James 1.1 and 2.1.

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Secret Alias
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Re: James 1.1 and 2.1.

Post by Secret Alias »

What about the old commercial "You asked for it, you got it, Toyota."

“Finally, from so little sleeping and so much reading, his brain dried up and he went completely out of his mind.”
― Miguel de Cervantes Saavedra, Don Quixote
John2
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Re: James 1.1 and 2.1.

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Secret Alias wrote: Fri Feb 15, 2019 5:53 pm What about the old commercial "You asked for it, you got it, Toyota."

Is it as old as the first century CE and from Israel though?
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Re: James 1.1 and 2.1.

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I don't think Matthew (and Jesus) and James are necessarily dependent on 4Q525, but I see them all as emanating from a Fourth Philosophic milieu. In other words, I think they all "talk the same talk" for that reason, not because Matthew (and Jesus) and James necessarily knew 4Q525.
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Ben C. Smith
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Re: James 1.1 and 2.1.

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John2 wrote: Fri Feb 15, 2019 6:46 pm I don't think Matthew (and Jesus) and James are necessarily dependent on 4Q525, but I see them all as emanating from a Fourth Philosophic milieu. In other words, I think they all "talk the same talk" for that reason, not because Matthew (and Jesus) and James necessarily knew 4Q525.
I understand your point, but there seems to be a difference between blessing the person who asks (as in 4Q525) and guaranteeing a positive result for the person who asks (Matthew 7.7-8 = Luke 11.9-10; James 4.3). So James and Matthew are still closer to each other than either is to the DSS. (And both of these concepts are different yet again from the concept of already having asked in that car commercial.) I am totally on board with the milieu of the DSS lying behind early Christianity; but it is not identical to early Christianity, so I am still interested in tracing the development. I agree that it is completely possible that "ask and you shall receive" was a common saying amongst early sectarians, so much so that Matthew/Jesus can simply quote it and James can mitigate the results of its failure as a promise (without attributing it to Jesus); I guess I am just wishing for more evidence that this was the case.
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John2
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Re: James 1.1 and 2.1.

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Ben wrote (though it was all well said; and Evans also notes the difference between "blessing the person who asks ... and guaranteeing a positive result for the person who asks"):
I am totally on board with the milieu of the DSS lying behind early Christianity; but it is not identical to early Christianity, so I am still interested in tracing the development.
Well, that's the thing. Despite their similarities, do you suppose all Fourth Philosophic factions were "identical" to each other? I don't have that impression anyway. So I would expect to see some differences between them and Christianity. Just like James 4:3 could be expanding on Matthew (or on Jesus or on a common saying), Jesus could be expanding on the ideas in 4Q525.
Last edited by John2 on Fri Feb 15, 2019 8:46 pm, edited 1 time in total.
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Re: James 1.1 and 2.1.

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Here is how Evans puts it in another book:
The parallels [between Jesus and 4Q525] are impressive, but important differences exist as well. The greatest difference is in the perspective of Jesus and the Essene author ...

We have seen striking similarities between the DSS and things said by and of Jesus. In some cases it seems clear that the DSS content came first; in other cases the DSS content may have arisen after Jesus, for some of the scrolls likely date to the latter part of the first century AD. In the chapter that follows, we examine examples where Jesus' teachings differ notably from those in the DSS.

https://books.google.com/books?id=kzFM8 ... ng&f=false
I would only change "Essene" to "Fourth Philosophic" and add (again) that I expect to see some differences along with all the similarities. Take what Jesus says in Mk. 13:5-6, for example:
Jesus began by telling them, “See to it that no one deceives you. Many will come in My name, claiming, ‘I am He,’ and will deceive many.
I take this to be an attack against the kind of Fourth Philosophers that Josephus mentions in War 2.13.4:
These were such men as deceived and deluded the people under pretense of divine inspiration, but were for procuring innovations and changes of the government; and these prevailed with the multitude to act like madmen, and went before them into the wilderness, as pretending that God would there show them the signals of liberty.


In my view, Jesus himself was one of these "such men" and it was because of their similarities as well as differences to him that he warns his followers to not be deceived by them. So Jesus (even in his own view) was similar to them but there were some differences as well.

As a website I like puts it:
Go shopping for the healthful and refreshing beverage Mountain Dew, and up on the grocery shelf you'll see a number of drinks that are pretty similar to Dew. Sugar water drinks. Fizzy drinks. In aluminum cans. Twelve ounce cans. With pop tops.

Did the fine people at Mountain Dew copy the idea of putting fizzy sugar water in a twelve-ounce pop-top aluminum can from anyone in particular? From Coke? From Pepsi? Fanta? No they didn't. Fizzy sugar water in a twelve-ounce pop-top aluminum can is soda. The idea of soda is part of our culture. Dew looks like all the other soda drinks, not because it is a direct copy of any one of them, but because our modern culture has the idea of soda, and Dew is just another one.

http://pocm.info/borrowing_getting_started.html
In this scenario Jesus is like Mountain Dew and the other "I am He" guys are Cokes and Fantas and such. But they are all (in my view) Fourth Philosophic 'fizzy sugar water in twelve-ounce pop-top aluminum cans.'

And that's how I view the similarities and differences between 4Q525 and James 4:3 and Mt. 7:7-8. They are just different kinds of Fourth Philosophic "soda."
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Re: James 1.1 and 2.1.

Post by Bernard Muller »

to Ben,
Very interesting OP and I would agree on almost every points you made.
The overlaps with Jesus' teachings are not attributed to Jesus at any point, and the apparent contact between James and another Christian author, Paul, involves James disagreeing with Paul. I think it is plausible that this epistle originated as a purely Jewish text attributed to James, a sectarian messianist who was not actually a Christian (in the sense that he did not feel that the messiah had already come, let alone in the person of a figure named Jesus).
Exactly
The sayings in this epistle which resemble sayings of Jesus in the gospels are Jacobian; they were part of James' regular teachings as a respected leader of a sect. Later on they would be stolen from him and given to Jesus. The friction between James (or at least his representatives) in Galatians 2 on the one hand and Paul and his associates on the other is at least partly reflected in the conflict over faith and works in James 2.14-26.
Yes, more so because I think the epistle was written a few years before 70 CE, mainly because the (bad) wealthy ones were supposed to be still alive at the arrival of the Kingdom in order to be judged by God. I do not think after the massacres of Jews in 70 Ce that notion could be kept.
So GMatthew, which would come later, "borrowed" from the epistle and put some of its saying in the mouth of his Jesus. That does not mean James did not continue the preaching of Jesus, more so about poor & wealthies, and the Kingdom to appear on earth soon, etc.
I also see in the epistle some points aimed against Paul & his preaching.
All of that explained in http://historical-jesus.info/38.html

I tend to agree that the epistle did not have any "Jesus" in it and was aimed first at a strictly Jewish (with God fearers)
audience by a Jew, probably not a Christian of any sort. Then, James 1.1 and 2.2 was added on (with "and of the Lord Jesus Christ" and "the faith of the glory of our Lord Jesus Christ") by a Jewish Christian when the epistle was introduced to Gentile Christians.

About the "James" in the epistle: I think that James, brother of the Lord in Galatians (contested by some of course), confirmed as James, the brother of Jesus in Josephus' Antiquities (also contested!) is implied as becoming the leader of the (not Christian) Church of Jerusalem in Galatians: at first, James is one of three pillars, but soon after, in Antioch, Peter showed he started to change his way about Gentiles due to James' men intervention. That would put Peter obedient of James and James the leader. The transition from Peter to James shows also in Acts.
Certainly the "James" in James' epistle looks like a leader.

Cordially, Bernard
Last edited by Bernard Muller on Mon Feb 25, 2019 7:01 am, edited 1 time in total.
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Ben C. Smith
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Re: James 1.1 and 2.1.

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Bernard Muller wrote: Sun Feb 24, 2019 8:24 pm to Ben,
Very interesting OP and I would agree on almost every points you made.
Well, drat. Now I have to rethink the whole thing. :D

Just kidding. Thanks. :cheers:
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Re: James 1.1 and 2.1.

Post by John2 »

Ben wrote:
I think it is plausible that this epistle originated as a purely Jewish text attributed to James, a sectarian messianist who was not actually a Christian (in the sense that he did not feel that the messiah had already come, let alone in the person of a figure named Jesus).
I just can't overlook James 1:1 and 2:1 or understand why it isn't sufficient for you and Bernard. It's right there in the introduction (and in all copies of James).
James, a servant of God and of the Lord Jesus Christ.
And it's in a Christian canon. So it makes more sense to me for it to have been Christian from the get go. Why would a non-Christian care to rebut Paul about works and faith? In the context of Paul, what is "faith"? Faith in God or Jesus?

Would you make a similar argument about the Shepherd of Hermas, which doesn't mention Jesus or Christ at all?
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Re: James 1.1 and 2.1.

Post by Ben C. Smith »

John2 wrote: Mon Feb 25, 2019 9:55 am Ben wrote:
I think it is plausible that this epistle originated as a purely Jewish text attributed to James, a sectarian messianist who was not actually a Christian (in the sense that he did not feel that the messiah had already come, let alone in the person of a figure named Jesus).
I just can't overlook James 1:1 and 2:1 or understand why it isn't sufficient for you and Bernard. It's right there in the introduction (and in all copies of James).
It is in the OP. The instance in 2.1 is very awkward, and looks added on. If it was, then this makes me wonder about 1.1.
James, a servant of God and of the Lord Jesus Christ.
And it's in a Christian canon.
So is Deuteronomy. Christians can Christianize Jewish texts, whether by interpolation or by interpretation, and then add them to their own canon(s). No rule against that.
So it makes more sense to me for it to have been Christian from the get go. Why would a non-Christian care to rebut Paul about works and faith?
Why would a non-Mormon care to rebut Joseph Smith about the nature of revelation? Yet Christian evangelicals in my background rebut Mormons all the time.
Would you make a similar argument about the Shepherd of Hermas, which doesn't mention Jesus or Christ at all?
No, I would not. But, to be frank, I do not have a lot of firm opinions about that text anyway.
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