The Book Of James Book Analysis

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The book of James is a collection of ancient letters for the Jewish Christian audience. The letter contains scriptures that encourage readers to “be doers of the word, and not hearers only;1:22” (Sumney, 2014, 350). The book of James elucidates Jesus’ regard of how his followers should conduct their life. Actual authorship and date leaves a lot of room for interpretation and many scholars have different view-points. James remains an obscure person throughout the bible, his name matching with several apostles and the blood or half-brother of Jesus. There’s lack of mentioning of Jesus Christ in the letter and the superior level of Greek seems too advanced for James to produce. The author of James appears to be well-versed in Hellenistic philosophies which was 323-31 B.C. However, there are some linguistic similarities in Acts 15 and James does seem to have …show more content…

The book of James remains pseudonymous to some scholars. Could the author be James the Just or James of the Early Church? The beginning of the letter states the author as “James a slave of God and of the Lord Jesus Christ” (Batten, 2009). There is little to no information about the author besides claiming himself as a teacher and he does not claim himself as an apostle, which could be a potential James of authorship. James the Just is known as James of the early church which could mean “slave” as quoted above. We also find a similar quote in 1 Jude, “Jude, a servant of Jesus Christ and brother of James” (Batten, 2009). Paul also refers to James as the brother of Christ, however Jude and Paul do not specify if this is Jesus’ half-brother or an apostle brother. James was also known to teach Jewish Christianity which makes no sense because first-century Judaism and first-century Christianity were very different and didn’t form together as a whole (Batten,

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