Dale C. Allison Jr. A
Critical and Exegetical Commentary on the Epistle of James, International Critical
Commentary Series, New York, London, New Delhi, Sydney: Bloomsbury, 2013, xlix
+ 790 pages.
Dale Allison’s commentary on the book of James is of the quality
rarely seen among modern scholars. Allison’s arguments are clear, his approach
is forthright, his research is impeccable, and he avoids using straw men to
bolster his own position. His commentary on James – in all over 800 pages in
length – is one of the best researched commentaries produced in recent times.
This is very much in fitting with the standards of the International Critical
Commentary series that – on the whole – consistently provides thorough
commentaries that drive readers into the text. Allison’s greatest strength in
this commentary is his vast research that combines historical critical
understanding with a reception history mindset. Therefore, he is as comfortable
using Ambrose and Luther on James as he is Kloppenborg and Dibelius. His
commentary is governed by a social circumstance of arguing for irenic relations
between Christians and Jews in the second century. This context is what
provides the greatest asset to the commentary and its largest challenge.
First, Allison should be commended for what he sees the
purpose of a commentary to be. He recognizes that the genre of “commentary” is
a difficult one and that there are any number of varieties of reasons for
writing them. This commentary is not so narrow as to be only an aid for those
studying Greek nor so wide as to consider itself the most important reference
work on all things James. Instead, Allison carves out his own place in the
genre:
Recent debates have seen much
discussion of what a commentary should be, and many have expressed discontent
with traditional historical-critical approaches to texts. In this writer’s
judgment, there is no moral imperative here, no right or wrong. There remains
rather room for manifold approaches. Commentators probably do best to write
about what interests them, and as long as there are readers with similar
interests – in the case of this commentary, readers who care about
historical-critical questions and reception history – their books will continue
to see the light of day.[1]
Allison points out that commentaries are not all the same
and are not the be all end all of study. This is commendable. Too often
commentaries are written without clear reason – they are simply scheduled
because it is easier to write a commentary than a monograph about a new aspect
of a book – indeed, very often commentaries can slip into saying very little
original and instead becoming an encyclopedia of previous work. This can have
some value, but Allison hopes for more than that in his volume.
Allison, then, chooses to use his commentary as a place to
show how “reception history” and “historical-critical” studies can, and ought
to be, merged. He argues that considering these two things in tandem can
provide new value to a commentary. He explains this in depth with 5 points that
he expresses are boons to the study of the New Testament:
At the same time [as the historical
critical analysis], the present volume is much concerned with the history of
interpretation and reception. Most critical commentaries tend instead to
privilege recent work, their footnotes typically citing ancient sources and
modern critics, with little in between. The habit is unfortunate. The history
of interpretation and application of biblical texts invites our serious
attention for multiple reasons. (i) Such history is intrinsically interesting
in and of itself, as I hope readers of these pages concur. (ii) It instills
humility by reminding exegetes of how much they owe to those who came before,
and of the degree to which they are bearers of traditions. The line between
present work and past work is much less distinct than many imagine…(iii)
Careful attention to older commentators sometimes allows one to recover
exegetical suggestions and profitable lines of inquiry that, from a
historical-critical point of view, should never have dropped out of the
commentary tradition. (iv) The history of the interpretation of James reveals
the plasticity of texts, and how easily and thoroughly they succumb to
interpretive agendas…(v) Finally, reception history that looks beyond
theologians and commentaries – as this volume sometimes does – reminds one that
biblical texts are not the exclusive property of clerics and exegetes.[2]
Here, Allison’s points are valid and helpful. His melding of
the two throughout the text reveals this well. It shows how – particularly in
New Testament studies – those things that are “new” are rarely new at all. The
worst kind of scholarship is “magic bullet” scholarship – the idea that there
is one hitherto unknown detail about a particular text that reinterprets
everything else in the text that had been read for millennia. Allison’s
commentary necessarily avoids that problem and even shows how foolish such an
approach is. It shows how thoroughly these texts have been read and how
“modern” questions are far less “modern” that we think. For example, it is a
common trope that ideas of pseudepigraphy in James (the idea that it was not
Jesus’ brother who wrote the book) are an enlightenment question and that there
were no people before this time who challenged the authorship of the piece.
However, Allison shows clearly that both Jerome and Origen were familiar with
people who did challenge authorship in the third and fourth centuries.[3]
What is even more helpful of combining reception history
with a historical critical commentary, is that Allison has shown how reception
history can actually be foundationally helpful for the study of the New
Testament. In recent years, there has been an absolute explosion in the
“history of exegesis.” This has culminated in several commentary series whose
whole role is simply to illustrate “what the Father said about the text” such
as the Ancient Christian Commentary Series, the Church’s Bible series, and the
Blackwell Bible Commentary Series. The use of them, though has been difficult.
Most of the time, they are viewed as helpful for understanding the author ‘s
expressed, but not the text. For example, what Augustine says about Genesis
often tells us very little about Genesis – with his use of allegories and
Platonic cosmology, but it is not clear how helpful these reception histories
are for actually understanding Genesis itself. Allison has done a great job
illustrating how the reception of a text can aid in understanding a text
historically. He has shown that even if the history of interpretation was
incorrect, that history has framed the questions that are still asked to the
text. Further, very frequently many of the questions that were once asked and
have subsequently ceased to be asked ought to be reconsidered. In this, combining
the two things was an absolute triumph and alone makes the book worthy of
consideration – even for those who are not terribly interested in the book of
James.
The second thing that Allison’s approach does, which is
relatively rare among modern commentaries, is finds a way to address a very
wide range of scholarship without making it his sole purpose to use a single
one of them as a type of straw man that he then uses as a counterpoint he will
prove wrong. For the book of James, Martin Dibelius’s commentary is used in
this manner. The 1920’s ideas in the book are outdated and most modern
commentators for some reason feel the need to destroy his ideas – look here for
my blog post about this practice and how it annoys me: How
the ghost of Martin Dibelius Haunts the Study of James: The proclivity of
scholarship to maintain an unfair caricature. Because of Allison’s
combination of reception history with historical critical analysis, what has
come before is honored rather than challenged. This is rare in modern
scholarship and the hermeneutic of respect which Allison promotes cannot be
lauded enough in the modern world of scholarship where a hermeneutic of iconoclasm
very frequently is encouraged.
In his actual argument, Allison argues for a general social perspective for the book of
James. He does not argue for a central thesis beyond its intended societal
effect. He argues that the book of James was written for both Christian Jews and non-Christian Jews (not for gentiles). He
argues that the goal of the book were to revolve around a variety of topics
that would promote irenic behavior between the two:
Our letter is not a systematic or
comprehensive statement of its author’s personal theology or religious
convictions. The content is rather dictated and circumscribed by the particular
goals its author had in mind; and as this commentary discerns an attempt to
promote irenic relations between Christian Jews and non-Christian Jews, the
dearth of unambiguously Christian beliefs is readily explained. So too the
traditional character of most of the letter: it is full of conventional
material because James wanted his group to be perceived as conventional. That is,
he wanted Christian Jews to be perceived as Jews. So the letter is in large
measure a statement of beliefs shared by Jews and Christians.[4]
This interest then requires that the text not have as
central a thesis as might be expected. Instead, he argues that the interest was
to promote a conventional Judaism for a few different points that might be at
issue between Jewish and Jewish-Christian groups.
This perspective then defines the author and audience as
Jewish Christians with little to no place for Gentile Christianity:
This commentary, going beyond
McNeile, suggests that James represents Christian Jews who did not define
themselves over against Judaism. That is, our book emerged from a
Christ-oriented Judaism, from a group that still attended synagogue and wished
to maintain irenic relations with those who did not share their belief that
Jesus was the Messiah.[5]
Here is Allison’s governing hypothesis for his
interpretation – that this was written to Jews in order to promote commonality
between the two via an argument for relatively conventional behavior on the
part of the Jewish-Christians.
While there certainly is some challenge to the idea that
James is not written to Gentiles, there are certainly many commentators of
James who would agree with Allison on this point. Where Allison’s argument is
less strong is the idea that James presents anything that could present
“conventional Judaism.” The book of James could be argued to be dominated by
Stoic theology rather than “standard Judaism” as read by some scholars – most
notably Matt A. Jackson-McCabe.[6]
McCabe points out that it was certainly possible
for Jews to read their ideas in a stoic lens – as can be found in figures
such as Philo, it is a very difficult position to take to argue that this was
in any way normative Judaism at any
point in Jewish history. This would have been rather exceptional Judaism to say
the least.
Where this theory is troubling is how this is expressed in
the commentary itself. The moments where stoic theology loom large, such as the
“law of freedom,” “dipsychos (double
minded),” “internal epithumia
(desire),” and “logos,” are not expressed clearly in Allison’s commentary. He
mentions the Stoic principles behind them, but then does not do anything with
that insight. It is quite possible that there are two reasons. The first is
that Allison is well aware that such a view is hardly normative Judaism. The
second, though, is less obvious – his interest in melding reception history and
critical exegesis would have made these moments difficult. Very few people
before the 19th century would have mentioned Stoic theology as such
in any commentary on James. Therefore, all of it is in the “modern” period and
therefore would not be bolstered by his melded approach. However, this is only
true on the surface level. In the Patristic period, many readers of James read
these terms fully in a Stoic context. However, they did not call it
deliberately “Stoic” because for them, this was their own philosophy. They held
“logos” in a very similar manner as Stoic theology, but never knew that. Very
few actually studied Epictetus or Chrysippus. However, they did study Augustine
and followed his example. Therefore, it seems that Allison’s melded approach
here fell victim to focusing on what was stated more outright than what was behind
many of these texts.
Finally, Allison’s argument about authorship – while being
quite standard – here illustrates the difficulty modern scholars have with
authorship. Allison argues that this is a pseudepigraphon. He does not feel
that the brother of Jesus wrote this work. He has a thorough argument for this
position that is as well presented as any that I have ever seen.[7]
The problem is why he considers it a pseudepigraphon in the first place. After
all, the text never says that it is Jesus’ brother – only that is someone named
Iakobos (Eng. “James”) who is a
member of the Jesus movement. Here, Allison falls into a relatively standard
argument suggesting that the silence of definition of this particular James is
deafening and that the silence should indicate it is Jesus’ brother:
Two views dominate today: either
James the brother of Jesus stands behind our text, or it is a pseudepigraphon
written in his name. Both views rightly assume that a lesser name requires
qualification whereas a greater name does not. The Jesus of Col 4.11 is “Jesus
Justus.” An early Christian could never have simply called such a one “Jesus”:
That name, if unqualified, would have signified Jesus of Nazareth. And so
likewise, most suppose, is it with the simple Iakobos of Jas 1:1: the only James who could be introduced without
further biographical specification, and who speaks with the authority that this
writer does, must be the most famous James, which means the brother of Jesus.[8]
Here, Allison presents a relatively standard argument. One
could see a similar argument in Ehrman’s recent Forgery and Counterforgery.[9]
This argument though, is always very weak. First, it is an argument from
silence. That alone makes this less strong than they wish it were. Second, in
this case, the name “James” was frequently
used in Early Christian literature for different figures. The best example
I have is James the son of Zebedee is hardly ever described with any kind of
qualifying title. Instead, it is simply “Peter, James, and John” who ascend the
mountain. If every time a Christian read “James,” they automatically thought of
James the Just, why did the gospels not need to include the kind of qualifying
remark that Allison (and others) propose they did? The argument seems to fall
apart. What is worse is that this is the beginning of his introduction with
this argument. This is the first thing that a reader will see and there are
serious questions as to the helpfulness of this conversation. Very little of it
aids the meaning of the actual text as I expressed in a previous blog post: Authorship
as Remoteness.
Finally, on a convenience’s note, the citations in this book
were weighty – there were more than a thousand footnotes that cited a
tremendous number of texts. This encyclopedic outlook was the strength of the
book. However, the bibliography did not include all of the books cited. While I
understand this for the purposes of brevity, for a book that is over 800 pages,
it is very annoying to have to root through the book to try and find the first
time a work was footnoted to find the entire reference (particularly if one is
on page 750 and the first time it was references was on page 125). This is not
a major issue, but it is annoying as a reader.
In all, this book is a triumph. It deserves to be read for
both its content on James and its format of melding the genres of reception
history with historical critical studies in an accessible way.
[1] Allison, 3.
[2] Allison,
2-3.
[3] Allison,
18-19.
[4] Allison, 88.
[5] Allison, 43.
[6] Matt A.
Jackson-McCabe Logos and Law in the
Letter of James: The Law of Nature, the Law of Moses, and the Law of Freedom (Leiden:
Brill, 2001).
[7] Allison,
3-32.
[8] Alllison,
4-5.
[9] Bart Ehrman,
Forgery and Counterforgery: The Use of
Literary Deceit in Early Christian Polemics (Oxford: OUP, 2013).
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