhaps the analogy of “wiki” modes in current open source media will enable us to re-appreciate this mode. That is, as modern online dictionaries recapture and carry on, with new additions, subtractions, and modifications, sometimes with little or no trace of citation, so James may be said to have given his own “wiki” version of various sayings of Jesus. This is not plagiarism because there was no such thing as word property; it was instead the ultimate compliment and a way of carrying on the sacredness of the earlier tradition.106
So the evidence about James in the New Testament and in the earliest Christian traditions comports with what we find in the letter, though it cannot be said to prove that the brother of Jesus wrote this letter. Furthermore, the connection of James to the letter from the Jerusalem Council in Acts 15 and a parallel connection to the Jesus traditions make the authorship by James the brother of Jesus credible and even make him the James most likely in mind in the letter’s salutation.
JAMES, BROTHER OF JESUS, AND THE GREEK STYLE OF JAMES
But is the letter pseudonymous? The arguments against the traditional authorship might be the clues needed to finalize that issue. They begin, and for some end as well, with this: the Greek of James is too sophisticated for the brother of Jesus.107 Since this discussion ultimately rests on whether a carpenter’s (or artisan’s) son from Galilee could have written sophisticated Greek, we will also mention the other arguments before we examine the language question more carefully.
The “James” of 1:1 does not claim to be the brother of Jesus. While this argument is not infrequently heard, the problem is that nearly everyone argues that the “James” of the pseudonym is the brother of the Lord—so that this argument turns against itself. It is no more likely that the real James omitted his family connection to Jesus than that a pseudonymous author did so. In fact, since pseudonymous authors not infrequently elaborate such connections, perhaps this argument actually favors James being the real author.
The letter also does not mention anything about the life of Jesus. But that also does not favor pseudonymity. Paul gave his life for Jesus, wrote long letters rooted in the so-called Christ-event, and carried on missionary work for decades, but hardly ever mentions events in the life of Jesus or quotes Jesus. If Paul could operate this way, there is no argument for the unlikelihood that the brother of Jesus wrote this letter in its non-mention of events involving Jesus. What it might show is that what we would like to see James do is an indicator that we have not quite grasped what James did.
Some argue that the Torah-observant James of Galatians 2 or Acts 15; 21:18–25 does not fit with the perspective on Torah found in the letter.108 My own analysis of these data is different: the James of the letter is Torah-observant, like Jesus, even if he approaches Torah through a combination of the Shema and Leviticus 19:18. For James to have captured (from Jesus, no doubt) Torah through the lens of loving others and loving God does not mean that he is not Torah-observant. It means only that he, like Philo and Paul,109 is observant from a distinct ethical vantage point. There is no reason to assume that everyone who obeyed Torah did so as the later rabbis did. Furthermore, because this letter is brief and does not address pressing topics in other parts of the earliest churches, it is hard to know what the author of this letter thought about a number of topics, including circumcision. Put differently, since we do not know what James thought, it is possible that he frowned on loose table fellowship as in Galatians 2:11–14 and advocated circumcision for converts. Assuming that James tells us everything in this five-chapter letter is not sound methodologically.
The external evidence that survives—and the surviving bits of information should not be assumed to represent even the most important or general realities that were going on—suggests that James was slowly recognized in the canonical process.110 The question, the details behind which we are about to sketch, runs like this: if the letter was written by the brother of Jesus, why was it not immediately endorsed?
A brief on the evidence is as follows: Irenaeus quotes James 2:23 in Against Heresies (4.16.2) about 180 AD. Origen called James “Scripture,” but this is sometime after 200 AD.111 The letter is not found in the Muratorian Canon, the African Canon, or the Syriac Canon. But Athanasius lists it in his famous Easter letter of 367 AD. Pelagius used the letter, demonstrating that it was authoritative in Rome prior to 405.112 Jerome seems to have paved the way for the letter’s acceptance in the West, where Augustine found it palatable and where its acceptance at the Council of Hippo (393) led to its inclusion at the third and fourth Councils of Carthage (397, 419). Eusebius, one century later than Origen, assigns James to the antilegomena—books against which there is some charge and which are therefore disputed as to status. But he accepts it as Scripture and cites it, appealing to its authority on the basis of its catholicity.113 Jerome is uncertain and at one point speaks of the letter’s possible pseudonymity:114 “James wrote a single epistle and some claim that it was published by another under his name.” And yet there are traces of James in early Christian literature.
It is important to remember that canon consciousness arose over time and that later criteria for inclusion in the canon or for canon-like function and status should not be imposed—as also even with the demand for explicit citation as indication of canonical status—on the earliest period.115 The doubts about James revolved around four issues: the lack of clarity regarding its provenance, its possible non-apostolic authorship, its addressees, and the nature of its theology.116 But the doubts appear to be more related to the surging emphasis of Protestant theological concerns and the framing of church teachings according to Paul’s theology than to anything else.117 In other words, this very Jewish letter and its practical, if not also commonplace, teachings were of little use to the concerns with christology and trinity that began to develop in the second century. Nor was the letter of much use for battling Gnosticism. Finally, its Jewishness did not appeal to either Eastern or Western theologians. Tardiness in acknowledgement and doubts about its authorship can be explained adequately by the lack of the letter’s usefulness on a number of fronts. At any rate, the rather clear evidence of tardy acknowledgment insufficiently sustains an argument against the brother of Jesus as its author.
If the external evidence yields nothing conclusive, the language may well be the decisive factor. Nigel Turner, one of this generation’s finest Greek experts, expresses a common conclusion: “it is widely felt that the style of Greek [in James] is too schooled for the Jerusalem James, the brother of Jesus.”118 Apply to James, mutatis mutandis, what was said of the early leaders in Acts 4:13, namely that they were “uneducated and ordinary men,”119 and some conclude simpliciter that James the brother of Jesus could not have been the letter’s author. Here we have the logical fallacy of applying what may have been the general situation statistically to a particular person. There are always exceptions to the average. Recent research in the Greek of those who lived in Galilee, not the least of whom would be Jesus and his potential use of Greek, opens up this question in new ways. Furthermore, one must factor into this the likelihood that the brother of Jesus had been living in Jerusalem, and such a setting may well have increased not only his use of Greek but also his capacity to write good Greek.
Perhaps some reminders are in order: Hengel concluded that “Judaea, Samaria, and Galilee were bilingual (or better, trilingual). While Aramaic was the vernacular of ordinary people, and Hebrew the sacred language of religious worship and of scribal discussion, Greek had largely become established as the linguistic medium for trade, commerce and administration.”120 It is simply mistaken to think of the Galileans as rustic hillbillies or as proto-rabbinic separatists who turned away from everything Roman, Greek and “cultural.” And it is mistaken to see Galilee as a land of rebellion and anti-Roman or anti-Judean sentiments. It had a thriving economy.121 Furthermore, there were Hellenists in Jerusalem, and their numbers were probably considerable (e.g., Acts 6:1). Translators were available both in Jerusalem and abroad (e.g., Josephus, Against Apion 1.50).122 There is a reason that the famous Temple inscription that prohibited Gentiles from advancing deeper into the sacred dimensions was in Greek: many foreigners were present and many who came to the Temple read Greek. In addition, more than a third of the Judean inscriptions surviving from the First Century are in Greek.123 The Septuagint was not intended exclusively for Diaspora Jews, and we can be confident that the Greek-speaking Jews of the early chapters of Acts were familiar with it. We cannot possibly list all the arguments, but one element that sometimes goes unnoticed is that the apostle Paul was both trained under the rabbinic system and more than competent to write engaging good Greek.124 To be sure, in the New Testament only Luke and Hebrews show connections to a traditional Greek education,125 but the commonalities of early Christian writers reveal a widespread facility among early Christians in reading the Septuagint and other more popular literature. To draw these various elements together leads not to the old-fashioned stereotype of Jewish monastic-like conventicles in Galilee and Judea, which in some important ways animates the argument against James as the author of this letter, but to a picture of the Jewish people as more or less fully integrated into a world run by Rome, shaped by Greece, and influenced by any and all who walked its roads. In other words, it is a mistake to infer that residence in Galilee or Judea implies lack of engagement with the reigning trends in culture or an incapacity to speak, read, or write Greek. The early Christian leaders, not the least of whom were James and Paul, were evidently middle-class Jews who had the capacity to read, speak, and write Greek.
In fact, Stanley Porter has recently built upon the path-breaking work of J. N. Sevenster126 to argue that Jesus himself spoke Greek, and he points to Matthew 8:5–13 par. John 4:46–54; John 4:4–26; Mark 2:13–14 pars.; Mark 7:25–30 par.; Mark 12:13–17 pars.; Mark 8:27–30 pars.; Mark 15:2–5 pars.127 It is not unreasonable to think that if Jesus was trilingual then his brother James was also. In fact, Porter’s conclusion is that “a sizeable number of Jews in Palestine used Greek.”128 Even if Porter’s criteria are disputed, the general drift of his argument and the evidence he sketches should make anyone ponder the likelihood that Jesus and his closest associates had some facility in Greek. This makes it reasonable that James, too, had some capacity in Greek.129 Add to this the long-term presence of James in Jerusalem, where many Jews spoke and wrote Greek and where some Christians would have done the same, and one has a reasonable argument that James could have spoken and written Greek, even Greek as good as is found in the letter of James.
And we cannot neglect the possibility that an amanuensis or compiler had an effect on such matters as style and vocabulary. Add yet more: there is evidence that James’s Greek has Semitic elements, such as “doer of the Law” in 1:22.130 These are not details brought in to salvage traditional authorship but elements of how letters were written in the ancient world. Once again we run up against a stereotype: not only do many of the arguments against the traditional authorship pretend a total bifurcation between Judaism and Hellenism, suggesting in fact that the Greek of James is more sophisticated than it really is, but they pretend to a simplistic theory of authorship. Joseph Fitzmyer long ago outlined the most common methods: (1) write the letter oneself, (2) dictate it word by word, (3) dictate the sense and authorize the secretary to formulate the letter, and (4) authorize a friend or secretary to write in one’s name. Recent research has deepened his observations to find three general approaches: the secretary could (1) transcribe as dictated by the author, (2) contribute to the letter to one degree or another, or (3) compose it for the author.131 Once one factors into consideration matters like these, one is left on shifting foundations for so much of what one argues about authorship for New Testament books. It is as likely as not that someone like James would commission his letter, read it, proofread it, and then sign it. And this means that its style, content, and vocabulary could be the result of a process.132
My conclusion on the language issue is this: dogmatism is unwarranted. More directly, those who argue from language to non-traditional authorship are standing on weak foundations. There is sufficient evidence that James could have known and written in Greek, at least with the help of an amanuensis, to dislodge the simple argument that this Greek is too sophisticated for a brother of Jesus.133 This argument against the brother of Jesus should be laid to rest.
JAMES, BROTHER OF JESUS, AND THEOLOGY
If the style of James offers ambiguity instead of clarity as well as no compelling evidence against the traditional authorship, there is one more question that might tip the balance: does the theology of James provide any insight into who wrote this letter? We begin with a sweeping warning: to plot the location of James’s theology on a developmental scheme from Jesus to Nicea is impossible because the evidence simply is not available for enough of that plot to enable confidence. Furthermore, mapping James on a Jewish versus Hellenistic axis is no longer useful.134 The details of the theological question will be found in the Commentary, but we can offer a sketch here. But we need to emphasize that the arguments there for primitivity or lateness will convey only an impression; the evidence is insufficient to map and plot all the developments of early Christian theology. Furthermore, if one factors in a vibrant conservative (and today largely unrecoverable) Jewish Christian tradition that led to such groups as the Nazareans and Ebionites, one could find “early” ideas late in the game and perhaps also “late” ideas appearing early.135 Finally, in many cases the accusation that James is not “doctrinal” or “theological” becomes a circular argument: since theology looks like Paul’s theology and since James’s theology is not like Paul’s, James is not really theology.136 The criticism of this argument is not only simple but also telling: we need to ask ourselves again and again why we must force all theology to look like Pauline soteriology. The simple observation that later Jewish Christians never did look like Paul should wash this argument clean.
Our fundamental contention here is that what we find in James is less early versus late and more Jewish Christian versus the Western re-expression of the gospel that we find in Paul, Hebrews, John, and perhaps Peter.137 There is a tendency in scholarship to equate “Jewish” with “early” and “Western developments” with “late.” This picture assumes that the march from Jerusalem to Rome and then back to Nicea was the only movement happening. In fact, there were also, at least, those who stayed home and marched in the backyard, that is, the development from Jerusalem that stayed with a more Judean and Middle Eastern perspective and that had its own variations, not all of them to be equated with what was taking place in the West. What we find in James could have been written, so we would argue, anytime from the middle 40s of the first century into the middle of the second century, proper nuances aside.138
A few examples should suffice. First, the matter of Torah observance, which clearly characterized the earliest followers of Jesus (Acts 5:33–39; 15:1–5; 21:20). Thus, James’s clear commitment to Torah observance (James 2:8–11) connects him to that early Jewish Christian movement. But it also connects him to later Jewish Christians. Justin Martyr, in his Dialogue with Trypho (47), speaks of Christians who still practice circumcision and Sabbath and other ceremonies.139 One could quite easily infer that James continued these practices. Thus, Torah observance is not about early versus late but about Jewish Christianity (Christian Judaism) versus the developments of the Christian faith as it moved away from its Jewish roots.
Second, christology. We should not assume that James reveals his full christology in this letter. He mentions Jesus only twice, in 1:1 and 2:1. Jesus is the “Lord,” the “Christ,” and “the Glorious One”—hardly minimalistic terms. Even if we recognize that the absence does not mean the beliefs were not there, James does not mention the atoning death or the resurrection or our union with Christ—in short, none of the emerging soteriology we find in Paul, Peter, and Hebrews is found in James. Some are prone to infer from these absences to an “early” dating. Perhaps so. But, the christology of later Jewish Christianity does not reveal the same developments we see on the Western side. Of the Ebionites, who had their own christological struggles,140 Eusebius says this: “The first Christians gave these the suitable name of Ebionites because they had poor and mean opinions concerning Christ. They held him to be a plain and ordinary man who had achieved righteousness merely by the progress of his character and had been born naturally from Mary and her husband.”141 There were others who believed in the virginal conception but not in Christ’s preexistence.142 Which is merely to point out that the absence of Western soteriological and christological developments in James is no necessary indicator of an “early” date; rather, it could indicate a connection to one or more strands of Jewish Christianity instead of a connection with more Western forms.
Third, the Jesus traditions. One factor that suggests an “early” rather than just a “Jewish” provenance for James is his connection to the Jesus traditions. We sketched some of the evidence above. Two observations: First, this connects James to the sorts of Christians who drew deeply from the Synoptic tradition, perhaps even from the Q traditions or the Matthean form of the Q traditions, more than from the Johannine traditions. This might indicate a Land of Israel provenance, but could hardly prove it. Second, because James does not “quote” the Jesus traditions as we find them in the Synoptics, it could be argued that James is some distance removed from that form of connection to Jesus and he might be more connected to those early Christian documents, mentioned above, whose practice it is to allude to and incorporate Jesus’ statements instead of directly citing them. Our swords get crossed here: a connection to the Synoptics might favor an early date while the form of citation might not eliminate a somewhat later dating.
Fourth, we need to factor in the relationship of James and Paul, which is discussed at the end of the comments on 2:14–26. That evidence, we will argue, is insufficient to compel firm conclusions about the date of James.
We have come to the end of what can be mustered as the best evidence and arguments. We have turned over the rocks, we have smelled the earth afresh, but we have discovered no gold. In my estimation, the arguments against the traditional authorship are inconclusive; the arguments for traditional authorship are better but hardly compelling.143 I draw two conclusions: First, when the name “James” appears in James 1:1, it is a reference, whether real or pseudonymous,144 to the brother of Jesus. Second, the traditional view has very few substantial arguments against it, and I will assume the traditional authorship in what follows, knowing that we have failed to prove conclusively that James wrote the letter. In my estimation, the traditional authorship is probably the best conclusion based on the evidence we have and the arguments that can be brought to the table. Following in the wake of a fine German commentator, Franz Mussner,145 and the prolific German historian Martin Hengel,146 Luke Timothy Johnson found other arguments in favor of traditional authorship:147 the absence of signs of late, pseudonymous authorship; a reflection of the early stages of a sect, but here he draws on an emphasis on “morals rather than the manners of the dominant culture,” and one could easily imagine a Jewish dominant culture where James’s morals would be just as easily described as its manners; proximity to Jesus’ teachings and (also!) to Paul’s teachings, as well as to local Palestinian color in the letter; and the use of James in 1 Clement. Johnson postulates that all this means James was written “at a substantially earlier date.” I doubt we know enough about how long a text has to be in circulation to be quoted. Our firmest conclusion, then, is that James is Jewish; at a lesser level we can conclude that the traditional view that James the brother of Jesus wrote this letter has many factors in its favor and that the arguments against it are not as conclusive or decisive as is often made out.
It follows from this conclusion that, if James, the brother of Jesus, wrote this letter, we have an early date.148 James most likely died at the hands of the Sadducean high priest Ananus (or Annas II), which means he died in 62 AD.149 We can assume that he had been leader of the Jerusalem church for more than a decade, perhaps up to two decades. He wrote the letter probably after Paul’s message was either known or beginning to be heard, even if Paul’s message was distorted and James was responding to parts of it or to the distortions. It is reasonable then to think James was written in the 50s.150 It is also reasonable to think the letter was sent from Jerusalem to a number of churches/synagogues of messianic Jews in the Diaspora and that any more specific setting outstrips the evidence.151 His eschatology or reading of the biblical Story led him to call those dispersed messianists the “twelve tribes.” We do not know whether they were in Syrian Antioch, Asia Minor, Greece, Italy, Egypt, Babylon, or even Petra.
WHAT ARE THE CENTRAL THEMES OF JAMES?
The most significant theological posture of James is that he thinks his audience should not only listen to him but do what he says,152 however one wants to classify his rhetorical strategy in terms of ancient (or modern) rhetoric or communication theory.153 Furthermore, he is fond of making his arguments with binary oppositions.154
James’s audience should listen to him because he is “a servant of God” and a servant “of the Lord Jesus Christ” (1:1). This posture is one of authority derived from Jesus, not of sentimental equality or servanthood. By calling himself a “servant” James aligns himself with Israel’s noble heritage of the servants of God, most notably Moses, David, and the prophets. The entailments are many, not the least of which is that James has authority as a distinguished leader in the community that believes Jesus is the Messiah.155
Everything that James says flows from this (Christian) source.156 The theological themes of James are formed in this messianic, Jewish context of a man who has been called by God to be a leader of the messianic community. Scholars today sometimes observe that James’s ethics are grounded in theology proper rather than christology or soteriology, but apart from a terse dismissal of both 1:1 and 2:1 as well as the significance of the teachings of Jesus, which have reshaped the entirety of James’s ethics, there is a soteriology in 1:18 and 1:21. In addition, there is an assumption once again in much of this discussion that Paul’s way of doing christology and soteriology is the Christian way of doing them; there are, in fact, various ways for a Jesus-shaped theology to emerge.157 Furthermore, as our comments will show, the ethics of James are not simply contextless listings of advice but theologically and christologically-shaped exhortations.158
James raises many themes central to the Jewish world and its interface with the early messianic communities.159 Such themes include God, messianism, church/community,160 Torah and halakah,161 salvation, faith and works, socio-economic justice,162 speech,163 prayer, wisdom,164 and eschatology—and each of these serves his rhetorical intent to shape a community as an alternative to the “world” around him.165 Short of offering an exhaustive (and perhaps exhausting) sketch of each topic emerging in this letter, I have chosen to sketch the themes of James around two themes: God and ethics. One can organize the teachings of James around other themes. One of the more fruitful such themes in recent discussion is “perfection.” Studies of James’s use of “perfect” (1:4, 17, 25; 2:8, 22; 3:2; 5:11) perhaps reveal the core of, or at least a window into, his thinking. The most suggestive text for the importance of perfection in James is found at 2:22: “and faith was brought to completion [eteleiōthē] by the works.”166 J. H. Elliott masterfully turns this theme over from the angle of a social scientific perspective and examines James’s theology through the lens of “holiness-wholeness.”167 Douglas Moo, if from much less of a social-scientific perspective, agrees on the importance of this category for understanding James.168 Whatever one chooses as the central category, and one should question if there is such a thing and ask why some think there needs to be a “central” category, it is more a logical and explanatory device in the mind of the interpreter than something explicitly stated by James. This category should be held with an honest detachment as one moves through the letter itself.
One might also, as does Rob Wall, sketch the themes of James within a narrative or, put differently, sketch the narrative that precipitates the themes. Wall finds four such themes: (1) the sovereign God, who is able to save and to destroy, (2) who sends forth the word of truth, (3) which saves those who receive it in anticipation of (4) the coming triumph of God’s reign. This sketch may appear too Pauline, too soteriological, and too individualistic, but Wall fills out the picture in Jacobite ways.169
A reminder: the themes of James are not simply advice. The substance of these themes are life and death (1:12–15), and James’s intent in using them is to draw his readers into the world that leads to life and away from the world that leads to death. Historians, commentators, and teachers, then, are lured at times by the demands of a discipline (to explain a text) from the flesh, blood, life, and death realities that animated James in crafting this letter. Todd Penner, and he is a singular voice in this regard, connects James to the Jewish covenant-shaped “two ways” tradition (e.g., Deut 28; 30:15–20; Ps 1; Prov 4:10–27; Pss Sol 10:1–4; 1QS 3:13–26; Did 1:1–2), revealing the gravity and magnitude of the theology of James as it sits neatly in a robust eschatology.170 We should not forget here that James’s intent is to form a community (or a set of communities) who embody his ecclesial ethic and that the work of God is at stake in this formation.171 In what follows, then, we have chosen to provide a sketch of two themes.172
James’ theology appears to be ordinary, Jewish, and Christian. Thus, the quintessential Jewish belief is found in this letter: there is one God (2:19) and that God is the Lawgiver (4:11). Also typically Jewish is that James is a servant of God (1:1) and prays to God (1:5) and that this God is incapable of evil and tempting (1:13). This God gives commands, and the observant who conform to the commands are righteous (1:20, 27) and friends of God (2:23; 4:4). This God elects (2:5) and creates humans as his eikons, or those who are created in God’s image (homoiōsis, 3:9), and this same God also judges (4:6) and summons his people to do what is right through James’s words (4:7–8). The God of James is the Lawgiver (4:11; 5:4) who judges on the basis of that Law, but this God is also merciful, gracious, and forgiving (2:13; 4:6, 7–11).174 The God of James is single and simple; this God is therefore trustworthy and unchanging (1:5, 17). This God is the Father (1:17, 27; 3:9), an early Christian and Jewish framing of deity in terms of creation, redemption, and provision to all.175
All this is typically Jewish or Christian, but James does something that ought to startle any who have concluded that James is early: there is confusion in this letter at times whether he is speaking of the Father or Jesus when he uses the word “Lord.”176 Some texts are quite clear. James already calls God “Father” (1:17, 27; 3:9) and sometimes he refers to the Father when he uses the word “Lord” (1:17; 3:9; 4:10, 15; 5:4). But other times he uses “Lord” for Jesus Christ (2:1). Most noteworthy are ambiguous uses of this term (5:7–8, 10–11, 14, 15). One can make a case for these either way, but that is not the point. Rather, we need to observe that use of “Lord” is no longer a single, traditional referent to YHWH. James’s christology is not what it will be with Paul, Hebrews, John, or Peter, but it is in the chrysalis awaiting re-formation.177 As Bill Baker has outlined, James’s christology involves Jesus as teacher (see the comments below at 2:8), but more significantly there is a broaching of the deity of Christ in this use of “Lord” for Jesus and in the use of “the name” (2:7; 5:10), and perhaps also in Jesus as lawgiver and judge (cf. 4:11–12).178 James sees himself as a “servant” of both God and the Lord Jesus Christ; this connection has drawn the interest of those scouting for early christology.179 This heightened christology is reshaping early Christian theology and makes a cameo appearance when James refers to Jesus Messiah as “the Glorious One” in 2:1.180
The ethics of James owe their origins to his soteriological reflection in 1:18, where it is said that God’s intent is to give birth to the new creation (life from death; cf. 5:19–20). This conversion occurs through the word of truth182 and leads to the ethical concerns of the entire letter, whether one wants to see it through the lens of “perfection” or of “friendship with God.” It surprises how infrequently one reads of James’s central ethical category being “Torah observance,” and one wonders if an aversion to Torah observance is reflected in Christian scholarship on James. We should observe that the messianic community has the power and obligation to becomes “doers of the word” (1:22–25), and I cannot think of a better ethical category for this expression than Torah observance. Once again, we need to emphasize that Torah observance during the Second Temple period was not always proto-rabbinic. There is a diversity to Torah observance that could easily include James’s ethic.
The precise topics James brings to the fore in his Torah-observant ethics are on the surface: trials and testing and perseverance, socio-economic justice, speech ethics, good works, compassion and care for the marginalized, loving God and loving others, resisting the temptation to violence, and pastoral care for the wandering. But he is not offering another proto-rabbinic list of mitzvot or commands. Instead, we are drawn back to the opening words of the letter to remember that this is a thoroughly messianic document and that the ethics are also messianic and are shaped to form a new community, a community that embodies a different way of life.
The following points deserve careful consideration in following the origins and contours of the Jacobite Torah-observance ethic.183 First, there is a messianic source for the Jacobite ethic in two respects: first, James is the servant of Jesus Christ and Jesus Christ his Lord and that means that he has self-consciously placed himself under discipleship to Jesus as the Messiah and paradigm for existence (1:1; 2:1). Second, frequently James expresses an ethical concern in interaction with the words of Jesus. Noteworthy examples are the question of oaths (5:12) and his appeal to the Shema in the form that Jesus himself articulated (2:8–11). James frames the Law/Torah in ways reminiscent of Jesus’ own teachings, and this accounts (as the commentary will show) for the “the perfect law, the law of liberty” (1:25), “the royal law” (2:8), and “the law of liberty” (2:12). But this messianic source need not be understood as replacement ethics. The ethic of James is an expression of Old Testament ethics; hence, his use of the Shema (1:12; 2:5, 19) and resonances with the Torah (e.g., 4:6–10). His ethic is Torah observance through the lens of Jesus for a messianic community.
Second, there is a theological source in the Jacobite ethic. God is there and the community can go to God because God wants to grace them with divine gifts (1:5). The God who calls them to live out the divine plan, sketched as it is in the Torah and then read through the lens of the Jesus Creed, is altogether good and gracious (1:13–15, 17).184 This God is the Lawgiver (4:11–12) who has given them the Torah so humans know how to live (2:8–11). Ultimately, Torah observance is relational; James sees the fundamental relation to be one of loving God (1:12; 2:5). Alongside this theological source is the Torah-Word that God uses for new birth (1:18) and that, once implemented/received, can be drawn upon to live out the life God intends (1:21). Because of this theological origin of ethics, God alone is the Judge for those summoned to observe this messianically-interpreted Torah (2:4; 4:11–12).
Third, there is a reduction to love in the Jacobite ethic. There is no theoretical discussion of the greatest commandment or any evidence of the later rabbinic idea of summarizing the Torah while standing on one foot, but James clearly is aware that love is the center of the human responsibility to God, to others, and to self (1:12; 2:8–11). But this reduction of the Torah to love stems from the Torah (2:9), making one wonder if James received it from Jesus or straight from the Torah. (Elsewhere I have called the combination of Deut 6:4–5 and Lev 19:18 as the essence of the Torah “The Jesus Creed,” and will do so hereafter.) It suggests also that James has set his understanding of the Torah’s essence as love over against those who conceived of it as miscellaneous divine mitzvot. To “break one command,” which might mean to opt for the mitzvot approach to the Torah, means breaking all the commands (2:10). This sounds dramatically like the apostle Paul in Galatians 5. But we need to emphasize that the love ethic of James is a Torah-observant love ethic, a love that leads to the proper observance of the Torah.
Fourth, there is a communal—new community—shape to the Jacobite ethic. James does not reveal that he knows of Gentile converts or Gentile participants in the messianic community, but boundaries do appear to be porous for him—hence, his appeal to Rahab as a virtuous woman because of her faith (2:25–26). But throughout the letter we find a community-shaped ethic. Not only does James use the second person plural constantly, but what matters are relational ethics—such as how one treats others and who matters the most (1:9–11, 19–21, 26–27, etc.). One of the fiercest sections in the letter is 3:1–4:12, a section we will explain as devoted to the teachers of the community. James’s obvious concern is the impact of their speech on the community. Furthermore, sin is to be confessed within the community (5:13–18), and the wandering are to be restored (5:19–20). The community to which James writes this letter is to be a Jesus-oriented Torah-observant community.
Fifth, like all Jewish and early Christian teaching, there is an eschatological warrant in the Jacobite ethic.185 God is the Lawgiver; God is the Judge; someday God will judge all humans, and that judgment determines salvation or death. This is found throughout the letter (1:2–4, 9–11, 12, 25; 2:12–13, 14–17; 5:1–6, 7–11). What reveals a Christian reworking of the theme of God as Judge is the parousia (5:7–11), and this gives the judgment a christological focus found only among the followers of Jesus. Revealingly, once again, the one who judges is the Lawgiver who will judge on the basis of Torah observance.
Sixth, we need to call attention to the terms used for what matters most in the Jacobite ethic. If one does not perform or live out the faith, one will not find eschatological salvation (cf. 2:14, 17, 18–19). It is unwise to reify these terms and say one must have one or another, or even to say one must have all. Instead, each of these terms brings to expression a life that is lived properly before God if one is following the Messiah, the Messiah’s Torah, and doing so in the messianic community. To further this point, it is also unwise to read any of these terms apart from the wider context of ethics we are sketching here: for James, ethics flow out of what God has now revealed in the Messiah as the community both challenges the systemic injustices of society and awaits the final consummation. I mention some of James’s terms now. James calls them to perfection (1:4; 3:2), away from double-mindedness (1:8), toward a focused sanctification of speech (1:19–21, 26; 3:1–4:12). He also clearly opposes the use of violence (1:19–20; 4:1–2) and calls the community to peace (3:17–18). He calls them to be patient and passive but firm in their commitment (1:21; 5:7–11). A singular feature of James is his emphasis on good works (1:22–27; 2:14–26). The flipside of good works is holiness (1:27). If one follows the Jesus Creed of loving God and loving others (1:12; 2:5, 8–11), then one will be impartial and show mercy to all (2:1, 9, 13). Luke Timothy Johnson thinks at the center of James’s ethic is friendship with God, and though I think this is overstated, the theme is important to James (2:23; 4:4). One of the hallmarks of James is its connection to wisdom, and one can say that the good life for James is wisdom (3:13–18). Every one of these linguistic signals for ethics emerges from and interacts with the Torah.
Seventh, there is a consciously important socio-economic shape to the Jacobite ethic. Liberation theology makes much of this and has much to go on in the letter of James.186 From beginning to end James has his eye on abuse of the poor, the injustices of the rich, the pride of the merchants, and the need to show mercy to those who are in need (1:9–11, 26–27; 2:1–4, 5–7, 14–17; 4:13–5:6). James is not giving an Aristotelian theory of how society works: the socio-economic shape of his ethics emerges from response to a system of injustice and exploitation (2:6–7; 5:1–6), and the critique he offers emerges from the Torah and the Prophets.187
Finally, there is an anthropological element to the Jacobite ethic. When James informs us that our temptations cannot be blamed on God, he not only anchors his ethic in the nature of the altogether good God but also informs us that human desires are at work in sinfulness because it is their broken system that generates the cycle toward death (1:13–15; 4:1). Humans have the capacity for self-deception (1:23–24, 26) and to be amazingly harsh, hard-hearted, cruel, and brutal (2:1–4, 14–17; 4:1–10; 4:13–5:6). James does not speculate much about human nature, but he describes humans such that one would have to posit that he believes in something not unlike original sin or a corrupt human condition (cf. 3:9–12; 3:13–4:10). He singles out the haughtiness of the merchants (4:13–17) and the abuse of the powerful rich (5:1–6). The good news for James is that God does something to and for humans that makes it possible to live aright (1:18, 21; possibly 4:5). Humans know right from wrong (4:17). Alongside this anthropological element is a cosmic dimension to the Jacobite ethic. Genuine wisdom comes from above; bad wisdom comes from below (3:15–17; 4:7). Such wisdom then unfolds into friendship either with the world or with God (4:4). Hence, James has a dualism of humans: either one is on God’s side or one is not (1:9–11; 2:8–11; 3:13–18; 4:4, 6; 5:19–20).
The fondness one finds today for the term “perfection” or “friendship of God” makes sense of the book of James, but it is our conviction that it is simpler, more historical, and more in line with the fundamental structures of James’s thought to speak of his ethic as a Torah observance in a messianic key. One has to wonder if Luther’s ghost haunts even how modern historians choose to conceptualize the ethics of James.
WHAT IS THE STRUCTURE OF JAMES?
Inherent to the interpretation of this letter is an implicit or explicit understanding of its genre.188 However one classifies this letter—allegory on the twelve tribes, diatribe, Hellenistic Jewish homily, protreptic discourse, paraenesis,189 or Christian wisdom—a more inductive model of analysis brings to fruition the elements that guide us in comprehending its genre. More importantly, the structural analysis of James puts to the test the widespread tendency to reify genres from the ancient world so that once one has made a conclusion regarding genre one has the key to unlocking the mysterious doors throughout James’s winding household. So our focus will be on structure rather than genre, a genre that the insightful study of L. L. Cheung clearly demonstrates to be within the ambit of Jewish wisdom and Hellenistic paraenesis.190
There are two extremes to how experts have understood how James put this letter together, that is, how its framing and guiding structure are assembled.191 First, though not alone in this regard, Martin Dibelius famously argued that the letter is a paraenetic192 miscellany, a collection of ideas and exhortations with no discernible relations or connections addressed to no discernible context; in fact, Dibelius did not believe it was really a letter. It is, rather, a treasury of a special kind of wisdom characterized by an eclectic use of ethical traditions, sayings loosely strung together, catchwords that sometimes make connections, and motifs repeated in different parts of the letter addressed to an audience that seems to vary from one unit to another.193 But this view has been largely abandoned today.
A second view finds subtle, overarching rhetorical themes and logical movements and even a carefully-structured composition.194 A few attempts to lay out that structure will be sampled below, but one observation needs to be made at this point: a number of units in James are clearly discernible and self-contained, including 2:1–13; 2:14–26; 3:1–12 or 3:1–4:12; and 4:13–5:6. If these units are discernible, the older observation of Dibelius, regardless of how unpopular his larger thesis is today, that the precise connection between units remains disputed if not at times indiscernible finds some support in the text.195 The result of this simple observation is that most agree on discerning the various units and therefore the various outlines proposed by those studying the structure of James frequently agree. Still, the shift from Dibelius to some of the more recent proposals is notable. Why? As Mark Taylor has chronicled the scholarship on this topic, the shift emerges from at least two factors: more attention has been given to the literary and rhetorical aspects of the text, and the assumptions at work in Dibelius’s proposal have been reevaluated.196 It appears to me that Duane Watson’s conclusion speaks for many today: “[James] is a Jewish-Christian work influenced by Hellenistic rhetoric, but is arranged overall in the topic-to-topic fashion of Jewish wisdom texts.”197 We would be wise not to rest too much interpretive weight on any structural proposal.
The outlines that follow are abbreviated; the proponents of each have worked out the details to explain the entire letter in light of their particular structural proposal.198
F. O. Francis199
1. Thematic statements of joy and blessing (1:2–27)
1.1. Joy (1:2–4), prayer (1:5–8), reversal of roles (1:9–11)
1.2. Joy (1:12–18), prayer (1:19–21), reversal of roles (1:22–25)
Hinge: 1:26–27
2. Faith and partiality (2:1–26)
3. Strife from words, wisdom, and position (3:1–5:6)
3.1. Words bad and good (3:1–12)
3.2. Two kinds of wisdom (3:13–18)
3.3. Conflict (4:1–12)
3.4. Arrogance and injustice (4:13–5:6)
4. Final exhortations (5:7–20), recalling various earlier parts
P. Davids200
1. Introduction (1:1)
2. Opening Statement (1:2–27)
2.1. First segment (1:2–11)
2.2. Second segment (1:12–27)
3. Excellence of poverty and generosity (2:1–26)
3.1. No partiality is allowable (2:1–13)
3.2. Generosity is necessary (2:14–26)
4. Demand for pure speech (3:1–4:12)
4.1. Pure speech has no anger (3:1–12)
4.2. Pure speech comes from wisdom (3:13–18)
4.3. Pure prayer is without anger and in trust (4:1–10/12)
5. Testing through wealth (4:13–5:6)
6. Closing statement (5:7–20)
These first two outlines are formative for the undoing of Dibelius’s proposal and include a substantive chiastic/inclusio-like connection between the opening statement and the closing statement. One of the most persistent observations made about this letter is that the first chapter anticipates later developments.201 For example, what James says about speech and the tongue in 1:26–27 (consciously and intentionally) anticipates what he will later say in 3:1–4:12. The observation is valid if one is careful with the word “anticipates.” Indeed, themes in the first chapter emerge elsewhere, but “anticipates” suggests that he had a literary, rhetorical, or logical plot in view when he wrote that chapter and that he intentionally sketched his themes and then later filled them in. In my exegetical comments I will push against such theories of conscious, literary, and logical anticipation and will argue that while these themes are natural to James and thus emerge in various locations, the evidence falls short of establishing that ch. 1 is a consciously literary anticipation or whetting of the appetite for what is to come.202
Martin borrows from Francis and Davids, backs away from some of their conclusions, and adds an emphasis on the opening chapter providing the major themes of the entire letter. In some ways, this is followed by Luke Timothy Johnson, who has added fresh proposals about the influence of Greek, Roman, and Jewish moral traditions on the letter. Doug Moo’s recent revision of an earlier commentary, based as it is on two decades of working in James, picks up what has gone before and avoids the extravagances of some more recent proposals as it works the entire letter through the theme of spiritual wholeness.
R. P. Martin203
1. Address and greeting (1:1)
2. Enduring trials (1:2–19a)
3. Applying the word (1:19b–3:18)
3.1 Obedience of faith (1:19b–27)
3.2 Problems in the assembly (2:1–13)
3.3 Faith and deeds (2:14–26)
3.4 Warning about teachers and tongues (3:1–12)
3.5 Two types of wisdom (3:13–18)
4. Witnessing to divine providence (4:1–5:20)
4.1 Community malaise (4:1–10)
4.2 Community problems (4:11–17)
4.3 Judgment on rich farmers (5:1–6)
4.4 Call to patience (5:7–11)
4.5 Community issues (5:12–18)
4.6 Final words and fraternal admonitions (5:19–20)
L. T. Johnson204
1. Greeting (1:1)
2. Epitome of exhortation (1:2–27)
3. The deeds of faith (2:1–26)
4. The power and peril of speech (3:1–12)
5. Call to conversion (3:13–4:10)
6. Examples of arrogance (4:11–5:6)
7. Patience in time of testing (5:7–11)
8. Speech in the assembly of faith (5:12–20)
D. J. Moo205
1. Address and greeting (1:1)
2. Pursuit of spiritual wholeness through trials (1:2–18)
3. Evidence of spiritual wholeness in obedience (1:19–2:26)
4. The community dimension of spiritual wholeness 1: speech and peace (3:1–4:3)
5. Summons to spiritual wholeness (4:4–10)
6. The community dimension of spiritual wholeness 2: speech and peace (4:11–12)
7. Worldview of spiritual wholeness: time and eternity (4:13–5:11)
8. Concluding exhortations (5:12–20)
Communication theory has been at work in the structural analysis of James, and two recent proposals—both in German—can illustrate this method.206 One comes from Hubert Frankemölle and the other from Wiard Popkes, authors of two of the best commentaries on James.207
H. Frankemölle208
1. Prescript (1:1)
2. Prologue (1:2–18)
2.1 Christian existence in testing (1:2–4)
2.2 Testing (1:5–11)
2.3 Blessing (1:12)
2.4 God and testing (1:13–18)
3. Body (1:19–5:6)
3.1 Hearing, speaking, anger (1:19–27)
3.2 Partiality and Christian faith (2:1–13)
3.3 Faith without works, faith with works (2:14–26)
3.4 Power of the tongue (3:1–12)
3.5 True wisdom (3:13–18)
3.6 Enmity and its origins (4:1–12)
3.7 Deceitful autonomy of the rich (4:13–5:6)
4. Epilogue (5:7–20)
W. Popkes209
1. Prescript (1:1)
2. The correct inner orientation (1:2–15)
3. Association with the Word of God (1:16–27)
4. Faith, love, deeds (2:1–26)
5. Responsible leadership in association with the Word (3:1–12)
6. Relationship to the world (3:13–5:6)
6.1 Wisdom, strife, and their origin (3:13–4:3)
6.2 Friendship with God, world (4:4–12)
6.3 Particular dangers (4:13–5:6)
7. Patience, prayer, and issues in association in the fellowship (5:7–20)
Two proposals applying discourse analysis in such a way that they enable us to take advantage of recent developments in rhetorical and socio-rhetorical criticism, those of L. L. Cheung and M. E. Taylor, round out this survey.210
L. L. Cheung211
1. Prescript (1:1)
2. Prologue (1:2–27)
2.1 Themes associated with the shema (1:2–18)
2.2 Obedience to the law of liberty for true piety (1:19–27)
3. The main body (2:1–5:6)
3.1 Testing of genuine faith (2:1–26)
3.2 Manifestation of wisdom from above (3:1–4:10)
3.3 Eschatological judgment of God (4:11–5:11)
4. Epilogue (5:12–20)
M. E. Taylor212
1. Letter opening (1:1)
2. Double introduction: living by righteous wisdom (1:2–27)
2.1 Trials (1:2–11)
Transition (1:12)
2.2 Perils of self-deception (1:13–27)
3. Letter body: living the “law of liberty” (2:1–5:6)
A Body opening (2:1–11)
B So speak and so act (2:12–13)
C Wrong acting, speaking (2:14–3:12)
D Righteous vs. worldly wisdom (3:13–18)
C Prophetic rebuke (4:1–10)
B Do the law, do not judge it (4:11–12)
A Body closing (4:13–5:6)
4. Conclusion (5:7–20)
I agree with the insight of Richard Bauckham, who observed that Dibelius and his followers too easily connected the lack of a careful, or at least obvious, structure to incoherence. Bauckham simply turned the rock over and discovered that under the rock of a lack of clear structure was coherence.213 While Dibelius will haunt my own approach to James in not seeing James 1 as an outline of the themes of the book, Bauckham’s observation probes more deeply than most.
In the commentary I will expound James according to the following outline, and my comments will themselves be my defense:
1. Salutation (introduction) (1:1)
2. The Christian and trials (1:2–18)
3. General exhortations (1:19–27)
4. The Christian and partiality (2:1–13)
5. The Christian and works (2:14–26)
6. General exhortations for teachers (3:1–4:12)
6.1 Teachers and the tongue (3:1–12)
6.2 Teachers and wisdom (3:13–18)
6.3 Teachers and dissensions (4:1–10)
6.4 Teachers, the community, and the tongue (4:11–12)
7. The messianic community and the wealthy (4:13–5:11)
7.1 The sin of presumption (4:13–17)
7.2 The sin of oppression (5:1–6)
7.3 The messianic community’s response to the wealthy (5:7–11)