Sayings of Jesus in James Chapters 6-7

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.

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