James, Epistle Of

James, Epistle Of, a book of the New Testament. The superscription (Jas. i. 1) ascribes it to that pre-eminent “pillar” (Gal. ii. 9) of the original mother church who later came to be regarded in certain quarters as the “bishop of bishops” (Epist. of James to Clement, ap. Clem. Hom. Superscription). As such he appears in a position to address an encyclical to “the twelve tribes of the dispersion”; for the context (i. 18, v. 7 seq.) and literary relation (cf. 1 Pet. i. 1, 3, 23-25) prove this to be a figure for the entire new people of God, without the distinction of carnal birth, as Paul had described “the Israel of God” (Gal. vi. 16), spiritually begotten, like Isaac, by the word received in faith (Gal. iii. 28 seq., iv. 28; Rom. ix. 6-9, iv. 16-18). This idea of the spiritually begotten Israel becomes current after 1 Pet., as appears in John i. 11-13, iii. 3-8; Barn. iv. 6, xiii. 13; 2 Clem. ii. 2, &c.

The interpretation which takes the expression “the twelve tribes” literally, and conceives the brother of the Lord as sending an epistle written in the Greek language throughout the Christian world, but as addressing Jewish Christians only (so e.g. Sieffert, s.v. “Jacobus im N.T.” in Hauck, Realencykl. ed. 1900, vol. viii.), assumes not only such divisive interference as Paul might justly resent (cf. Gal. ii. 1-10), but involves a strange idea of conditions. Were worldliness, tongue religion, moral indifference, the distinctive marks of the Jewish element? Surely the rebukes of James apply to conditions of the whole Church and not sporadic Jewish-Christian conventicles in the Greek-speaking world, if any such existed.

It is at least an open question whether the superscription (connected with that of Jude) be not a later conjecture prefixed by some compiler of the catholic epistles, but of the late date implied in our interpretation of ver. 1 there should be small dispute. Whatever the currency in classical circles of the epistle as a literary form, it is irrational to put first in the development of Christian literature a general epistle, couched in fluent, even rhetorical, Greek, and afterwards the Pauline letters, which both as to origin and subsequent circulation were a product of urgent conditions. The order consonant with history is (1) Paul’s “letters” to “the churches of” a province (Gal. i. 2; 2 Cor. i. 1); (2) the address to “the elect of the dispersion” in a group of the Pauline provinces (1 Pet. i. 1); (3) the address to “the twelve tribes of the dispersion” everywhere (Jas. i. 1; cf. Rev. vii. 2-4). James, like 1 John, is a homily, even more lacking than 1 John in every epistolary feature, not even supplied with the customary epistolary farewell. The superscription, if original, compels us to treat the whole writing as not only late but pseudonymous. If prefixed by conjecture, to secure recognition and authority for the book, even this was at first a failure. The earliest trace of any recognition of it is in Origen (A.D. 230) who refers to it as “said to be from James” (φερομέγη ἡ Ἰακώβου Ἐπιστολή), seeming thus to regard ver. 1 as superscription rather than part of the text. Eusebius (A.D. 325) classifies it among the disputed books, declaring that it is regarded as spurious, and that not many of the ancients have mentioned it. Even Jerome (A.D. 390), though personally he accepted it, admits that it was “said to have been published by another in the name of James.” The Syrian canon of the Peshitta was the first to admit it.

The date (A.D. 95-120) implied by the literary contacts of James of course precludes authorship by the Lord’s brother, though this does not necessarily prove the superscription later still. The question whether the writing as a whole is pseudonymous, or only the superscription a mistaken conjecture by the scribe of Jude 1 is of secondary importance. A date about 100-120 for the substance of the writing is accepted by the majority of modern scholars and throws real light upon the author’s endeavour. Pfleiderer in pointing out the similarities of James and the Shepherd of Hermas declares it to be “certain that both writings presuppose like historical circumstances, and, from a similar point of view, direct their admonitions to their contemporaries, among whom a lax worldly-mindedness and unfruitful theological wrangling threatened to destroy the religious life.”3 Holtzmann has characterized this as “the right visual angle” for the judgment of the book. Questions as to the obligation of Mosaism and the relations of Jew and Gentile have utterly disappeared below the horizon. Neither the attachment to the religious forms of Judaism, which we are informed was characteristic of James, nor that personal relation to the Lord which gave him his supreme distinction are indicated by so much as a single word. Instead of being written in Aramaic, as it would almost necessarily be if antecedent to the Pauline epistles, or even in the Semitic style characteristic of the older and more Palestinian elements of the New Testament we have a Greek even more fluent than Paul’s and metaphors and allusions (i. 17, iii. 1-12) of a type more like Greek rhetoric than anything else in the New Testament. Were we to judge by the contacts with Hebrews, Clement of Rome and Hermas and the similarity of situation evidenced in the last-named, Rome would seem the most natural place of origin. The history of the epistle’s reception into the canon is not opposed to this; for, once it was attributed to James, Syria would be more likely to take it up, while the West, more sceptical, if not better informed as to its origin, held back; just as happened in the case of Hebrews.

It is the author’s conception of the nature of the gospel which mainly gives us pause in following this pretty general disposition of modern scholarship. With all the phenomena of vocabulary and style which seem to justify such conceptions as von Soden’s that c. iii. and iv. 11-v. 6 represent excerpts respectively from the essay of an Alexandrian scribe, and a triple fragment of Jewish apocalypse, the analysis above given will be found the exponent of a real logical sequence. We might almost admit a resemblance in form to the general literary type which Spitta adduces. The term “wisdom” in particular is used in the special and technical sense of the “wise men” of Hebrew literature (Matt. xxiii. 34), the sense of “the wisdom of the just” of Luke i. 17. True, the mystical sense given to the term in one of the sources of Luke, by Paul and some of the Church fathers, is not present. While the gospel is pre-eminently the divine gift of “wisdom,” “wisdom” is not personified, but conceived primarily as a system of humanitarian ethics, i. 21-25, and only secondarily as a spiritual effluence, imparting the regenerate disposition, the “mind that was in Christ Jesus,” iii. 13-18. And yet for James as well as for Paul Christ is “the wisdom of God.” The difference in conception of the term is similar to that between Ecclesiasticus and the Wisdom of Solomon. Our author, like Paul, expects the hearers of the word to be “a kind of first-fruits to God of his creation.” (i. 18 cf. 1 Pet. i. 23), and bids them depend upon the gift of grace (i. 5, iv. 5 seq.), but for the evils of the world he has no remedy but the patient endurance of the Christian philosopher (i. 2-18). For the faithlessness (διψυχία i. 6-8; cf. Didache and Hermas), worldliness (ii. 1-13) and hollow profession (ii. 14-26) of the church life of his time, with its “theological wrangling” (iii. 1-12), his remedy is again the God-given, peaceable spirit of the Christian philosopher (iii. 13-18), which is the antithesis of the spirit of self-seeking and censoriousness (iv. 1-12), and which appreciates the pettiness of earthly life with its sordid gains and its unjust distribution of wealth (iv. 13-v. 6). This attitude of the Christian stoic will maintain the individual in his patient waiting for the expected “coming of the Lord” (v. 7-11); while the church sustains its official functions of healing and prayer, and reclamation of the erring (v. 13-20).4 For this conception of the gospel and of the officially organized church, our nearest analogy is in Matthew, or rather in the blocks of precepts of the Lord which after subtraction of the Markan narrative framework are found to underlie our first gospel. It may be mere coincidence that the material in Matthew as well as in the Didache seems to be arranged in five divisions, beginning with a commendation of the right way, and ending with warnings of the judgment, while the logical analysis of James yields something similar; but of the affinity of spirit there can be no doubt.

The type of ethical thought exemplified in James has been called Ebionite (Hilgenfeld). It is clearly manifest in the humanitarianism of Luke also. But with the possible exception of the prohibition of oaths there is nothing which ought to suggest the epithet. The strong sense of social wrongs, the impatience with tongue-religion, the utter ignoring of ceremonialism, the reflection on the value and significance of “life,” are distinctive simply of the “wisdom” writers. Like these our author holds himself so far aloof from current debate of ceremonial or doctrine as to escape our principal standards of measurement regarding place and time. Certain general considerations, however, are fairly decisive. The prolonged effort, mainly of English scholarship, to vindicate the superscription, even on the condition of assuming priority to the Pauline epistles, grows only increasingly hopeless with increasing knowledge of conditions, linguistic and other, in that early period. The moralistic conception of the gospel as a “law of liberty,” the very phrase recalling the expression of Barn. ii., “the new law of Christ, which is without the yoke of constraint,” the conception of the church as primarily an ethical society, its functions already officially distributed, suggest the period of the Didache, Barnabas and Clement of Rome. Independently of the literary contacts we should judge the period to be about A.D. 100-120. The connexions with the Pauline epistles are conclusive for a date later than the death of James; those with Clement and Hermas are perhaps sufficient to date it as prior to the former, and suggest Rome as the place of origin. The connexions with wisdom-literature favour somewhat the Hellenistic culture of Syria, as represented for example at Antioch.