voice, which has spoken to so many in past years, may continue to be heard for generations to come.
Linda Foster
London
2001
The Letter of James
INTRODUCTION TO THE LETTER OF JAMES
James is one of the books which had a very hard fight to get into the New Testament. Even when it did come to be regarded as Scripture, it was spoken of with a certain reserve and suspicion, and even as late as the sixteenth century the reformer Martin Luther would gladly have banished it from the New Testament altogether.
The Doubts of the Early Christian Fathers
In the Latin-speaking part of the Church, it is not until the middle of the fourth century that James emerges in the writings of the fathers. The first list of New Testament books ever to be compiled is the Muratorian Canon, which dates to about AD 170 – and James is absent from it. Tertullian, writing in the middle of the third century, is an immense quoter of Scripture; he has 7,258 quotations from the New Testament, but never one from James. The first appearance of James in Latin is in a Latin manuscript called the Codex Corbeiensis, which dates to about AD 350. This manuscript attributes the authorship of the book to James the son of Zebedee, and includes it, not with the universally acknowledged New Testament books, but with a collection of religious tracts written by the early fathers. James has now emerged, but it is accepted with a certain reservation. The first Latin writer to quote James verbatim is Hilary of Poitiers in a work On the Trinity, written about AD 357.
If, then, James was so late in emerging in the Latin church, and if, when it did emerge, it was still regarded with some uncertainty, how did it become integrated into the New Testament? The moving influence was that of the biblical scholar Jerome, for he unhesitatingly included James in his Latin version of the New Testament, the Vulgate, completed early in the fifth century. But even then there is an accent of doubt. In his book On Famous Men, Jerome writes: ‘James, who is called the brother of the Lord . . . wrote only one epistle, which is one of the seven catholic epistles, and which, some people say, was issued by someone else under James’ name.’ Jerome fully accepted the letter as Scripture, but he felt that there was some doubt as to who the writer was. The doubt was finally set at rest by the fact that Augustine fully accepted James and was not in doubt that the James in question was the brother of our Lord.
James was late in emerging in the Latin church; for a long time there was a kind of question mark against it, but in the end, and only after a struggle, Jerome’s inclusion of it in the Vulgate and Augustine’s full acceptance of it brought it full recognition.
The Syrian Church
One would have thought that the Syrian church would have been the first to accept James, if it was really written in Palestine and was really the work of the brother of our Lord; but in the Syrian church there was the same wavering and swinging of opinion. The official New Testament of the Syrian church is called the Peshitto. This was to the Syrian church what the Vulgate was to the Latin church. It was made by Rabbula, the Bishop of Edessa, about AD 412, and in it for the first time James was translated into Syriac. Up to that time there was no Syriac version of the book, and up to AD 451 there is no trace of James in Syriac religious literature. After that, James was widely enough accepted, but as late as AD 545 Paul of Nisibis was still questioning its right to be in the New Testament. It was not, in fact, until mid-way through the eighth century that the great authority of the Greek theologian John of Damascus did for James in the Syrian church what Augustine had done for it in the Latin.
The Greek Church
Although James emerged sooner in the Greek-speaking church than it did in the Latin and Syrian, it was nonetheless late in making a definite appearance. The first writer to quote it by name is Origen, head of the school of Alexandria. Writing almost mid-way through the third century, he says: ‘If faith is called faith, but exists apart from works, such a faith is dead, as we read in the letter which is currently reported to be by James.’ It is true that in other works he quotes it as being without doubt by James and shows that he believes James to be the brother of our Lord, but once again there is the accent of doubt. Eusebius, the great scholar of Caesarea, investigated the position of the various books in the New Testament or on its fringe mid-way through the fourth century. He classes James among the books which are ‘disputed’, and he writes of it: ‘The first of the epistles called Catholic is said to be his [James’]; but it must be noted that some regard it as spurious; and it is certainly true that very few of the ancient writers mention it.’ Here again, there is evidence of doubt. Eusebius himself accepted James, but he was well aware that there were those who did not. The turning point in the Greek-speaking church came in AD 367. In that year, Athanasius, the theologian and Bishop of Alexandria, issued his famous Easter Letter in Egypt. Its purpose was to inform his people what books were Scripture and what were not, because apparently their reading had become too wide, or, at least, too many books were being regarded as holy writ. In that Letter, James was included without qualification, and its position from that point onwards was safe.
So, in the early Church, no one really questioned the value of James, but in every branch of it the letter was late in emerging and had to go through a period when its right to be considered a New Testament book was under dispute.
In fact, the history of James is still to be seen in its position in the Roman Catholic Church. In 1546, the Council of Trent once and for all laid down the Roman Catholic Bible. A list of books was given to which none could be added and from which none could be subtracted, and which had to be read in the Vulgate version and in no other. The books were divided into two classes: those which were proto-canonical, that is to say, those which had been unquestioningly accepted from the beginning; and those which were deutero-canonical, that is to say, those which only gradually won their way into the New Testament. Although the Roman Catholic Church never had any doubts about James, it is nonetheless in the second class that it is included.
Luther and James
In our own day, it is true to say that James, at least for most people, does not occupy a position in the forefront of the New Testament. Few would mention it in the same breath as John or Romans, or Luke or Galatians. There is still for many a kind of reservation about it. Why should that be? It cannot have to do with the doubt about James in the early Church, for the history of the New Testament books in those distant days is not known to many people in the modern Church. The reason lies in this. In the Roman Catholic Church, the position of James was finally settled by the Edict of the Council of Trent; but in the Protestant Church its history continued to be troubled, and indeed became even more troubled, because Luther attacked it and would have removed it from the New Testament altogether. In his printing of the German New Testament, Luther had a contents page with the books set out and numbered. At the end of the list, there was a little group, separate from the others and with no numbers assigned to them. That group consisted of James, Jude, Hebrews and Revelation. These were books which Luther held to be secondary.
Luther was especially severe on James, and the adverse judgment of a great scholar on any book can be a millstone round its neck forever. It is in the concluding paragraph of his Preface to the New Testament that Luther’s famous verdict on James can be found:
In sum: the gospel and the first epistle of St John, St Paul’s epistles, especially those to the Romans, Galatians and Ephesians; and St Peter’s first epistle, are the books which show Christ to you. They teach everything you need to know for your salvation, even if you were never to see or hear any other book or hear any other teaching. In comparison with these, the epistle of James is an epistle full of straw, because it contains nothing evangelical. But more about this in other prefaces.
As he promised, Luther developed this verdict in the Preface to the Epistles of St James and St Jude. He begins: ‘I think highly of the epistle of James, and regard it as valuable although it was rejected in early days. It does not expound human doctrines, but lays much emphasis on God’s law. Yet to give my own