JAMES, Epistle of, one of the canonical epistles of the New Testament, concerning the true authorship of which frequent doubts have been raised. It has been claimed for the son of Zebedee, on account of the inscription on a Syriac MS. published by Widmanstadt; and also of an Arabic MS. cited by Cornelius à Lapide. This claim, however, has found few supporters. In regard to James, the Lord's brother, and James the son of Alphaeus, all who believe these to be different personages, agree in ascribing the epistle to the former. According to Hegesippus he was surnamed the Just, from the equity with which he governed the church at Jerusalem; and, according to Eusebius, he was the first who had the pastoral charge in that city, an office which he held for thirty years. The claims of the pseudo-James invite the question of the authenticity and canonical authority of the epistle. The objections which have been raised to the epistle are the following:—Eusebius expressly refers to it as a spurious production, and Jerome uses expressions to the same effect, probably merely repeating Eusebius. It was rejected in the fourth century by Theodore of Mopsuestia, and in the sixth by Cosmas Indicopleustes. On the other hand, it has been cited by Clemens Romanus, Irenæus, Origen, and Ephrem Syrus, and was commented on by Clemens Alexandrinus. Still more important is the fact, that the epistle forms part of the Syriac version made so early as the close of the first century. After the Council of Nice, it was received by the churches of both the East and the West. It remained as a canonical portion of Scripture till, on purely dogmatic grounds, doubts were raised by Erasmus, Cajetan, and Luther. The second of these observed, that the salutation with which the epistle begins is that of a heathen rather than of an apostle, and one who does not even claim to be an apostle. Luther called it an epistle of straw, and considered the doctrine of justification, as set forth in James, opposed to that of St. Paul. In conformity with these views, De Wette started the hypothesis that the epistle was written by some one who assumed the name of James, in order to add weight to his attack upon Paul's doctrine of
justification. This has been successfully refuted by Neander, who shows that the real difference between Paul and James consists in the different circumstances in which they wrote, and the different objects which they had in view. Paul had to enlighten those who put their trust in the justifying works of the law; James had to show the Jews that their faith as a solitary principle, without conformity of life, was valueless.
The epistle, then, is to be considered the production of James the Just, bishop of Jerusalem, and was written A.D. 62 or thereabout, immediately before his martyrdom. Some commentators complain of the want of connection in thought, but Bishop Jebb shows that there is a strong logical chain binding together what at first sight appears the most incongruous and irrelevant materials. He has also applied the principle of Hebrew parallelism with success to several passages in the epistle.