398 Introduction

for questioning the authorship of St. James is the absence of any references to the great outstanding events connected with our Lord’s Person—His mannier of life on earth, His sufferings and death, His resurrection and ascension. There are special reasons for expecting to find such references in this Epistle—assuming it to have been written by St. James. It is almost impossible to believe that one who had known Christ, and had been an eye-witness of His doings and a hearer of His teaching, should maintain such absolute silence on these things when addressing a letter to fellow-believers which touches otherwise on such a large variety of subjects. If there was one thing of paramount importance in the early days of Christianity it was that the fact of Christ’s resurrection should be proclaimed ; one has but to remember how often reference is made to this in the Acts—about twenty-five times—how it is mentioned or implied in all the Pauline Epistles, in the Epistle to the Hebrews, as well as in I Peter and 1 and 2 John, to realise the conviction and practice of the other apostles in this: and yet St. James, to whom had been vouchsafed a special manifestation of the risen Lord, can write an Epistle to Jewish-Christians who were scattered abroad without the slightest reference, implicit or explicit, to this cardinal tenet of the faith! The fact of the Epistle being addressed to the Dispersion makes this omission all the more strange; for on the assumption that St. James wrote it, 1.6., that it was probably the earliest in date of all the books of the New Testament, there must have been many among those addressed who would require strengthening in their belief, or who would possibly have heard of the resurrection for the first time from a “ pillar” of the Church, supposing it had been men- tioned ; and, therefore, one might reasonably have expected to have found it occupying a central position in the Epistle. It is fully realised that to argue from omissions is not always safe ; it is, how- ever, impossible not to be struck by the omissions referred to if the Epistle was written by St. James. On the assumption of a late date, at all events for the bulk of the Epistle, when the main tenets of the faith, such as the resurrection, were regarded as “ first principles ” and were meant rather for ‘‘ babes” in faith (cf. Heb. vi. 1 and con- text), these omissions would not cause surprise ; but they would be very difficult to account for on the assumption of St. James’ author- ship, which would imply a date prior to c. 63 Α.Ρ. for its composi- tion. In reply to this it may well be urged that in Acts xv. we have an instance of an Epistle written in the earliest ages of Christianity in which no references to the cardinal tenets of the faith are found ; but in an Epistle like this (Acts xv. 23 Π.), written for one specific