Why Did the Author of James Claim to be James in Particular?
This will be my last post on the epistle of James in the New Testament as “counter”-forgery, that is, as a forgery (a book written by someone falsely claiming to be a famous person) that is written against another book that is itself a forgery (written by someone claiming to be some *other* famous person). In this case, the author is claiming to be James, the actual brother of Jesus, and he is writing to counter views of Paul – but not views Paul himself endorsed (exactly), but later developments of Paul’s views by an author (or authors) who wrote books, after Paul’s death, while *claiming* to be Paul. All a bit confusing! But here I finish by explaining why I think this author of the epistle of James claimed to be James in particular. Why did he choose that name? Why not some other? We will never know for sure, of course, but here are my thoughts about it. (This again is taken from my book Forgery and Counterforgery; I’ve added a couple of [...]