Greatings To The Twelve Tribes (James 1.1)

The study of James starts with a review of the author (which James wrote the book?) and the introduction verse of the book. All the New Testament references to James are identified in this lesson.

No home work assigned this week …

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Greeting to the Twelve Tribes

1 James, a bondservant of God and of the Lord Jesus Christ,

To the twelve tribes which are scattered abroad:

Greetings.

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The author and recipient of the epistle

The author of the epistle identifies himself simply as James or Jacobus. He provides no details about his family, his place of origin, or his profession, either in the greeting or body of the letter, which would allow us to say definitively who this James was. There were two or three individuals named James mentioned in the New Testament who could be the human author of this epistle: the apostle James, son of Zebedee and brother of John; the apostle James, son of Alphaeus, often called James the Lesser or Younger; and James, the brother of Jesus Christ.

Acts 12:1-2 records that the apostle James, son of Zebedee, brother of John, was killed by King Herod Agrippa I, around 44 B.C. It is therefore unlikely that that James was the author of the Epistle of James. About James the Lesser, son of Alphaeus, and James, the brother of Jesus, very little is found in Scripture. There are just a handful of references to James, son of Alphaeus, in the Gospels and one in the Book of Acts. Similarly, James, the brother of Jesus, appears only in the two lists of the brothers of Jesus found in Matthew 13:55 and Mark 6:3, and in a comment made by Paul in Galatians 1:19.

Traditionally, James, the brother of Jesus, and an influential person in the church at Jerusalem, is held to be the author of this epistle, and we will adhere to this tradition in our discussion of the epistle. I must mention, if only in passing, that there is considerable speculation among scholars as to whether James the Lesser was the same person as James, the brother of Jesus Christ. Some have theorized that Alphaeus (his Greek name), or Clopas (in the Aramaean), who was called the father of James, was actually the brother of Joseph, Jesus’ step-father. Alphaeus was married to another Mary but their union had no children at the time of his death. In accordance with the Mosaic Law [see Deuteronomy 25:5-7], Joseph took his brother’s widow as his wife and had a son with her named James. Again according to the Law, James would have been known as the son of Alphaeus and would have been a half-brother to Jesus.

Suffice it to say that there is evidence in Scripture for both sides of that position. For example, after the death of James, son of Zebedee, Scriptural references to any James (Acts 12:17; 15:13; 21:18; 1 Corinthians 15:7; Galatians 2:9,12; and James 1:1.) still living are made without qualification (e.g., without James, son of Alphaeus, or James, the brother of the Lord), as if there were only James. This is an interesting but ultimately non-fruitful subject. Heeding the advice of Paul not to “give heed to fables and endless genealogies, which cause disputes rather than godly edification which is in faith,” (1 Timothy 1:4) we will spend no further cycles here and leave the matter to experts and pedants.

Assuming with tradition that the author of our epistle is James, the brother of Jesus, what can we say about him? As we mentioned above, here are only three direct references to James, the brother of our Lord, in Scripture. The direct references in Matthew 13 and Mark 6 tells us that James was one of four brothers of Jesus. In John 7:3-5 and Mark 3:20-21 we read that Jesus’ brothers did not believe in Him, so we can assume that neither did James, initially. However, after Jesus’ Ascension, we find that His mother and brothers were among those who attended the prayer meeting in the upper room (Acts 1:12-14). It appears that James began to assume a position of influence among the believers in Jerusalem. Paul’s remark in Galatians 1.18 –

18 Then after three years I went up to Jerusalem to see Peter, and remained with him fifteen days. 19 But I saw none of the other apostles except James, the Lord's brother. 20 (Now concerning the things which I write to you, indeed, before God, I do not lie.)

- suggests that by about 35 A.D., when scholars believe Paul made his first visit to Jerusalem as a believer, James was numbered, at least by Paul, among the apostles of Jesus.

As was mentioned above, tradition holds that references to James made without qualification, except where context would otherwise dictate, refer to James, the brother of Jesus, and it is these references that we will now mine for yet more information about the author of our epistle. On the whole, these unqualified references to James substantiate the claim that James grew in stature within the church at Jerusalem. After King Herod Agrippa had James, son of Zebedee, killed with the sword in 44 A.D., he then seized the Apostle Peter and threw him into prison. When Peter was miraculously rescued by an angel, he made his way to the house of Mary, mother of John Mark, where the church had gathered in prayer, and instructed them, "Go, tell these things to James and to the brethren." (Acts 12:17)

Five years later, in 49 A.D., a council was held in Jerusalem to discuss whether – or to what extent - Gentile believers should be held accountable to observe the Mosaic Law. In Galatians, Paul remarks that James, Cephas, and John, whom he perceived as pillars of the church there, gave him the right hand of friendship, that Paul and Barnabas should take the Gospel to the uncircumcised. (Galatians 2:7-10) At the council, after the testimonies of Peter, Paul, and Barnabas, James stated what would become the official position of the council:

Acts 15:19-21

“Therefore I judge that we should not trouble those from among the Gentiles who are turning to God, 20 but that we write to them to abstain from things polluted by idols, from sexual immorality, from things strangled, and from blood.”

And eight years later, in 57 A.D., when Paul made his final visit to Jerusalem, Acts 21:17-25 records his initial meeting with the brethren, James, and the elders (of the church at Jerusalem):

17 And when we had come to Jerusalem, the brethren received us gladly. 18 On the following day Paul went in with us to James, and all the elders were present. 19 When he had greeted them, he told in detail those things which God had done among the Gentiles through his ministry. 20 And when they heard it, they glorified the Lord. And they said to him, "You see, brother, how many myriads of Jews there are who have believed, and they are all zealous for the law; 21 but they have been informed about you that you teach all the Jews who are among the Gentiles to forsake Moses, saying that they ought not to circumcise their children nor to walk according to the customs. 22 What then? The assembly must certainly meet, for they will hear that you have come. 23 Therefore do what we tell you: We have four men who have taken a vow. 24 Take them and be purified with them, and pay their expenses so that they may shave their heads, and that all may know that those things of which they were informed concerning you are nothing, but that you yourself also walk orderly and keep the law. 25 But concerning the Gentiles who believe, we have written and decided that they should observe no such thing, except that they should keep themselves from things offered to idols, from blood, from things strangled, and from sexual immorality."

Although we are not told that it is James who addresses Paul, what is said certainly seems consistent with James words at the Council of Jerusalem, as well as what we will read in the Epistle of James. The speaker tells Paul to observe “how many myriads of Jews there are who have believed, and they are all zealous for the law [verse 20].”  He informs Paul that rumors are circulating that he has taught Jewish believers among the Gentiles to forsake the Law of Moses [verse 21]. And he advises Paul that when he appears before the assembly (of the Sanhedrin?) that he should communicate that he himself walks orderly and keeps the law [verse 24], but that regarding Gentile believers, they (the leadership within the church) have decided and written that Gentiles “should observe no such thing, except that they should keep themselves from things offered to idols, from blood, from things strangled, and from sexual immorality [verse 25].”

This passage from Acts suggests that James was held in high esteem not just among the brethren in Jerusalem and the apostles, but also among the Jewish religious leadership. The brethren speaking to Paul seem to have continued to observe the Mosaic Law. They appear to advocate continued observance of aspects of the Mosaic Law such as circumcision of Jewish children and the sacrifices and ritual purification associated with a vow of Nazirite. (Numbers 6 for the aspects of the Mosaic Law hat pertained to the vow of a Nazirite).

They encourage Paul to participate in the purification ceremony associated with the ending of the vow of four Nazirites, to demonstrate to the assembly that he also is in agreement with the Law of Moses. It is not surprising that Paul agreed with these suggestions. Based on what we read in Acts 18:18, Paul himself had apparently taken a vow as a Nazirite.

I suspect that James’ position regarding the observance of the Mosaic Law was not atypical of the first century church in Jerusalem. Many if not most of the believers in Jerusalem in the first decades after Jesus’ Ascension would have been first Jews by birth or conversion. Jesus Himself was a Jew, from the tribe of Judah and the house of David, who came and ministered first, although not exclusively, to the Children of Israel. Jesus said of Himself to the Canaanite woman from the region of Tyre and Sidon who was asking Him to heal her daughter, "I was not sent except to the lost sheep of the house of Israel." (Matthew 15:21) Yet despite the fact that she was a Canaanite, because she had faith, Jesus healed her daughter. In the end, it is not our physical condition or our ethnicity or our works that determines whether we are saved: we are all saved the same way - by grace through faith.

The men Jesus chose to be His twelve apostles were, we believe, all Jewish. So too, I suspect, were the seventy disciples, since Jesus sent them out to every city and place where He Himself was about to go (Luke 10:1-2). The three thousand souls whom the Lord added to the church on the Day of Pentecost where in all likelihood Jews, who were in Jerusalem in observance of the Law of Moses (Acts 2:41). The Feast of Weeks was one of the three festivals when Jews were called to travel to Jerusalem to worship the Lord with their sacrifices (Exodus 34:22-24). Peter’s message to the crowds on the Day of Pentecost was addressed to fellow Jews and residents of Jerusalem (Acts 2:14).

The first seven chapters of the Book of Acts document the growth of the church in Jerusalem. The persecution documented in Acts 8, which was spearheaded by Saul of Tarsus, served to disperse believers throughout the regions of Judea and Samaria (Acts 8:1-2). But with Saul of Tarsus’ conversion, the persecution subsided and seems to have ceased altogether for a time. Meanwhile the Gospel continued to spread within the area of Israel. In Acts 9:31 we read “

Then the churches throughout all Judea, Galilee, and Samaria had peace and were edified. And walking in the fear of the Lord and in the comfort of the Holy Spirit, they were multiplied.”

For these Jews who had given their lives to Christ, Jesus was in a very real sense the culmination of the Old Testament, of the Law and the Prophets. The Old Testament often spoke about the Messiah, prophesied about Him, and was filled with images and types of Him. And Jesus fulfilled all those words, prophesies, and types. Jesus was the Word become flesh, who lived a life completely obedient to the will of His father and completely compliant with the Mosaic Law. And that perfect life qualified Him to be the Lamb of God, given as a sacrifice with spot or blemish, to atone for the sins of all mankind, past, present, and future. These Jewish believers were saved like every person except for Jesus, by grace through faith in God, in the atoning power of the blood of Jesus.

Furthermore, Jesus not only kept the Mosaic Law perfectly but He clearly stated in the Sermon on the Mount that He had come to fulfill the Law not to abolish it (Matthew 5:17-20). Certainly He talked to His disciples at the Last Supper of a new covenant in His blood. But I suspect that like most things He told His disciples, it took time for the Holy Spirit to prepare their hearts to receive the significance of that new covenant. Indeed for some, the Law of Moses and the old covenant would remain a stumbling block. It would be the writings of the Apostle Paul which would flesh out this notion of a new covenant, and reveal the significance that new covenant had for the observance of the Law by believers.

It is therefore hardly surprising that Jews who gave their life to Christ continued to observe that Mosaic Law. We read often in the Book of Acts of the disciples being in the Temple. In Acts 3, Peter and John go to the Temple to participate in the three o’clock prayer.  Before the persecution began, believers even met in that area of the Temple known as Solomon’s Porch (Acts 5:12-13).

But we need to remember that James’ situation was unique and in some ways even more extraordinary; James was after all the brother of Jesus. James had opportunities to observe Jesus on a daily basis as He lived out His life without sin. James would have seen Jesus keep the Mosaic Law perfectly, day after day, month after month, and year after year. We are told that initially James, like his siblings, did not view Jesus as anything special; I suspect he was too close to close to the events take them in; he could not see the forest for the trees. James and his brothers probably could not recognize and did not believe that Jesus was a prophet, much less the Messiah or the Son of God. But Jesus’s death, resurrection, and Ascension would change that all that and the brothers became became followers of the Way. James would have known personally in a way that few other could what it meant to pick up his cross and follow Jesus. Following in Jesus’ footsteps to James probably meant among other things trying to keep the Mosaic Law, because that’s exactly what Jesus had done.

Indeed there is nothing wrong with observing the Law, provided that a person is not observing it to be righteous. The Law is a tutor. It is intended to show us exactly what kind of men and women we are. When we look at the Law, we should see how short of the standard God has set therein we actually fall. We are saved by grace through faith, and not of works, lest anyone should boast. The danger is when you begin to see obedience to the Law as what can save you, rather than grace through faith. Ephesians 2:8-10 puts the matter plainly:

8 For by grace you have been saved through faith, and that not of yourselves; it is the gift of God, 9 not of works, lest anyone should boast. 10 For we are His workmanship, created in Christ Jesus for good works, which God prepared beforehand that we should walk in them.

The temptation to see our works, whether it be keeping the Law of Love that Jesus commanded us to observe, or doing whatever God calls us to do through His Holy Spirit, as somehow obligating God to us or as somehow making us more righteous than those who might be less obedient, is a great one. We know that during the time of Paul’s missionary journeys he at times encountered the teachings of the Judaizers, who taught that it was necessary for believers in Jesus to observe the Law of Moses. Even apostles were not immune from this way of thinking.

In Galatians 2:11-13 Paul tells us that in Antioch Peter stopped dining with Gentiles fearing those who were of the circumcision:

11 Now when Peter had come to Antioch, I withstood him to his face, because he was to be blamed; 12 for before certain men came from James, he would eat with the Gentiles; but when they came, he withdrew and separated himself, fearing those who were of the circumcision. 13 And the rest of the Jews also played the hypocrite with him, so that even Barnabas was carried away with their hypocrisy.

I suspect that the men who came to Peter from James in Jerusalem were most likely Judaizers. It seems that their words or their presence discouraged Peter from dining with Gentiles. Under Mosaic Law, Jews who dined with Gentiles were considered unclean. Other believing Jews at Antioch apparently followed suit, including Barnabas, despite the time he had spent with Paul. It was at that point that Paul intervened and took Peter to task for his hypocrisy.

Galatians 2:14-21

14 But when I saw that they were not straightforward about the truth of the gospel, I said to Peter before them all, "If you, being a Jew, live in the manner of Gentiles and not as the Jews, why do you compel Gentiles to live as Jews?  15 We who are Jews by nature, and not sinners of the Gentiles, 16 knowing that a man is not justified by the works of the law but by faith in Jesus Christ, even we have believed in Christ Jesus, that we might be justified by faith in Christ and not by the works of the law; for by the works of the law no flesh shall be justified.

17 "But if, while we seek to be justified by Christ, we ourselves also are found sinners, is Christ therefore a minister of sin? Certainly not! 18 For if I build again those things which I destroyed, I make myself a transgressor. 19 For I through the law died to the law that I might live to God. 20 I have been crucified with Christ; it is no longer I who live, but Christ lives in me; and the life which I now live in the flesh I live by faith in the Son of God, who loved me and gave Himself for me. 21 I do not set aside the grace of God; for if righteousness comes through the law, then Christ died in vain."

Although I can imagine that James’ desire to balance the Law of Moses and the traditions of the Jews with grace and faith could be perverted into the Judaizers’ doctrines, I find it interesting that Scripture contains no rebuke of James nor does Paul rebuke the particular men who came from James to Peter at Antioch. From this I believe we can assume that James was not himself a Judiazer nor did he agree with their doctrines. This opinion, and an opinion it is, is supported by the traditions about James that have been preserved in the writings of Josephus and Eusebius, a 4^th century historian of the early church. Here is what Eusebius, quoting from the Memoirs of Hegesippus, a second century chronicler of the early church, has to say about James:

4 "James, the brother of the Lord, succeeded to the government of the Church in conjunction with the apostles.  He has been called the Just  by all from the time of our Saviour to the present day; for there were many that bore the name of James.

5 He was holy from his mother's womb; and he drank no wine nor strong drink, nor did he eat flesh. No razor came upon his head; he did not anoint himself with oil, and he did not use the bath.

6 He alone was permitted to enter into the holy place; for he wore not woolen but linen garments. And he was in the habit of entering alone into the temple, and was frequently found upon his knees begging forgiveness for the people, so that his knees became hard like those of a camel, in consequence of his constantly bending them in his worship of God, and asking forgiveness for the people. 

7 Because of his exceeding great justice he was called the Just, and Oblias,  which signifies in Greek, 'Bulwark of the people' and 'Justice,'  in accordance with what the prophets declare concerning him.” (From the THE CHURCH HISTORY OF EUSEBIUS, Book Two, Chapter 23, The Martyrdom of James, Who Was Called the Brother of the Lord, sections 4 – 7.)

 

Josephus records that James was killed in Jerusalem in 62 A.D. at the request of the high priest Ananus. James was first thrown down from the top of the Temple, then stoned, and finally dispatched by blows to the head with a fuller’s pole, used for wringing out garments which had been dyed. Tradition holds that immediately after the murder of James, Vespasian, later Roman emperor, began his siege of Jerusalem but historians date the beginning of the siege to four years later, in 66 A.D. So much for the traditional author of the Epistle of James.

Let us quickly look at the recipient to the epistle. Not surprisingly, given the character of James the traditional author of the epistle, the letter is addressed to the twelve tribes of Israel who are scattered abroad. James is writing to Jewish believers outside of Jerusalem, in Samaria, Judea, and elsewhere in Gentile countries. Certainly persecution is one of the agents that sparked this dispersal. We have already remarked about the scattering of Jewish Christians that resulted from the persecution of Saul of Tarsus shortly after the death, resurrection, and Ascension of Jesus. Other factors also contributed to the spread of pockets of Jewish Christianity, not the least of which was the Great Commission that Jesus had commanded to His disciples.

We are most familiar with the missionary activities of Paul, Barnabas, Silas, John Mark, and Luke, but there were undoubtedly many others whose names are not recorded for us. 

To take but one example, we read in Acts 8 of the conversion to Christianity of the Ethiopian eunuch, a man of great authority under Queen Candice, who had come up to Jerusalem to worship. This man was almost certainly a Jew by conversion who would have been well-placed to spread what he had been taught by Phillip. It is interesting that Christianity in Ethiopia dates from the first century A.D., which is consistent with the account in Acts.

James was particularly well-situated in Jerusalem to come in contact with these Jewish Christian groups. As we have already mentioned, there were three feasts each year in Jerusalem that Jewish Christians who continued to observe the Law of Moses would attend. James would have been able to speak with these brethren, understand their struggles, their needs, their questions, and compose an epistle to address these. And this is how I see the Epistle of James. It is most likely what is called a catholic epistle, by which is meant a letter that was not addressed to a particular individual or church, but was intended to be read in all churches.

What then can we say by way of conclusion? As we read through the Epistle of James, it is important to remember that our author was probably the brother of Jesus, a Hebrew among Hebrews, respected by Christians and Jews alike. And it also important to bear in mind that his intended audience is also very Jewish. This is not in any way to assert that James’ epistle has nothing for us. God’s word is alive and active to this day. And as Paul writes in Romans 2:28-29:

For he is not a Jew who is one outwardly, nor is circumcision that which is outward in the flesh; 29 but he is a Jew who is one inwardly; and circumcision is that of the heart, in the Spirit, not in the letter; whose praise is not from men but from God.

Recalling these things can, I hope and pray, together with the power of the Holy Spirit, help open up the Epistle of James a bit more for our understanding. Such is my prayer this evening.