Forgery and Counterforgery: The Use of Literary Deceit in Early Christian Polemics (87 page)

2
. F. H. Kern,
Der Charakter und Ursprung des Briefs Jakobi
(Tübingen: Fues, 1835).

3
.
The Letter of James
, AB 37A (New York: Doubleday, 1995), p. 7.

4
. Ibid., p. 9.

5
. Matt Jackson-McCabe, “The Politics of Pseudepigraphy and the Letter of James,” in Jörg Frey et al., eds.,
Pseudepigraphie und Verfasserfiktion
, p. 621.

6
. See pp. 242–47.

7
. Contra J. N. Sevenster,
Do You Know Greek? How Much Greek Could the First Jewish Christians Have Known?
(Leiden: Brill, 1968), who argues that James would have known Greek. Sevenster’s study has been superseded, indeed, demolished by the more recent investigations of M. Chancey, M. Bar Ilan, and C. Herzer mentioned in the previous chapter. And so, Lindemann,
Paulus
, is precisely wrong to maintain “The Greek of James is indeed the weakest argument against its authenticity” (“In der Tat ist die griechische Sprache des Jak das schwächste Argument gegen seine Echtheit,” p. 241, n. 57). And when John Painter (
Just James: The Brother of Jesus in History and Tradition
, Edinburgh: T&T Clark, 1997) maintains that James
could
have been the author, since as a Galilean he would have been fluent in Greek, he is simply arguing on the basis of assertion, flying in the face of the evidence; his further claim that we need to take into account “the educative effect of the Jesus tradition” fails to address the hard issues (p. 238). Training in Greek composition was not part of first-century catechism.

8
. “Es [bleibt] gleichwohl fraglich … dass einem galiläischen Handwerkersohn das rhetorische und sprachliche Niveau des Jak zuzutrauen sei.” “‘Jakobus, der Gerechte’: Erwägungen zur Verfasserfiktion des Jakobusbriefes,” in Jörg Frey et al., eds.,
Pseudepigraphie und Verfasserfiktion
, p. 578.

9
. “Selbst wenn man eine weite Verbreitung des Griechischen im Palästina des 1. Jh.s n. Chr. annimmt, wird man eine Abfassung des Jak durch den Herrenbruder selbst kaum für möglich halten, insbesondere, wenn man daneben das merklich einfachere Griechisch des Diasporajuden Paulus stellt.”
Der Herrenbruder Jakobus und die Jakobustradition
(Göttingen: Vandenhoeck & Ruprecht, 1987), p. 211.

10
. Sometimes in discussions of authenticity, the letter’s allusions to dominical traditions are brought into play, by advocates of both positions. But it should not be thought that the author’s failure to quote his brother explicitly demonstrates that James did not write the book; one can imagine all sorts of reasons for the absence of direct quotations. At the same time, the many parallels with the sayings of Jesus do not demonstrate that the author was his brother. Most early Christians would have known the teachings of Jesus, and many of them would have been interested in replicating these sayings in their reflections on the ethical lives of Christians.

11
. Cf. Matt 22:34–50; Rom 13:9; Gal 5:14, where “love,” not “works of the Law,” fulfills the Law.

12
. It is important to note that the use of the term
synagogue
to refer to the Christians’ gathering does not indicate that the letter is either early or “Jewish,” as shown, for example, by such texts as Ignatius
Polycarp
4:2 (“let there be more frequent synagogues”),
Shepherd
, Commandments 11:9 (“the synagogue of upright men”), and Dionysius of Alexandria, according to Eusebius,
H.E
. 9.9.2, 7.11.11.

13
. See pp. 218–22.

14
.
Letter of James
, pp. 94–96.

15
. See pp. 305–8.

16
. Johnson,
Letter of James
, p. 249. Johnson bases his argument on two claims, that for James
are never connected to the law, and that the common elements in the two authors is just as easily explained as resulting from the fact that they were both first-generation of a messianic movement that had faith in Jesus as the messiah. This view is effectively refuted by Matt Jackson-McCabe,
Logos and Law in the Letter of James: The Law of Nature, the Law of Moses, and the Law of Freedom
(Leiden: Brill, 2001). Among other things, Jackson-McCabe points out that there are simply too many verbal connections with Paul to be accidental (as I will show). Moreover, it is not true that
are not connected with the law in James—as seen most clearly in 1:25 and also in 2:1–13. (Below I argue that what Paul and James
mean
by
is different; but that is another matter.) Moreover, although it is true that typical discussions in ancient first-generation members of the Jesus messianic movement do tie “attitude and action” (faith and works), it is equally important to note that the terms used to
express
this important tie, outside of James and Paul, are never
and
—let alone in connection to whether one can be considered “righteous” (using
) by faith apart from
.

17
. Kari Syreeni, “James and the Pauline Legacy,” in
Fair Play: Diversity and Conflicts in Early Christianity
, ed. Ismo Dunderberg et al. (Brill: Leiden, 2002), p. 401.

18
. “Der Abschnitt Jak 2, 21–24 berührt sich jedenfalls so eng mit Röm 3.4, daß eine literarische Beziehung doch zu vermuten ist.” Andreas Lindemann,
Paulus
, p. 247. See also, among a large host, Wiard Popkes, “James and Scripture: An Exercise in Intertextuality,”
NTS
45 (1999): 213–29.

19
. Thus James 3:13–18 is close to 1 Corinthians 2–3, down to the wording (genuine wisdom over against earthly psychic eagerness for quarrels). Among other phrases and ideas that appear Pauline are “Lord of glory” 2:1 (cf. 1 Cor. 2:8), the contrast of “desire and death” 1:13–15 (cf. Rom. 6:11–13, 23; 7:7ff), and God’s preference for the poor (2:5; cf. 1 Cor. 1:26–28). Moreover, the climactic chain of conclusions in 1:2–3 is like Rom. 5:3–5 (and 1 Peter 1:6–7). On the other hand, Martin Hengel, “Der Jakobusbrief als antipaulinische Polemik,” in
Tradition and Interpretation in the NT: Essays in Honor of E. Earle Ellis
, ed. G. Hawthorne and Otto Betz (Grand Rapids, MI: Eerdmans, 1987), pp. 248–78, is overly fanciful when he sees everything in the letter (esp. 3:1–12; 4:13–16; 5:13–16) as anti-Pauline.

20
. “Jak behandelt nicht ein isoliertes theologisches Thema (in 2, 14–16), sondern schreibt auf dem Hintergrund der Entwicklung der (paulinischen) Missionskirchen. Möglicherweise gewann er sogar Zugang zu einigen paulinischen Kerntexten, evtl. freilich nicht auf direktem Weg, sondern durch mündliche oder schriftliche Vermittlung.”
Der Brief des Jakobus
(Leipzig: Evangelische Verlagsanstalt, 2001), p. 39.

21
. Margaret Mitchell, “The Letter of James as a Document of Paulinism?” in
Reading James with New Eyes: Methodological Reassessments of the Letter of James
, ed. Robert L. Webb and John S. Kloppenborg (London: T&T Clark, 2007), p. 75. I am not, however, persuaded by Mitchell’s rather eccentric attempt to show that the author of James was actually a later Paulinist trying to reconcile Paul (of Galatians) with Paul (of 1 Corinthians). In support she points to other later Paulinists such as 1 Clement and Polycarp, who make similar rhetorical moves to the same end. The difference, however, is stark. James states a Pauline theologoumenon and then argues against it so as directly to oppose a “Pauline” teaching. None of her other authorities does this.