Authorship issues in the New Testament have been of
particular interest in the past few centuries of Christianity. Several of the
works of the New Testament have had their traditional authorship attributions
challenged. Some of these works were written anonymously and it is only the
title that has been challenged (such as the gospels) whereas others have been
challenged as being written pseudonymously (such as the Pastoral Epistles). Some
scholars have accepted this view wholeheartedly[1]
while others are more skeptical. Amidst this conversation, a very unusual
dichotomy has arisen. Exegetical studies of the content of the New Testament
have increased and presented new and interesting material in the same time
period. What is striking is that these two conversations have happened along
side one another, but they never seem to intersect. In fact, it seems that the
more one discusses authorship, the less one discusses the actual text. To
discuss this relationship the book of James will be used as a case study as it
is one of the texts in the New Testament which is often discussed in regard to
authorship issues.
The book of James is one of the books in the New Testament
wherein there is not scholarly agreement about authorship – some see it as
written by James the Just – the brother of Jesus. Others read it as a standard
practice of pseudepigraphy in antiquity and that it was intended to be taken as
the brother of Jesus but really was not. Finally, a third group argues that it
was written by someone named James, but that is not necessarily the same James
as the brother of Jesus. The reason there is so much disagreement is that the
evidence for authorship is slim. Unlike the works of Paul, we have only one
book attributed to James and therefore there is nothing to compare. Further, the
text itself never claims that the author is the brother of Jesus. Additionally,
we do not have clear indications of its precise audience.
The interest in authorship; however, is quite laudable. As
scholars do want to put books in their proper setting, one way of doing so is
by means of considering a historical author. In regard to the book of James,
Sophie Laws points out the possible value that considering authorship might
have:
The traditional questions of an
Introduction, of the date and place of origin of a document, its purpose and
its probably recipients, would be easily answered if the identity of the author
were known.[2]
This is certainly the case – if the author of the text was
known, its purpose and recipients would be easier to detect. This example shows
why the interest in authorship has been so persistent – knowing who wrote the
texts (or perhaps who did not write the texts) would provide possible insight
into the study of the New Testament.
The problem with the drive for authorship is that the
evidence in the book of James is so scanty that no consensus can be reached. As
such, the hermeneutical principles of the author govern the conversation about
authorship as opposed to the data from the text itself. Therefore, an inverse
relationship exists between discussions about authorship and dialogue with the
text itself.
Arguments for
Authorship in James
To understand how authorship studies on James have
progressed, it is helpful to consider two different perspectives about
authorship in James. Bart Ehrman believes that James is a pseudepigraphic text
– meaning that the author was not the brother of Jesus but that he claimed he
was. Luke Timothy Johnson, on the other hand, does not quite argue that the
author was the brother of Jesus, but suggests that it is highly likely.
Ehrman’s position concerning the Epistle of James is that it
is pseudepigraphic. He is aware that the text itself does not suggest that this
was the brother of Jesus, but argues that the lack of definition of the author
suggests that the author felt the audience would know “which James” it was:
With respect to authorship, in any
event, the point is that this is a letter intended to be read far and wide by
someone who simply calls himself “James” without indicating with James he was;
the recipients would have no way of knowing his identity unless they assume he
is “that” James: the most famous one of all, the brother of Jesus is charge of
the mother church in Jerusalem.[3]
Ehrman therefore considers this as a pseudepigraphic work
for a few reasons (one being his argument that the brother of Jesus would not
be able to write)[4] but the most
worthwhile is his argument that this letter (particularly James 2:14-26 on
faith and works) is written to challenge Paul:
Despite occasional disclaimers,
there should be no doubt that Paul, or at least the tradition associated with
Paul, is under attack in the letter attributed to James in the New
Testament…The book is about nothing if not “doing good works” and so being a
“doer of the word” instead of simply a hearer.[5]
This passage, of course, suggests that James must have been
addressing Paul’s work and therefore would have to be at a later time than
James’s own lifetime.
While Ehrman’s presentation might lead one to think that it
is his dialogue with the text that has led him to the conclusion that James is
an anti-Pauline tract, it is in fact his larger hermeneutic that forgery and
counterforgery were done in order to correct “errors” that authors saw in the
interpretations of sacred authors. In fact, Ehrman argues that the most common
reason for forgery was to combat previous forgeries (what he calls counterforgery).
This is something that he argues was present throughout the early Christian
movement and James fits nicely into that fold. Ehrman presents that James is in
fact primary addressing Ephesians and Colossians (texts he sees as forgeries –
the veracity of which claim I will not address here):
What I will be arguing is that even
though the author based his arguments against Paul on “authentic” Pauline
traditions, he read these traditions through the lens provided by later Pauline
interpreters, so that what he attacked was not (the “real”) Paul but a kind of
Deutero-Paul, one evidenced, in fact, in surviving Pauline forgeries. The book
of James, in other words, is a counterforgery.[6]
Ehrman, therefore, has set James as a corrective polemic in
relation to Paul. This is not so surprising given that his entire work is
dedicated to this practice which he sees as widespread in the developing
Christianities of the first several centuries.
In contrast to Ehrman, Luke Timothy Johnson opposes this
type of interpretation and values the traditional approach to the book of
James. Johnson argues that the mistake most readers of James suggest is a
seeming antagonism between James and Paul – precisely what Ehrman argues:
The most troublesome aspect of most
theories of authorship and provenance, whether conservative or liberal, has
been the insistence on reading James and Paul in tandem.[7]
Johnson argues that precisely Ehrman’s premise – which
Johnson argues was developed in the Tubingen school – is faulty. He argues that
there is not necessarily a contrast between James and Paul and as such, it does
not make sense to make that a necessary requirement for the letter of James to
be particularly late and therefore it suggests that it well could have been
written by the traditional author:
These arguments do not prove that
James of Jerusalem, the ‘Brother of the Lord,’ wrote the letter. Such proof is
unavailable, for the simple reason that, even if early, the document could
still have been penned by some other “James” than the one who became famous in
the tradition. But the arguments do tend strongly toward the conclusion that
James is a very early writing from a Palestinian Jewish Christian source. And
James the Brother of the Lord is a reasonable candidate.[8]
Johnson does not suggest that the brother of Jesus had
written this, but it is certainly clear that he is ready to accept that idea.
What is of interest here is that Johnson’s arguments are not
primarily concerned with the data of the text. Instead, Johnson uses as his main
argument a critique of the scholarly development of the concept of
Pseudepigrapha:
By the end of the nineteenth
century, the battles within the historical-critical approach had reached a
stalemate. Using the same methods and identical evidence, scholars came to
diametrically opposed conclusions. No one convinced anyone else. Criticism was
less a matter of incremental progress than of proclaiming allegiance.
As in the nineteenth century, the
debate concerning James’ place in early Christianity ahs [in the twentieth
century] largely consisted in ‘talking past each other,’ which continues with
little new evidence or insight. The growth of the more radical position [the
view that the letter is pseudonymous] owes as much to the politics and fashion
of scholarship as it does to argumentation.[9]
Johnson’s critique here is clearly as much concerned with
the history of scholarship (and he indeed does have an entire chapter devoted
to this) as it is concerning the text.
Both sides of the discussion, rather than appealing to the
text itself, draw upon later tradition to support their claims. Nearly all
conversation moves to the first time the text was used (Origen of Alexandria in
the third century), its reception in Eusebius (as one of the “disputed”
writings), and the brief comment made by Jerome that it was only accepted
gradually. This conversation has nothing to do with the text itself and instead
is a conversation about church history and what kind of reception history is
expected for early texts. This drives us back to the original issue wherein
figures such as Ehrman see texts received only insofar as they are dialoguing
(and essentially arguing) with one another whereas Johnson discusses essential
continuity and harmony between different Christian groups in the early going.
Therefore, the conversation is once again concerning this theoretical framework
and the actual text of James is lost.
Matt Jackson-McCabe has pointed out that the conversation is
a political one. While he affirms Johnson’s above critique of the Tubingen
school, he levies the same critique against those holding traditional
authorship:
If this is true with respect to the
position that the letter is pseudepigraphic, the continued affirmation of its
authenticity itself surely owes no less to the politics of New Testament
scholarship – a point that is ironically underscored by Johnson’s repetitious
use of the highly charged term “radical” to effectively marginalize the
position he sides against.[10]
Jackson-McCabe suggests that the authorship of James has
become a political football that is being used to have a conversation about the
role of Christianity in scholarship. He argues, “the academy is itself one of
the arenas in which Christian apologetics play out.”[11]
Jackson-McCabe is certainly correct and he points out that
both sides will consistently speak past one another as both are trying to do
very different things:
But it is equally certain that
this very scholarship represents a tangle of what are in fact two fundamentally
different projects: a history-of-religions project that seeks to explain the
letter’s composition in relation to a historical account of early Jesus
veneration; and an ecclesiastical project that seeks to clarify the letter’s
authority in relation to the primal, sacred (i.e., apostolic) authority of
Christianity itself.[12]
While he considers these two projects as fundamentally
different, he does admit to being a member of the “history-of-religions”
project and therefore is more sympathetic to that position. However, his observation
that authorship has become the focus of conversation of some kind of apologetic
argument is certainly correct. Once again, though, the conversation is about
the nature of the text and not the contents of it.
Significance of the
authorship issue for the meaning of the text
The authorship arguments presented above do present an
interesting argument concerning the way texts were composed in the New
Testament. However, one will note that very few of them had anything to do with
the content of James itself. In fact, it seems as if the more one discusses
authorship, the less the text itself is a primary part of the conversation.
The reason that authorship does not seem of primary
importance is that very few commentators use authorship to interpret the
meaning of the text. All commentators take it as a point of fact that the book
of James is fully in the Hellenistic world. The book is fully cognizant of
complex Greek language, uses Greek analogies, and borrows frequently from Greek
philosophy. This would not be surprising for an interpreter who held that the
text was pseudepigraphic, but even Luke Timothy Johnson argues that James is
best understood in the genre of a Greek moralist. While most discussion of the
authorship of James will use this data and either use it to support their idea
that the brother of Jesus could not have had this knowledge, or they discuss
how the brother of Jesus could have gained this knowledge in his time in
Jerusalem.[13]
What should be noted is that neither interpretation of the author’s knowledge
of Greek actually changes the meaning of James itself.
What would seem to be of more importance would be the issue
of “faith and works” in James 2:14-26. It is, in fact, the relationship of this
pericope to Paul’s presentation of faith and works of the Torah that determine
the relationship between the two. This, on the surface of it, would seem to be
primarily about the text rather than above it. However, when one looks at James
only as James – and not as in relationship to Paul, there really is very little
debate as to what James means. James uses the term “faith” as “You believe that
God is one.”[14] This is
usually understood as a reference to the Shema in Deut. 6:4 and is more than
likely appealing to that entire tradition of belief in that sense.[15]
“Works” on the other hand seem to be general ethical obligation – likely based
upon Leviticus 19.[16] Further,
the relationship of the two is relatively standard – that James argues for the
necessity of faith – if it is truly faith – to be expressed.
Most all scholars agree with this assessment of James. Where
they divide is when comparing this with Paul. Does this work oppose Paul or
does Paul oppose this? While scholars have a variety of conversations about
that particular topic, it is noteworthy that the actual meaning of James is not
on the table – only what that might have meant in the larger Christian milieu.
The one value of authorship – as presented by Laws at the
beginning of this paper – is that if we knew when the piece was written, then
it would be particularly helpful in understanding the purpose of this. James
Ropes argues that authorship is usually determined by scholars given when they
want to date the epistle:
Those who hold the author to be
James the Lord’s brother assign the epistle to a date before c. 50 (so
Beyschlag, Zahn, Mayor, and many others) or to one shortly before the death of
James (62 or a little later), and naturally think of Jerusalem as the place of
composition. Among critics who reject the apostolic authorship, the dates given
show wide variation, but are seldom earlier than 90 or later than 130, although
a few carry the possible date down as late as 150. As to the place, these
critics are for the most part divided between Palestine and Rome.[17]
This issue of dating is something wherein the conversation
about authorship could aid in understanding the text itself. However, all of
the conversation about particular dating in the late first and early second
centuries are absent from the text. There is no conversation one way or the
other about the destruction of the temple in 70 C.E., no discussion of Torah,
no conversation about the relationship between Christianity and Judaism, and
not even a conversation about Jesus’ life in any of its facets. Therefore, the
type of discussion that would normally place the epistle is simply missing.
There is nothing in the epistle that could not be from either period. It is for
this reason that Ropes argues that authorship does not in fact affect the
meaning of the epistle:
For the significance of the
Epistle of James in the history of early Christian thought it makes not much
difference whether it was written by James the Lord’s brother about the year
60, or by another Palestinian teacher fifty years later. In either case the place
of origin and the kind of Christians whose life the epistle reflects are the
same, and the epistle itself shows how little development of Christian thought
took place there in those decades.[18]
Ropes shows that the conversation about authorship is not
significant for the conversation about the meaning of the epistle.
Conclusion
What is striking is where the conversation about authorship
lies in the study on James. Nearly every commentary has at least a section on
the authorship of James in the introduction to the work. What is striking is
how exceedingly rarely does that conversation bleed into the actual commentary
(and the rare places it does, it presents poor analysis of the text).[19]
Instead, it seems that authorship is a conversation kept to the margins.
Authorship moves the conversation away from the text and
into a far more speculative social reconstruction of the composition of the
texts. It seems to be something that could have some value for the development
of the social world of Early Christianity, but it might not be the best way of
understanding what the text is saying. The conversation about the text avoids
authorship and authorship avoids the text – this inverse relationship calls
into question how the authorship question ought to be addressed in New
Testament scholarship.
[1] Easily
exemplified by a variety of works, but for a recent exposition, See Bart
Ehrman, Forgery and Counterforgery: The
Use of Literary Deceit in Early Christian Polemics (Oxford: OUP, 2013).
[2] Sophie Laws,
Commentary on the Epistle of James,
38.
[3] Ehrman, Forgery and Counterforgery, 284.
[4] Ibid.,
285-287.
[5] Ibid.,
290-291.
[6] Ibid., 291.
[7] Luke Timothy
Johnson, Letter of James: A New
Translation and Commentary, 110-111.
[8] Ibid., 121.
[9] As quoted in
Matt Jackson-McCabe “The Politics of Pseudepigraphy in the Letter of James” in
Jorg Frey et al., (eds.), Pseudepigraphie
und Verfasserfiktion in fruhschristlichen Briefen, WUNT 246. Tubingen: Mohr
Siebeck, 2009, 601.
[10] Ibid., 601.
[11] Ibid., 604.
[12] Ibid., 606.
[13] For a
discussion of this precise issue, see my previous blog post ‘They Couldn’t Have
Known Greek”: An Argument for Abandoning a Common Trope.”
[14] James 2:19.
[15] Hutchinson
Edgar, David, “The Use of the Love-Command and the Shema in the Epistle of
James” Proceedings of the Irish Biblical
Association 23 (2000), 9-22.
[16] Johnson,
L.T. “The Use of Leviticus 19 in the Letter of James” JBL 101 (1982), 391-401.
[17] James
Ropes, Critical and Exegetical Commentary
on St. James, 47.
[18] Ibid., 52.
[19] See James
B. Adamson, The Epistle of James
(Grand Rapids: Eerdmans, 1976).
No comments:
Post a Comment