Fredbauck said

Robert said

They do all have some loose affinity in that they all seem to represent a relatively Judeo orientation. Hebrews and the letter of James are both written in rather good Greek, but the complicated syntax of Hebrews is very different from that of James. Likewise, the theology of Hebrews seems much more complicated or sophisticated than that of James. I would never guess that they were the same author. It’s hard to compare the Greek of the gospel of Matthew since it is a completely different genre, but his theology also seems distinctive in comparison.

Is it conceivable that the “epistle committee” in the church at, say, Antioch felt that the target audience of James was sufficiently different from the target audience of Hebrews that the two letters required substantially different diction?  I will have to read Matthew again.

  

I saw an article arguing, based on shared vocabulary, that Hebrews and Luke/Acts were written by the same author. I doubt that, but the affinity in language use is considerable.

As for Matthew and James, my working hypothesis is that both are the product of communities that were interacting with the writings of Paul and both were critical of some aspects of how the Pauline school was shaping the church. At some level, I think they were “enemies” of the Pauline school which included Col, Eph and Hebrews (eg P46). If the canon is taken seriously, it cuts against a tendency to make specific phrases of Paul into “God’s word” unreservedly. Maybe that’s why they don’t quote whole phrases from Paul as they appear in Paul’s letters. 

I do think that all the communities that produced documents that ended up in the NT canon were rooted and grounded in love. They loved one another.