The Name is James, James B…B…Brother of Jesus

I’m often a little slow to pick up on things. For instance, it was only after I had been teaching a class on the book of Acts for a few years before I realized that the early church actually sprouted in two locations, not one. Jerusalem is the obvious first choice for one of the locations. Jerusalem is where the Spirit descended during Pentecost (Acts 2), Peter and John boldly preached (Acts 3, 4), the first deacon board was created (Acts 6), Stephen preached and became the first martyr (Acts 7), and the first church council was held (Acts 15). But Jerusalem wasn’t the place where believers were first called Christians (Acts 11:26) and it isn’t the place from which the first missionary journeys began (Acts 13). Those accolades belong to the city of Antioch.

While these facts might seem irrelevant to the letter of James, I believe they will help us better understand its message. But, before we get to the letter of James, taking a brief detour to Paul and his writings will add a much-needed point of comparison.

Paul’s role in the book of Acts and his many writings in the New Testament are well-known to most believers. Most will know that Paul primarily addressed the Gentiles on his missionary journeys and in his writings. But some, like myself, might initially miss that it was the church in Antioch from which he was sent on his missionary journeys, not Jerusalem.

James the author, on the other hand, is not well-known to most of us. Tradition, not scripture, tells us that the author of the letter of James was Jesus’s half-brother. And if this is the case — and many scholars believe it to be the case — then we also know that James was not a believer while Jesus was alive (John 7:1-10). In fact, he and his siblings thought Jesus was a bit looney (Mark 3:21). But, despite how he felt while Jesus was alive, James eventually changed his mind. In Acts 1:14 we read that after the ascension, James and his brothers were praying with the disciples; Acts 15:13 then tells us that James became one of the leaders of the church in Jerusalem. And, along with Peter and John as leaders of the Jerusalem church, James was focused on Jewish believers, not Gentile (Galatians 2:9).

We should be able to conclude with a high degree of confidence that Paul, based out of Antioch, directed his efforts toward Gentiles, while James, a leader in the Jerusalem church, focused his time on Jewish believers. Now that we have that, let’s talk a little bit about James’s and Paul’s writings.

Determining the date that books of the Bible were written is not a simple task. There are many different opinions, but I hold to a more conservative and traditional point of view with regard to New Testament authorship. What this means is that I think the people to whom the books are attributed actually wrote the books. Matthew wrote Matthew. Luke wrote Luke. James wrote James. And Paul wrote Galatians. This also means that I accept an early date for authorship of the New Testament books. For James, this means that I believe he wrote his book somewhere between 45 and 48 a.d. And for Paul, I accept that Galatians was his first letter and that it was written somewhere between 48 and 54 a.d. (But since this isn’t a course on manuscript dating, that’s all I’m going to say on that topic. If, however, you have some questions or comments about book authorship or these dates, please feel free to drop me an email, I’d love to chat about it.)

When we put all this together, the picture that begins to emerge is that James, a pillar of the Jewish church in Jerusalem, wrote his first, (and only, as far as we know) letter to Jewish believers (James 1:1). And Paul, a missionary from the church in Antioch, wrote his first letter of Galatians to Gentile Christians (Galatians 1:2 and Acts 13:46). Furthermore, lacking any other canonical correspondence to the early church, it seems reasonable to conclude that these two letters, James and Galatians, were the first letters to the early believers, both Jew and Gentile.

Now, a brief look at Paul and his letter to the Galatians should help us get a bit of a baseline so we might draw a general conclusion about James’s letter.

In Acts 10 we read about Peter, a devout Jew, being sent by the Lord to see Cornelius, a Gentile. Leaving many specifics of that event aside, this clearly indicates that God wanted his gospel to be sent to the Gentiles. God’s plan is then affirmed when, in Acts 13 and 14, we read that Paul’s missionary focus shifted from the Jews to the Gentiles. Finally, we see God’s plan affirmed when in Acts 15 we read that the Jewish leaders of the Jerusalem church, James included, declared that Gentile believers didn’t have to follow the full Mosaic Law to become followers of Jesus. When all of this is put together, what would you expect Paul’s first letter to the Gentile church to say? If you guessed that he would have written about how “a person is not justified by works of the law but through faith in Jesus Christ” (Galatians 2:16) then you would be correct!

Since Paul, part of the Antioch church and preaching to the Gentiles, wrote his first letter to address a central issue with Gentile believers, it seems highly likely that James, a leader of the Jerusalem church, might write his letter to address some issues with the early Jewish believers. The fact that James was writing to Jewish believers is confirmed in James 1:1 where he writes, “To the twelve tribes in the Dispersion.” James’s primary audience was clearly those believers in Jesus Christ who were descendants of the twelve sons of Jacob, the Jews.

The point of knowing this is not so we can dismiss the letter of James because we aren’t Jewish Christians in the first century. It is also not the point that we need a Master’s degree in first-century Jewish customs to understand the letter of James. The point of this is that we know James had a specific audience in mind and thus, it is highly likely, a specific message to deliver. So, if we can see, ever so slightly, how a first-century Jewish Christian might have read James’s letter, we should be able to better understand James’s message than if we had disregarded the original audience. And now, with these starting points, I think we are about ready to embark on a study of the letter of James.

But let me say one last thing before closing this week. In future posts, I may bring in some extra-biblical information to help us better understand James’s audience, but keep in mind that such information, while it may be helpful, is not necessary for us to be able to read and understand scripture. I’m a firm believer that the honest believer studying the Bible who opens themselves up through prayer to the Holy Spirit’s guidance will receive the message God has for them; adding extra-biblical information may add depth and richness, but it should never change the message of the inspired scriptures.

As we sit here some 2,000 years after the scripture was written, under the Spirit’s guidance, we should realize one of the great beauties of God’s inspired word; God’s specific messages to specific people hold universal truths for a universal audience. My hope is that as we see the letter of James through a first-century Jewish mind we will know the truths God gives us through the pen of James.