(00:02) Our topic this evening is saved by works the epistle of James. So we are going to look at one of the I think lesser read you know compared to the gospels anyway. I think people first think of the gospels and and and then the writings of Paul and maybe Acts and Revelation and then there's a whole bunch of other small letters and this is one of them that that um is very very interesting but maybe less um less read than it might be maybe should be.

The Afterlife and Judgment Concepts

(00:37) Um, and it's also a a t text that is sort of at the center of a great debate that happened within western Christianity during the Protestant Reformation. And so it's very interesting for a whole number of reasons and I think you'll you'll see that tonight. One of my favorite shows um that has been on recent shows anyway, relatively recent, is The Good Place, which is a comedy, but it's a philosophical comedy, a comedy that explores a lot of philosophical ideas.

(01:10) And it does so through setting itself in an afterlife. And this afterlife operates on the premise that every action taken by everyone on earth is assigned a certain number of points based on how good or how bad that action is. And so Michael, who is the architect of the good place neighborhood where our heroes are all uh staying, explains the point system.

(01:39) And so he gives a bunch of examples of different things that you can do to gain a certain number of points. So if you um scratch your elbow, that's apparently a good thing. Pet a lamb. It's got a little minor point that you can get. You can get lots of points. You can get 800,000 points here. If you were the person who ended slavery or if you um remember your sister's birthday, you get 15 points and so forth.

(02:06) On the other flip side of it, if you are engaging in sexual harassment, you lose 700 points. If you, you know, do a much more minor sexist thing by telling a woman she should smile more, you'd lose just 50 points. If you ru the opera and you ruin it with your borish behavior, you lose 90 points. If you commit genocide, there's 430,000 points you're losing there.

(02:31) So, um, in other words, there's a bunch of these kinds of things and that's sort of a comedy, right? And so some of these everything that you do that's good you get points for and it depends on how how big the thing is. Um blowing your nose by pressing one nostril down and exhaling you'd lose one point. Okay. So at the end of your Earthlight the points of all of your good actions are tallied against all of your bad actions.

(02:54) And if you have a positive score after the math comes in you're sent to the good place where you will experience paradise for all of eternity. But if your score is negative, you are sent to the bad place where you will be horrifically tortured forever and all of the um bad place demons are constantly talking about the horrible tortures that they are inflicting on the humans that are in the bad place.

(03:23) Um and then they also have a um you know if it just comes down perfectly even which is very rare but apparently sometimes happens then you will get sent to a medium place which is neither paradise nor torture but in some ways as it gets explored as its own kind of torture and so um one one character Mindy Sinclair her points were precisely balanced so she was sent to a medium place so given what's at stake take you know this is like a the internal immortal soul of a hum all human beings.

(04:00) Why wouldn't humans just be told ahead of time that life is a test and the point and they could also be told the point values of every good thing and very very bad action and then you would know essentially what to do and what to avoid doing. But according to the good place that's can't be that can't happen. that can't be allowed to happen because if humans had that knowledge, it would spoil their motivation as a test subject.

(04:31) So they not what the good place is trying to find out is or what I'm sorry what the the cosmos is trying to find out is if you're truly good or truly bad. And if you're truly good then you're being rewarded and if you're truly bad you're not. If you however are simply um trying to earn a reward or trying to escape punishment, that doesn't mean you're good or bad.

(04:51) That just means that you're a mercenary. That means you are um you just want something what's best for yourself. So that that doesn't u merit pun or reward. And so doing something good to avoid punishment, earning a reward that like I say effectively taints your motivations. And so on the good place anyway, once the person becomes aware of the point system, they can no longer earn points for doing good things because the system assumes that you're only doing that to uh earn a reward.

(05:25) So the idea um expressed in this TV show is hardly new. You know, people have been making the case that a person's good and bad actions will be tallied in an afterlife. uh going all the way back to you know the earliest civilizations. And so for example in ancient Egypt one of the very most common um images preserved from papyrie was this u s u image of the person's heart being weighed on a scale by Anubis uh the gods of the dead here.

Historical Conceptions of Divine Weighing

(06:02) And you can see on the one side of the scale is the person's heart that's been removed as part of the mummification process. and it's being weighed against a feather of mott. And so if your heart has been weighed down and made heavy with sin, then it's going to outweigh uh this feather, you're going to be judged as a person who was a sinful and not worthy of um eternal life in the in the good place.

(06:33) essentially the Egyptian ancient Egyptian divine equivalent of the good place. And so instead, the goddess Amit will be allowed to devour uh your heart and that will permanently destroy the soul. So you actually don't have um eternal punishment. You just have oblivion. So that same artistic motif uh known as psychostasia, the weighing of souls, you know, that continues to be drawn.

(07:02) You can see, it's a little harder to see on this painting, but it's Michael the Archangel is holding a set of scales, and you can see there are two souls of the dead represented as nude people um in the scales as they're being weighed to see once again if um you know, weighing their sins, whether they're going to go to heaven or hell.

(07:27) And so this is one of the symbols of judgment day in Christian um paintings and other kinds of um Christian imagery. And many Christians I think have a sense that when they you know they're imagining their afterlife that that will involve being judged according to actions whether they've done enough good things or they've done too many bad things.

Cultural Tropes of Judgment

(07:53) And that judgment then will determine whether they make it into heaven or whether they are sent to hell. And mostly everybody who's surveyed um who believes in this um tends to think that they're going to heaven. So although usually in all um um art and movies and things like that like the good place well I won't spoil the good place but like um like like the South Park movie almost everybody uh actually goes to hell according to the um anyway according to movies and literature like that. Um, so I think that this this

(08:32) general vernacular sense of of of heaven and hell and getting judged by your actions and things like that that um ends up you know being expressed in all kinds of different ways but one of them is the sort of cartoons of St. Peter at the gates, which I'm calling, I guess, like a trope or a meme, although they predate, it's a kind of a cartoon that predates memes.

(08:54) And so, you know, we have Peter who is uh watching a person recently deceased and they're telling them whether you usually they're not they're not going to make it in or something like that. And so in the case here, the one guy, he says, "Well, yeah, you were a believer, but you skipped the part about uh I'm sorry, you skipped the not being a jerk about it part.

(09:14) " And so that's a problem. Um that Peter maybe is not going to let that guy in. And this other one from the New Yorker, uh Peter saying, you know, that stupid thing you did at a party, I'm sorry, you said at a party when you were in your 20s, uh that you then thought made everyone hate you and it kept you up at night for years after.

(09:33) Well, you are right to be concerned about that. So they may be keeping that person out. So again, the idea here underlying these jokes is this kind of general sense that Peter's at the is expressing that he's at these gates as a gatekeeper and he's got a book of all of your life's deeds. And if there's too many bad things that you've done, like being a jerk or whatever, that means you're not going to make it in through the perily gates of heaven.

(09:59) So if this vernacular understanding of Christianity is true, you know, what about that question of flawed or mercenary motivations raised in the good place? So in other words, if you know that you're going to be punished eternally for bad actions, but rewarded for good, isn't your motivation then going to be mercenary? That is to say, you're just trying to earn a reward or avoid a punishment rather than having a true desire to be and to do good.

(10:35) So, it turns out that Christian theologians have actually put a lot of thought into the issue of motivations. And contrary to the St. Peter at the pearly gates meme. Access to heaven in orthodox Christianity is not like the point system of the good place. Um it's much more complicated as as you might imagine in the same way that whenever we tried to uh define the trinity it turns out that that's quite complicated.

The Reformation Debate on Works

Purgatory and Indulgences in the Reformation

(11:04) So the question of being judged by your actions which um are called works in the kind of medieval or early modern shorthand of the theological debates of the 16th century judged by works in other words judged by good and bad actions that became very central to a theological debate that was happening in the 16th century.

Luther's Scriptural Revolution

Luther and the Doctrine of Faith Alone

(11:29) theism within the western or Latin church known as the Protestant Reformation. And so Martin Luther um one of the obviously the foremost leader of the reformation promoted the idea that sinners and everyone's a sinner sinners are all forgiven by faith alone. That is to say solid in Latin by faith alone. In other words, without any consideration of their actions, the works they did, good or bad, that they do in life.

(12:03) So that is um sort of wildly out of step with either the good place or people sort of think of when they're thinking of all the bad things they do and whether that's going to let them get past St. Peter. So no, it's by faith alone are you uh justified and you're saved by grace alone. um that is to say an infinite gift that God gives not um by anything that you are earning.

(12:29) Uh so your motivations should not be that way in terms of mercenary. So where is that coming from? So throughout the middle ages the western western church Latin Christendom had elaborated an idea that prior to anybody getting into heaven in the afterlife the soul of the deceased person would need to go to a kind of middle place as the terminology is in the TV show.

Medieval Traditions: Purgatory and Intercession

(12:55) That middle place being purgatory. And purgatory means the place wherein your um your the deceased soul is purged of the different sins they've committed in life. And that's not going to be a pleasant process, but it has the advantage over over hell, an eternal punishment because um because there is improvement.

(13:22) So whereas the um uh you know whereas hell the punishment is eternal and nobody's getting any better from it. It's just simply an ongoing thing. Um the people who are ultimately destined to make it into heaven um nevertheless need to have um you know punishment that is actually efficacious that is actually improving them as they then are more more and more purged of sin and purified and can then stand to be in the presence of uh the eternal.

(13:55) So that with that within that conception of a afterlife with a purgatory that is very much immortalized in and elaborated in uh in Dante's Divine Comedy. Um certain acts that you can do on earth, either you or your heirs, are said to reduce the amount of time that a soul needed to be in purgatory to um to make its way uh through and purge out a certain kind of sin.

(14:27) So, for example, very early on in the middle ages, one of the ways u that you might be um able to get through get somebody through purgatory a lot faster is um you know go to the intercessors. So in the early middle ages and central middle ages especially um the real focus of Christianity in the west and in the east both was on um communities who had committed to live a fully um separated life.

(15:00) monks and nuns who are not going out into the world and being part of the world but are instead um only focusing on uh spiritual practices um taking vows of poverty um uh and also focusing on on prayer and uh the the reading in scripture the the copying of texts and all the other good things. And so um as they are praying, as they are saying masses and things like that, what thing you might do for on behalf of let's say your father who died and maybe was a a very rich u knight but had done some pretty awful things in war some of the time and maybe you're worried that

(15:41) you know he's his soul is going to be in a little bit of trouble. um you might commission let's say the monks of the nearby abbey to say 200 masses on behalf of your father's soul. And so that's a way to essentially get potentially you that intercession where monks, you know, you don't maybe have it in as good with the person upstairs with God because of again you um you're not focused on that.

(16:09) You're focused on material world and day-to-day life. the monks are focused on that. Um, God probably listens to them a little bit more in your evaluation. And so if they are specifically praying on behalf of your dad, that maybe is going to help this whole purggation process. So another um way to do this as heirs of St.

(16:29) Peter, the bishops of Rome, the popes um claimed especially as of the Gregorian reform in the middle ages uh lots of authority to be the vicers of Christ on earth. And among the privileges um uh that they had as key as as the people holding the keys to seal and unseal is the authority to grant indulgences that would shave off time in purgatory in return for certain actions that you might do on earth.

Indulgences and Institutional Criticism

(17:00) And so one of those examples for for the living would be um every so often a pope would declare a jubilee year in the city of Rome and everyone in Christendom if they made a special pilgrimage to Rome. um they would have um an indulgence, a plenary indulgence given to them that would as they repent um also, you know, help them through purgatory, shaving off some time as you're in purgatory.

(17:30) um kind of famously um in response to uh the um holy war between religions, the jihad versus crusaders. Um Christianity didn't originally have an idea of of holy war but developed it. And part of that is based on an armed pilgrimage where um where that armed pilgrimage of the crusader also results in an indulgence and so forth.

(17:58) And that became one of the again papal powers since the papy controlled the ability to call those holy wars. You know, of course, not everybody could go on a pilgrimage. Not everybody is a knight who could um go on a crusade, but they might be able to give somebody money so that they could go on their behalf.

(18:22) So, um maybe you get you're able to support somebody else to go on the jubilee for you and the fact that that good work happened. Well, maybe you deserve some of the um indulgence that is resulted from that. And so that kind of equation over time ultimately made indulgences a fungable commodity. In other words, something that you could essentially pay money for.

(18:50) And so um because of the constant need of the papacy for uh to generate income um as a as a major institution that had uh that was relatively poor in terms of land compared to um other like great monarchies that had you know whole nations that they were able to tax and so forth. Um and so uh selling indulgences had become a pretty serious abuse by the Protestant Reformation by the 16th century and you know even in the ultimately in the counterreformation and later um uh the half of the sism that remained Catholic also you know recognized that well this the way this

(19:30) had had evolved and was done wasn't was an abuse. uh but they just simply argue that the solution to that was not you know uh a sism and founding separate churches or or separating from uh the Catholic communion but in any event this is something that um nobody's particularly proud of anymore. So in the middle of the abuse um the reformers like Martin Luther began to question the very theology on which indulgences are based.

(20:02) And so, for example, he had a a lot of study of the Bible, which was now much more accessible than it ever had been because of the development of the printing press. And he kind of pointed out, as many who were reading the Bible now, that purgatory itself is not mentioned in the Bible. Indulgences aren't mentioned in the Bible.

(20:23) A lot of this um a lot of this ideas that had evolved and were taken for granted by Christians uh at the beginning of the early modern period is in fact you know not biblical. It's things that ideas that had evolved over the many centuries of Christianity's existence. Luther changes how Christianity works and it's hard for us to even um think of what Christianity was actually like before.

(20:50) um and because of if we're experienced with how it is now, which is I think almost everybody thinks of um Christianity as being fully focused on the Bible, but this was less true before Luther put so much emphasis on scripture. So previously um authority in Christrysendom was understood as having four-fold uh pillars and so scripture was certainly one of the pillars upon which the authority of the church rested.

(21:23) But in addition to that there was the authority of apostolic succession which is the belief anyway that the first apostles had been appointed by Jesus that the apostles in turn appointed bishops as their successors and the bishops had continued in a line that uh dates down to us today. So the tradition the I'm sorry the authority of apostolic succession.

(21:48) Um there's also the authority of tradition. So the church has been doing a thing because it's doing that and that's the way it's been always been done that that also is how it should be done and it's an authoritative thing. And then also when we're finding um let's say a complicated reading in scripture where scripture is telling us something that we're like well what is that supposed to mean or that seems opposite to how we operate things in Christianity today.

(22:19) We also had as a source of authority the church fathers that is to say the earliest Christian writers outside of the Bible often who had very long commentaries on uh biblical texts which allow people to um make sense of things or to explain that verse um let's say a particularly problematic verse to explain that one um allegorically or even how you know like a way to understand things maybe as as saying the opposite of what they kind of said if read literally and so forth.

(22:52) So the apostolic fathers, the church fathers helping um you know make uh you know sand off the rough edges of some of the scripture. And so as um Luther got rid of all of that and instead had scripture as the sole source of authority, soulless scriptor, that emphasized the Bible all the more and made it incredibly important and very authoritative.

Theological Tensions: Faith vs. Works

The Conflict: Paul vs. James on Mosaic Law

(23:20) And as Luther then was studying the Bible and in particular the writings of Paul, he enunciated this additional doctrine of solid that is to say by faith alone. So the apostle Paul as we always note is the earliest Christian whose texts survive and he was writing at a moment when Christianity was first emerging as a new religion having previously been a sect of second temple Judaism.

(23:52) Paul is writing before even people are commonly using the name Christian and and certainly um they're only have only beginning at this point to think of themselves as as not Jewish or something other than Jews. Paul is part of an intense debate over whether converts to this new faith who do not have any Jewish background.

(24:17) So people who are termed Gentiles in the Bible just is a Latin word for people of the nations. That is to say people who are not Jewish. But when they convert to Christianity, do they need to adhere to Mosaic law the way that all of the previous Christians had done being themselves Jewish or not? And so in Galatians on this topic in his letter to the Galatians, Paul says um uh actually in a conversation to uh Peter, he says, "We ourselves are Jews by birth and not Gentile sinners.

(24:58) Yet we know that a person is justified not by the works of the law but through the faith of Jesus Christ." So justification here is not by works but by faith. And Paul says something very similar in his epistle to the Romans. He's saying to the Christian community there, we hold that a person is justified by faith apart from works proscribed by the law.

(25:29) So for Paul then sinners achieve justification which is to say the declaration from God that they've been pardoned. Everyone's a sinner but now that has that sin has been pardoned and but God has declared you righteous and that occurs not by the works of the law but through the faith that you have in Jesus Christ or in other words by faith apart from works.

(25:57) So as Martin Luther is making his own translation of the Bible into German, he then also he takes that he loves those two sections of Paul, but he also puts his thumb on the scale of the translation by adding the word align uh which is alone in German to Paul's statement in Romans 3:28 that I just quoted.

(26:24) And so in Luther's translation translated into English, it writes, "Man is justified through faith alone." So not by works but through faith alone. And so he adds that word faith alone. Solid, which is his his um doctrine that he has um enunciated. So when Luther's opponents cried foul that he's actually changing the Bible, he does admit, look, I know very well that the word solle, which is alone in Latin, that's not in the Greek or the Latin text.

(26:56) It's a fact that these four letters s o l a sol in Latin alone. They're not there. Nevertheless, Luther argued that his addition of the word align alone was necessary to render the clear sense of Paul's statement in the German language. So he says at the same time it belongs there if the translation is to be clear and vigorous.

(27:22) I wanted to speak German not Latin or Greek since it was German that I had undertaken to speak in the translation. But it's the nature of our German language that in speaking of two things, one of which is fir affirmed and the other is denied that we use the word solemn. We use the word alone along with the German word for not ne or kind no.

(27:45) So for example, we say the farmer brings a line grain and kind money. So he brings only grain and no money. So he anyway argues that in German anyway you do need to put the word alone in order to make uh sense in the German construction. So whether everybody agreed with him or not that's what his his excuse was.

(28:08) So I'd say though that this is actually a problem that's inherent with soloulless scriptor. In other words, if you knock down all other sources of authority, then you get run into trouble when you find out, well, what if scripture in one of its many verses and its contradictions and so forth. What if scripture says something you don't want it to say? So, like I said, if the church fathers are authoritative, then we can look at how they explained this or that problem with an individual text and that will allow us to um, you know, get past it. and barring that tradition

(28:42) could be cited as an authoritative guide for why we don't we don't follow that particular thing despite the fact that it's technically in the Bible. So given the temptation for scriptural authoritarians in other words someone who do see scripture as solely and uniquely authoritative to then want to improve um positive texts.

(29:08) So these these are things that Paul said that are actually speaking to Luther, but he just wants them to be a little better. What's the response that such a person would have to texts that argue against your preferred ideology? So Martin Luther was faced with that very problem in confronting the Epistle of James, which seems to take a polar opposite position on faith and works from Paul's position.

The Counter-Argument in the Epistle of James

(29:35) So for example, if we read in James chapter 2, what good is it, my brothers and sisters, if someone claims to have faith but does not have works? Surely that faith cannot save, can it? If a brother and sister is naked and lacks daily food, and one of you says to them, "Go in peace, keep warm, and eat your fill.

(30:01) " and yet you do not supply their bodily needs. What is the good of that? So faith by itself if it has no works is dead. Well, someone will say you well you have faith and I have works. I say show me your faith apart from works and I by my works will show you faith. You believe that God is one. Oh well that's great.

(30:28) You do well. Guess what? Even the demons believe that and they shudder. So you know that demons understand that God's one. They have faith in that sense then. Do you want to be shown you senseless person that faith apart from works is worthless? Well, here's some examples from scripture.

(30:48) Was not our ancestor Abraham justified by works when he offered his son Isaac on the altar? You see that faith was active along with his works and by works faith was brought to completion. Thus the scripture Genesis in that place says Abraham believed God and it was reckoned to him as righteousness and he was called the friend of God.

(31:14) So you see that a person is justified by the works and not by faith alone. Likewise, was not Rahab, the prostitute, the person who helped the Israelites defeat uh the city of Jericho when they begin their uh entry into the promised land. Was not Rahab also justified by works when she welcomed the messengers and sent them out by another road? For just as the body without the spirit is dead, so faith without works is also dead.

(31:51) So um throughout this whole thing, only not only scripturally but um just from a common sense standpoint, the Epistle of James here, the author of James makes a pretty strong counterargument um that justification occurs by faith fully apart from anything that you might might do. Um, so what does Luther do? So Luther's response is to attack the epistle of James. So he derides it.

Luther's Rejection of James

(32:17) He says this is just an epistle of straw. He argues contrary tradition that it's probably not the work of an apostle. He denies that the author is the traditional um James that we think of, James the just, the brother of Jesus. And he also quipped, I almost feel like throwing Jimmy on the stove. So using in German jeekal a common dimminative for Jacob um you know which is like these words Jacob is rendered in the New Testament anyway in English as James and so Jimmy would be the equivalent of that.

(32:52) So in other words he wants to throw it out of the Bible and Luther did contemplate removing James from his translation of the Bible. Um Luther and the Protestants ultimately removed a whole bunch of texts from uh the Christian Old Testament uh because they were not part of the canon of uh the rabbitic Judaism's Bible, the Hebrew Bible.

(33:18) Um and so because they are part of the it'd always been part of the Christian Old Testament, the Septuagent um and the rabbitic Old Testament cannon was created later. um not all of those texts made it into rabbitic Judaism's scripture. And so um Protestants decided, well, we'll take the extra books and we will call them the Apocrypha and we essentially move them out of the Old Testament or put them in a special place in the Old Testament.

(33:43) And Luther contemplated doing the same thing for the books of Hebrews, Jude, and the book of Revelation um and they along with James. But ultimately he decided not to do that. Um ultimately he decided um even especially with revelation that he found a way to read that that um that he then really liked and it became um more important again in Protestantism.

(34:11) Um so we let's look at this really interesting book a book that nearly became part of a section of the Protestant New Testament Apocrypha. I think one thing that probably um all of you who are already um if you listen to a bunch of our lectures or you just even listened to um what we're talking about here um there is a little bit already of a disconnect that we have between this idea of of actions and also motivations for actions and what both Paul especially but also James are talking about which are not simply um I

(34:52) think the way it's being argued in early modern theology about just the idea between faith and actions. But Paul is very specifically talking about actions in terms of obedience to Mosaic law. Do you still need to obey a Mosaic law or not? and uh and so that is the fact that that is um a very particular thing is not being entirely understood or read properly um in early modern example and so I think this one of the reasons why this is a confused ends up being a little bit of a confused debate.

The Identity of "James"

Authorship and Identity of James

(35:30) So let's look at James starting with the name James. So I mentioned in most English translations of the New Testament, we use the name James to um represent the Greek Yakabus, which is the same name that English translates from the Old Testament Hebrew uh Yakov as Jacob. And so Jacob in the Old Testament, that's the same word as James in the New Testament.

(36:01) And we have the same thing for all of our New Testament and Old Testament names because um the convention in English anyway was to translate um you know from Hebrew into uh into English and therefore preserve a more Hebrew understanding or version of the of the Old Testament name and then obviously the New Testament is written in Greek and so to translate from that and to not then have a equivalent name even if it's essentially the same name if you were to just have translated did the whole thing from the the Septuagent from the Greek

(36:32) Old Testament. Um they would have you know the Old Testament figure would have been Jesus not Joshua or James not Jacob in the Old Testament times and just because of um you know the Latin here is is Jacob. Um in English we use Jacobin or Jacobite as an adjective meaning related to James.

(36:57) But um Jacobins and Jacobites are also have a bunch of different meanings because of um both the uh uh the alternate line of uh of pretenders to the crown uh Bonnie Prince Charlie and all the the uh the Jacobins and then Jacobites also has a meaning of um uh you know peasants and things like that and and French revolutionaries and things like that and so but in any event when we're going to say Jacob been or or Jamesian or Jacobite here we're relating to James and the church of James.

(37:32) So when we're talking about an epistle of James it turns out that there are many many Jameses in the Old Testament. It's a very common name. Um and so we have on the list of the 12 apostles in Mark and uh and the other synoptics James the son of Zebedee and James the son of Alfaas. And then there is an additional character James the brother of Jesus often sometimes called James the just.

Historical and Scriptural Evidence of James the Just

(38:01) And so just is a term that he gets that's sometimes also translated James the righteous. and it means righteous in zeal for the law is where that um epithet comes from. So um because um James son of Zebedee is seen as like the foremost apostle in the later tradition of the twelves. This is the James that um whose shrine is in at the end of the great pilgrimage route in uh north western Spain. Santiago, St.

(38:35) Yago, St. James the greater. So he's called James the greater. Um and then other James's are called James the less. And so both James the son of Alfaas and also James the just are sometimes called James the less. And so it's not clear if actually James the less isn't a third James.

(38:57) Um but in any event this is the um several of the James's that we have in the uh New Testament. According to tradition, the Apostle of James is composed by Jesus's brother James. So James the Just is the traditional author of this letter. Although even though that's the tradition that eventually uh was agreed to, not all church fathers um initially agreed.

(39:21) And so some of them did not believe that the epistle had in fact been written by James the brother of Jesus. So, one of her important uh writers by the time we get to the 4th century, Ucius, who's essentially the first writer who really tries to work out a history of Christianity, writes concerning the epistle of James, you know, it's to be observed that this text is disputed and at least not many of the ancients mentioned it.

(39:49) So when he's looking back last three centuries and at the writings of the church fathers, they're not actually quoting from it or even aware of it. As is the case likewise with the epistle that bears the name of Jude, which is also one of the seven so-called Catholic epistles, that is to say general epistles people um by different early Christian writers who are writing to the church at large.

(40:12) Nevertheless, we know that these also with the rest have been read publicly in very many churches. So, you know, they're disputed. Lots of people consider the scripture, but lots of people don't know about it, don't use it, and a lot of the earliest sources are not aware of it. And he's not wrong. So, there's no explicit usage or mention of James by some of the earliest fathers, that is to say, the ones that are called the apostolic fathers, nor is he used by a lot of the writers in the west, Tertellian, Arnaeus, Cyprien.

(40:44) um the very first clear references to James are found in the writings of origin and that's already getting us into the 3rd century and then because of the popularity of origin and uh so on and the text gained more and more use until as Jerome um later says it sort of started getting used then it was used more until finally it was sort of made its way into the canon.

(41:10) one of the last books though to be added into the cannon along with like Jude and Revelation which are again among the uh books that Luther was considering pulling out of the cannon for the Protestants anyway. So the historicity of James the just is multiply attested. So um James the brother of Jesus as an early Christian leader of the first generation is one of the few ones that we can um say pretty definitively is a historical person.

(41:38) So Paul reports that he himself met James and he describes him as an acknowledged pillar or leader of the church and also he is the leader in Paul's letters of this protochristian church that is still meeting in Jerusalem that's still gathered in Jerusalem and has presumably been there since um Jesus's execution.

(42:03) Um this is sometimes given the shorthand we think the poor of Jerusalem and um Paul talks about as he's writing to his different congregations and he's talking about trying to essentially um have good relations with this group he is taking up a set of donations on behalf of the poor of Jerusalem. So James's leadership of the church in Jerusalem is confirmed by the book of Acts of the Apostles.

(42:35) So a different source. And finally, he is one of the very few figures in early Christianity that is attested by Josephus along with John the Baptist in a passage unlike the one about Jesus that is um is generally everyone agrees is is um authentic without any kind of Christian interpolation. So in Josephus, Josephus then being a um a Jewish uh Roman uh historian, one of our major I mean our essentially our most important source for um the context of second temple Judaism.

The Council of Jerusalem and the Mosaic Law

(43:14) He writes a number of books at the end of the first century including antiquities of the Jews where he narrates a story about the execution of somebody he calls James the brother of Jesus who is called the Christ. I'm sorry who is called Christ. And he writes it really as an illustration of the unstable political situation at the time in Judea.

(43:37) So this younger Ananas he says who as we have told you already took the high priesthood. So in other words the high priest of Jerusalem Ananas the younger was a bold man in his temper and also very insolent. He was also of the sect of the Sadducees who are very rigid in judging offenders above all the rest of the Jews as we've already observed.

(44:05) When therefore Ananas was of this disposition, he thought he now had a proper opportunity. So Fesus who had been the Roman procurator of Judea, the governor essentially Fesus was dead and Albinus the new procurator who had been appointed by the emperor was not actually uh arrived yet. He was on the road.

(44:29) So Ananas assembled the Sanhedrin of judges, that is to say, the Jerusalem council, and brought before them the brother of Jesus, Jesus who was called Christ, whose name was James, and some others. And when he'd formed an accusation against them as breakers of the law, he delivered them to be stoned. But as for those who seemed the most equitable of citizens, such as the were the most uneasy at the breach of laws, they disliked what was done.

(44:59) So in this telling, the high priest, Ananis, he sees James as someone he prefers to get rid of. And so when he has this opportunity, this brief resppite from direct Roman administration. So the procurators died and the new procurator hasn't come out there yet. So he uses a pretext to execute him and some of his friends and um Josephus more or less says well that action wasn't popular.

(45:24) Um he's not a supporter of this anonymous the younger and his rule um in himself as Josephus. So in telling this little story James is not important to Josephus per se. He's simply using this to illustrate the political opportunist of Ananas. So, in other words, this is not something that a Christian would add and tell the story this way as interpolation um because it doesn't quite match the the Christian version of the execution anyway.

(45:58) And Josephus does not credit the claim that Jesus brother was Jesus, I'm sorry, of Jesus was the Christ. So, he identifies him as Jesus who is called Christ because of course there's lots of people named Jesus. And so presumably, in other words, um, uh, you know, Josephus knows that that's the the common appellation of this particular Jesus, you know, as opposed to Jesus some other Jesus.

(46:23) Um, but he doesn't credit it. He doesn't think he's the Christ. And so he says he's called Christ. And so again, this seems to identify James as leading this group in Jerusalem. Anyway, he's in Jerusalem anyway when he's executed by the high priest. Jesus rises to the attention of uh the high priest and the Sanhedrin.

(46:43) The book of acts similarly portrays James as the leader of the Christian community in Jerusalem and in its telling of the council of Jerusalem uh story James is the one who is called upon to render the decision. So he's the leader not Peter. The question that comes before the council is whether gentile converts to Christianity need to obey the law of Moses.

(47:10) And at its conclusion, James stands up and says, "I have reached the decision that we should not trouble those Gentiles who are turning to God." So in other words, they don't have to do all these Mosaic law things, but we should write to them to abstain only from things polluted by idols and from sexual immorality and from what has what has been strangled from blood.

(47:34) So a very particular umly limited way of keeping kosher. You have to wait just how you're butchering food animals. But um and this is an interesting um this is an interesting tradition that's preserved in Acts because this differs from um what the idea is of the compromise in Paul's own telling and it also differs from Paul's teachings about um things polluted by idols for example.

(48:01) So um so the idea here is that uh almost all meat in uh Greco Roman cities has been part of some ritual sacrifice to a god. And uh in his letters um Paul is asked by former um former pagans who have converted to Christianity, what should they do about it? Is it okay for them to eat meat that has been part of a pagan ritual like this? a ritual honoring the old gods.

(48:32) And Paul has a lot of very pragmatic um answers to that, which is in part, you know, you're going around to the market, just don't don't ask, don't tell, don't worry about where this where this comes from. On the other hand, if you go to um if if you are if you're seen to be doing this and eating this meat and that's causing your um your fellow Christian who was formerly a pagan to think, oh well, you're still trying to honor uh Apollo or series or whoever um whichever god, well then you're harming them, so then you shouldn't do it. Or if you're at dinner

(49:04) and somebody who is uh sort of trying to do a gotcha on the Christian says, "Oh, wasn't that u pot roast great?" And then and then you say, "Oh, it was wonderful." And then they say, "Oh, but you ate something that was, you know, sacrificed to Zeus. Haha. You proving that you believe in Zeus or whatever." Then he says, "Okay, well then don't let them play gotcha like that.

(49:24) Then don't eat it anymore." You know, that kind of thing. So in other words, it's generally, but otherwise, we don't don't worry about it because we know that none of these gods are real anyway, so it doesn't really matter. So that's different from this um um idea in Acts where it's saying that that you have to actually just just a blanket prohibition um abstain from things polluted from idols and so forth.

(49:45) Um in terms of uh traditions about James from multiple attestations, multiple sources, the gospel of Thomas preserves a particularly strong tradition of James claim to uh leadership after Jesus. So uh the disciples in saying 12 asked Jesus, we know that you will depart from us who is to be our leader.

(50:10) And Jesus said to them, wherever you are, you are to go to James the just for whose sake heaven and earth came into being. So James has some cosmic um importance in this saying the same way that presumably John the Baptist had had and also certainly Jesus has. And odd thing about this is because Thomas um so Thomas develops presumably in different uh layers and stages as a compilation.

(50:40) And as time goes on, it includes anyway maybe most scholars anyways think of the kind of the protognostic sayings as maybe being the later uh additions and those sayings um that relate more to gnosticism or could be read as gnostic. Gnostic communities um don't really emphasize James at all. James is um is usually actually a little bit antagonistic or presented as an antagonistic authority to gnosticism as opposed to um apostles like uh Thomas like Mary Magdalene and even as we saw recently in a lecture the gospel of

(51:17) Judas and so it's thought then that this particular saying in favor of the authority of James the just may be a an especially old saying that's embedded within this collection. So in Paul's writings, which is what certainly is the earliest for sure anyway that we have in terms of a um a text about James, Paul wrote a heated letter to the Christian communities he'd planted in Galatia, a region in central Anatolia, Asia Minor.

(51:52) Because this community has subsequently become influenced by a another group of apostles. Apostles who are somehow, you know, kind of set up the set themselves up in rivalry to Paul and who teach contrary to Paul's understanding that all Christians, whether they have a Jewish background or a Gentile background, all of them need to adhere to Mosaic law.

Paul's Account of the Conflict

(52:17) And those apostles have been teaching that to the Galatians. And so Paul is really mad and he's uh he's essentially telling the Galatians, "You stupid Galatians at some point or other, why why are you believing all of these things when I'm the one who taught you all the truth to begin with? So why are you turning away from that?" In his letter um as part of the background, Paul recounts his version of the meeting that Acts later portrayed as that council of Jerusalem where James um issued that compromise, that compromise about not eating food polluted by idols,

(52:50) but we don't have to worry about most of the rest of Mosaic law other than don't eat meat that's been strangled and so forth. So then Paul writes, "Then after 14 years after his conversion, I went up again to Jerusalem with Barnabas, one of his companions, taking Titus and other of his regular companions along with me.

(53:12) I went up in response to a revelation." So nobody made me go other than God. Then I laid before them, the people, the leaders who were in Jerusalem, though only in a private meeting with the acknowledged leaders. I laid before them the gospel that I proclaim among the Gentiles in order to make sure so they can make sure that I was not running or had run not run in vain.

(53:38) And even Titus who is with me, he wasn't compelled to be circumcised even though he's Greek. So in other words, I went to Jerusalem. I met with the acknowledged leaders. They were worried about what things I was teaching all these new gentile converts they had. I explained it all to them and they were all fine. And I even had my companion, a gentile Christian who is not obeying the law of Moses, he was there and he got full fellowship.

(54:02) So that that part went well. But he says because of false brothers and sisters secretly brought in who had slipped in to spy on the freedom that we have in Christ Jesus so that they might enslave us. Uh we did not submit to them even for a moment so that the truth of the gospel might always remain with you.

(54:22) So there were some informants that had um uh did not like how Paul is is leading churches up in Syria who have come down now and testified against them. Uh and they are trying to u enslave them is what Paul is saying. Enslave people by making them go back to obeying Mosaic law.

(54:46) And from those who were supposed to be acknowledged leaders, what they actually were makes no difference to me. God shows no partiality. Those leaders contributed nothing to me. On the contrary, when I saw that I had been entrusted with the gospel for the uncircumcised, so I've been given a special mission to go to the Gentiles, just as Peter had been entrusted with the gospel for the circumcised for people who are in the Israelite community, um, Judeans and Samaritans.

(55:17) For God worked through he who worked through Peter, making him an apostle to the circumcised also worked through me and sending me to the Gentiles. So he's setting himself up as um a pillar side by side with Peter. Each one of them having a special mission. And then when James and Cphus, Peter and John, who were the acknowledged pillars, recognized the grace that had been given to me, they gave Barnabas and me the right hand of fellowship, agreeing that we should go to the Gentiles and they to the circumcised. And they asked only one

(55:52) thing, that we remember the poor, which is what we were I was actually eager to do. So, so Paul's understanding is it's perfectly fine for him to um to go and preach his the gospel the way he understands it to Gentiles and have them convert to Christianity without the need for any of them to obey Mosaic law.

(56:15) um and and as a sweetener or whatever, he will also ask them um to ma remember the poor of Jerusalem, give contributions to this mendicant community that has um given away all their property and is now focused entirely on lives of of voluntary poverty, lives of of prayer and so forth. Um, and so again, he acknowledges that James and Peter and John are the acknowledged leaders, but he himself says,"Well, you know, that's what people say, but I only care what God says.

(56:47) " So, it's not he doesn't really recognize their authority. And nevertheless, while having this dispute about whether the gentile converts need to observe Mosaic law, Paul does believe he's secured agreement to his position. But and and the proof of that agreement is that Titus, this Greek gentile Christian with no Jewish background, thus was not circumcised, which is the sign of course of adherence to Mosaic law for males.

Tensions Over Table Fellowship

(57:13) Anyway, um that he had been given full fellowship by these leaders. Nevertheless, um James and his Jewish Christian followers continued themselves to adhere to Mosaic law, including dietary rules. And those dietary rules include the fact that if you're not if you're following them, if you're keeping kosher, you're not able to share meals with people um who aren't because that could cause you to have um you know ritual impurity, involuntary impurity, breaking the law.

Analyzing the Epistle's Composition

(57:47) So this led to new problems. And so as Paul tells the story as he goes on, he says, "When Cephus, when Peter came to Antioch, the capital of Syria, which has been the home base for these churches, I I Paul opposed him to his face, because he stood self- condemned. For until certain people came from James, he used to eat with the Gentiles.

(58:12) But after that they came, he came back and he kept himself separate for fear of the circumcision faction, the faction who believes that um we need to keep maintaining the law. And other Jews joined him in this hypocrisy. So that even Barnabas, my own companion, uh companion that has the Jewish background, was led astray by their hypocrisy.

(58:38) So Paul maybe here if we try to read between the lines of what's going on he maybe seems to have understood James agreement to mean that Christians in general no longer needed to adhere to Mosaic law meaning that he Paul and other Christians with Jewish background like Peter and Barnabas they could now share meals with gentile Christians.

(58:59) Christ has fulfilled the law. No one needs to literally maintain ritual purity anymore. we don't need to keep kosher any longer. And that's what the understanding he says was. And he says anyway that he he and Barnabas and Peter were already doing that until James sent some people to Antioch who said, "No, no, no, that's not how it's to be.

(59:21) " James sent the apostles um to this mixed community and with uh it's saying probably saying it's permitted of course for the gentile Christians to disregard the law. That's what our agreement is. But Jewish Christians still need to adhere to it. And so the problem with this practically is that makes shared meals including u agape meals but also including communion which is becoming the central practice of the Christian community that makes it impossible.

(59:53) And so just from a um a practical standpoint, this is not an idea that's going to work, but that's seems to be where um they're coming down on at this point. And this is again James's position. So this caused both Peter and Paul's companion, Barnabas, to pre repent of the previous practice, what Paul and they had all been doing.

(1:00:18) And so this makes Paul so mad. He calls Peter a hypocrite to his face in public, explaining his position using those verses that we already quoted that Martin Luther found so compelling. So pe Paul says when I saw that they Barnabas and Peter were not acting consistently with the truth of the gospel as I understand it.

(1:00:44) I said to Cephus to Peter before them all if you though a Jew live like a Gentile and not like a Jew how can you compel the Gentiles to live like Jews? So, so Peter has been not keeping kosher and and yet now he's going back to keeping kosher and he's trying to make uh compelling Gentiles to live that way too.

(1:01:07) We ourselves are Jews by birth and not Gentile sinners. Yet we know a person is justified not by works of the law but through faith of Jesus Christ. So this is again that not by works but through faith thing that um is one of the two quotes of Paul that Luther latched on to. And we have come to believe in Christ Jesus so that we might be justified by the faith of Christ and not by doing the works of the law because no one will be justified by the works of the law.

(1:01:40) So interestingly then Paul outlines his thinking that a person is justified faith and not by works. Um, obviously it's very clear that every time he says it, he's not just talking about all good and bad acts. He's actually specifically talking about the law and adhering to the law. And what's also very interesting though is that this very passage um that inspires uh this debate, this passage that inspires uh Martin Luther later um it's also associated with the historical James who is the key leader in Paul's understanding who has

(1:02:18) uh taken up the opposite position from Paul. So, you know, the existence of an important historical leader who has the same name, James, who Paul argues against when he's developing his own ideas about justification by faith and not by works. And then the existence of an early Christian text that claims to be written by somebody named James, which seems to make the opposite point from Paul.

(1:02:47) So that really makes it tempting to identify uh James the just as James the author of the epistle of James. So unlike the gospels and acts and the epistle to Hebrews which all of which are written anonymously um the names that are attached to the gospels Mark uh Matthew, Luke and John are uh identified by by later Christians in the second century.

(1:03:17) And so um same thing Acts is also written by the same anonymous author who wrote Luke. The Epistle to the Hebrews is by a first century very brilliant um Christian writer but it's not known who that person is. It was initially thought to have been written by Paul but it's clearly not and nor does it claim to be unlike some of the other letters that are claimed to be written by Paul but weren't.

(1:03:41) Um the Epistle of James is not anonymous. It begins with a salutation that names the author. It says in right the beginning, James, a servant of God and of the Lord Jesus Christ to the 12 tribes in the dispersion. Greetings, my brothers and sisters, whenever you face various trials, consider it all joy because you know that the testing of your faith produces endurance.

(1:04:12) So, you know, just identifying here himself here as a servant of Jesus Christ and of God. Um, you know, James doesn't give any further descriptions of his identity. He doesn't say James the brother of the Lord Jesus or James the just in none of those things. He is just humbly calling himself James a servant.

(1:04:33) In this sense, um, the author of James is a little bit more like the author of the book of Revelation, who simply identifies himself as John. He calls himself a servant again of Jesus Christ. And he mentions that he's had a vision, a revelation while he is on the island of Patmos. So he doesn't claim anywhere that he is the apostle John or that he is John the beloved.

(1:04:59) And indeed when he later talks about the twel apostles um in his revelation he doesn't consider he doesn't mention oh and I'm I was there watching among them because I'm one of the twel apostles or anything like that. There's no sense of that with the John who wrote the book of revelation which um later tradition amalgamated with all of bunch of other John's and uh and claimed it was the apostle John but it's clearly a different writer writing in a very different kind of Greek and he doesn't also even make that claim.

(1:05:33) So this contrasts though you know like that's just a John or maybe a James. This contrasts with the author of second Peter um who is a different writer than the author of first Peter. There's two canonical uh epistles of Peter in the uh New Testament almost certainly neither one of them is written by Peter but they certainly are clearly written by two different people probably two different synonymous author synonymous authors.

(1:06:03) Um, and second Peter especially is claiming very particularly, I mean Peter's a rare name, but he's claiming to be Simeon Peter, a servant and apostle of Jesus Christ. So you want to make it very clear which um figure he's this author is claiming to be pseudonymously. And we see that kind of more um more dramatic um pseudo um pseudonymous authorship in another um book text that is attributed or claims to be written I'm sorry claims to be written by um James the just James the brother of Jesus and this we've had a lecture on too the infancy gospel of James the

(1:06:45) protoevangelium as it's sometimes called um this is written by a second century writer who really goes all out to claim to be the brother of Jesus and claims to be an eyewitness of the Christmas story. So in multiple places during the story, the elderly Joseph who has is a widowerower and has had um a bunch of sons by a previous marriage before he marries Mary, the mother of Jesus.

(1:07:15) And those sons actually are participants in the story. So, one of these sons, presumably James, leads Mary as she's riding along on the donkey. And later, he and the other sons are helping guard the cave where Mary uh is resting and where she gives birth to Jesus in the infancy gospel. And in addition to having um those characters, having James essentially appear as a son of Joseph in the text, the text concludes with the claim, "Now I, James, wrote this history in Jerusalem.

(1:07:52) When there was a commotion over Herod's death, and I went into the wilderness until the commotion in Jerusalem had died down, I was glorifying the Lord who gave me the wisdom to write this history." And so, you know, if this is um if this would have been true, a true claim, this would be by far in a way the oldest Christian writing and the most important one.

(1:08:14) But of course, it's not uh it's actually a second century, someone who's pretending to be James. And despite the fact that this story ends up being really really influential and it added all kinds of details to the traditional understanding of the Christmas story, especially ideas like Joseph was extremely old and a wither and had children beforehand and actually especially about Mary who is uh a a young pure virgin raised in the temple, the names of her parents and so forth.

(1:08:43) Nevertheless, despite the fact that this thing was really important, the text, ancient people already, ancient Christians decided it's definitely inauthentic. This is not written by Jesus's brother James. Pope Innocent I in the year 405 condemns it. The Galazian degree in 500 declares it apocryphal.

(1:09:06) Um, and so, so people in antiquity did actually care about whether um whether pseudonymous texts were authentic or not. Nevertheless, the author of the epistle of James while claiming the same to be written by the same author makes no such dramatic claims as the author of the protoevangelium. So nevertheless, the dispute between Paul and the historical James and the portion on the works on faith that are uh and on works and faith that are staked out, sorry, the position on faith versus works that's staked out by the epistle of James. So in other words, that

(1:09:44) association that's left essentially no doubt from antiquity to the present. That the James of the letter is meant to be James the just, the brother of Jesus, the leader of the Jerusalem church. In other words, nobody nobody is imagining that this is supposed to be written by James the less or by Santiago, James the Greater.

(1:10:04) Um, biblical scholar Timothy Luke Johnson suggests that the relative humility on the part of the author of the epistle of James compared to the author of the protoevangelium that that might author that the might argue that the author could actually be the historical James the just. And I think Luke Timothy Johnson is one of one of my favorite biblical scholars although on the more conservative end of this.

(1:10:29) he almost always wants to hold out uh hope that a um traditional attribution is authentic. Um and there's reasons why it probably can't be. But he says, "Hey, well, at least this one the guy is not making outlandish claims and maybe that actually shows that um uh more likelihood anyway that it could actually be written by him.

(1:10:54) " Luke Timothy Johnson makes a bunch of other arguments uh in favor that the letter may actually be written by James the Just although he doesn't say that he believes that. He just is saying if you want to argue it this is my what you might say. And so he says quote that the letter reveals social situations and perspectives appropriate to a sect in the early stages of its life.

(1:11:19) And so part of that I think it means that it lacks those kind of anacronisms in the development of Christianity as it goes along that letters written in Paul's name for example to Timothy and Titus. So those are letters that are uh attributed to Paul that most scholars don't think Paul could have written because they're include too many anachronisms the way the church exists after the historical Paul would have died.

(1:11:46) uh two uh Luke Timothy Johnson says James, the epistle of James makes use of Jesus traditions at a stage earlier than their incorporation into the synoptic gospels. So in other words, we get um nearly all of our our teachings of Jesus from um from the gospel traditions, but the gospels are written late.

(1:12:14) So they are written way past the letters of Paul and so forth. Um the main three you know Matthew, Mark and and Luke are the synoptic traditions and that's where we get all of the parables of Jesus and so forth. Uh whereas the John tradition, the fourth gospel preserves a bunch of completely different sayings that most scholars think are less likely to date to the historical Jesus, but are different understanding anyway of of a different Christian community with a unique witness.

(1:12:47) Um and so um even though um the Jesus traditions, the Jesus sayings that are running around replete through the epistle of James, even though they um they relate to the same traditions that we see in the synoptic gospels, um James is not using the synoptic gospels to get them and and he's actually using them differently than the way the gospels use them.

(1:13:12) And then finally, James closely resembles in its language and its outlook our earliest datable writer Paul. So the fact that um that James is is having this seeming debate with Paul um a debate that later isn't as important at all. So actually by the time we get into the um the second century um most of the Christian community, the protoorthodox community has have resolved this this issue especially about adherence to Mosaic law firmly in favor of Paul's position.

(1:13:47) Um this also anyway at least argues for an earlier uh dating for the epistle of James. So by contrast like we saying so if we look at that anacronism point so the letters like I say written in Paul's name to Timothy and Titus are usually understood to reflect a very later development for example as Christianity um really gets going by the end of the first century the age of the apostles starts to decline and now uh there are settled Christian communities that are led by individual bishops who have increasing um importance and authority. Uh and so

(1:14:26) uh in uh whereas Paul um himself in his authentic letters uh for example to the Philippians, he talks about um greetings to your your bishops and your um and your deacons. This might just be to groups of people who had the roles of overseer and helper as opposed to a single bishop who is important.

(1:14:48) He's not just simply writing to the bishop of Philippi. He's writing to people that include people who are are our our overseers or bishops. But in the epistle to Titus, we have um uh that um that development happening or has already happened. So Paul says I left or pseudo Paul says I left you behind you Titus in behind in cree for this reason so that you should put in order what remained to be undone.

(1:15:18) You should appoint elders in every town as I directed you. So someone who is blameless, someone who's married only once, whose children are believers, not accused of debauchery, and not rebel rebellious. So appoint them to be a bishop. For a bishop as God's steward must be blameless. He must not be arrogant or quick-tempered or addicted to wine or violent or greedy for gain.

(1:15:43) But he must be hospitable, a lover of goodness, self-controlled, upright, devout, restrained, holding tightly to the trustworthy word of the teaching, so that he may be able to both exort within sound instruction and refute those who contradict it. There are also many rebellious people, idol takers and deceivers, especially of those of the circumcision.

(1:16:09) They must be silenced since they are upsetting whole families by teaching for sorted gain what it is not right to teach. So we're already seeing every community needs to have elders appointed to be a single bishop. The bishop has to have all of these very pure qualities and they will then have authority to um silence uh rebels, people who are having a different position than the Pauline position, the protoorthodox position.

(1:16:34) Um unlike letters to Timothy and Titus and other Christian texts that are written by the end of the first century uh and the beginning of the second which presuppose this church led by bishops the epistle of James may reflect the movement at an earlier stage of development like the um authentic letters of Paul.

(1:16:55) So for example um another way is this um this use of the Jesus material. So Paul is writing this early stages. He's writing before the earliest gospels written. He also doesn't have access to any kind of compilation of Jesus teachings. So he doesn't have access to the Q source if that's already been compiled.

James and the Oral Traditions of Jesus

(1:17:18) It may not have been yet or the proto source for the Gospel of Thomas, a saying source. And Paul rarely then quotes Jesus without access to that uh document. But when he does um uh it's it's interesting. So he has a rare exception when he's um in uh talking about Jesus teaching on divorce. So in his letter first letter to the Corinthians in chapter 7, Paul says to the married I give this command.

(1:17:44) If you're a person who's married, I give you this command. Actually not I but the Lord. So this is actually something that Jesus taught that the wife should not separate from her husband. But if she does separate, let her remain unmarried or else let her be reconciled to her husband and the husband should not divorce his wife.

(1:18:05) So this is a teaching against divorce that Paul is commanding but actually he stopped in the middle of his own giving his own commandment and actually mentioned actually this one comes from Jesus and of course teach Jesus has similar teachings in the synoptic gospels that prohibit uh divorce. So for example in the sermon on the mount in Matthew.

(1:18:26) Elsewhere Paul shares teachings similar to those attributed to Jesus in the gospels but he does that without attributing to them to Jesus. So he appropriates the teaching for himself. So in his letter to the Romans he writes bless those who persecute you. Bless and do not curse them. And you know again it's writing before um the gospels are compiled but in Matthew and the sermon on the mount it's Jesus who teaches you know love your enemies and pray for those who persecute you.

(1:19:00) So it's not quite the same teaching but it's very similar. Um uh and Paul's not saying well this is I'm giving you this one. The Lord said this one. So he's not um seeing this material that is part of the teachings. it's not important to him necessarily uh to attribute that to Jesus the way it is in the gospel tradition later gospel tradition.

(1:19:20) So another example of this is when Paul is talking in the epistle to the Romans about paying taxes. He says you know for the same reason you uh the Christians in Rome also pay taxes for the authorities are God's agents busy with this very thing. Pay to all what is due them. taxes to whom taxes are due, revenue to whomever revenue is due, respect to whom respect is due, honor to whom honor is due.

(1:19:51) And so, you know, that's not cited as a teaching of Jesus. But Matthew later attributes a similar teaching to Jesus when a group of people in his gospel come up and ask what's Jesus's policy on paying taxes, imperial taxes, and Jesus says, "Give therefore to Caesar the things that are Caesars and give to God the things that are God." So give to whomever uh taxes whoever they're due.

(1:20:15) So that's an interesting way that Paul um is dealing with Jesus materials as we might call it. In other words, the kind of teachings that are central to the gospel. In other words, it's not about quoting Jesus authoritatively as saying things, but it's about sharing similar ideas that are gospel ideas.

(1:20:33) And the author of the epistle of James has a similar approach to teachings that are attributed to Jesus. That is he teaches them himself without um quoting Jesus as their source. So for example concerning oaths the epistle of James teaches above all brothers and sisters do not swear either by heaven or by earth.

(1:20:59) Don't make any other oath but let your yes be yes and your no be no so that you may not fall under condemnation. And so once again, this kind of prohibition on on taking oath by swearing by uh heaven or on earth or anything like that that corresponds to a teaching that's attributed to Jesus in Matthew in the sermon on the mount where Jesus says, "I say to you, do not swear at all either by heaven, for it is the throne of God, or by earth, for it is his foottool, or by Jerusalem, for it is the city of the great king. and do not swear by your

(1:21:35) head, for you cannot make one hair white or black, but let your word be yes, yes, or no, no, anything more than this comes from the evil one. So again, very very um similar between the two teachings. Uh and you might think that, you know, at later Christians when they uh want to have a teaching that they can authoritatively, you know, assign to Jesus, they'll say the Lord said this, Jesus said this, you know, remember how Jesus taught.

(1:22:07) Um that's not how Paul is presenting it usually and it's not how the author of James uses the material. So James in other examples condemns judging. He says, "Who are you to judge your neighbor?" Again, without quoting the teaching of Jesus, we can read in Matthew, judge not that you be not judged. Um there's a whole series of sayings that are attributed to Jesus in multiple sources about asking and receiving.

(1:22:35) Ask and you shall receive. And that's um found in the synoptics and in Thomas and elsewhere. And so the beginning itself of of the gospel of James has one of these that again isn't attributed to Jesus. It's just simply um gospel teaching that um James says in on his own authority. James says if any of you is lacking in wisdom, ask God who gives to all generously and ungrudgingly and it will be given you.

(1:23:04) So ask and it will be given you. It's the same formula with just a little bit more um re you know additional words phrased in there. And this um ultimately uh in the Latter- Day Saint tradition, this particular scripture becomes incredibly important because in Joseph Smith's final um telling of his first vision story, the experience that he claims to have had with the divine when he was a teenager, um part of it, part of his impetus for going out and praying is reading this particular verse of scripture.

(1:23:37) um which inspired him to go to the uh to a grove or pray and pray all day. Um so above all the epistle James is convinced that the poor are blessed and they are already participating in the kingdom of God while the rich are to be condemned because all of the wealth and material goods that's distracting themselves from what truly matters in life.

(1:24:05) And so there are multiple sayings and phrases like that that um relate to uh sayings that are understood to be by Jesus in other sources. So in the gospel of Luke, Jesus is the one who proclaims blessed are you who are poor for yours is the kingdom of God. You know, so the author of James similarly connects the poor and God's kingdom but does so without quoting Jesus.

(1:24:33) So he says, "Listen my brothers and sisters, has not God chosen the poor in the world to be rich in faith and to be heirs of the kingdom that he's promised to those who love him?" So the poor is belongs to the kingdom uh of God. Jesus likewise argues against focusing on material wealth. In the Gospel of Matthew, he says, "Do not lay up for yourselves treasures on earth, where moth and rust destroy and where thieves break in and steal.

(1:25:06) " And James uses that same moth and rust imagery in his just general condemnation of the rich when he's saying, "Woe to you rich. Your riches have rotted and your garments are mothed. Your gold and silver have rusted." So um for this reason uh you know this wealth this distraction of wealth Jesus in Matthew teaches that we should all humble ourselves because whoever exalts himself will be humbled and whoever humbles himself will be exalted and James agrees with his own teaching where he says humble yourselves before the

(1:25:44) Lord and he will exalt you. So all in all then this use of Jesus material in James by not you know attributing it to Jesus or quoting Jesus but rather um by sending these teachings on under James's own authority um seems to be a more early way of using the material more way like comparable again to the way Paul does it than how uh later writers will use the same kind of material.

(1:26:14) So Paul makes the impassionate case that because Christ has brought about a new covenant, Christians should not obey Mosaic law. In other words, the rules of the old covenant. And he goes so far as to say that if people could actually be justified by obedience to the law, if you were able to uh perfectly obey every Mosaic law and so forth, um then he's saying Christ really died for nothing.

The Law of Liberty vs. New Covenant Theology

(1:26:41) And um and so we've had a bunch of different lectures where this is just central to um both Paul's understanding of the new covenant and then also other um first century writers like the author of the epistle to Hebrews. But there is a different perspective and the gospel of Matthew has a different perspective.

(1:27:03) This is a perspective where um uh where the saying is attributed to Jesus that uh that not one jot or tit of the law uh will be uh will be removed. In other words, that we still Christianity is not um uh replacing an old covenant that was not uh useful or fulfilling it and replacing it, but rather Christianity is the old covenant and new covenant plus.

(1:27:27) We do the whole thing and we do it better than the the Pharisees and the Essins and things like that. And we all because we also were doing the New Covenant on top of it. And the Epistle of James is one of those New Testament texts that um that also agrees, you know, Christians should be should obey the whole law, both the old covenant and the new.

(1:27:48) And so James says, "If you really fulfill the royal law according to scripture, that is Mosaic law, you know, you shall love your neighbor as yourself." Um this is again quoting Jesus quot you know Jesus also quotes this same passage um from the Old Testament law as being the most important one of the two most important commandments in um uh uh in the Old Testament uh Mosaic law.

(1:28:17) So he says, "If you were going to do that, um, quoting that same important verse, you do well. That's great. But if you show partiality, you commit sin and are convicted by the law as transgressors. For whoever keeps the whole law but fails in one point has become accountable for it all." So it's not enough to just um pick out love your neighbor as yourself.

(1:28:42) That Jesus was quoting from the uh Old Testament law. And according to James anyway, you have to do everything that's in the Old Testament law, if you even if you do only if there's 700 commandments and you do only 699, then you're condemned and you're accountable for the whole thing because you failed in one point.

(1:29:01) For the one who said you shall not commit adultery also said you shall not murder. Now, if you do not commit adultery, but you do murder, you have become a transgressor of the law. And there's a bunch of other lesser ones that you might also do like have a tattoo or um eat uh eat a in in some interpretations eat well anyway eat meat in its mother's milk so eat a cheeseburger so so to speak and so speak and so act as those who are to be judged by the liberty the law of liberty so unlike Paul who is talking about we who are free of Mosaic

(1:29:39) law because of Christ's fulfillment and the new covenant. Um James has the opposite view which is the Mosaic law itself is a law that gives freedom. So instead of being uh set free from the law. So just as the focus on the poor is in keeping with the known interests of the historical James the just, you know, so too the epistle's advocacy for adherence to Mosaic law is clearly something that Paul understood um James the Just to be uh a leader of the faction that is um that is proposing that. So nevertheless, although the

(1:30:19) epistle seems to share this perspective with the community that James led, most scholars do reject the idea that Jesus's brother could possibly be the author of this epistle. And the problem with it especially is that the book is written in Greek and it is written a very high quality Greek and and and high style.

(1:30:43) And few people think it's very likely that someone of the same kind of humble Galilean origins as Jesus could have achieved, you know, such an education in Greek rhetoric. And so it seems more likely that we have somebody who is um much more highly trained in in Greek in writing who maybe is part of the community ultimately that James led or maybe the next generation after after um after James is executed and maybe after the community uh has been forced to flee Jerusalem during the um uh the first Roman Jewish war. results in Jerusalem's

(1:31:27) destruction. So this community is known to have fled uh north to the dicapus to the city of Pella. So maybe once it's there um that community has you know in this new in this essentially Greek city that this community has um attracted new disciples who have a lot of Greek training and maybe they are writing um in this uh in the in the uh perspective of the community that James had led.

(1:31:55) Scholars have also argued that the text is maybe too aware of the developments in the churches that have followed Paul's teachings. So Pauline Christianity um which is really on the rise by the end of the first century meaning that it um represents a somewhat later response of the followers of James to those arguments than maybe James would have been aware at the time.

Comparison with First Peter

(1:32:20) um it seems to know what Paul's saying too much and um and is perhaps being writing in response to it. And like I say, the most likely author seems to be a member of James's church writing after James was killed. One of the other um questions that's an open question about this is that there's a potential dependence on First Peter.

(1:32:44) There's all kinds of overlap of themes and concepts with this other um text which again is almost certainly not written by uh the Apostle Peter and is probably written at the end of the first century between 70 and 100. And so um it's possible that the epistle James is contemporary with it.

(1:33:05) And it's actually not clear if um the author of James has a copy of First Peter or if the author of First Peter has a copy of James. Um but there's an overlap. So both epistles, for example, begin by urging believers to rejoice in their trials. Uh James and Peter both quote directly from Proverbs. God opposes the proud but gives grace to the humble.

(1:33:29) They both use imagery from the book of Isaiah about human glory fading like a flower, a wild flower. James uh states that turning a sinner from their error will cover a multitude of sins and that sort of shares the same kind of vocabulary and conceptual themes of first Peter which advises that love covers a multitude of sins.

(1:33:54) In any event, it can't be conclusively shown that the one is dependent on the other or vice versa. Which one's first, we don't know. What I think anyway is that they both seem to have come out of the same school, the same community. Like I say, probably uh the community that is the successor to the church that James had led in Jerusalem, which has fled uh to the decaps to Pella, Greek city as a result of the first Roman Roman Jewish war.

(1:34:21) So let's just sum up. Regardless of who wrote the text, I think the Epistle of James is a really important survivor that illustrates the diversity of thought present at the very beginnings of Christianity. Um and so we have a understanding of um you know essentially the old and new covenants um old testament uh commandments and so forth that is more or less at polar opposites with another biblical writer Paul.

Summary and Significance

(1:34:56) Um and obviously this is a tradition that um and an understanding that uh Christians haven't followed because they have ended up um following uh Paul's idea that that the Old Testament uh commandments have all been fulfilled in Jesus and therefore we don't um follow them until again modern times vernacularly um Christians who are parts of churches that haven't who read the Bible a lot end up um having brought back the ten commandments ments as if that's we have a whole we had a whole lecture on the ten commandments and the

(1:35:29) problems of modern Christians um who try to obey the law and not in any event it also shows I think really clearly that the canon of the Bible is actually made up of authors who are engaged in dialogue with each other that are not all have the same position actually sometimes they are directly at odds with each other which um is a good um um counterargument to scriptural authoritarianism and is instead an invitation for people who are interested in engaging the texts to themselves um enter into dialogue and decide which of the principles is

(1:36:13) relevant uh to our lives today. And so that is my take on the epistle of James.

Glossary 1: Previous Lectures or Episode

Name of previous lecture or Episode	Description of the lecture or Episode	Link to the transcript	Date of release
Gospel of Judas	An exploration of the gnostic text that presents an alternative view of Judas Iscariot and his relationship with Jesus.	Link	Not specified

Glossary 2 : Religious Studies Terms

Religious Studies Term	Description	Link to Transcript
Apocrypha	Extra books removed from the Old Testament canon by Protestants and placed in a separate section.	Link
Apostolic Succession	The belief that Jesus appointed apostles, who appointed bishops as successors in an unbroken line of authority.	Link
Indulgences	Grants by papal authority said to reduce time spent by a soul in purgatory, which eventually became a financial commodity.	Link
Justification by Faith Alone (Sola Fide)	The Protestant doctrine that sinners are pardoned by God solely through faith, apart from good or bad works.	Link
Mosaic Law	The religious and ritual laws given to the Israelites, including dietary rules and circumcision, central to early Christian debates.	Link
Purgatory	In medieval Latin theology, a middle state after death where deceased souls are purified of sins before entering heaven.	Link
Psychostasia	The concept or artistic motif depicting the divine weighing of souls or human deeds on scales to determine post-mortem judgment.	Link
Sola Scriptura	The Protestant principle that the Bible is the sole authoritative source of Christian doctrine and practice.	Link

Glossary 3: Individuals Named

Individual	Description	Link to Transcript
Ananas the Younger	High Priest of Jerusalem who ordered the execution of James the brother of Jesus.	Link
Anubis	Ancient Egyptian god of the dead associated with the weighing of the heart.	Link
Barnabas	Early Christian missionary and companion of Paul.	Link
James (Brother of Jesus)	Leader of the early Jerusalem church and traditional author of the Epistle of James.	Link
Josephus	First-century Jewish-Roman historian who recorded the death of James.	Link
Martin Luther	Leader of the Protestant Reformation who advocated justification by faith alone and criticized the Epistle of James.	Link
Paul the Apostle	Early Christian apostle whose letters emphasize justification by faith apart from Mosaic law.	Link
Peter (Cephas)	Prominent apostle and leader among the early Jewish Christians.	Link

Glossary 4: Bible Passages

Bible Passage	Reference Type	Link to Transcript
1 Corinthians 7	Quoted	Link
Galatians 2	Quoted	Link
James 1	Quoted / Referenced	Link
James 2	Quoted	Link
James 4-5	Referenced / Alluded to	Link
Matthew 5-7 (Sermon on the Mount)	Referenced / Alluded to	Link
Matthew 22	Referenced	Link
Romans 3	Quoted	Link
Romans 12-13	Referenced / Quoted	Link

Glossary 5: Non English Words

Non-English Word	Definition	Language of Origin
Agape	A Christian fellowship meal expressing brotherly love.	Greek
Allein	Alone.	German
Iakobos	Jacob / James.	Greek
Ma'at	Ancient Egyptian concept of truth, balance, order, and justice.	Egyptian
Psychostasia	The weighing of souls or human deeds on scales in judgment.	Greek
Sola fide	By faith alone.	Latin
Sola scriptura	By scripture alone.	Latin
Yakov	Jacob.	Hebrew

Glossary 6: Books mentioned

Extra-biblical / Non-canonical Book	Author
Antiquities of the Jews	Josephus
Divine Comedy	Dante Alighieri
Gospel of Thomas	Anonymous (attributed to Thomas)
Infancy Gospel of James (Protoevangelium of James)	Anonymous (pseudonymously attributed to James)

Glossary 9: Graphics Referenced

Graphics Referenced	Link to the transcript
Anubis weighing heart against feather of Ma'at	Link
Michael the Archangel holding set of scales weighing souls	Link
St. Peter at the gates cartoon ("not being a jerk about it")	Link
The Good Place point system examples	Link

Glossary 12: Chronology

Date in the transcript	Event at that date	Link to the transcript
405	Pope Innocent I condemns the Protoevangelium of James	Link
500	Gelasian Decree declares the Protoevangelium of James apocryphal	Link

20260714 Script/Headings/Visuals

Introduction to the Epistle of James