Other Epistles of the New Testament: James

The letter of James is one of the most neglected writings of the New Testament. One of the strongest and most influential voices against James has been that of Martin Luther who saw James as a challenge to Paul's teaching on the relationship between faith and works. Even within the Roman Catholic Church, James has suffered great neglect as is evidenced through the scant usage of this writing within her liturgy." "Hartin's study begins with a detailed examination of the letter's literary background and its relationships within the context of the Jewish, Hellenistic, and emerging Christian worlds. From this examination James emerges clearly as a writing at home within the world of Jewish-Christianity. Those complex issues of genre, authorship, and readership are examined, and Hartin argues convincingly that James is an early writing, stemming from the authority of James, the brother of the Lord, who writes to those Jewish-Christians in the dispersion of northern Syria.

The Word Biblical Commentary delivers the best in biblical scholarship. This series emphasizes a thorough analysis of textual, linguistic, structural, and theological evidence with an insight into the meanings of the text in the framework of biblical theology.

Peter David's study on the Epistle of James is a contribution to The New International Greek Testament Commentary, a series based on the UBS Greek New Testament, which attempts to provide thorough exegesis of the text that is sensitive to theological themes as well as to the details of the historical, linguistic, and textual context.

First and Second Peter, James, and Jude have existed on the edge of the canon throughout the centuries. In this volume, Pheme Perkins casts light on these often neglected writings, ably demonstrating that they have, in fact, much to offer to today's readers.

Dan McCartney, a highly regarded New Testament scholar and an expert on biblical interpretation, offers a substantive yet accessible commentary on James in this latest addition to the award-winning BECNT series. With extensive research and thoughtful chapter-by-chapter exegesis, McCartney leads readers through all aspects of the book of James--sociological, historical, and theological--to help them better understand its meaning and relevance. As with all BECNT volumes, this commentary features the author's detailed interaction with the Greek text and an acclaimed, user-friendly design. It admirably achieves the dual aims of the series--academic sophistication with pastoral sensitivity and accessibility.

Sleeper's lucid exposition of James restores this often neglected work to its rightful place in the Christian canon. Carefully charting the verbal structures and argument of the letter, he demonstrates that it is a coherent piece of moral teaching intended to encourage the development of Christian character, not just a collection of disparate maxims. As he guides the reader through the letter's basic themes, Sleeper is attentive to its echoes in the Old Testament, Hellenistic Jewish wisdom literature, and sayings of Jesus, as well as to its affinities with other Christian writings. Moreover, he shows that the author's understanding of God and of human nature provides a significant theological foundation for practical wisdom about the Christian moral life.

In this addition to the well-received Paideia series, two respected New Testament scholars offer a practical commentary on James and Jude that is conversant with contemporary scholarship, draws on ancient backgrounds, and attends to the theological nature of the texts. This commentary, like each in the projected eighteen-volume series, proceeds by sense units rather than word-by-word or verse-by-verse. Paideia commentaries explore how New Testament texts form Christian readers by: attending to the ancient narrative and rhetorical strategies the text employs; showing how the text shapes theological convictions and moral habits; commenting on the final, canonical form of each New Testament book; focusing on the cultural, literary, and theological settings of the text; making judicious use of maps, photos, and sidebars in a reader-friendly format. Students, pastors, and other readers will appreciate the historical, literary, and theological insight that John Painter and David deSilva offer in interpreting James and Jude.

Complete biblical texts with sound, scholarly based commentary that is written at a pastoral level; the Scripture translation is that of the New American Bible with Revised New Testament and Revised Psalms (1991)

The letter of James has enjoyed a colorful history, with its background and significance widely debated over the centuries. In this book an outstanding scholar of the New Testament offers new and selected studies of James that show its roots in antiquity and its importance for Christian history and theology. Luke Timothy Johnson explores the letter of James from a variety of perspectives. After a general introduction to James, he looks at its history of interpretation. Johnson then examines James's social and historical situation, its place within Scripture, and its use of the sayings of Jesus. Several exegetical studies take care to place James in the context of Hellenistic moral discourse. Two concluding essays look at the themes of friendship and gender in James. While seemingly of interest only to professionals, Johnson's Brother of Jesus, Friend of God will also be accessible to general readers serious about Bible study, and church groups will find this volume to be a fruitful entry into an important portion of the New Testament.

This programmatic socio-rhetorical investigation approaches the Epistle of James as an instance of written deliberative rhetoric, and it seeks to ascertain the social texture of James 2.5, a rhetorical performance of language that in other contexts is explicitly attributed to Jesus. Utilizing the conventions of Greco-Roman rhetoric, Dr Wachob successively probes the inner texture, the intertexture, the social and cultural texture, and the ideological implications of the rhetoric in James 2.1-13. He analyses James' activation of antecedent texts in the LXX, common conceptions and topics in the broader culture, and also sayings in the Jesus tradition. He concludes that James emanates from the same milieu as the pre-Matthean Sermon on the Mount and shows James 2.5 to be an artful performance of the principal beatitude in that early epitome of Jesus' teachings.

Not by Paul Alone explores the historical reasons for the creation of the book of James and the implications for the creation of the Christian canon. Nienhuis makes a case that James was written in the mid-second century and is, like 2 Peter, an attempt to provide a distinctive shape to the emerging New Testament. This book bolsters the claim that the Catholic Epistles not only have a distinct witness individually, but that collectively they are also a considered theological agenda within the Christian church.

In this volume, Peter Davids offers a comprehensive study of the General or Catholic Epistles of James, 1-2 Peter, and Jude, which are often insufficiently covered in more general New Testament introductions, theologies, and surveys. Before discussing a theology of each of the four letters, Davids first deals with their common aspects - their shared background in the Greco-Roman world and a similar Christology, view of the source of sin, and eschatology - thus justifying their being treated together. In the chapters that follow, Davids embarks upon a theological reading of each letter informed by its social-rhetorical understanding - what they meant in the context of their original cultural settings - including: a survey of recent scholarship, a discussion of relevant introductory issues, a thematic commentary, a treatment of important theological themes, and a discussion of the place of the letter in the biblical canon and its contribution to New Testament theology.

Using a variation of reader-response criticism, Melchert engages thewisdom texts in an effort to determine why the sages said and taught asthey did. He also explores what contemporary teachers and learnersmight pick up from the wisdom texts about teaching, learning, and beingwisely religious in a postmodern world. Melchert argues that the wisdomtexts presumably embody not only what these teachers wanted readers tolearn but also how it was to be learned.

Throughout this century the Letter of James has been viewed consistently as a disjointed set of instructions. Father Hartin deviates radically from this approach. He shows that the "call for perfection" provides a unifying meaning for the letter. Examining the concept of perfection against the background of the Greco-Roman world, the Old Testament, and the Septuagint, the author shows that perfection provides a key to define the spirituality of the Letter of James. It offers an understanding of God and of the way one is called "to be in the world." Hartin adopts a fresh approach toward understanding the categories of wisdom, eschatology, and apocalyptic as they illuminate the letter's advice.