MatrHEw. JAMES. vii. 2. ii, 13. Viteats ade tee Onw Live vii. 8. iv. 3. vii. 12. ii. 8. vii. 16. iii. 12. vii. 21-26. ; Tg PPAR Stl DSR oes
The style and diction of the epistle are strongly marked. Links connecting them with the historie individuality of the writer, which are so numerous in the case of Peter, are almost entirely wanting. The expression, “ Hearken, my beloved brethren ” (ii. 5), suggests the similar phrase, Acts xv. 13; and the ordinary Greek greeting, yaipew, hail (Acts xv. 23), is re- peated in Jas. i. 1; the only two places where it occurs in a Christian epistle. The purity of the Greek, and its comparative freedom from Hebraisms, are difficult to account for in a writer who had passed his life in Jerusalem. The style is sententious and antithetic; the thoughts not linked in logical connection, but massed in groups of short sentences, like the proverbial say- ings of the Jews; with which class of literature the writer was evidently familiar. His utterance glows with the fervor of his spirit; it is rapid, exclamatory, graphic, abrupt, sometimes poetical in form, and moving with a rhythmical cadence. “ It combines pure and eloquent and rhythmical Greek with He- brew intensity of expression.”
The life and character of the apostle Peter are familiar to all readers of the Gospels and Acts. It has already been shown in the Introduction to the Gospel of Mark how the style and diction of that gospel exhibit the influence of Peter, and how tRe characteristics which appear in the Acts, in those scenes in which Peter.was the only or the principal actor, reappear in the second gospel. If these epistles are from his pen, we may therefore expect to find in them traces of the keen-sightedness, the ready application of what is observed, and the impulsiveness