The Epistle of James

Linguistic Exegesis of an Early Christian Letter

James D. Dvorak, Zachary K. Dawson, James D. Dvorak, Zachary K. Dawson

• Publisher: Pickwick Publications
• Year: 2019
• ISBN:
  9781498224598
• Topic: Theology & Religion
• Subtopic: Biblical Studies

The Epistle of James is a collection of essays that applies to the book of James linguistic methods of analysis that are based on the same theoretical framework, namely Systemic-Functional Linguistics. This volume is unique in that it provides a theoretically consistent and unified approach to a single New Testament book, which makes the whole volume useful for researchers and students of James. Each essay makes its own creative use of this linguistic perspective to engage important critical questions and to pave new ground for Jacobean scholarship based on linguistic analysis. Various topics in this volume include the textual structure and cohesion of the letter, intertextuality, rhetorical strategies, ideological struggle, interpersonal relations, and other topics related to the letter's social context and language use.

3

Cohesion in James

A Response to Martin Dibelius

Stanley E. Porter

Introduction

In his recent commentary on the letter of James, Dale Allison indicates that questions regarding the structure of the book have been posed from the earliest days of critical discussion. These questions have persisted from the time of Luther to the present.75 However, one figure looms most significantly in this debate: Martin Dibelius. In his now classic commentary, first published in 1921 in the Meyer commentary series76 and then translated in the Hermeneia series, Dibelius from the outset engaged in a brief analysis of the content of the letter; the beginning of his commentary reads, “The results of this analysis are indeed complex, but they do lead to the recognition of one consistent feature of Ja[me]s: the entire document lacks continuity in thought. There is not only a lack of continuity in thought between individual sayings and other smaller units, but also between larger treatises.”77 Dibelius is quic...

Table of contents

• Title Page
• Series Preface
• Contributors
• Abbreviations
• Introduction
• Mapping the Text
• Cohesion in James
• Torah Observance without Faith
• Minding the Gap
• An Analysis of James 2:14–26 with Special Reference to the Intertextual Reading of Abraham and Rahab
• The Rules of “Engagement”
• Ask and Ye Shall Position the Readers
• Brothers, Sisters—Adulteresses!
• Ἰακώβου Contra Mundum
• Conclusion