Companion to the Bible

by E. P. Barrows

2. The question respecting the person of James who wrote this epistle is one of great difficulty. That "James the Lord's brother," whom Paul names as one of the apostles (Gal. 1:19), is identical with the James mentioned by Luke in Acts 12:17; 15:13; 21:18, and is the author of the present epistle, is admitted by most writers, though not by all. That this James of Gal. 1:19 was the James who is named with Joses, Simon, and Judas, as one of our Lord's brethren (Matt. 13:55; Mark 6:3), must be received as certain. But whether he was identical with "James the son of Alpheus," who was one of the twelve (Matt. 10:3; Mark 3:18; Luke 6:15; Acts 1:13), is a question which has been much discussed and on which eminent biblical scholars are found arrayed on opposite sides. The question turns very much on the interpretation of the words "brother," and "brethren" and "sisters," in the passages above referred to. If we take them in their literal sense, as some do, then James the son of Alpheus and James the Lord's brother are different persons. But others understand them in the general sense of kindred or cousins, believing that our Saviour was the only child of Mary. A statement at length of the arguments and objections that are urged on both sides does not come within the compass of the present work. Nor is it necessary. The author of the present epistle is beyond all reasonable doubt the James who gave the final opinion in the assembly of the apostles and elders at Jerusalem (Acts 15:13-21), whom Paul names with Cephas and John as one of the "pillars" there (Gal. 2:9), and who elsewhere appears as a man of commanding influence in the church at Jerusalem (Acts 21:18; Gal. 2:12). If any one doubts his identity with James the son of Alpheus, who was one of the twelve, this cannot affect the canonical authority of the epistle. The position of this James in the church at Jerusalem and his relation to the apostolic college is such that, even upon the supposition that he did not belong to the number of the twelve, his writings must have to us the full weight of apostolic authority. See above chap. 30, No. 42.

3. The place where this epistle was written was manifestly Jerusalem, where James always resided; and the persons addressed are "the twelve tribes who are in the dispersion" (chap. 1:1); that is, as the nature of the case and the tenor of the epistle make manifest, that part of them who had embraced Christianity. There is no allusion in the epistle to Gentile believers.

The dispersion is a technical term for the Jews living out of Palestine among the Gentiles. We need not hesitate to understand it here literally. The apostle wrote to his Jewish brethren of the dispersion because he could not visit them and superintend their affairs as he could those of the Jewish Christians in and around Jerusalem. Some take the term in a wider sense of the Jewish Christians scattered abroad in and out of Palestine, but this is not necessary.

4. With regard to the date of this epistle also different opinions are held. Some place it early in the history of the church—earlier, in fact, than any other of the apostolic epistles—before the origin of the controversy respecting circumcision and the Mosaic law recorded in Acts, chap. 15; others quite late, not long before the destruction of Jerusalem by the Romans. The latter view best agrees with the contents of the epistle. The doctrine of justification by faith, for which Paul had contended, would naturally be abused precisely in the way here indicated, by the substitution of a barren speculative faith, for the true faith that works by love and purifies the heart and life from sin. The age preceding the destruction of Jerusalem was one of abounding wickedness, especially in the form of strife and faction. It had been predicted by our Lord that the effect of this would be to chill the love of many of his visible followers and withdraw them from his service. In truth the descriptions of these unworthy members of the Jewish Christian community which we find in this epistle, in the second of Peter, and in that of Jude, are but the realization, in most particulars, of the state of things foretold in the following remarkable words of the Saviour: "And then shall many be offended, and shall betray one another, and shall hate one another. And many false prophets shall arise and shall deceive many. And because iniquity shall abound the love of many shall wax cold. But he that shall endure unto the end, the same shall be saved." Matt. 24:10-13.

5. For the genuineness and canonical authority of the present epistle we have a very important testimony in the Old Syriac version (Peshito), which represents the judgment of the Eastern churches where the epistle was originally circulated. The remaining testimonies prior to the fourth century are scanty and some of them not very decisive. They may be all seen in Davidson's Introduction to the New Testament, and in the critical commentaries generally.

It cannot be reasonably doubted that the words of Irenæus, "Abraham himself, without circumcision and without the observance of Sabbaths, believed in God, and it was counted to him for righteousness, and he was called the friend of God" (Against Heresies, 4.30), refer to James 2:23. Origen quotes the epistle as "current under the name of James," and intimates that some did not acknowledge its apostolic authority. But he elsewhere cites it as that of "James the Lord's brother," "the apostle James," "the apostle," and simply "James." See in Kirchhofer Quellensamlung, pp. 263, 264. Eusebius reckons the epistle among the books that were "disputed, but known nevertheless to many." Hist. Eccl., 3, 25. Elsewhere he says: "It is regarded as spurious; at least not many of the ancients have made mention of it." Hist. Eccl., 2. 23. But these words cannot be regarded as expressing Eusebius' own opinion; for he himself quotes him as "the holy apostle," and his words as "Scripture." See in Davidson's Introduction to the New Testament, vol. 3, p. 336; Kirchhofer Quellensamlung, p. 264.

In the course of the fourth century the canonical authority of this epistle was gradually more and more acknowledged, and in the fifth its reception in the churches of both the East and the West became universal.

"This is just what we might expect: a writing little known at first, obtains a more general circulation, and the knowledge of the writing and its reception go almost together. The contents entirely befit the antiquity which the writing claims; no evidence could be given for rejecting it; it differs in its whole nature from the foolish and spurious writings put forth in the name of this James; and thus its gradual reception is to be accounted for from its having, from early times, been known by some to be genuine (as shown by the Syraic version), and this knowledge being afterwards spread more widely." Tregelles in Horne, vol. 4, chap. 25. Davidson suggests that differences of opinion and perplexities respecting the number of the persons called James in the apostolic period, and the relation they bore to one another, and also the fact that the epistle was addressed solely to Jewish Christians, may have made its early circulation comparatively limited. Perhaps we may also add, as he does, its apparent contrariety to the Pauline doctrine of justification by faith, but this is by no means certain.

6. This epistle is eminently practical. If any part of it can be called argumentative, it is that in which the apostle shows that "faith without works is dead." Chap. 2:14-26. The sins which he rebukes with such graphic vividness and power were all preëminently the sins of his countrymen at that age—hearing God's word without doing it, resting in an empty faith that does not influence the life, inordinate love of worldly possessions and a self-confident spirit in the pursuit of them, wanton revelling in worldly pleasures, partiality towards the rich and contempt of the poor, defrauding the poor of their wages, ambition to assume the office of teaching, censoriousness, a lawless and slanderous tongue, bitter envying and strife, mutual grudging and murmuring, wars and fightings; all these with an unbelieving and complaining spirit towards God. But these are not merely Jewish vices. They are deeply rooted in man's fallen nature, and many a nominal Christian community of our day may see its own image by looking into the mirror of this epistle.

The alleged disagreement between Paul and James is unfounded. Paul's object is to show that the ground of men's justification is faith in Christ, and not the merit of their good works. The object of James is to show that faith without good works, like the body without the spirit, is dead. Paul argues against dead works; James against dead faith. Here we have no contradiction, but only two different views of truth that are in entire harmony with each other, and both of which are essential to true godliness.