Loading...In this “New Testament in a Nutshell” thread I come now to the intriguing book of James, long one of my favorites among the Catholic epistles. At one point in my earlier existence, I liked the book so well that I memorized it. Don’t ask me to recite it now; that was 50 years ago.
Even so, I still think it is a terrific book. And now I realize it is intriguing for all sorts of reasons I never would have imagined back when I was able to recite it at a drop of the hat.
I start here with a one-sentence, fifty-word summary.
The Book of James consists of ethical instruction for followers of Jesus who are to live in ways pleasing to God as a way of demonstrating their faith, since anyone who thinks they can be saved only through what they believe does not understand that “faith without works is dead.”
For the rest of this post, I will summarize the major themes and emphases of this short, five-chapter book, which, hey, you too can memorize.
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James consists of a series of ethical admonitions to
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What does he mean with “Faith without works IS dead”?
He means that it is not living and active, it is of no use, it can’t accomplish anything. He is referring to “faith” as the acceptance of a propositional truth. If you accept the idea that God is all powerful but do not live like it matters, than accepting the truth doesn’t do you a single bit of good.
Greetings, Bart. There’s much back and forth among scholars concerning the authorship of the letter of James and the letters of Peter (among others), with the conversation frequently centered on whether or not the poorly educated, Aramaic speaking Apostle Peter or James, the Brother of the Lord, had the ability to compose such a letter in Greek. I’ve never thought so. But what strikes me as even a bigger mark against disciple authorship is not just their ability (or lack thereof) to write in Greek, but also the astoundingly educated vocabulary we find in these letters. Is it realistic to think that a fisherman and the son of a carpenter possessed advanced language skill sets enabling them to even compose such letters? The same question pops up in the speeches we find in Acts. Your thoughts?
That’s right. Even if they could speak a bit of Greek, like, say, an immigrant to the U.S. from Ukraine or Guatamala, that doesn’t mean they would be able to compose a *book* in it, let alone a highly rhetorically effective book. I frankly think it’s inconceivable, given what we know about ancient educational systems, as I’ll be pointing out in a later post.
Hello Dr. Ehrman,
I have heard some speculation that the disciple that Jesus loved may have been his brother James, although it seems to be predominantly thought to have been John. Do you buy into the John opinion and if so, why. I find it odd that if John is accurate, Jesus entrusted the care of Mary to another man other than his brothers, expressly James, if he was next in line in age. Lastly, do you recall if you and Megan have ever done a MJ pod on this topic?
Thank you
I don’t see how he could be. John 7 explicitly indicates that Jesus’ brothers did not believe in him.disabledupes{915e00a3dfc64203b0a83d407217910d}disabledupes
Being raised in the Wesleyan Tradition, the Book of James was given more importance in my church upbringing then maybe other denominational traditions. John Wesley promoted it’s focus on works and its criticism of focusing on wealth and status. This may be why some of the Wesleyan Dominations are considered “liberal” or “leftist”.
Fwiw, I think James 1:2-5:20 was written between 50s-70s CE since James 2 is a reaction against Gal 3 and/or Rom 4. “James” and Paul are not just both arguing about faith and works, but are doing so based on the exact same verse from Genesis!
The only thing about James that resembles a “letter” is the opening verse. I suspect that was added on to this collection of loose teachings to give them more authority, in a time when it was problematic for James and Jesus to be considered biological brothers. That’s the kind of theology we see in Proto-Gospel of James where Joseph is a widower who has sons from a previous marriage in order to disconnect the brothers from Jesus and preserve Mary’s perpetual virginity. Or the Infancy Gospel of Thomas where James is called the son of Joseph, but never the brother of Jesus.
In James 1:1, James’ greatest claim to fame should be as the brother of Jesus but instead he’s called the “servant of God and the Lord Jesus Christ.” That’s not unlike the letter of “Jude,” “a servant of Jesus Christ and the brother of James.”
Are the ‘works’ mentioned here in James really just good deeds, or is the author really calling back to the practices of the Jewish law? In much of Paul’s writing when he talks about ‘works’ he is talking about the works of the law, and he teaches his gentile followers not to think that those ‘works’ will save them, as the Jews think. In this book of James, it almost feels like the author is saying the works of the law demonstrate faith. What do you think?
Hi Bart,
Thanks for this really interesting post. Maybe I miss something but I’m still curious about how exactly the author of James saw the faith versus works thing. Did he see it that true faith automatically/unconsciously produced an impulse/motivation for works, or was it something more conscious and considered? To make the point a bit more clearly, there’s the example of someone claiming to have true faith but unable to do works eg a tetraplegic – I assume his view could still admit this as true faith, as long as the impulse for works was within the person?
Thanks, Andrew
Reading through James 2:14-26 I get the impression that the author’s view was that good works were not merely a manifestation of faith, but rather in themselves a requirement for salvation, in addition to faith. Perhaps he thought that for faith to be made effective for salvation, it must be accompanied by good works.
“What good is it, my brothers and sisters, if someone claims to have faith but does not have works? Surely that faith cannot save, can it?”
“Do you want to be shown, you senseless person, that faith apart from works is worthless?”
“You see that a person is justified by works and not by faith alone.”
Your thoughts?
Bart,
This remains one of my biggest wonders. Did James (most likely called Jacob back in his day) ever think of himself, or accept the role, of being the heir to Jesus’ ministry? There are plenty of indications from Paul and the ‘other’ gospels that James was considered “the big guy”, not just for Jerusalem, but for the whole Jesus movement after the crucifixion of Jesus. Yet we have no existing pre-crucifixion evidence of James being in Jesus’ inner circle nor, outside the Gospel of Thomas, any quotes attributed to Jesus indicating that James had any authority at all. Bloodlines were still an important part of succession in Judaism, so James (the brother of Jesus) would seem to be the logical successor. Yet the death of James did not seem to be that big of a deal in any of the canonical gospels. That is hard for me to explain. Perhaps, by demoting the importance of James, it became easier to avoid using the name of ‘Jacob’ and any prominence to the Judeo-Christians?
Was Paul’s view really that works didn’t matter as long as you professed your faith in Christ as the risen son of God? It seems that there would be an implication or it would follow that if you had this faith, your behavior would reflect it. Is it just a matter of emphasis? Was James view then that only works matters? This would make your faith, beliefs, religion secondary.
No, that wasn’t his view. James does not appear to be attacking Paul himself (though the author may have *thought* he was), but a later understanding of Paul’s teachings by later Christians (including the author of Ephesians, who claims to be Paul, as I’ll explain later)
Are we ever given any indication as to why the “letter” was included in the books of the NT? If it doesn’t include any new material as such, and could be taken to be in opposition to Paul’s teachings, was it purely because of its attribution to James that it came to be seen as important? I’m a non-Christian, but I would love to see a bit more unity / clarity of meaning in the NT. it seems to me that far from being at all clear in its message there is more than ample wiggle room to squeeze almost any teaching out of it you fancy. Totally incompatible interpretations abound. If God oversaw the creation of the New Testament, it (again) seems to me that he did a very poor job! If God wasn’t involved do we put all this disparity between the different authors (and the inclusion of books/letters into the cannon) down to some committee trying to keep all the early branches of Christianity happy?
I”m hoping to do more work on that question down the line (why it was included), but at this stage I think the most likely answer is the most obvious: people assumed it really was written by the brother of Jesus, it has good ethical advice, it mirrors many of the teachings found in places like the Sermon onthe Mount, and people found it useful — nothing much more complicated than that. But maybe I’ll turn something else up later! I’m always looking for a different angle if one presents itself.