James
Introduction
The
person to whom this letter is ascribed can scarcely be one of the two members
of the Twelve who bore the name James (see Matthew 10:2-3;
Mark 3:17-18; Luke 6:14-15), for
he is not identified as an apostle but only as "slave of God and of the
Lord Jesus Christ" (James 1:1). This
designation most probably refers to the third New Testament personage named
James, a relative of Jesus who is usually called "brother of the
Lord" (see Matthew 13:55;
Mark 6:3). He
was the leader of the Jewish Christian community in Jerusalem whom Paul
acknowledged as one of the "pillars" (Gal 2:9).
In Acts he appears as the authorized spokesman for the Jewish Christian
position in the early Church (Acts 12:17; 15:13-21).
According to the Jewish historian Josephus (Antiquities 20, 9, 1 ¶201-203), he
was stoned to death by the Jews under the high priest Ananus II in A.D. 62.
The letter is addressed to
"the twelve tribes in the dispersion." In Old Testament terminology
the term "twelve tribes" designates the people of Israel; the
"dispersion" or "diaspora" refers to the non-Palestinian Jews
who had settled throughout the Greco- Roman world (see John 7:35). Since
in Christian thought the church is the new Israel, the address probably
designates the Jewish Christian churches located in Palestine, Syria, and
elsewhere. Or perhaps the letter is meant more generally for all Christian
communities, and the "dispersion" has the symbolic meaning of exile
from our true home, as it has in the address of 1 Peter (1 Peter 1:1).
The letter is so markedly Jewish in character that some scholars have regarded
it as a Jewish document subsequently "baptized" by a few Christian
insertions, but such an origin is scarcely tenable in view of the numerous
contacts discernible between the Letter of James and other New Testament
literature.
From the viewpoint of its
literary form, James is a letter only in the most conventional sense; it has
none of the characteristic features of a real letter except the address. It
belongs rather to the genre of parenesis or exhortation and is concerned almost
exclusively with ethical conduct. It therefore falls within the tradition of
Jewish wisdom literature, such as can be found in the Old Testament (Proverbs, Sirach)
and in the extracanonical Jewish literature (Testaments of the Twelve
Patriarchs, the Books of Enoch, the Manual of Discipline found at Qumran). More
specifically, it consists of sequences of didactic proverbs, comparable to Tobit 4:5-19, to
many passages in Sirach, and to sequences of sayings in the synoptic gospels.
Numerous passages in James treat of subjects that also appear in the synoptic
sayings of Jesus, especially in Matthew's Sermon on the Mount, but the
correspondences are too general to establish any literary dependence. James
represents a type of early Christianity that emphasized sound teaching and
responsible moral behavior. Ethical norms are derived not primarily from
christology, as in Paul, but from a concept of salvation that involves
conversion, baptism, forgiveness of sin, and expectation of judgment (James 1:17; 4:12).
Paradoxically, this very
Jewish work is written in an excellent Greek style, which ranks among the best
in the New Testament and appears to be the work of a trained Hellenistic
writer. Those who continue to regard James of Jerusalem as its author are
therefore obliged to suppose that a secretary must have put the letter into its
present literary form. This assumption is not implausible in the light of
ancient practice. Some regard the letter as one of the earliest writings in the
New Testament and feel that its content accurately reflects what we would
expect of the leader of Jewish Christianity. Moreover, they argue that the type
of Jewish Christianity reflected in the letter cannot be situated historically
after the fall of Jerusalem in A.D. 70.
Others, however, believe it
more likely that James is a pseudonymous work of a later period. In addition to
its Greek style, they observe further that (a) the prestige that the writer is
assumed to enjoy points to the later legendary reputation of James; (b) the
discussion of the importance of good works seems to presuppose a debate
subsequent to that in Paul's own day; (c) the author does not rely upon
prescriptions of the Mosaic law, as we would expect from the historical James;
(d) the letter contains no allusions to James's own history and to his
relationship with Jesus or to the early Christian community of Jerusalem. For
these reasons, many recent interpreters assign James to the period A.D. 90-100.
The principal divisions of
the Letter of James are the following:
I.
Address
(James 1:1)
II.
The
Value of Trials and Temptation (James 1:2-18)
III.
Exhortations
and Warnings (James
1:19-5:12)
IV.
The
Power of Prayer (James
5:13-20)
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James
Introduction Ends.
Easter
Sunday 12 April 2009.