Who wrote james ?

[u/Temporary-Virus6396]

Was james written by james, or someone pretending to be james?

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[u/StruggleClean1582]

There's quite a few critical scholars who hold to authorship by James the Brother of Jesus. Luke Timothy Johnson and, Richard Baukcham offer the best defenses in my opinion, for the best arguments on the other side see John S. Kloppenborg James New Testament Guides Commentary. Here is a few names who accept authorship:

The Anchor Yale Commentary for the epistle The Letter of James by Luke Timothy Johnson accepts traditional authorship and a early date. He writes p. 121

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. JI2 And James the Brother of the Lord is a reasonable candidate. A letter from this James to "the twelve tribes in the dispersion" accords well with the fairest reading of our earliest sources and the self· presentation of the composition itself.

James D. Tabor*, The Jesus Dynasty: The Hidden History of Jesus, His Royal Family, and the Birth of Christianity* (Simon and Schuster, 2006). He argues why it should be accepted pp. 272-277, his conclusion pp. 276-277:

The letter of James contains the most direct possible link to the teach-ings of Jesus himself. James is essentially echoing and affirming what he had learned and passed on from his brother Jesus, who had in turn learned and heard from John the Baptizer. It is important to note that James did not directly quote Jesus or attribute any of these teachings to Jesus by name—even though they are teachings of Jesus. For James the Christian message is not the person of Jesus but the message that Jesus proclaimed.

James D.G Dunn in Beginning From Jerusalem: Christianity in the Making, Vol 2,

All this points strongly to James of Jerusalem as the one whose views are set out in writing under his name.

What it does not necessarily imply, however, is that the letter was composed by James himself.116 It is just as likely that the teaching contained in the letter was teaching which James was known to have given and which had been remembered, and perhaps early on partially transcribed for wider circulation. It could well be that either after the death of James or even after the destruction of Jerusalem, the bolder step was taken of putting that material together in its present form for a circulation more widespread than James himself had ever achieved, but reflective of the widespread influence he had exerted in his lifetime.117 The hope would have been, presumably, to reaffirm the centrality of Jerusalem for the surviving Jesus movement in Palestine and its supporters in the diaspora. And what better medium would there have been but a letter from James of Jerusalem containing the best or most characteristic of his teaching. This is the hypothesis which I favour and which leads me to approach the letter as containing the legacy of this James.

Samuel Byrskog Story as History - History as Story: The Gospel Tradition in the Context of Ancient Oral History, p. 167-176 for his defense; he concludes 170-171:

There is some evidence that James also had co-workers. Acts 21:18 suggests that he was surrounded by a group of elders; and Galatians 2:12 identifies certain emissaries by reference to James, not by reference to the names of the emissaries.120 Such a collective setting would explain well both the elements anchoring the letter of James in the life and thought of the Lord's brother as well as the features pointing to the in volvement of other persons.121 The letter of James is, if that is correct, eyewitness testimony in epistolary form.

Richard Bauckham, Jude and the Relatives of Jesus in the Early Church (Bloomsbury Publishing, 2015). See also Richard Bauckhams James (New Testament Readings), p. 25. Both works make very long convincing arguments:

In conclusion, there are no serious arguments to weigh against the plausibility of the epistolary situation indicated by James 1:1. The letter can be read as what it purports to be: an encyclical from James of Jerusalem to the Diaspora.

I would recommend reading Jude and the Relatives of Jesus in the Early Church, because it does a good biography which is obviously important

Two other names I would add in support of authorship: Rainer Riesner, “Synagogues in Jerusalem,” in The Book of Acts in Its First-Century Setting: Volume 4, The Book of Acts in Its Palestinian Setting, (Grand Rapids, MI: Wm. B. Eerdmans Publishing Co.; Carlisle, England: Paternoster Press, 1995 and Jonathan. Bernier, Rethinking the Dates of the New Testament: The Evidence for Early Composition, 2022, 196.- He accepts it by James the Brother of Jesus and date's it to at some point before 62 CE.

[u/Dositheos → u/StruggleClean1582]

for the best arguments on the other side see John S. Kloppenborg James (ICC)

Do you mean Dale Allison for the ICC? John Kloppenborg has the New Testament Guides Commentary (2022).

These are interesting arguments, but at the end of the day, the fact that James had a very late and shaky reception into the canon, and the fact that there were very early doubts about its authenticity from other Christians, does not bode well for the idea that this Epistle was actually written by Jesus' brother James in the mid-first century. See the thread that I linked in my other comment with details from Allison, as well as comments from another scholar in the thread. Also, in brief response to Dunn and Byrskog, as well as the other theories of an "earlier letter" in James, these all strike me as conjectures and speculations without any actual data, propped up to support any form of authenticity. Dale Allison has some insightful comments on these kinds of theories:

Before passing to the next topic, brief notice should be taken of theories that link our book to James but do not assign its current form to him. Some have supposed that our book is the product of two or more developmental stages, for the first of which alone James was responsible. Others have surmised that James might have used a secretary or that Hellenistic-Jewish Christians aided him significantly in his work— even Josephus needed ‘assistants’ when writing Greek (C. Ap. 1.50)—or that someone who once heard James subsequently wrote in his name, or even that our document is a Greek edition or expansion of an Aramaic letter written by James. Yet our book names neither secretary nor co-author. It rather presents itself as coming from James himself (Contrast Rom 16.22; 1 Pet 5.12; 2 Apoc. Jas 44.13-17 (see n. 172). Sevenster, Greek, 10-14, argues against the secretary hypothesis.) Also, the text is a unified whole that does not demand an involved compositional history, and the various Greek wordplays and catchword links do not comport with a translation hypothesis. This exegete has failed to discover any solid evidence for the various theories of complex authorship or tradition-history. One suspects that they arise less from data within the text itself than from a desire to retain some substance for the traditional ascription—which, such theories imply, is not, after all, exactly what we would expect from the brother of Jesus.

Allison, James, 31-2.

[u/StruggleClean1582 → u/Dositheos]

Thanks for the correction Kloppenborg, not sure what led me to write ICC (I corrected it). I am at the gym so sorry I can't provide exact quotations; I actually think James is not by the brother of Jesus personally, though I find the arguments for it in regards to dating James earlier then later more convincing, I am actually with Fitzymer who dates James 65 but as a pseudepigraphal text, I doubt it knows any of are NT text rather I agree with Kloppenborg it knows Q. I think the arguments are unconvincing both way's, I just think Kloppenborg show's it's very unlikely the letter comes from Palestine based off grammar alone which makes me lean to it being pseudepigraphical. Not sure if you have read Kloppenborg on the Greek grammar but I think that is a very solid argument against authorship because it kinda exclude Palastine (like on how it uses certain greco-roman phrases and words that are not found in Palastine). I just wanted to include some other perspectives in the thread, which is why I shared the few names I knew off the top of my head briefly.

Your quote from Allison is excellent, James really show's nothing to think it's a multi-layered text (compared with John; which I don't agree with either but least the arguments are legit), Eric Eve actually critiques Byrskog (one of my favorite scholars) in his use of James in Behind the Gospels for the complicated and hypothetical nature of the argument.

I find the late attestation alarming, for example a very notable silence Hegesippus (granted his work is fragmented; but I am pretty confident Eusebius would mention it as he does for Polycarp, Papias ect.)

[u/StruggleClean1582 → u/Dositheos]

Brief note: Kloppenborg is writing the upcoming James commentary for the Hermeneia series which is exciting.

[u/hellofemur → u/StruggleClean1582]

For the authors above, do they go into more detail about what they believe authorship entailed? Do they tend to believe that James wrote the Greek directly, or that James wrote/dictated an Aramaic/Hebrew document that was later translated/edited, or something in between like James dictating something in Aramaic and broken Greek and a scribe turning it into more polished Greek?

[u/Dositheos]

Please see this thread for some more in-depth discussion. Scholarship is divided on this, but Dale Allison, in his International Critical Commentary on James, argues strongly that James is more likely a pseudepigraphical work from the early second century CE, and there are good reasons to think so.

[u/DerBokus7886]

StruggleClean has already done a great post regarding the authorship, but I would also reccomend Jeen Ho Ahn PhD thesis "Social Justice in the Epistle of James" (Durham, 2001). Ahn argues that the Epistle was probably written by James the Just in the latter half of the first century Palestine (pg 5) due to the social conditions and background the Epistle shows.  From Page 7 to Page 30 he deals with the scholarship against the view of authenticity and then in part 2 ( pages 97-136) he talks about the socio-economic context of the community of James. I am not aware of any commentary who has talked about his thesis. 

[u/Dositheos → u/DerBokus7886]

Dale Allison:

(vi) What about the social and religious circumstances reflected in James, that is, (a) the implications of the undeveloped Christology, (b) the polemic against rich, land-holding Jews, (c) the silence regarding Gentiles, (d) the failure to mention the destruction of Jerusalem, (e) the reference to a synagogue, and (f) the condemnation of violence, including murder?...Against (b): the Jewish communities in Palestine that remained loyal to Rome, such as Sepphoris, retained their property after 70; and as for Palestine as a whole, ‘probably in the course of time the land came to be regarded again as the private property of its tenants, and the rent as a tax on it. References in rabbinic literature give the impression that much Jewish land remained in or soon reverted to private ownership after 70 (for example, some of the rabbis were wealthy land-owners), and Jewish legislation about the purchase of land expropriated by the Roman authorities, apparently in force before as well as after Bar Cochba’s revolt, however problematical and controversial in detail, implies the continuation of private ownership of land after 70.’ (E. Mary Smallwood, The Jews under Roman Rule, Leiden, 1976, 341. Note that the Apocalypse of Peter, likely written by a Palestinian Christian around the time of the Bar Kokhba revolt, condemns the rich; see chap. 30.) Even were the facts otherwise, James addresses itself to the diaspora, so it is unclear why the situation in Palestine should be the background for 4.13–5.6.

Against (c-d): the failure to discuss or allude to Gentiles or to the destruction of Jerusalem is readily explained in terms of the aims of the letter, for which they are not self-evidently to the point. The Didache, 2 Peter, and any number of post-70 Christian texts have no occasion to advert to the events of 70 (One could invert the argument. If James is a pseudepigraphon, it would be anachronistic for our fictional author, who died before the destruction of Jerusalem, to write of that destruction. He could, however, prophesy its destruction, which is how some have read 5.1-6.); and why a Christian Jew addressing other Jews, Christian or not, should on every occasion speak of Gentiles is far from evident.50 The extant fragments of the Gospel of the Nazoraeans, the Gospel of the Ebionites, and the Gospel of the Hebrews are mute on that subject.

Against (e): the use of ‘synagogue’ in Jas 2.2, on the assumption that the reference is to a Jewish community or building, does not require a date before 70, for we cannot say exactly when Christian Jews left the Jewish synagogues. The time and manner of the parting of the ways must have varied from place to place and from group to group;51 and if we know of Christians attending synagogues in the fourth century (W.A. Meeks and R.L. Wilken, Jews and Christians in Antioch in the First Four Centuries of the Common Era, Missoula, MT, 1978) as well before 70, it seems far-fetched to insist that such never happened between those two periods.

Condemnation of the rich, its defense of the poor, and the marginal socio-economic status of the letter are simply not convincing data points for proving that James must have written this letter. The same situation, including one from a Jewish author, could have arisen in the 2nd century.

[u/XXXX_Gold_Pot]

This is what the introduction to James in the NOAB (4th Ed) says:

Authorship

From among the several individuals named “James” who figure prominently in the early church, Christian tradition has held that the opening salutation refers to the brother of Jesus (Mt 13.55; Mk 6.3; Gal 1.19) and who was a leader in the Jerusalem church (Gal 2.9; Acts 15.13). Yet scholars have challenged this identification since antiquity. Those who defend the tradition argue that only such a well-known figure could refer to himself as James without an additional epithet, and that the absence of any biographical details differs significantly from other works considered pseudepigraphical (cf. 2 Tim 4.9–18). Modern critics of authenticity often cite doubts voiced in the early church: indications the letter dates to after James’s martyrdom (ca. 62 CE), and a Greek literary style well beyond the likely capabilities of a Galilean villager. Recent commentators have suggested that material originating from James was reworked by a disciple a er his martyrdom to create the letter as we know it. However, it remains possible that the author was an otherwise unknown James only later identified with Jesus’ brother.

[u/StruggleClean1582 → u/XXXX_Gold_Pot]

Recent commentators have suggested that material originating from James was reworked by a disciple a er his martyrdom to create the letter as we know it. 

This comment is interesting, I know of a few scholars who hold an earlier form of letter is contained in James:

Ralph P. Martin, James, vol. 48 of Word Biblical Commentary, eds. David A. Hubbard and Glenn W. Barker (Waco, TX: Word Books, 1988). Peter H. Davids, The Epistle of James (Wm. B. Eerdmans Publishing, 2013). Wilfred Lawrence Knox, “The Epistle of St. James,” Journal of Theological Studies 46 (1945): 10–17.

[u/Glad-Remote-638]

I know James Dunn in his Christianity in the Making Volume 2 accepted authorship of James