194 CHAPTER 5.

THE CATHOLIC EPISTLES

2:6-7 5:11
2:8-13 5:21-32; 7:12 (cf. Jas 2:8 with Mt 22:39)
2:14-26 7:12-29
3:1-12 5:5.22.33-37; 7:1-2: Lk 6:28
3:13-18 Mt 5:5.9.24.38-48; 7:16-20
4:1-3 5:21-26; 7:7
4:4 6:24 (cf. Jas 4:10 with Mt 23:12)
4:11-12 7:1-5
4:13-5:6 6:19-34
5:7-8 7:21-22
5:9 7:1
5:10-11 5:10-12
5:12 5:33-37

5.1.2 Content of James

1:1 Letter beginning. Author is "James, a servant of God and of
the Lord Jesus Christ". Recipients are "the twelve tribes in the Dis-
persion". Greetings. 1:2-4 Trials mean joy for Christians if they
endure them with faith and steadfastness because then they grow
more mature and towards spiritual perfection. 1:5-8 Everybody
who lacks wisdom, should ask God in faith, and he will see how
God gives generously to him. If such a man doubts God, he will
receive nothing, being himself double-minded and unstable.
1:9-11 A lowly brother should boast of his high value before
God knowing that he is not less than a rich man in a worldly sense
whose beauty will pass away very quickly. 1:12-18 Blessed are
those who remain steadfast under trial, for they will will receive
eternal life from God. Any temptation to do evil, is not from God.
The source of such a temptation is in sinful man himself. "But each
5.1. THE CATHOLIC EPISTLE OF JAMES 193

friend of God. 24 You see that a person is justified by works and not
by faith alone." These statements of James somehow relate to what
Paul writes in Gal 3:5-14 or Rom 3:28-4:25 and also to what Paul
probably was preaching in the churches he planted. One important
purpose of his letter is that James wants to give a correction to a
misunderstanding of Paul's preaching or writing or both (cf. Acts
21:20-26; Gal 2:6-10; 2 Pt 3:15-16; see Gal 5:6!).
If James presupposes Romans, then it is written after Romans
(after A.D. 56) and before the death of James in A.D. 62. If it pre-
supposes Galatians, then it is written after Galatians (after A.D. 48).
I think a good time area for James is after 48 and before the visit of
Paul in Jerusalem and in the house of James (Acts 21:17-26; before
the late spring of A.D. 56).
5:3 "You have laid up treasure in the last days." James sees the
presence as the last days.

James as the Sermon of the Mount in the form of a letter

There are so many parallels between this letter of James and the
famous Sermon on the Mount that we can see this letter of James
as the Sermon on the Mount in the form of a letter.

Jas 1:2 Mt 5:10

1:5 7:7
1:9-11 Lk 6:20.24
1:12 Mt 5:11-12
1:16 Mt 7:11
1:19-20 Mt 5:21-22
1:22(-25) 7:24
1:26 5:22.37
2:5 Mt 5:3; Lk 6,20
192 CHAPTER 5. THE CATHOLIC EPISTLES

brother James who is the author of the letter.1 I think James, the
brother of Jesus, fits best. He was stoned to death in A.D. 62 in
Jerusalem and was a very prominent leading figure of that church
at least from Acts 12:17 onward. The place of writing is therefore
probably Jerusalem.
1:1 Recipients are "the twelve tribes in the Dispersion". 1:12;
2:2 (synagogue)2 ; 3:14; 4:1-4; 4:13; 5:14. I would understand
"the twelve tribes in the Dispersion" as the worldwide ("catholic")
Christian church in the dispersion with Jewish and Gentile chris-
tians in it. The Dispersion would stand in contrast to Jerusalem
from where James probably has written.
That God's people in the dispersion may imply Gentile Chris-
tians as well is clearly the case for first and second Peter (1 Pt 1:1;
2:9f; 4:3; 2 Pt 3:1; Jude was written to the same recipients as 2 Pe-
ter). 1:12 "Blessed is the man who remains steadfast under trial":
one subject is temptation.
2:1 James speaks of "the faith in our Lord Jesus Christ, the Lord
of glory" which implies the divinity of Jesus Christ. 2:1-7 It is sin
to prefer rich guests in the church to poorer people. It is the sin of
partiality. "Are not the rich the ones who oppress you, and the ones
who drag you into court?" (2:6)
2:21-24 "Was not Abraham our father justified by works when
he offered up his son Isaac on the altar? 22 You see that faith was
active along with his works, and faith was completed by his works;
23 and the Scripture was fulfilled that says, 'Abraham believed God,
and it was counted to him as righteousness' - and he was called a

1. Theodor Zahn, Grundriß der Geschichte des neutestamentlichen Kanons,

2nd ed. (Leipzig: Deichert’sche Verlagsbuchhandlung, 1904), p. 43.
2. In the letter of Ignatius to Polycarp (IV,2) the word synagogue is used for
Gentile Christian assemblies. It does not necessarily imply Jewish Christian
recipients.
5.1. THE CATHOLIC EPISTLE OF JAMES 191

5.1 The Catholic Epistle of James

5.1.1 Introduction to James

Summary

James, the brother of the Lord Jesus Christ, has written this let-
ter probably in the middle of the fifties of the first century from
Jerusalem to the churches "in the Dispersion", meaning wherever
the churches were, including the area of "the dispersion in Pontus,
Galatia, Cappadocia, Asia, and Bithynia" mentioned in 1 Pt 1:1. As
many of these churches had been planted by the team of Paul, we
must view them as mixed churches with Jews and Gentiles, proba-
bly with a majority of Gentile Christians in them. One purpose of
his letter was to correct a misunderstanding of Paul's teaching (rep-
resented in Gal 3 and Rom 4) as if faith without works was enough
to be saved. That this was not really the meaning of Paul is evident
in such passages as Gal 5:6 (cf. 2 Pt 3:15-16).

Introduction statements as they come up in the letter.

1:1 Author is "James, a servant of God and of the Lord Jesus Christ".
There are four possible men in the New Testament with the name
of James: 1. James, son of Zebedee and Brother of John (Mk 1:19).
2. James, the son of Alpheus (Mk 3:18). 3. James, father of Ju-
das (Lk 6:16; Acts 1:13). 4. James, the brother of the Lord Jesus
Christ (Mt 13:55; Mk 6:3; Gal 1:19; 2:9; 2:12; Acts 12:17; 15:13;
21:18; 1 Cor 15:7; 9.5; Jud 1:1). There are certain similarities be-
tween the letter of James and the words of James, brother of the
Lord, in Acts 15:13-21. Zahn points to a section of Origene in a
Latin manuscript of his (lib IV, 8 in Rome) where it is the Lord's
Chapter 5

The Catholic Epistles

The remaining letters of the New Testament are called "catholic"

epistles in the sense of epistles with a worldwide audience. The
sequence of James, 1 and 2 Peter, 1 and 2 and 3 John and Jude seems
to follow the sequence found in Galatians 2:9: "And when James
and Cephas and John, who seemed to be pillars, perceived the grace
that was given to me, they gave the right hand of fellowship to
Barnabas and me, that we should go to the Gentiles and they to
the circumcised." Jude who calls himself "Jude, a servant of Jesus
Christ and brother of James" (Jude 1:1) has been added to them at
the end, being a smaller and less famous servant of Jesus Christ and
the brother of the first in this series. This makes him at the same
time a brother of Jesus, of course, but humbleness lets him drop
that claim as James drops it as well in his introduction. Though the
three letters of John belong to the catholic epistles, they are treated
here in the context of the Corpus Johanneum.

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