The Cradle, the Cross, and the Crown (166 page)

²
Often the first question asked by American students is, “How do we get ‘James’ from
Ia
acov?'”
The answer requires a long trek through both translations and geopolitical entities. Suffice it to say that the name
Ia
acov
becomes
Iacomus
in Latin,
Giacomo
in Italian,
Gemmes of Jaimmes
in French, and “James” in English as a result of the Norman conquest at the battle of Hastings in 1066.

³
According to R. Bauckham
(Jesus and the Eyewitnesses: The Gospels as Eyewitness Testimony
[Grand Rapids: Eerdmans, 2006], 85) the name “Jacob” ranked as the eleventh most popular male name among Palestinian Jews from 330 BC to AD 200.

⁴
L. T. Johnson,
The Letter of James
, AB 37A (New York: Doubleday, 1995), 93.

⁵
R. P.
Martin, James
, WBC 48 (Waco: Word, 1988), lxx.

⁶
E.g., M.
Dibelius, James: A Commentary on the Epistle of James
, trans. M. A. Williams, Hermeneia (Philadelphia: Fortress, 1976), 17; W. G. Kümmel,
Introduction to the New Testament
, rev. ed., trans. H. C. Kee (Nashville: Abingdon, 1975), 411; and J. H. Ropes,
St. James
, ICC (Edinburgh: T&T Clark, 1916), 50.

⁷
D. J. Moo,
The Letter of James
, PNTC (Grand Rapids: Eerdmans, 2000), 14. Ropes
(St. James
, 25) stated, “There is nothing to suggest acquaintance with the higher styles of Greek literature.“

⁸
See R. Bauckham, “James,” in
New Testament Readings
(London: Routledge, 1999), 18, 24. He noted that Greek was the native language for 10—20 percent of Jerusalem's residents.

⁹
J. N. Sevenster,
Do You Know Greek? How Much Greek Could the First Jewish Christians Have Known?
(Leiden: Brill, 1968), 191. Cf. G. Kittel,
Die Probleme des palästinischen Spätjudentums und das Urchristentum
(Stuttgart: W. Kohlhammer, 1926), 38. Kümmel (
Introduction
, 290) said, “The cultured language of James is not that of a Palestinian,” and B. Reicke (“James,” in
The Epistles of James, Peter and Jude
, AB 37 [New York: Doubleday, 1964], 4) agreed, “It is highly improbable that James could write Greek.” Such statements are no longer tenable.

¹⁰
Against S. S. Laws, “Does Scripture Speak in Vain?”
NTS
20 (1974): 211-12.

¹¹
P. Davids,
Commentary on James
, NIGNTC (Grand Rapids: Eerdmans, 1982), 10.

¹²
Ibid., 11.

¹³
See R. Bauckham, Jude
and the Relatives of Jesus in the Early Church
(Edinburgh: T&T Clark, 1990), 125—30.

¹⁴
See sidebar for a catalog. Several monographs have been written on the subject; e.g., P. J. Hartin,
James and the
Q
Sayings of Jesus
, JSNTSup 47 (Sheffield: Sheffield Academic Press, 1991).

¹⁵
Davids,
James
, 15.

¹⁶
Moo,
James, 2.

¹⁷
Johnson
(James
, 124—61) compiled perhaps the most extensive catalog of the reception of James to date.

¹⁸
Both Davids
(James
, 8) and Johnson
(James
, 75—79) believed that the earliest extant reference to James is in the
Shepherd of Hermas
(early second century?).

¹⁹
Johnson,
James
, 72—75.

²⁰
See Eusebius,
Eccl. Hist.
6.13.2; and Cassiodorus,
De Institutione Divinarum Litterarum
(PL 70:1120).

²¹
Eusebius,
Eccl. Hist.
3.23.3.

²²
Moo (
James
, 3); he further noted that the Syrian church eventually included the General Epistles in the canon and that such Syrian luminaries as Chrysostom (d. 407) and Theodoret (d. 458) quoted James with approval.

²³
Jerome is admittedly dependent on Origen in many instances, whose views may come from his teacher Didymus the Blind, a successor to Origen in Alexandria.

²⁴
Jerome,
De Viris Illustribus
2 (PL 23, Col. 639).

²⁵
See Johnson,
James
, 138.

²⁶
Martin,
James
, lv.

²⁷
Moo,
James
, 4.

²⁸
D. Guthrie (
New Testament Introduction
, rev. ed. [Downers Grove: InterVarsity, 1990], 521) stated, “It is the kind of letter which could easily be neglected as, in fact, the treatment of it in the modern church abundantly shows and, once neglected, a fertile soil was provided for future doubts, especially at a time when spurious productions were being attributed to apostolic names.”

²⁹
Dibelius,
James
, 17.

³⁰
Moo,
James
, 16.

³¹
Dibelius,
James
, 18.

³²
For an excellent discussion see Moo,
James
, 17—18.

³³
Johnson,
James
, 110.

³⁴
See Kümmel,
Introduction
, 414.

³⁵
In the minds of most of these interpreters, Acts is dismissed as a valuable historical source for either James or Paul; the pseudo-Clementine literature is a valued source for early Christianity; and Paul is understood solely on the basis of
Hauptbriefe
(his “major letters,” i.e., Romans, 1 and 2 Corinthians, and Galatians). These views are addressed elsewhere in this volume.

³⁶
Johnson,
James
, 114.

³⁷
See the section on “The Relationship Between Faith and Works” under Theological Themes below.

³⁸
E.g., S. Laws,
A Commentary on the Epistle of James
(San Francisco: Harper & Row, 1980), 40.

³⁹
See Moo,
James
, 12, citing L. Massebieau, “L'Épître de Jacques, est-elle l'oeuvre d'un Chrétien?”
RHR
32 (1895): 249—83; F. Spitta, “Der Brief des Jakobus,” in
Zur Geschichte und Literatur des Urchristentums
, vol. 2 (Göttingen: Vandenhoeck & Ruprecht, 1896), 1-239.

⁴⁰
Most of the apocryphal works clearly identify the intended James either by context or direct statement. E.g., the
Protevangelium of James
9.2 and 20.5; the
Apocryphon of James
, which refers to a former letter, now lost, that probably identified the James in view; and the
Gnostic Apocalypses of James
, the first of which has Jesus address James as “my brother” and the second identifies James as “James the just.” See J. M. Robinson, ed.,
The NagHammadi Library in English
, 3d rev. ed. (San Francisco: Harper & Row, 1988), 262, 270. W. O. E. Oesterly (“A Coptic Fragment Attributed to James the Brother of the Lord,” JTS 8 [1907]: 240—48) contends that James may be a document Hippolytus ascribed to Naassene Gnostics. But the brief, humble description found in this letter is quite unlike that found in the pseudepigraphical works.

⁴¹
J. A. T. Robinson,
Redating the New Testament
(London: SCM, 1976), 129.

⁴²
E.g., A. C. McGiffert,
A History of Christianity in the Apostolic Age
(New York: Scribner, 1897), 585.

⁴³
Martin
(James
, lxxii) enlisted the apocryphal
Second Apocalypse of James
44.13—17 (NHS 5), which states, “This is [the] discourse that James [the] Just spoke in Jerusalem, [which] Mareim, one [of] the priests wrote.” Cf. Davids,
James
, 22.

⁴⁴
Guthrie,
Introduction
, 536. Guthrie's further comments are worth repeating here: “If the editor was working under the supervision of James himself, this would amount almost to the traditional view. But if he is editing some time later than James' lifetime, the problem of motive becomes acute, for why a later editor should suddenly have conceived such a publication plan when the great majority of the intended readers must have known that James was already dead is difficult to see, and it is even more difficult to understand how the letter came to be received. If some real connection with James would have been generally recognized, why the need for this theory at all, since it would possess no advantage over the traditional view? It would furnish no better explanation for the tardiness of recognition among the church's orthodox writers.”

⁴⁵
Calvin, “Commentary on the Epistle of James,” 227.

⁴⁶
Moo,
James
, 12.

⁴⁷
Although James only quoted the OT explicitly in five verses (1:11; 2:8,11,23; 4:6), Guthrie (
Introduction
, 521) noted that “indirect allusions are innumerable (cf., e.g., 1:10; 2:21, 23, 25; 3:9; 4:6; 5:2, 11, 17, 18).”

⁴⁸
F. Mussner,
Derjakobusbrief
, HTKNT 13/1 (Freiburg: Herder, 1964), 1-59; Johnson,
James
, 108-21; R. Bauckham,
James: Wisdom of James, Disciple of Jesus the Sage
, New Testament Readings (London: Rouledge, 1999), 11—25;
id., Jude and the Relatives of Jesus
(Edinburgh: T&T Clark, 1990), 128; M. Hengel,
Paulus und Jakobus
, WUNT 141 (Tübingen: Mohr Siebeck, 2002), 511-48; P. J. Hartin,
James
, SacPag 14 (Collegeville: Liturgical Press, 2003), 24-25; and T. C. Penner,
The Epistle of James and Eschatology: Re-Reading an Ancient Christian Letter
(Sheffield: Sheffield Academic Press, 1996), 35-103.

⁴⁹
Robinson,
Redating
, 118-19.

⁵⁰
According to Josephus (
Ant.
20.9.1), James's death occurred after the death of the procurator Porcius Festus and before his successor Lucceius Albinus took office. The Jewish high priest Ananus took advantage of the power vacuum and assembled the Sanhedrin. There, “a man named James, the brother of Jesus who was called the Christ,” and certain others were accused of having transgressed the law and were delivered up to be stoned. Apparently, this offended some of the fair-minded, law-observant Jews who petitioned Albinus on the matter when he entered the province, and king Agrippa had Ananus replaced with Jesus, the son of Damnaeus, as high priest.

⁵¹
See the sidebar on The Teachings of Jesus in James above.

⁵²
See deSilva,
Introduction
, 816.

⁵³
E.g., in the book of James, the meeting place of Christians is still called a “synagogue” (2:2), which may indicate a time of writing prior to the launch of the Gentile mission.

⁵⁴
Robinson,
Redating
, 139.

⁵⁵
Johnson,
James
, 120—21.

⁵⁶
See Provenance above. Antioch is the tentative preference of A. Chester, “The Theology of James,” in A. Chester and R. P. Martin,
The Theology of the Letters to James, Peter, and Jude
, New Testament Theology (Cambridge: University Press, 1994), 13-15.

⁵⁷
See Acts 11:19, where the verb used is
diaspeirō,
the verbal cognate of the noun used in Jas 1:1.

⁵⁸
This is disputed by writers such as Dibelius
(James
, 2), who noticed the lack of epistolary features and stated: “It [is] impossible to consider James an actual letter.”

⁵⁹
Deissmann classified James as a literary letter, similar to other writings included in the General Epistles. See A. Deissmann,
Light from the Ancient East
, 2d ed., trans. L. R. M. Strachan (London: Hodder & Stoughton, 1911), 235.

⁶⁰
Ropes,
James
, 17.

⁶¹
Johnson,
James
, 9—10.

⁶²
Ibid., 17-18.

⁶³
Ibid., 17.

⁶⁴
D. W. Watson, “An Assessment of the Rhetoric and Rhetorical Analysis of the Letter of James,” in
Readingjames with New Eyes: Methodological Reassessments of the Letter of James
, LNTS 342 (London: T&T Clark, 2007), 118-19. Cf. L. L. Cheung,
The Genre, Composition and Hermeneutics of the Epistle of James
, Paternoster Biblical and Theological Monographs (Carlisle, UK: Paternoster, 2003), 40.