In chapter 6 of my dissertation entitled The Sayings of Jesus in the Epistle of James I address the difficult issues involved in determining the background to this book. I contrast the evidence for an authorship by James of Jerusalem in the early apostolic period with evidence for authorship by an unknown James in Rome near the end of the apostolic period. Surprisingly there are strong arguments for both theses so that an unprejudiced reader would probably proclaim a tie. In the end I suggest that James repeats the paraenetic tradition of the Jerusalem church as it existed in the early 60s of the first century.

Chapter 7 is entitled “Concluding Perspectives” where I argue that the exhortations in James derive from the general themes of Jesus’ teaching and that the genre of paraenesis explains the form of the Sayings of Jesus in the Epistle of James as well as the lack of Christology.

Click the download button to read this file.

This book is my doctoral dissertation from the Vrije Universiteit (Free University) in Amsterdam. I still have about ten copies left if you would like to purchase one for $30.

Frequently in a New Testament Introduction you will read the statement that there are more sayings of Jesus in the Epistle of James than all the other epistles put together. However, the form of the sayings is not very close to the sayings found in the Synoptic Gospels. In fact, sixty authors have discovered over 180 parallels with the Sayings of Jesus but two-thirds of these scholars only agree on six specific parallels. This book attempts to discover the reason for the similarities and the diversity.

Basically four approaches have been taken to solve this problem. The dominant oldest tradition is that the source was the personal memory of James, the brother of Jesus. Other scholars think that the Epistle of James was dependent upon the Gospel of Matthew. Still others insist that it is a Jewish document which explains the differences with the Jesus tradition. A fourth solution attempts to show that the genre of paraenesis is the explanation for the similarity and yet divergence from the Synoptic tradition. The history of these four proposals is presented in chapter one.

Then in chapter two I study James use of preexistent material, especially the Old Testament. It turns out that James quotes the Old Testament on six occasions with introductory formulas to authoritatively ground his arguments. James does not do this with the Sayings of Jesus. What explains this difference?

Click the download button to read this pdf file.

This book is my doctoral dissertation from the Vrije Universiteit (Free University) in Amsterdam. I still have about ten copies left if you would like to purchase one for $30.

Frequently in a New Testament Introduction you will read the statement that there are more sayings of Jesus in the Epistle of James than all the other epistles put together. However, the form of the sayings is not very close to the sayings found in the Synoptic Gospels. In fact, sixty authors have discovered over 180 parallels with the Sayings of Jesus but two-thirds of these scholars only agree on six specific parallels. This book attempts to discover the reason for the similarities and the diversity.

Chapter three is the heart of my doctoral dissertation. This chapter investigates in detail the twenty most quoted parallels to the Synoptic tradition. The first half of this chapter is found in this file. A list of all the discovered parallels can be found in the file containing Appendix I.

Click the download button to read this file.