It has been suggested that James was a letter written by someone else under the name of the Lord’s brother. That is apparently what Jerome thought when he said that this letter ‘was issued by someone under James’ name’. But, whatever else this work is, it cannot be that – because, whenever such a book was written, the author was careful to make quite clear who was supposed to have written it. If this had been pseudonymous, no possible doubt would have been left that the author was supposed to be James the brother of our Lord; but this fact is not mentioned at all.
(3) The New Testament scholar James Moffatt inclined to the theory that the writer was not the brother of our Lord, or any other well-known James, but simply a teacher called James of whose life and story we have no information whatever. That is by no means impossible, for the name James was just as common then as it is now; but it would be rather difficult to understand how such a book gained entry into the New Testament, and how it came to be connected with the name of the Lord’s brother.
(4) The traditional view is that the book was written by James, the Lord’s brother. We have already seen that it seems strange that such a book should have only two incidental references to Jesus, and none at all to the resurrection or to Jesus as the Messiah. A further and most serious difficulty is this. The book is written in good Greek. In his commentary, J. H. Ropes says that Greek must have been the native language of the man who wrote it; and J. B. Mayor, himself one of the greatest of Greek scholars, says: ‘I should be inclined to rate the Greek of this epistle as approaching more nearly to the standard of classical purity than that of any other book in the New Testament with the exception perhaps of the Epistle to the Hebrews.’ Quite certainly, James’ native language was Aramaic and not Greek, and quite certainly he would not be an expert in classical Greek. His orthodox Jewish upbringing would make him despise and avoid it as a hated Gentile language. It is next to impossible to think of James actually writing this letter.
(5) So we come to the fifth possibility. Let us remember how closely the Letter of James resembles a sermon. It is possible that this is, in substance, a sermon preached by James, taken down by someone else, translated into Greek, added to and decorated a little and then issued to the wider church so that everyone could benefit from it. That explains its form and how it came to be attached to the name of James. It even explains the scarcity of the references to Jesus, to the resurrection and to the messiahship of Jesus – for, in one single sermon, James could not go through the whole range of orthodoxy and is, in fact, pressing moral duty upon men and women, and not talking about theology. It seems to us that this is the one theory that explains the facts.
One thing is certain – we may approach this little letter feeling that it is one of the lesser books of the New Testament; but, if we study it faithfully, we will lay it down thanking God that it was preserved for our instruction and inspiration.
JAMES
GREETINGS
James 1:1
James, the slave of God and of the Lord Jesus Christ, sends greetings to the twelve tribes who are scattered throughout the world.
AT the very beginning of his letter, James describes himself by the title in which lies his only honour and his only glory, the slave of God and of the Lord Jesus Christ. With the exception of Jude, he is the only New Testament writer to describe himself by that term (doulos) without any qualification. Paul describes himself as the slave of Jesus Christ and his apostle (cf. Romans 1:1; Philippians 1:1). But James will go no further than to call himself the slave of God and of the Lord Jesus Christ. There are at least four implications in this title.
(1) It implies absolute obedience. Slaves know no law but their master’s word; they have no rights of their own; they are the absolute possessions of their master; and they are bound to give their master unquestioning obedience.
(2) It implies absolute humility. It is the word of someone who thinks not of privileges but of duties, not of rights but of obligations. It is the word of someone who has lost all sense of self in the service of God.
(3) It implies absolute loyalty. It is the word of someone who has no self-interest, because whatever is done is done for God. Personal gain and preference do not enter into the calculations; all loyalty is to God.
(4) Yet, at the back of it, this word implies a certain pride. Far from being a title of dishonour, it was the title by which the greatest ones of the Old Testament were known. Moses was the doulos of God (1 Kings 8:53; Daniel 9:11; Malachi 4:4); so were Joshua and Caleb (Joshua 24:29; Numbers 14:24); so were the great patriarchs, Abraham, Isaac and Jacob (Deuteronomy 9:27); so was Job (Job 1:8); so was Isaiah (Isaiah 20:3); and doulos is distinctively the title by which the prophets were known (Amos 3:7; Zechariah 1:6; Jeremiah 7:25). By taking the title doulos, James sets himself in the great succession of those who found their freedom and their peace and their glory in perfect submission to the will of God. The only greatness to which the Christian can ever aspire is that of being the slave of God.
There is one unusual thing about this opening salutation. James sends greetings to his readers, using the word chairein, which is the regular opening word of salutation in secular Greek letters. Paul never uses it. He always uses the distinctively Christian greeting, ‘Grace and peace’ (Romans 1:7; 1 Corinthians 1:3; 2 Corinthians 1:2; Galatians 1:3; Ephesians 1:2; Philippians 1:2; Colossians 1:2; 1 Thessalonians 1:1; 2 Thessalonians 1:2; Philemon 3). This secular greeting occurs only twice in the rest of the New Testament, in the letter which Claudius Lysias, the Roman officer, wrote to Felix to ensure the safe journeying of Paul (Acts 23:26), and in the general letter issued after the decision of the Council of Jerusalem to allow the Gentiles into the Church (Acts 15:23). This is interesting, because it was James who presided over that Council (Acts 15:13). It may be that he used the most general greeting that he could find because his letter was going out to the widest public.
THE JEWS THROUGHOUT THE WORLD
James 1:1 (contd)
THE letter is addressed to the twelve tribes who are scattered abroad. Literally, the greeting is to the twelve tribes in the Diaspora, the technical word for the Jews who lived outside Palestine. All the millions of Jews who were, for one reason or another, outside the promised land were the Diaspora. This dispersal of the Jews throughout the world was of the very greatest importance for the spread of Christianity, because it meant that all over the world there were synagogues, from which the Christian preachers could make a beginning, and it meant that all over the world there were groups of men and women who themselves already knew the Old Testament and who had persuaded others among the Gentiles at least to be interested in their faith. Let us see how this dispersal took place.
Sometimes – and the process began in this way – the Jews were forcibly taken out of their own land and compelled to live as exiles in foreign lands. There were three such great movements.
(1) The first compulsory removal came when the people of the Northern Kingdom, who had their capital in Samaria, were conquered by the Assyrians and were carried away into captivity in Assyria (2 Kings 17:23; 1 Chronicles 5:26). These are the lost ten tribes who never returned. The Jews themselves believed that at the end of all things all Jews would be gathered together in Jerusalem, but until the end of the world these ten tribes, they believed, would never return. They founded this belief on a rather fanciful interpretation of an Old Testament text. The Rabbis argued like thm, “He will cast them into another land, as at this: ‘The ten tribes never return for it is said of them, “He will cast them into another land, as at this day” (Deuteronomy 29:28). As then this day departs and never returns, so too are they to depart and never return. As this day becomes dark, and then again light, so too will it one day be light again for the ten tribes for whom it was dark.’
(2) The second compulsory removal was in about 580 BC. At that time, the Babylonians conquered the Southern Kingdom whose capital was at Jerusalem, and carried the ‘elite of the land’