12/1/2022 0 Comments Why was the book of james writtenParadoxically, 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. 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 ( Jas 1:17 4:12). James represents a type of early Christianity that emphasized sound teaching and responsible moral behavior. 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. More specifically, it consists of sequences of didactic proverbs, comparable to Tb 4:5– 19, to many passages in Sirach, and to sequences of sayings in the synoptic gospels. 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). It belongs rather to the genre of parenesis or exhortation and is concerned almost exclusively with ethical conduct. 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.įrom 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. 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 Pt 1:1). Since in Christian thought the church is the new Israel, the address probably designates the Jewish Christian churches located in Palestine, Syria, and elsewhere. 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 Jn 7:35). According to the Jewish historian Josephus ( Antiquities 20, 9, 1 ¶♢01–203), he was stoned to death by the Jews under the high priest Ananus II in A.D. In Acts he appears as the authorized spokesman for the Jewish Christian position in the early Church ( Acts 12:17 15:13– 21). He was the leader of the Jewish Christian community in Jerusalem whom Paul acknowledged as one of the “pillars” ( Gal 2:9). 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 Mt 13:55 Mk 6:3). 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 Mt 10:2– 3 Mk 3:17– 18 Lk 6:14– 15), for he is not identified as an apostle but only as “slave of God and of the Lord Jesus Christ” ( Jas 1:1).
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