James (Baker Exegetical Commentary on the New Testament)

McCartney, Dan G., Yarbrough, Robert W., Stein, Robert

• Publisher: Baker Academic
• Year: 2009
• ISBN:
  9781441206466
• Topic: Teología y religión
• Subtopic: Comentario bíblico

Dan McCartney, a highly regarded New Testament scholar and an expert on biblical interpretation, offers a substantive yet accessible commentary on James in this latest addition to the award-winning BECNT series. With extensive research and thoughtful chapter-by-chapter exegesis, McCartney leads readers through all aspects of the book of James--sociological, historical, and theological--to help them better understand its meaning and relevance. As with all BECNT volumes, this commentary features the author's detailed interaction with the Greek text and an acclaimed, user-friendly design. It admirably achieves the dual aims of the series--academic sophistication with pastoral sensitivity and accessibility.

	I. Salutation (1:1)
	II. Overview of the Life of Faith (1:2–27)
	III. First Discourse: Faith and Behavior (2:1–26)
	IV. Second Discourse: Faith, Wisdom, and Speech Ethics (3:1–18)

I. Salutation (1:1)

The “greeting” of James as an opening to the letter follows the standard classical form for a salutation. It identifies the sender and the addressees, concluding with the word “greetings.” In spite of its commonness in secular Greek literature (cf. the letter of Claudius Lysias to Felix in Acts 23:26–30), the only other Christian letter in the NT to follow this form is the brief letter, also from James, recorded in Acts 15:23–29 (see Acts 15:23). Later Christian letters moved toward the use of “grace,” “mercy,” and/or “peace” in various combinations (all of Paul’s letters, 1 Peter, 2 Peter, 2 John, Jude, Revelation), and thus we may have here an indication that James was written before the peculiarly Christian adaptations of the greeting had become standard.

On the other hand, James’s salutation shares the address to those in the “diaspora” (or “dispersion”) with 1 Pet. 1:1, and the self-identification of the author as a “servant” or “slave” of Jesus Christ resembles the opening of a couple of Paul’s letters (Rom. 1:1; Titus 1:1; see also Gal. 1:10; Col. 4:12) as well as 2 Pet. 1:1 and Jude 1. As a letter to people “in the dispersion,” it signals that it is intended, like 1 Peter, not for a specific church or persons, but as a general exhortation addressed to Christians in a variety of locations and circumstances.

Exegesis and Exposition

1James, servant of God and the Lord Jesus Christ, to the twelve tribes in the Diaspora, greetings.

[1:1] “James,” the same biblical name as “Jacob,” is a common name in the NT. The author gives no further self-designation except the phrase “servant of God and the Lord Jesus Christ.” A more complete analysis of the authorship question appears in the introduction to this commentary, but it is fairly easy to deduce that this James is the half brother of Jesus. According to Acts 12:2, James the apostle, the brother of John, was killed by Herod Agrippa in the year 44, and that is probably too early a date for this letter. The other one of the Twelve named James, son of Alphaeus, is barely known in the early church and would have needed to identify himself more fully had he been the author. But James the half brother of Jesus is widely known as a leader of the Jewish Christian community in Jerusalem. He is mentioned several times in Acts, is noted by Paul in 1 Cor. 15:7 as the recipient of a special appearance by the resurrected Jesus, and was highly respected as a man of piety and godliness even outside Christian circles (Josephus gives him more notice than Jesus). He is sometimes given the designation “James the Just” or “James the Righteous.” Even commentators who do not think that James the Just wrote the letter agree that he is the one who is being designated as the author in the first verse. Although there are a few difficulties with James being the author of this letter, most of what we know of this James fits quite well with its contents.

As noted above, this is not the only letter in the NT purporting to come from James the Just. Acts 15:23–29 records the substance of a brief encyclical letter from James to the church, indicating the agreement of the Jerusalem church with the Gentile mission of Paul. There James, like Paul, advocated acceptance of Gentile converts as full members of the new covenant community, though without the requirement of circumcision. He did, however, instruct them to abstain from certain Gentile behavior patterns: fornication and eating meat offered to idols, blood, and strangled things.[1] This concern with practical Christianity gives a picture much like the one that we get from the Epistle of James. Further, James’s insistence on remembering the poor, noted by Paul in Gal. 2:10, fits well with the concerns of the Epistle of James.[2]

In this letter, however, James identifies himself simply as a “servant of God and the Lord Jesus Christ.” Since James includes no definite or indefinite articles with these words, it is possible to read this phrase as “servant of Jesus Christ, God and Lord.” But it is more likely that he is simply closely associating the two nouns: Lord Jesus Christ and God. In any case, we must remember that when a Jew put the words “God” and “Lord” together, the Lord in view could only be God (cf. 1:7, where “from the Lord” means “from God”). No matter how the verse is read, James is setting forth a very high Christology, identifying Jesus not just as Christ (Messiah) but also as Lord, mentioned in the same breath with God. Further, Jews saw themselves as servants of God, not of any earthly king or master, and as Dibelius points out (1975: 65), the term “servant” or “slave”[3] “expresses a definite relationship to the God to whose cult a person is committed.” So again James’s declaration of being a “slave” to the Lord Jesus is an implicit acknowledgment of Jesus’s deity.

It is interesting that although James is a brother of Jesus, he makes nothing of his physical relationship.[4] Were this letter pseudepigraphal, one would have expected the author to have made more of James’s unique relationship with Jesus, as indeed was done in certain quarters of the church in centuries following. However, this James identifies himself not as Jesus’s brother but as Jesus’s servant, thus classifying himself along with all his readers.[5]

The Jesus whom James serves is further identified as the Christ. It is easy to forget that to a first-century Jew, “Christ” was not a name but a title, meaning “anointed one” (“messiah”), the deliverer and king expected by the Jews. The fact that James writes to “the twelve tribes in the Diaspora,” whether that phrase is regarded as literal or figurative, reinforces that for him, “Christ” means the expected deliverer of Israel.

The “twelve tribes in the Diaspora” is, of course, a reference to Israel. Although many Jews had some knowledge of their tribal connections (e.g., Paul the Benjaminite, Symeon the Levite), the twelve tribes as distinct and discernible units or clans within Judaism were a thing of the past, especially the “northern” tribes (though the Samaritans probably were largely derived from northern Israelites). But the OT and later Jewish writings sometimes speak of the twelve tribes as an aspect of the restored Israel (Ezek. 47:13; T. Benj. 9.2). The notion is also evident at Qumran (1QM 2.1–3) and may lie behind the Gospel of Matthew’s record of Jesus sending specifically twelve disciples to the “lost sheep of the house of Israel” (Matt. 10:5–6).[6] Since early Christians (Acts 26:7), following Jesus’s lead (Matt. 19:28), regarded the community of believers in Christ as the fulfillment of the promises of restoration, James does not hesitate to apply this OT designation of restored Israel (cf. Ezra 6:17) to his hearers.

The “diaspora” is literally the “scattering” or “dispersion” or “sowing” of seed. In Hellenistic Jewish literary contexts “diaspora” was a way of referring to the fact that after the destruction of the northern kingdom of Israel and after the exile of Judah, ethnic Jews/Israelites were “scattered” throughout the Middle East and in subsequent centuries were even further “scattered” into Europe and North Africa. The Greek translation of Deut. 28:25 used the word in the prophecy that Israel would be dispersed throughout the kingdoms of the earth (the Hebrew text says that Israel would be a “horror” to all the kingdoms of the earth), and in the first century the term was well known among Jews as a reference to the Jews who lived outside Palestine (see John 7:35). Hence, if taken literally, James appears to be addressing his letter to Jews dwelling outside Palestine.

However, James appears to be addressing not Jews in general but Christians, either specifically Jewish Christians or Christians generally. Although some scholars have tried to argue that James was originally a non-Christian Jewish letter that later was “Christianized” by the addition of 1:1 and 2:1 (see “Was the Audience Christian or Jewish Non-Christian?” in the introduction), several aspects of James clearly indicate a Christian provenance. But is James written specifically to Jewish Christians, perhaps those who are still active in their local synagogues?

Although the Jewishness of James is quite visible, James appears to regard the Christian community as the manifestation of the present people of God. Even if James is writing to Jewish Christians, therefore, his letter is not exclusive of Gentile Christians, and nothing in the letter suggests that James’s audience is necessarily exclusively Jewish. Whatever the case, this letter has as much to say to Gentile Christians as it does to those of Jewish background.

There are, however, some good arguments for at least a large part of the audience being ethnically Jewish (e.g., their assembly is still called a “synagogue” [2:2]—the only time that word is used in the NT letters). In its earliest stages (as in Acts) the church comprised mostly Jewish believers and also regarded itself as being in close continuity with (ethnic) Israel,[7] but at the same time it recognized that what Jesus had accomplished entailed a change of concept of what constituted Israel. The new Israel was no longer so much a matter of ethnicity as one of religious commitment or faith (cf. Rom. 2:28–29; 1 Cor. 10:18; Gal. 6:16; Phil. 3:3). Ethnicity, therefore, if present at all, had little prominence in this designation of the recipients as “twelve tribes.”

If James is intended not for literal Jews in general (as over against Gentiles) but for Christians (Jewish or otherwise), then the “twelve tribes” is metaphorical. Is, then, “diaspora” perhaps also metaphorical, that is, a referent not to geographical displacement but to the scattering of Christians in the Mediterranean world?[8] The term “diaspora” also appears in 1 Pet. 1:1, and given that that letter almost certainly is addressed to Gentile Christians,[9] it appears that the early church was using the term to refer to the fact that Christians were spread throughout the world by God for the purpose of being salt and light to the Gentiles. We see this happening in Acts 8:1, where members of the Jerusalem church are “scattered” (διεσπάρησαν, diesparēsan) in Judea and Samaria, and in Acts 8:4, where they are called the “scattered ones” (διασπαρέντες, diasparentes). The letter of 1 Peter also emphasizes that Christians are “aliens and strangers,” outsiders because this world is not their true home (1 Pet. 2:11). Whether or not James has this distinct a purpose in the use of the term, his concern with Christians as sufferers (see 1:2) and God’s sovereign purposes (1:18) at least means that he is thinking along lines similar to 1 Peter.

	I. Salutation (1:1)
	II. Overview of the Life of Faith (1:2–27)
	III. First Discourse: Faith and Behavior (2:1–26)
	IV. Second Discourse: Faith, Wisdom, and Speech Ethics (3:1–18)

II. Overview of the Life of Faith (1:2–27)

All of James 1 serves to give an overview of James’s concern with the life of faith, or faithful life. All the concerns that will later be developed in James 2–5 are introduced here: the importance of genuine and unwavering faith, the nature and desirability of wisdom, not just hearing but doing God’s word, the importance of self-control, the problem of self-deception, the dangers of wealth and the corresponding blessing of the poor, and the importance of prayer. The two overarching concerns of faith and wisdom[1] are presented in the opening paragraph. James is especially interested in the importance and indispensability of genuine faith and unyielding conviction, and this interest runs right through the letter. But it is also clear from this opening that James’s audience is facing problems that are putting that faith to the test, problems that require wisdom. James writes his letter in response to the sufferings, trials, and temptations that threaten the integrity of the community of those who have believed in Jesus as Lord and Christ. The horrors of life can leave a believer confused, uncertain, uncomprehending, and floundering. Joy, which is the fruit of knowing God, and wisdom, which is the ability to handle life, seem remote and unattainable. James reminds the audience that trials are part of the package of faith and yield good fruit at the end of the day.

Although wisdom is a concern in James, of even greater concern to him is the faith of his hearers. Here in the opening statement it is “your faith” that is being proven, and it is by faith that one must ask of God, because without faith a person is unstable. James makes it clear time and again that it is precisely because faith is so important that actions and attitudes incompatible with faith must be attacked. Although the Epistle of James often is thought of as the NT book about the importance of works, it is genuine faith that concerns James. Works are important precisely because they are indispensable to true faith.

These verses therefore serve as an overview of the issues that confront the suffering community called to be God’s people of faith in the world. In this way again James resembles 1 Peter, but whereas 1 Peter addresses the issues of faith and suffering primarily by reference to the redemptive-historical acts of Christ that are applied to believers by virtue of their identification with Christ, James addresses those issues by reference to the “wisdom” tradition of Jesus’s teaching.

James has already introduced the overall concern of his letter by referring to Christians as those in the “diaspora.” They are a suffering community that is “dispersed” in order to bring the seed of the word to the world. Being “in the diaspora” means that his readers face many problems and tasks in life, especially the likelihood of suffering, the necessity of faith and wisdom, and the danger of pride and wealth. So in his opening statement James lays out for the readers the issues that face such a community: trials (1:2–3), endurance (1:3–4), wisdom (1:5), and persevering faith (1:6–8). In the following verses he will introduce another complex of issues: pride and humility (1:9–10) and wealth (1:10–11), concluding with trials again (1:12). These are the issues that occupy the remainder of the letter, not in simple sequence but in various combinations and with various applications. They are all common issues in wisdom literature, and indeed James is often considered to be the “wisdom book” of the NT (see excursus 3, “James ...

Table of contents

• Cover
• Series Page
• Title Page
• Copyright Page
• Dedication
• Contents
• Series Preface
• Author’s Preface
• Abbreviations
• Transliteration
• Map
• Introduction to James
• I. Salutation (1:1)
• II. Overview of the Life of Faith (1:2–27)
• III. First Discourse: Faith and Behavior (2:1–26)
• IV. Second Discourse: Faith, Wisdom, and Speech Ethics (3:1–18)
• V. Third Discourse: Strife in the Church as Lack of Faith (4:1–12)
• VI. Interjection: Two Oracles of Warning (4:13–5:6)
• VII. Fourth Discourse: Looking to God (5:7–18)
• VIII. Closing Exhortation: Mutual Responsibility and Blessing (5:19-20)
• Excursus 1: Faith as the Central Concern of James
• Excursus 2: Faith, Works, and Justification in James and Paul
• Excursus 3: James and Wisdom
• Excursus 4: James and Suffering
• Works Cited
• Index of Subjects
• Index of Authors
• Index of Greek Words
• Index of Scripture and Other Ancient Writings
• Notes
• Back Cover