JAMES, EPISTLE OF. The first of the so called catholic Epistles, an encyclical writing, belonging either to the very earliest or the very latest part of the New Testament literature.
The settlement of this wide difference of date rests upon the determination of three questions, each of them interetting in itself, and all of them subject to debate among scholars to-day. (I) Is the writer of the Epistle the well-known James, the Brother of the Lord, the Head of the Jeru salem Church, or an unknown. James of post Apostolic times? (2) Were the recipients of the letter distinctively Jewish Christians, or Christians generally, Gentile as well as -Jewish? (3) Does the situation of the readers betray the primitive condition of the Church before the Judaizing controversy of Acts xv., or the devel oped condition of the Church after that con troversy had been forgotten? As to the first question, it would seem that the naive way in whieh the author describes himself I'James, a servant of God and of the Lord Jesus Christ: i. 1) mild letter understood of one who, like the Jerusalem .fames. was conseinwi of hi-s rec ognized authority in the Church (ef. Gal. H. 9, 12; Acts XV. 13: xxi. 18), and to needed no further titles to commend himself to those to whom he wrote. than of an unknown James who, if be followed the custom of the second century, must have made his depend upon such titles as he could either honestly or falsely assume. There is naturally the query whether we can suppose the culture evident in the lan guage and diction of the Epistle possible in the case of a Palestinian Jew, as the brother of the Lord must have been ; but conclusions here are wholly conjectural and must yield to more defi nite indications furnished by other points. As to the second question, the wording of the ('.lames . . to the twelve tribes which are of the Dispersion, greeting: i. 1) makes apparently clear the distinctively Jewish character of the readers—an impression which seems to be confirmed by several hints th•ough out the letter (e.g. ii. 2, 19, 21; v. 4, 11, 17, 18). At the same time we cannot ignore the fact that terms similar to the address: are used symbolically, both by Paul (Gal. vi. 16; Phil. Hi. 3) and by Peter (I. l'et. i. 1; ii. 9) ; while the phrases referred to in the body of the letter might lie possible with a Gentile readership (cf. Rom. iv. I; ix. 29; 1. Cor. viii. 6). The third question is really the decisive one; since, if the situation shows itself necessarily that of primi tive Christianity, the readers must be considered distinctively Jewish Christian, and the author becomes almost necessarily the -Jerusalem dailies; while, if the situation is that of post-Apostolic Christianity, the readers cannot lie exclusively Jewish, since a group of such elmrehes in the Diaspora is scarcely supposable so long after Cent ilism had become part of Christendom. Nueli less, on the supposition of such a later date, can the author have been the Jerusalem James.
The situation disclosed by the Epistle, however, is clearly that of early Christianity, while the Church was yet exclusively Jewish, and before the introduction of Gentiles into its membership had brought about the Judaistic controversy, con sidered in the Jerusalem Council (Acts xv.) and discussed 1,y Paul specifically in his Galatian Epistle. This is shown (1) not so much by the social customs of ii. 1-9 and community con
ditions of v. 1-6, the commercial life of iv. 13, the term given to their religious assemblies in ii. 2, and the oath formula described in v. 12, all of which indeed disclose a definite situation belonging, to the readers that cannot be naturally understood save as Jewish; but rather (2) by the fact that there is such an absence of all teference to Gentile and Jewish differences in the Church as has its only legitimate explanation in the fact that the gospel had not yet been carried outside of Jewish circles to such an extent as to raise the questions which constituted the controversy of Acts xv.; specifically, (3) by the fact that not only is the faith and works discussion of ii. 14-25 not a polemic against Paul, but it is not even a sympathetic explanation of his position. It belongs dis tinctively to a period previous to the Pauline propaganda. as is clear from the fact that the idea of 'justification' which it embodies is specifically the Old Testament idea of the justifi cation of the just, not the Pauline idea of the justification of the sinner; while its idea of `faith' is-- distinctively the idea seen in the 0111 Testament of intellectual belief in monotheism, not the Pauline idea of spiritual trust in Jesus Christ. Against this uniquely Jewish concep tion of thin ,s it is of little moment to emphasize the moral degeneracy of the times supposed in the Epistle as impossible in the early years of Christianity. As such degeneracy was actual in Judaism itself (cf. Rom. ii. 17-29), the question is simply one of the possibility of the reaction of Jewish Christianity into its previous condi tion, and it is altogether too bold a claim to make that the seventeen years between Pentecost and the Jerusalem Council were too short a period for this. The Epistle is, therefore, to be dated some time before 50 A.D., from somewhere in Palestine—most likely Jerusalem, by James, the head of the mother church. It was ad dressed as an encyclical letter to the near-by Jewish Christian communities—probably those in the Syrian regions to the north, which were quite likely those first evangelized after the Stephen persecution (ef. Acts viii. 1, 4. 40; ix. 1, 2. 19-25; xi. 19). Its purpose was to en courage the readers in face of their peculiar trials, which were easily possible in the time succeeding the above persecution, and at the same time to warn them against their special degenerating tendencies, which were quite likely to follow upon these trials (cf. specially cps. i. and ii.).
BIBLIOGRAPHY. Commentaries: Mayor (LonBibliography. Commentaries: Mayor (Lon- don, 1892) ; Wandel (Leipzig, 1896) ; Von Soden, in Handkommentar zum Nene?, Testa ment (Freiburg, 1893) ; Burger. in Strack and Zeiekter Kommentar (Munich, 1895) ; Beysehiag, in Meyer Kommentar (Giittingen, 1898). Intro ductions: Holtzmann (Freiburg, 1892) ; Salmon (London, 1894) : .fitlicher (Freiburg. 1901); Weiss (English trans., New York, 1888) ; Zahn (Leipzig, 1900) ; Bacon (New York. 1900) ; Moffatt, The Historical New Testament (London, 1001 ) . Discussions: Feine, Der Jakobu.sbrief imeh Lehransehauungen und Entst ehitaysverhiilt nissen (Eisenach, 1893) ; Spitta, Zur Gcsehiehte surd Littcratur des Urehristentums, Bd. ii. (Gut tingen, 1896) ; Dale. Discourses on the Epistle of James (London, 1895) ; llarnack, Chronologies Bd. i. (Leipzig, 1897).