This paper was most likely written for Professor John Dow’s New Testament 1 course, “Introduction to Textual Criticism and the Literature of the New Testament,” which Frye took during the 1933–34 academic year. Frye received an “A” for the paper, the typescript of which is in the NFF, 1991, box 37, file 9.
The weight of modern scholarship seems to be on the side of a view which states that the Epistle of James dates approximately from the middle of the second century A.D., and, thus, was not written by James the brother of our Lord, but by someone else, either of the same name or pseudonymous. The readers of the Epistle are the “Twelve Tribes in the Dispersion,” which has a Jewish sound, and the various expressions such as “Abraham our father” (2:21), and “Lord of sabaoth” (5:4), the references to the Old Testament traditions and scriptures (to Job in 5:11; to Elijah in 5:17; to Rahab in 2:25, etc.), the mention of a synagogue (2:2), and a Jewish respect for law (2:10) are positive arguments for a Jewish Christian public. Negative arguments stress the complete absence of the usual Christian dialectic concerning the Messianic claims of Christ, the glory of his Resurrection and the atoning power of his death, the zeal for expansion and evangelism of the primitive Christians, a cautionary and conservative note rather than the buoyant courage and optimism we should expect if the Epistle were really an echo of Pentecost. This is sometimes accounted for on the assumption that James was reticent and unwilling to insist too much on what he was afraid would merely antagonize and arouse ridicule in his hearers. Such appearance of compromise and shamefacedness with regard to the Christian gospel does not compare James too favourably with Peter or Paul, and against the Judaistic theory may be urged the lack of any explicit reference to the Mosaic code or any Ebionite leanings1 on the part of the author, and the complete ignoring of the tremendous import of the Jewish-Gentile controversy in the primitive Church. If the Epistle were really written after the destruction of Jerusalem by Titus in 70 A.D., the notion that James was addressing Jewish communities collapses at once. It seems probable, then, that the type of Christianity reflected and presupposed in the Epistle is not specifically Judaistic. The reference to Jewish traditions implies a fairly late and well-organized Christian community which was aware of the background of Christianity and would be quite reconciled to being addressed in terms which implied them to be the ideal Israel, the elect of God, rather than the chosen race. Such a relationship is worked out by Matthew, and as that appears to be James’s favourite gospel (cf. reference in 5:12),2 its tenets would be instinctive with him.
We have spoken of the comparative lack of buoyant zeal and the general emphasis on the sententious and moralistic. James seems to be addressing a community which had indefinitely postponed the hope of an immediate second coming, such as we would expect to find in the second century: people who still accepted the doctrine, but would not allow it unduly to disarrange their affairs. James’s reference to it (5:7–9) gives it precisely the minatory emphasis which a fairly conservative adjudicator of that time would be expected to advance. The people addressed are advised with respect to their lives, on the assumption of their indefinite continuance. The moral and social virtues are stressed and moral and social vices condemned. Avarice is especially attacked, and in words distinctly reminiscent of the great prophets Isaiah and Amos (2:1 ff.; 5:1 ff.) James points out the dangers of encrusting the spiritual life with material possessions. There is no definite reference to the communism of primitive Christianity; it is assumed that there are rich and poor in Christian communities, and the attack is rather on the abuse and idolatry of riches. It is rather unkind to suppose avarice a specifically Jewish vice; it is probable that James’s words are as much as anything a literary convention borrowed from the prophets and the sayings of Christ. Apparently, then, Christianity had gained some hold among fairly solid and respectable citizens, and there was a growing belief in the permanence and stability of a Church, which we would hardly get till the eschatological fervour had subsided and the work of Paul had been accomplished. This seems to be reflected in James’s attack on the tendency to substitute the routine and ritual of Church work and membership for inward Christian living. Hence, the argument on the inefficacy of faith without works (2:14–26), and, on the other hand, the recognition of charity and generosity as important virtues of Christian society gradually becoming clerical (1:27; 2:15–16).
This leads to the larger criticism implicit in the distinction of James between the Church and the world. With the earlier apostolic writers the distinction was a positive one: by an act of faith men rose out of the world into a community of believers. With James and his second-century contemporaries it is negative, the Church being conceived as more a withdrawal from the world; not in an eremitical sense altogether, but a separation in which evangelism is conducted more by example than persuasion (1:27). It is really this change of attitude which underlies James’s view of works as the test of faith. The era of argument, of the justification of the divinity of Jesus, the upward theological development of Paul, the note of apologetic and appeal to tradition, has waned. James is addressing Christians and Christians alone: people who take the ecumenical doctrines of the faith as they were at that time for granted and who need to be urged only to live up to that faith. Prayer, even, the private and individual nature of which had been insisted on by Christ himself, is judged purely with reference to its immediate and practical value (5:13 ff.).
Not that James lacks anything of subtlety or erudition. In fact, it is largely this that militates so strongly against the possibility of the authorship of our Lord’s brother. References to the gospels, particularly the one in 5:12 to Matthew, are more obvious than actual references to the words of our Lord, and the utter lack of any personal knowledge of the historical Jesus or the note of reminiscence which could not possibly be kept out of anyone’s advocacy of his own brother’s religion, shows clearly enough that the kind of Christianity James is talking about has already lost the immediacy of Jesus’ personal appeal. The book is of an unusual literary sophistication. The adoption of the epistolary form itself is in all probability a literary pose, as was common at that time. References have been traced which show James’s familiarity, not only with the Old Testament, but even more, from a literary point of view, with the Old Testament Apocrypha, notably the Wisdom of Solomon and the book of Jesus ben Sirach, with Philo and with the development of New Testament thought.3 Those who regard James’s Epistle as early will consider that Paul in Romans, I Corinthians, and Galatians (cf. the argument in James 2:14–26, referred to above), Peter (I Peter), and the author of Hebrews (vide James 2:21 ff.) are referring to or quoting from James, but the general tone of literary allusiveness in the latter supports other evidence for a second-century date in assuming that James quoted from and referred to them. On the other hand, it does not seem to be quoted by anyone else before Origen, except by Hermas, ca. 150. (This is what Moffatt says, p. I;4 apparently the long list of ante-Nicene quotations given by Mayor, p. cxxi,5 do not bear examination.) The Epistle is the work of a man who had an easy command of Greek language and literature, who was acquainted with much of the best Greek thought, probably through Hellenistic commentary, and who preferred the Septuagint to the Massoretic text of the Old Testament. He can hardly, therefore, be addressing simple-minded or uneducated people, yet he does not sustain an argument. He is, thus, neither a theologian nor an evangelist, but a bishop of souls.
We have said that the conception of a permanent Church was beginning to take hold of the minds of Christians in the second century. James’s Church would be, therefore, the central fact of Christian society, but not yet an elaborate organization. There are no bishops yet, only a distinction between elders, or men of approved experience and piety, and the rest of the congregation.
The history of the Epistle has been fitful. It has not had the high and undisputed rank equal to any of the Gospels, which it surely would have possessed from the first if it had been what Mayor claims it to be.6 It narrowly missed an undeserved oblivion, along with the Epistles of Clement,7 but a weight of tradition gradually accumulated behind it and propelled it into the canon. The high authority of James, deliberately invoked by the author (whether his name was James or not, the connection with Acts 15:13–32 is probably an argument for pseudonymity) at last bore fruit, and gave us the finest example of the sententious, pietistic, didactic literature of the second century, typically represented by the Shepherd of Hermas and the Didache,8 the lull between St. John and Origen, a period of adjustment between the early hope of a second coming and the later ideal of the Catholic and apostolic Church.
See Commentaries by Ropes, Mayor, Knowling, Moffatt, and Hort.9