James 3:13-18
Do you want to be counted wise, to build a reputation for wisdom? Here’s what you do: Live well, live wisely, live humbly. It’s the way you live, not the way you talk, that counts. Mean-spirited ambition isn’t wisdom. Boasting that you are wise isn’t wisdom. Twisting the truth to make yourselves sound wise isn’t wisdom. It’s the furthest thing from wisdom—it’s animal cunning, devilish conniving. Whenever you’re trying to look better than others or get the better of others, things fall apart and everyone ends up at the others’ throats.
Real wisdom, God’s wisdom, begins with a holy life and is characterized by getting along with others. It is gentle and reasonable, overflowing with mercy and blessings, not hot one day and cold the next, not two-faced. You can develop a healthy, robust community that lives right with God and enjoy its results only if you do the hard work of getting along with each other, treating each other with dignity and honor.
Today we begin the fourth leg of our long journey through the New Testament. To remind you of the plan, and recap what we have already done, we started two summers ago by taking an in-depth look into the four Gospels. The next summer we did the same with seven letters attributed to Paul – the seven that are considered by most mainline scholars as genuinely Pauline.
Then this summer, so far, we have read through the six remaining “letters from Paul” – the ones attributed to him but most likely not actually written by him, but by others using his name and his market value.
Just as a reminder, we have done all this because we believe that if we are going to claim to be Christians and look to the Bible for our history we need to know more about said Bible. Not just what it says, but why it says it. Out of the dozens of documents left to us from the biblical time-frame, why were these few preserved and gathered together into this collection? Who wrote them? Why were they written and to whom? And why do we care?
Last week we read from Rachel Held Evans’ new book, “Inspired,” and learned about “origin stories,” those “family-gathered-around-the-kitchen-table” stories we tell about those who came before us and how they shaped who we are today. Scripture is similarly a collection of stories written by and about people - real live ordinary people -- people with worries and fears and hopes and dreams. People who were leaders and people who were followers. People mostly doing their best. We have claimed their stories as somehow part of our own history, therefore we have an obligation to know more about them and what they mean to us here today – two thousand years later.
So today we’ll start the fourth section of documents, the ones I’ll just refer to as “the rest of them.” This will include the remaining New Testament letters – ones attributed not to Paul, but to other writers - James, Jude, three letters from John, two from Peter, plus the unattributed Letter to the Hebrews. Just who these letters were actually written by is a question we will handle as we get to each one.
So first, the letter from James. The author identifies himself only as “James” and doesn’t clarify which James. Historically the church assumed it was James, the brother of Jesus. This James was, according to both Paul and Peter, the leader of the early Christian community in Jerusalem. He was executed in the early 60’s.
If we accept this attribution then this letter could have been written as early as twenty years after Jesus’ crucifixion – which would make it even earlier than Paul’s authentic letters – the earliest written pieces we have.
But the majority of mainstream scholars do not believe this is a true attribution – in part because the writer never mentions a relationship with Jesus or with the church in Jerusalem. Even more important here is the fact that the document is written in Greek – and pretty sophisticated Greek, at that, and while not impossible, it does seem unlikely, at best, that a brother to Jesus, raised, as Jesus was, in rural Galilee and speaking only Aramaic, would suddenly have such an educated grasp of Greek.
If we don’t accept this James as the brother of Jesus then we don’t know who he was and the date of writing could be just about anywhere from the 70’s to 100's. Marc Borg puts it somewhere in the 70’s – after Mark's gospel and before Matthew’s.
After Paul’s letters, these two gospels are the earliest remaining writings we have. The writer of James never quotes either gospel directly but he does seem to share ideas with them, suggesting they all pulled from the same source materials.
Remember “Q,” that designation bible scholars use for a non-surviving written source from the earliest years of Christianity? Several early documents appear to quote from the same document, but that document doesn’t exist anymore, its existence is only implied by the similar quotes. Anyway, these similarities all help us date James somewhere near Mark and Matthew, so we’re back there among the earliest documents, after Paul’s letters.
James is a very different example of writing from anything we have looked into so far in this study. We call it a letter, yet there is no greeting and no closing. It isn’t addressed to any of the early Christian communities. There is no mention of specific towns or people as Paul’s letters usually have.
It is not particularly theological writing – there’s nothing about the life and death of Jesus, there’s nothing about doctrine, nothing about what we must believe – it just seems to be practical wisdom – but the practical wisdom is pretty amazing stuff. The writer quotes more sayings from Jesus than any New Testament document other than the gospels – and manages not to theologize about them.
I’m going to stop here for today. I’ve given you all the boring, nerdy stuff, now. Next week we will hear what this James-person has to say – and it’s not boring. We’ll also see how history has viewed it down through the centuries - which is definitely not boring.
Then this summer, so far, we have read through the six remaining “letters from Paul” – the ones attributed to him but most likely not actually written by him, but by others using his name and his market value.
Just as a reminder, we have done all this because we believe that if we are going to claim to be Christians and look to the Bible for our history we need to know more about said Bible. Not just what it says, but why it says it. Out of the dozens of documents left to us from the biblical time-frame, why were these few preserved and gathered together into this collection? Who wrote them? Why were they written and to whom? And why do we care?
Last week we read from Rachel Held Evans’ new book, “Inspired,” and learned about “origin stories,” those “family-gathered-around-the-kitchen-table” stories we tell about those who came before us and how they shaped who we are today. Scripture is similarly a collection of stories written by and about people - real live ordinary people -- people with worries and fears and hopes and dreams. People who were leaders and people who were followers. People mostly doing their best. We have claimed their stories as somehow part of our own history, therefore we have an obligation to know more about them and what they mean to us here today – two thousand years later.
So today we’ll start the fourth section of documents, the ones I’ll just refer to as “the rest of them.” This will include the remaining New Testament letters – ones attributed not to Paul, but to other writers - James, Jude, three letters from John, two from Peter, plus the unattributed Letter to the Hebrews. Just who these letters were actually written by is a question we will handle as we get to each one.
So first, the letter from James. The author identifies himself only as “James” and doesn’t clarify which James. Historically the church assumed it was James, the brother of Jesus. This James was, according to both Paul and Peter, the leader of the early Christian community in Jerusalem. He was executed in the early 60’s.
If we accept this attribution then this letter could have been written as early as twenty years after Jesus’ crucifixion – which would make it even earlier than Paul’s authentic letters – the earliest written pieces we have.
But the majority of mainstream scholars do not believe this is a true attribution – in part because the writer never mentions a relationship with Jesus or with the church in Jerusalem. Even more important here is the fact that the document is written in Greek – and pretty sophisticated Greek, at that, and while not impossible, it does seem unlikely, at best, that a brother to Jesus, raised, as Jesus was, in rural Galilee and speaking only Aramaic, would suddenly have such an educated grasp of Greek.
If we don’t accept this James as the brother of Jesus then we don’t know who he was and the date of writing could be just about anywhere from the 70’s to 100's. Marc Borg puts it somewhere in the 70’s – after Mark's gospel and before Matthew’s.
After Paul’s letters, these two gospels are the earliest remaining writings we have. The writer of James never quotes either gospel directly but he does seem to share ideas with them, suggesting they all pulled from the same source materials.
Remember “Q,” that designation bible scholars use for a non-surviving written source from the earliest years of Christianity? Several early documents appear to quote from the same document, but that document doesn’t exist anymore, its existence is only implied by the similar quotes. Anyway, these similarities all help us date James somewhere near Mark and Matthew, so we’re back there among the earliest documents, after Paul’s letters.
James is a very different example of writing from anything we have looked into so far in this study. We call it a letter, yet there is no greeting and no closing. It isn’t addressed to any of the early Christian communities. There is no mention of specific towns or people as Paul’s letters usually have.
It is not particularly theological writing – there’s nothing about the life and death of Jesus, there’s nothing about doctrine, nothing about what we must believe – it just seems to be practical wisdom – but the practical wisdom is pretty amazing stuff. The writer quotes more sayings from Jesus than any New Testament document other than the gospels – and manages not to theologize about them.
I’m going to stop here for today. I’ve given you all the boring, nerdy stuff, now. Next week we will hear what this James-person has to say – and it’s not boring. We’ll also see how history has viewed it down through the centuries - which is definitely not boring.
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