Forgery and Counterforgery: The Use of Literary Deceit in Early Christian Polemics (80 page)

Further indications that the letter is not written by James are given by the intimations that it was written at a relatively late date within the development of early Christianity, after James had died, presumably sometime in the 60s. For one thing, the debate over whether it was important for Christians to engage in “good works” is itself evidenced in the post-Pauline period. In Paul’s day, and James’s, the pressing issues had to do with the relationship of believers in Jesus to the “works of the Law.” Only later, as we will see more fully below, did that concern migrate into a conflict over the importance, or irrelevance, of doing good deeds for salvation.

Another indication of a late date is the concern over ostentatious wealth in the community. Wealthy people have come into the congregations and caused problems, both by their very presence (the problem of favoritism, 2:1–5) and by their actions (dragging the poor into court, 2:6). That rich members of the community formed a sizable minority is evident from the charge of 5:1–6. And how early in the history of the Christian communities could this have been a problem? Surely not in the first decades. So too we learn that even though the “coming of the Lord is at hand” (5:8–9), people need to exercise the patience of Job in waiting for it. This seems to indicate that a good deal of time has passed in the expectation of the parousia, so much so that people have grown highly impatient and need proverbial patience in order to quell their anxieties. Consonant with these considerations is the fact that “elders” appear to be in charge of the community (5:14), a development that appears closer to what we find, say, in the Pastoral epistles than in the letters of Paul written during James’s lifetime.
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These indications of late date (and the Hellenized language) not only show that the letter was not written by James, but also that it was not commissioned by him in his lifetime—a view that is rendered highly improbable on other grounds as well, as discussed earlier when I considered the widespread but faulty view among scholars that early Christian authors employed others to write their works for them.
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This book, in short, claims to be written by someone who did not write it. It is our earliest extant work produced in the name of James, brother of Jesus, and head of the church in Jerusalem. But like its later counterparts, it too is forged in his name. Why then was it forged?

Luke Johnson has made a strong case that there is no hard evidence of real animosity between the historical James and the historical Paul, basing his argument in large measure on Paul’s neutral references to James in 1 Cor. 15:7; Gal. 1:19, 2:9, 2.12; and possibly 1 Cor. 9:5.
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This reading may falter on the Antioch incident of Gal. 2:11–14, as already mentioned. If “James” is not to be blamed for the highly controversial stance of Cephas—who acted “out of fear for the circumcision party”—why would Paul bother to specify that it was the representatives of James who created the problem in the first place? Paul’s stance, in any event, is clear: these “men from James” represented a completely intolerable view that threatened the essence of his gospel message. Would James have agreed? We have no way, ultimately, of knowing. What we do know is that later traditions portrayed James and Paul at loggerheads. This can be seen, for example, in the graphic account of the Pseudo-Clementine
Recognitions
, where Paul is said to have tried to murder James for his missionary success among Jews in Jerusalem (a passage we will consider at greater length later in this chapter
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) and by implication in the Epistula Petri, where James is the recipient (eager and willing, one might infer) of the letter of Peter in which Paul, though not named, is clearly described as “the man who is my enemy.” The tradition appears to have lived on in some Christian groups who swore allegiance to Jerusalem and the church started there, ruled by James, such as the Ebionites, who understood Paul as Christian enemy number one.

Despite occasional disclaimers, there should be no doubt that Paul, or at least the tradition associated with Paul, is under attack in the letter attributed to James in the New Testament. Johnson is absolutely right to object that there is more to the book than 2:14–26; but it is also the case that this passage is where the principal polemic lies. Moreover, the themes of these thirteen verses resound throughout the short letter. The book is about nothing if not “doing good works” and so being a “doer of the word” instead of simply a hearer. It is overwhelmingly
concerned with followers of Jesus living out their faith. All the paranesis is directed to that end, and the book is almost completely paranesis.

Moreover, Johnson is wrong to argue that “there is absolutely no reason to read this section [i.e., 2:14–26] as particularly responsive to Paul.”
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Much to be preferred, for clear and compelling reasons I will enumerate, is Kari Syreeni: “Not only does [James] heavily draw on Paul, it goes very decidedly into a debate with well-known Pauline statements. The reluctance of many scholars to see a literary dependence here is stunning.”
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Stunning indeed, but understandable. Who wants two of the leading authorities of early Christianity to stand at loggerheads? But at loggerheads they stand—at least in the opinion of the author of this letter, who put words on the pen of James in order to attack what he understood to be the views of Paul. What I will be arguing—here I stand at some variance with Syreeni—is that even though the author based his argument against Paul on “authentic” Pauline traditions, he read these traditions through the lens provided by later Pauline interpreters, so that what he attacked was not (the “real”) Paul but a kind of Deutero-Paul, one evidenced, in fact, in surviving Pauline forgeries. The book of James, in other words, is a counterforgery.

The evidence that James depends on Pauline formulations for its polemic is clear and compelling; it hinges on verbatim agreements, conceptual formulations, and polemical constructions that are simply too closely aligned to be discounted.

James 2:21 and Rom. 4:2 (and Gal. 3:7)

The precise verbal overlap alone would be significant, but it is important as well to recognize that for James, both the concept of justification and the example of Abraham appear completely out of the blue in 2:21. “Being justified” has not been part of the discourse of faith and works until this point:
occurs here for the first time in the letter. This shows that James is responding to someone who made justification—and more specifically, Abraham’s justification—the key point in a discussion of faith and works. This point is made nowhere in early Christian literature, outside of Paul and James.

Moreover, both James 2:23 and Rom. 4:3 quote Gen. 15:6 in order to establish their (contrary) views about Abraham in relationship to his justification. Again, nowhere else in early Christian (or Jewish) literature is Gen. 15:6 brought to bear on the question of justification, let alone justification by works or by faith.

In addition, it is worth noting that the author of James 2:21 understands that Christian believers are the children of Abraham (“Abraham our father”), the one who was justified “by works.” This stands in stark contrast with Gal. 3:7: “those who are from faith, these are the children of Abraham.”

James 2:24 and Gal. 2:16 and Rom. 3:28

The parallels among the passages, much noted for centuries, are striking still today: all of them contain a verb of knowing, an indefinite “person,” the verb “justified” in the passive voice, and the antithetical contrast of works and faith. Nowhere else in all of early Christian literature are these elements combined. Yet the two authors take what appear to be—at least on the surface—opposite sides of the argument, one insisting that a person is justified not by “works” of the Law but by faith, the other that a person is not justified by faith alone but by “works.” The passages are far too close to have been accidentally created in such similar yet contrary fashion. And so, as Lindemann, in the company of many others, has noted: “The section James 2:21–24 in any case touches so closely upon Romans 3–4 that it raises suspicions of a literary relationship.”
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The difficulty with Lindemann’s claim, which echoes the views widely held at least since Luther, is that it imagines only two possible alternatives: literary independence (of James and Paul) or literary dependence. As I will argue below, this
overlooks other options, especially “secondary orality,” where Paul’s writings influenced how people, even illiterate followers, may have discussed (and here and there altered) his views. This would be a kind of literary dependence mediated not through manuscripts but through an oral tradition, and would make sense of the fact, noted by many, that technically speaking James does not contradict Paul, since his construal of the key terms of the debate—“faith” and “works”—differs from Paul’s. That does not mean there is not dependence. Given all the linguistic and conceptual parallels, some kind of dependence is necessary. But it may mean that James is not simply “misreading” Paul. He may have inherited these Pauline formulations in some way other than a direct literary connection with copies of Romans and Galatians in hand.

Before developing that idea, it is important to note several other indications that James is reacting to or otherwise influenced by Pauline formulations, whether he learned of these in writing or by other means. Thus for example, James’ reference to
(1:25; cf. 2:12) seems to stand in sharp contrast to Paul, for whom the Law is a matter of slavery (Gal. 4:24; 5:1) and brings a curse (Gal. 3:10). In addition, as Popkes has pointed out, the only places in early Christian writings where the love command of Lev. 19:18 is portrayed as the crown of the Law, but not used as part of the “two greatest commandments,” are James 2:8–11, Rom. 13:8–10, and Gal. 5:14. Popkes convincingly argues for other connections with Paul,
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leading him to conclude: “James does not treat an isolated theological motive (in 2:14–16) but writes from the background of the development of (Pauline) missionary churches. It is even possible that he may have gained access to several Pauline key texts, albeit probably not directly but mediated through oral or written communication.”
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Note the final phrase.