Bible Study - James

About The Book Of James

The book of James is traditionally viewed as the earliest New Testament book, although 1st Corinthians is more likely to be the first. Regardless, it is likely to have been one of the first written. James is an in-your-face confrontational pastoral letter. It is very much in the tradition of John the Baptist who's ministry was primarily yelling at people about their specific sins. Like John the Baptist, it verbally grabs the reader by the shirt and tries to shake the sin, wrong attitudes, and delusion out of them. As such it is avoided by most western churches today as they have an unbiblical aversion to confrontation and calling out sin.

Some have questioned whether James should be in the cannon. Martin Luther was a big critic of its inclusion, despite it being accepted as scripture more than a thousand years earlier. He saw it being misused to support anti-biblical teachings of the Catholic Church. Most critics argue that James promotes a Judaic nomism that Paul wrote in opposition to. However, James is not advocating nomism as the Judaizers did and Paul wrote against. Nor does James advocate a salvation by works plus faith of the Roman Catholics that Martin Luther wrote against. On the contrary, James is a response and critic of those who would make a verbal profession of faith but failed to show it in their lives in any way. These were early virtue-signaling phonies with no substance like the Pharisees. In other words, James argued that works are the outward sign of a true inner faith. And this is fully compatible with the Pauline epistles and the gospel. Regardless of opposition centuries later, it was accepted as scripture by the early church. The canon is not an authoritative list of scriptural books. It is a list of authoritative scriptural books.

Which James wrote this epistle is a matter of debate. But in the end it isn't important. There are three main candidates. One is James the son of Aphaeus who is one of the twelve disciples. But little is said about him. The second is James the son of Zebedee, brother of John. He was also one of the twelve disciples. However, he was martyred very early, and the likely time this epistle was written make this very unlikely. The third is James, the half-brother of Jesus. Although originally he didn’t believe Jesus was the Messiah, after the resurrection he not only believed but became the head of the church in Jerusalem as well as leader of the greater church. This is most likely the author of this epistle of the three primary candidates. But it could have been a different James entirely. Who the author may be is not important. That it is inspired scripture is clear. As to the context, the style and references in the Greek text are consistent with a Palestinian Jew of the first century, as exampled by Paul, Josephus and others. And there are clear references to the Septuagint, the Greek translation of the Old Testament.

James Bible Study

James Chapter 1
James chapters 2-5 coming soon. This study is completed, but is in editing for the web.