Lordship in the epistle of James.

[iskander]

Thank you , DCHindley

Does the letter of James say that Jesus is God? The Reading Guide of the Catholic Study Bible, second edition appear to say that there no evidence for an affirmative reply.

I can only comment that, at least in the case of the Paulines, there was the occasional confusion, which appears to have been theologically driven.

The epistle of James may not have undergone the same type of editorial or publication history as the Paulines. But the two cases where kurios refers to Christ, in a letter where it everywhere else serves as an euphemism for YHWH, does seem to suggest that it was edited before publication in the form we have it.

DCH

Yes.
Jesus told us this:
MATTHEW -22
44 The LORD said unto my Lord, Sit thou on my right hand, till I make thine enemies thy footstool?
44 εἶπεν ὁ Κύριος τῷ Κυρίῳ μου, κάθου ἐκ δεξιῶν μου ἕως ἂν θῶ τοὺς ἐχθρούς σου ὑποπόδιον τῶν ποδῶν σου
http://www.ellopos.net/elpenor/greek-te ... hew/22.asp
It means Jesus is the Messiah who is above the great king David : the King of Kings, but never God.


https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=A9v7vYuZSAU
King's College Cambridge
2011 Easter #16 Hallelujah Chorus, Handel Messiah

[John2]

I think Is. 19:20-21 hits the nail on the head. Yes, it is "the Lord" (or God) who will "come" and judge Egypt in Is. 19, but it involves a savior. "When they cry out to the Lord because of their oppressors, he will send them a savior and defender, and he will rescue them. So the Lord will make himself known to the Egyptians, and in that day they will acknowledge the Lord."

And just as there is "only one Lawgiver and Judge" in James 4:12, there is only one "savior" in Is. 43:11: "I, even I, am the Lord, and there is no savior besides Me."

(And both Is. 19:20 and 43:11, incidentally, use the word yasha for savior, from which the name Jesus is derived.)

So there is only one "judge" in James, and there is only one "savior" in Isaiah, yet both writings also refer to a savior agent or Jesus Christ. So what is the point of James mentioning Jesus (and calling him "Christ," "the Lord," and "our glorious Lord") if it has nothing to do with the coming of the Lord?

[FransJVermeiren]

I see only three relatively clean options here:

1. James consistently refers to God the Father as "Lord", and only the name of Jesus Christ (as in 1.1 and 2.1) is enough to make the title apply to anyone else.
2. James consistently refers to God the Father as "Lord", and both phrases referring to Jesus Christ as Lord are interpolations ("and of the Lord Jesus Christ" in 1.1 and "" in 2.1).
3. James cleanly identifies Jesus with Yahweh, or God; they are the same person. Jesus was an incarnation or avatar, so to speak, of Yahweh himself. (Refer to another thread of mine for more on this topic: viewtopic.php?f=3&t=2588&p=58143.)

Thank you Ben for your fine exposition.

I vote for your second option, considering the ‘Lord Jesus Christ’ of 1:1 and the ‘our Lord Jesus Christ’ of 2:1 as interpolations. I’ll discuss the ‘Jesus’ interpolation first.

Jesus
To start I adhere to an early date of writing for this text (50’s or early 60’s of the first century CE). Beside that my research has shown that during the fifties Jesus was nothing more than a rising Essene priest in the eastern Galilee region. The decisive event of his life, after which he was considered the expected messiah by the Essenes, took place about a decade later, in the summer of 70 CE. This means that there cannot have been a place in James’s epistle for an exalted Jesus-next-to-God, nor could any theological or moral element in his letter be based on this man of only local importance. James’s independence from Jesus based on my theory is in perfect accordance with the content of this writing. Not a single element of the text explicitly refers to ideas, teachings or sayings of Jesus. Points of contact between this text and the Gospels are the result of the shared Essene ideas of James and Jesus (and/or the Gospel writers).

Lord Christ
A second question then remains: are the two ‘Lord Christ’ mentions also interpolated? I believe this is the case, as this text is not overtly messianistic, which means that there is no explicit messianistic line of thought to be found in it nor the development of any messianistic idea. Still James asks his readers to be patient until the Lord’s (=God’s) future coming. God’s coming, his harsh judgement over a decadent world, implies the installation of an ideal Jewish king or messiah. Which means that this text is only implicitly messianistic, and I believe this implicit messianism doesn’t require any ‘Lord Christ’ mention.

The elimination of these two interpolations makes the text very consistent as focused on God as Lord. This consistency further enhances the beauty of this exhortation.

[MrMacSon]

.
I thought it would be interesting to look at aspects of the what is thought about the Epistle of James (avoiding issues of who the author might be).

From wikipedia -

Dating

• The author introduces himself merely as "a servant of God and of the Lord Jesus Christ" without invoking any special family relationship to Jesus.
• The cultured Greek language of the Epistle, it is contended, could not have been written by a Jerusalem Jew. Some scholars argue for a primitive version of the letter composed by James and then later polished by another writer.[14]
• The epistle was only gradually accepted into the canon of the New Testament.
• Some see parallels between James and 1 Peter, 1 Clement, and the Shepherd of Hermas, and take this to reflect the socio-economic situation Christians were dealing with in the late 1st or early 2nd century. It thus could have been written anywhere in the Empire that Christians spoke Greek. There are some scholars who argued for Syria.[14]

Other scholars, such as Luke Timothy Johnson, suggest an early dating for the Epistle of James:

• "The Letter of James also, according to the majority of scholars who have carefully worked through its text in the past two centuries, is among the earliest of New Testament compositions. It contains no reference to the events in Jesus' life, but it bears striking testimony to Jesus' words. Jesus' sayings are embedded in James' exhortations in a form that is clearly not dependent on the written Gospels."[15]

Genre
James is considered New Testament wisdom literature: "like Proverbs and Sirach, it consists largely of moral exhortations and precepts of a traditional and eclectic nature."[16]

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Epistle_of_James

In discussing authorship Theopedia makes these more general comments

• (again, authorship is not why I post these points; headings included for those wanting to find & see the quoted text in the original) -

Author and date

• 2. The author seems to have a great reverence for the Law, which would be consistent with the background of James.
  3. There are some linguistic similarities between the epistle and the speech of James in Acts 15.

Pseudononymous author
Some scholars argue for a pseudononymous author of James. Reasons cited for such a view could be any of the following:

• There is a lack of reference to Jesus Christ Himself in the letter.
• The superior level of Greek in the letter seems beyond what James, brother of Jesus, could have produced.
• The reverence for the Law issue is countered with a discussion on whether or not the works referred to in James are works of the Mosaic Law or general good works.
  The author appears to be well-versed in current Hellenistic philosophies.

Scholars holding to the traditional position are able to refute these arguments fairly easily, especially in consideration to the level of Greek used and the author's familiarity with Greek philosophy.

Blueprint
The epistle of James is generally divided into three sections:

• Genuine Religion (1:1-27)
• Genuine Faith (2:1 - 3:12)
• Genuine Wisdom (3:13 - 5:20)

http://www.theopedia.com/epistle-of-james

Both Theopedia & Wikipedia make reference to superior or cultured Greek used, and Wikipedia suggests it could not have been written by a Jerusalem Jew, unless polished by a more cultured editor.


As far as dating goes-

• Theopedia says "James is thought to have been written in 49 A.D. prior to the Jerusalem council held in 50 a.d."
  
  Wikipedia says "Many scholars consider the epistle to be written in the late 1st or early 2nd centuries:[13]"
  
  Wikipedia also says
  
  • "The earliest extant manuscripts of James usually date to the mid-to-late 3rd century.[4]" and

  .... scholars, such as Luke Timothy Johnson, suggest an early dating for the Epistle of James:
  

  • "The Letter of James also, according to the majority of scholars who have carefully worked through its text in the past two centuries, is among the earliest of New Testament compositions. It contains no reference to the events in Jesus' life, but it bears striking testimony to Jesus' words. Jesus' sayings are embedded in James' exhortations in a form that is clearly not dependent on the written Gospels."[15]
    
    15 Johnson, Luke Timothy (1996). The Real Jesus. HarperOne. p. 121. ISBN 0060641665.

  and

  Canonicity
  
  The Epistle was first explicitly referred to and quoted by Origen of Alexandria, and possibly a bit earlier by Irenaeus of Lyons[37] as well as Clement of Alexandria in a lost work according to Eusebius, although it was not mentioned by Tertullian, who was writing at the end of the Second Century.[36] It is also absent from the Muratorian fragment [the [allegedly] earliest known list of New Testament books].
  
  The Epistle of James was included among the twenty-seven New Testament books first listed by Athanasius of Alexandria in his Thirty-Ninth Festal Epistle (AD 367)[38] and was confirmed as a canonical epistle of the New Testament by a series of councils in the Fourth Century[?]. Today, virtually all denominations of Christianity consider this book to be a canonical epistle of the New Testament.
  
  In the first centuries of the Church the authenticity of the Epistle was doubted by some, including Theodore, Bishop of Mopsuestia in Cilicia. Because of the silence of several of the western churches regarding it, Eusebius classes it among the Antilegomena or contested writings (Historia ecclesiae, 3.25; 2.23). St. Jerome gives a similar appraisal but adds that with time it had been universally admitted. Gaius Marius Victorinus, in his commentary on the Epistle to the Galatians, openly questioned whether the teachings of James were heretical.
  
  Its late recognition in the Church, especially in the West, may be explained by the fact that it was written for or by Jewish Christians, and therefore not widely circulated among the Gentile Churches. There is some indication that a few groups distrusted the book because of its doctrine.
  https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Epistle_of_James

[John2]

MrMacSon cited:

•The superior level of Greek in the letter seems beyond what James, brother of Jesus, could have produced.

I hear this a lot. But I think the situation is similar to the Dead Sea Scrolls. They are approximately 80% Hebrew, 16% Aramaic, and 3% Greek (and some Nabatean), but it says in the Damascus Document (14:8-9) that:

"The Guardian of all the camps shall be from thirty to fifty years old, one who has mastered all the secrets of men and the languages of all their clans."

So even though the vast majority of the DSS are in Hebrew and Aramaic, the Guardian ("mebaqqer") was required to be a master in other languages, and I see the Letter of James in a similar light.

[John2]

And by the way, the position of the mebaqqer is seen by some as being similar to a bishop.

... there was at Qumran a functionary similar to the Hellenistic bishop, the mebaqqer, an etymological equivalent in Hebrew of "overseer."

https://books.google.com/books?id=kVqRa ... op&f=false

That term in fact means "overseer," just as episkopos does, and the mebaqqer was charged to do many of the same things that an episkopos was to do...

https://books.google.com/books?id=YS_d3 ... op&f=false

[John2]

Is. 19:20-21 reminds me of James 5:3-4 (in the same chapter that refers to "the coming of the Lord"):

"You have hoarded wealth in the last days. Look! The wages you failed to pay the workers who mowed your fields are crying out against you. The cries of the harvesters have reached the ears of the Lord Almighty."

"When they cry out to the Lord because of their oppressors, he will send them a savior and defender, and he will rescue them. So the Lord will make himself known to the Egyptians, and in that day they will acknowledge the Lord."

[iskander]

Is. 19:20-21 reminds me of James 5:3-4 (in the same chapter that refers to "the coming of the Lord"):

"You have hoarded wealth in the last days. Look! The wages you failed to pay the workers who mowed your fields are crying out against you. The cries of the harvesters have reached the ears of the Lord Almighty."

"When they cry out to the Lord because of their oppressors, he will send them a savior and defender, and he will rescue them. So the Lord will make himself known to the Egyptians, and in that day they will acknowledge the Lord."

This verse is very informative in that it explains the conflict in Galatians: Jas 2.17 So faith by itself, if it has no works, is dead.
http://bible.oremus.org/?passage=James+2
What do think?

[John2]

I'm not sure what you mean exactly, iskander, but regarding the doctrine of works and faith in the Letter of James, this is arguably yet another similarity between Jewish Christianity and the DSS. In addition to the numerous messianic proof texts that both sects used (e.g., the fallen booth of David, the Star Prophecy, a prophet like Moses, "strike the shepherd," "the fountain of living waters," "I will be his father, and he will be my son" and Is. 61), there is Hab. 2:4, which is used twice by Paul to defend his doctrine of faith without works.

Rom. 1:17: "For in the gospel the righteousness of God is revealed--a righteousness that is by faith from first to last, just as it is written: 'The righteous will live by faith.'"

Gal. 3:10-11: "For all who rely on the works of the law are under a curse, as it is written: 'Cursed is everyone who does not continue to do everything written in the Book of the Law.' Clearly no one who relies on the law is justified before God, because 'the righteous will live by faith.'”

Paul also attacks Jewish Christians in 2 Cor. 11 and says in v. 15 that "their end will be what their actions deserve," using the same word (ergon) that he and James use regarding the issue of faith and works:

"And I will keep on doing what I am doing in order to cut the ground from under those who want an opportunity to be considered equal with us in the things they [i.e., the Hebrew "super-apostles" mentioned in 11:5] boast about. For such people are false apostles, deceitful workers, masquerading as apostles of Christ. And no wonder, for Satan himself masquerades as an angel of light. It is not surprising, then, if his servants also masquerade as servants of righteousness. Their end will be what their actions deserve."

http://biblehub.com/greek/strongs_2041.htm

But the Habakkuk Pesher interprets Hab. 2:4 in a way that is in line with James:

"Its interpretation concerns all Doers of the Torah in the House of Judah, whom God will save from the House of Judgment because of their works and faith in the Righteous Teacher."

Vermes has this as, "Interpreted, this concerns all those who observe the Law in the House of Judah, whom God will deliver from the House of judgement because of their suffering and because of their faith in the Teacher of Righteousness," translating the word amal as "suffering." But amal has the sense of labor/toil/work. i.e, hard work.

http://biblehub.com/hebrew/5999.htm

As Del Tondo puts this issue:

The DSS author interprets the verse, however, to require faithfulness for salvation. The Pesher then rejects the idea that justification is without adding works to faith. Professor Eisenman asks us how can we credibly believe this Pesher on Habakkuk 2:4 is directed at anyone else but Paul. As we shall see next, the DSS Poor are up in arms about the "spouter of Lies" who opposes the Zaddik. Are we to believe it is merely coincidence again the Ebion of the DSS just so happen to want to show Habakkuk 2:4 -one of Paul's favorite proof texts- does not stand for an idea that Paul alone was known to espouse?

https://books.google.com/books?id=3VFns ... ks&f=false

[FransJVermeiren]

MrMacSon cited:

•The superior level of Greek in the letter seems beyond what James, brother of Jesus, could have produced.

I hear this a lot. But I think the situation is similar to the Dead Sea Scrolls. They are approximately 80% Hebrew, 16% Aramaic, and 3% Greek (and some Nabatean), but it says in the Damascus Document (14:8-9) that:

"The Guardian of all the camps shall be from thirty to fifty years old, one who has mastered all the secrets of men and the languages of all their clans."

So even though the vast majority of the DSS are in Hebrew and Aramaic, the Guardian ("mebaqqer") was required to be a master in other languages, and I see the Letter of James in a similar light.

Thank you John2 for your quote of the Damascus Document. James, the mebaqqer of the Essene community of Jerusalem writes a moral exhortation in eloquent Greek. His excellent Greek is not unlikely because this had been one of the requirements for the function. I think we should never underestimate the intellectual abilities of the Essene elite.

James the brother of Jesus? Certainly not in the biological sense, but they were both Essenes, who addressed each other as brother and sister. Moreover, they were mebaqqer simultaneously (until 62 CE), James of the Jerusalem community and Jesus of the Essenes of Tiberias, the most important town of Galilee.