Ch. I. 1. Salutation. 1. Ch. i. 2-27. (1) Vera. 2-18. The subject of temptation. (2) Vers.19-27. Exhortation (a) to hear rather than speak; (b) not only to hear, but to do. 2. Ch. ii.-iv. 12. (1) Cb. ii. Warnings against (a) respect of persons (vers. 1-13); (b) a mere barren orthodoxy (vers. 14-26). (2) Ch. iii. Further warnings against (a) over-readiness to teach, leading to general remarks on the need of governing the tongue (vers. 1-12) ; (b) jealousy and faction (vers. 13-18). (3) Oh. iv. 1-12. Rebuke of quarrels arising from pride and greed. 3. Ch. iv. 13-v. 6. (1) Oh. iv. 13-17. Special uenunciation of overweening confidence in our own plans and our ability to carry them out. (2) Oh. v. 1-6. Special denunciation of rich sinners. 4. Ch. v. 7-end. Concluding exhortations. • (1) Vers. 7-11. To patience and long-suffering. (2) Ver. 12. Against swearing. (3) Vera. 13-20. With regard to behaviour in health and sickness.
IV. THE DATE OF THE EPISTLE.
1. The terminus ad quem is definitely fixed by the death 0£ St. James in A.D. 62. 2. How much earlier the Epistle was written will depend upon the view taken of its relation to the writings 0£ St. Paul and St. Peter. (1) There are coincidences between St. James and the First Epistle of St. Peter which can hardly be accidental, but must point to a knowledge on the part 0£ one writer of the work of the other (see the notes on eh. iv. 6 and v. 20, where reasons are given for thinking that St.James is the earlier of the two). (2) The relation between the teaching of St. James and St. Paul on the subject of justification is examined in the notes on eh. ii. 14, seq. If St. James is writing (as many think) with direct reference to a perversion of St. Paul's teaching, his Epistle will be subsequent to those to the Romans and Galatians, and will thus belong to the last years of bis life, about A.D. 60-62. But there are strong reasons given in the notes for holding that the teaching of the two apostles is really entirely independent of each other, and that the error which St. James is combating is a strictly Jewish one. Thus we are still left entirely free in our search for a terminu-' a quo. It is, perhaps, impossible to fix one with any degree of exactness, but the arguments for an early rather than a. late date seem to the present writer overwhelming. They may be summed up as follows:- (a) The very slight line which appears to exist between Judaism and Christianity. (b) The absence of definite Christian phraseology. Contrast the saluta- X INTRODUCTION TO
tion in eh. i. 1 with that in other Epistles. The term ~Ga.yyl>.&ov never OCCUI"R, et,e,.
(c) The absence of dogmatic teaching. Our Lord's name is only men- tioned twice ( eh. i. 1 and ii. 1). "The apostle calls Christianity the law of freedom, the royal law of love which God writes on man's heart by faith; but otherwise the weightiest New Testament doctrines are not once touched on" (Di:illinger's ' First Age of Christianity,' p. 106). An acknow- ledgmcnt of our Lord's divinity wonld, however, underlie the expression in eh. ii 1, and it must not be overlooked that, by designating himself e.s the servant of God and of the Lord Jesus Christ, the writer places Christ on an equality with God. Further, " the circumstance that the author directly unites the Divine judgment with the coming of the Lord, indeed designates the Lord himself as the Judge, points to this higher dignity of Christ" (Ruther, p. 18). Still, it must strike every reader that there is very little specifically Christian doctrine in this Epistle. In this respect it is interesting to compare it with St. John's Epistles, the latest of New Testament writings. Like St. James's, they are remark- able for the absence of allusion to the historic facts of Christianity, but how fnll of doctrine which is based upon those facts ! ( d) From the absence of all reference to Gentile Christianity, and the questions which arose between Jewish and Gentile Christians, it may fairly be argued that the Epistle was written even prior to the Council of J eru- salem, A.D. 50. On the whole, then, we conclude that we have before us the very earliest of the writings of the New Testament. With this accords its position (so far as the Epistles are concerned) in the oldest manuscripts, in which, as ie well known, the Catholic Epistles precede those of St. Paul. "And this position,'' says Dean Stanley, in a remarkable passage, which it is well to quote at length, " does, in fact, exactly correspond to its character, both historically and morally. Whether it be or be not the earliest in time, which, however, there is much reason to believe, it is certainly the earliest in spirit. It belongs, if not to an age, at least to a mind, which knew nothing of the contest which shook the whole Christian society to its very founda- tions in the time of St. Paul ; not only is the Gentile Christian completely out of sight, but the distinction between Jew and Christian is itself not yet brought to view; both are equally addressed in the Epistle as belonging to the twelve tribes scattered abroad; it passes at once from rebuking the unbelieving Jews of the higher orders to console the believing Jews of the lower orders; the Christian assembly is still spoken of under the name of 'synagogue ; ' the whole scene, in short, ie that which appears before us in the earlier chapters of the Acts of the Apostles. . . . And as in these out- ward circumstances, so also in its inward spirit, this Epistle exactly coin- cides with the character of him in whom the Jew and the Christian thronghont his whole life were indistinguishably blended together. Christianity appears in it. not BB a. new dispensation, but as a. development THE GENERAL EPISTLE OF JAMES. Ji