Overview

The Epistle of James is one of the most practical and morally focused letters in the New Testament. However, it presents several challenges to traditional Christian doctrine and raises questions about its authorship and theological consistency.

Key Issues

  • Disputed authorship claims
  • Apparent contradiction with Paul on faith vs. works
  • Late acceptance into the biblical canon
  • Lack of distinctly Christian content

Authorship Questions

Traditional Claims

The letter claims to be written by "James, a servant of God and of the Lord Jesus Christ" (James 1:1). Christian tradition identifies this as James the brother of Jesus, who became a leader of the early Jerusalem church.

Problems with Traditional Authorship

The letter shows sophisticated Greek composition. James was likely an Aramaic-speaking Galilean peasant, yet the epistle demonstrates refined Greek literary skills and knowledge of Greek philosophical concepts that would be unexpected for someone of his background and education.

New Testament scholar Bart Ehrman notes in his book Forged:

"This author has written a very fluent and rhetorically effective composition in Greek. He is intimately familiar with the Greek version of the Old Testament. The historical James, on the other hand, was an Aramaic-speaking peasant from Galilee who almost certainly never learned to read. Or if he did learn to read, it was to read Hebrew. If he ever learned Greek, it would have been as a second language in order to speak it, haltingly no doubt... This book was not written by an illiterate Aramaic-speaking Jew."

Dale Allison, Professor of New Testament at Princeton Theological Seminary, expands on this point in his Critical and Exegetical Commentary on The Epistle of James:

"[It] is not simply a question of whether a first-century Galilean could have spoken or even written Greek, even good Greek. It is rather a question of how likely it is that the brother of Jesus could have written fairly accomplished Greek, possessed such a large Greek vocabulary, employed the LXX, and adopted Hellenistic literary topoi. Maybe Jesus spoke some Greek, but certainly the extent of his literacy in any language remains an unresolved problem...We have no indication that Jesus could have produced anything like the Epistle of James, whose author 'uses with freedom rare [Greek] words and compounds, all of them correctly formed'. How likely, then, that one of his siblings could have done so?"

Lack of personal connection to Jesus. If written by Jesus's brother, we would expect personal references to Jesus's life and teachings. Instead, the letter contains only two brief mentions of Jesus Christ (1:1, 2:1) and shows more influence from Jewish wisdom literature.

Late acceptance in the early church. The letter was disputed and not widely accepted until the 4th century, suggesting early Christian communities had doubts about its authenticity and apostolic authority.

Missing from early canonical lists. The Book of James is not found in the Muratorian Fragment, the earliest authoritative list of canonical scripture that we possess, likely written around 150-200 CE. This suggests late circulation and late acceptance. James was not officially canonized until 367 CE.

Pseudepigraphic context. There are dozens of examples of pseudepigrapha—writings that falsely claim to be written by a particular character—in early Christianity. Paul himself acknowledges that pseudepigraphic letters were being written (2 Thessalonians 2:2). Other examples include the Gospel of James, the Apocryphon of James, the First Apocalypse of James, the Second Apocalypse of James, and the Epistle of James to Quadratus.

Dating Issues

The traditional dating of James presents several chronological problems:

James the brother of Jesus died in 62 CE. According to Josephus, James was executed by the high priest Ananus in 62 CE. However, the letter shows awareness of developed Christian theology and church structure that suggests a later date.

The letter addresses Diaspora communities. James is addressed "to the twelve tribes in the Dispersion" (1:1), suggesting a time when Christianity had spread significantly beyond Palestine, which points to a later date than the 60s CE.

Theological development. The letter's treatment of faith and works suggests familiarity with Pauline theology and represents a response to potential misunderstandings of Paul's teachings, indicating composition after Paul's letters were circulating.

Theology

A Direct Response to Paul?

Interestingly enough, the most famous passage in James appears to be a polemic against Paul's writing in Galatians. It mirrors Paul's writing closely in vocabulary, subject matter, argumentative format, quotation of Gen. 15:6.

Paul in Galatians
(Galatians 2:16, 2:21, 3:1, 3:6-7)		 James in Response
(James 2:18-24)
We know that a person is not justified by the works of the law but through faith in Jesus Christ; so we ourselves have believed in Christ Jesus, so that we might be justified by faith in Christ and not by works of the law, because no one will be justified by works of the law....

...I do not nullify the grace of God, for if righteousness were through the law, then Christ died for no purpose. O foolish Galatians! Who has bewitched you? It was before your eyes that Jesus Christ was publicly portrayed as crucified.

...Thus Abraham "believed God and it was counted to him as righteousness." You see therefore that those who have faith are the children of Abraham. 		But someone will say, "You have faith and I have works." Show me your faith apart from works and I will show you my faith by my works. You believe that God is one? You do well: even the demons believe, and they shudder. But do you wish to know, O shallow man, that faith apart from works is barren? Wasn't Abraham our father justified by works when he offered Isaac his son on the altar? You see that faith was working with his works and faith was completed by the works. And the Scripture was fulfilled which says, "And Abraham believed God, and it was counted to him as righteousness." And he was called a friend of God. You see that a person is justified by works, and not by faith alone.

Rather than attempting to harmonize these passages, it may be more accurate to recognize that James and Paul simply disagreed on fundamental theological issues. James may have been intentionally correcting what he saw as dangerous misunderstandings in Paul's teaching about faith without works.

Reception

Some well-known Christian leaders did not think the Book of James should be in the New Testament. They thought its message about "works" (doing good things) did not fit with Paul's teaching that faith alone is enough.

Martin Luther

Martin Luther, who started the Protestant Reformation, was the most famous critic of James. He called it an "epistle of straw," meaning he thought it was weak and not very useful. Luther said James disagreed with Paul's idea that people are saved by faith alone. Because of this, Luther put James, along with Hebrews, Jude, and Revelation, at the back of his New Testament and said they were less important.

St. James’ epistle is really an epistle of straw, compared to the others, for it has nothing of the nature of the gospel about it.

- Martin Luther, Preface to the Epistles of St. James and St. Jude (1522)

Other Early Doubts

Even before Luther, some early Christians were unsure about James. Eusebius, a church historian writing in the early 300s, listed James among the "disputed books" of the New Testament. He noted that not many early Christian writers mentioned James, which shows that its place in the Bible was uncertain for a long time.

Among the disputed writings, which are nevertheless recognized by many, are extant the so-called epistle of James and that of Jude, also the second epistle of Peter, and those that are called the whether they belong to the evangelist or to another person of the same name...

— Eusebius, Ecclesiastical History 3.25.3-5