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Not by Paul Alone: The formation of the catholic epistle collection and the christian canon
Abstract
Not by Paul Alone explores the historical reasons for the creation of the book of James and the implications for the creation of the Christian canon. Nienhuis makes a compelling case that James was written in the mid-second century and is, like 2 Peter, an attempt to provide a distinctive shape to the emerging New Testament. This book bolsters the claim that the Catholic Epistles not only have a distinct witness individually, but that collectively they are also a considered theological agenda within the Christian church.
... до РХ та впродовж І ст. після РХ), яка носила конструктивний характер (агонізм), оскільки предметом її дискусії було обстоювання Божої Правди, особливо що стосується оправдання 33 . Дана полеміка, яка носила позитивний та конструктивний характер, виступала парадигмою вирішення конфлікту в раввіністичній літературі. ...
The article presents a short intertextual analysis of Old Testament quotations and allusions in Jas 2: 14-26 and in Rom 4: 1-8. Has been demonstrated the intertextual connection between Jas 2 :14-26 and Rom 4: 1-8, taking into account the closer and distant contexts of both passages with application of approach of rabbinic controversy to the analysis of the text of Jas 2: 14-26. The hermeneutical approach has demonstrated two distinct starting points for Paul and James' argumentation, which ultimately lead to commune conclusion and point of arrival – faith in Christ is organically called to be active in the works of love and mercy.
... Some informed voices put it in the 2nd century -even the mid-second century (e.g. Nienhuis 2007). ...
Many older commentators understood the Epistle of James to address itself to Jews of the diaspora, whether Christian or not. Although few modern scholars have seriously reckoned with this possibility, much is to be said for the thesis. It makes sense for example of important features of the epistle that otherwise would remain unclear, such as its dearth of explicit Christology, its seeming lack of distinctive Christian sentiments, and its thoroughly Jewish orientation. The author was a Jewish Christian still hoping for a Christian place within the Jewish synagogue; he wished for irenic relations with those who did not confess Jesus to be the Messiah. He was thus intentionally quiescent about much for apologetical purposes, a strategy with clear parallels in other ancient Christian literature.
Die Joodse agtergrond van die Jakobusbrief. Die Jakobusbrief is deur baie van die ouer kommentaarskrywers gesien as ’n selfverklarende geskrif aan die Jode van die diaspora – hetsy Christene of nie-Christene. Hoewel van die moderne navorsers heelhartig daarmee saamstem, bestaan daar heelwat twyfel oor hierdie siening. Dit maak egter sin ten opsigte van sekere belangrike beskrywings van die brief wat andersins onverklaarbaar sou wees soos die gebrek aan uitdruklike Christologie, die skynbare gebrek aan kenmerkende Christelike sentimente en die grondige Joodse oriëntering daarvan. Die skrywer was ’n Joodse Christen wat steeds gehoop het vir erkenning binne die Joodse sinagoge en versoenende verhoudings met diegene wat nie vir Jesus as die Messias erken het nie, verlang het. Dus was hy met voorbedagde rade baie stil oor baie dinge om apologetiese redes – ’n strategie wat duidelike parallelle met ander antieke Christelike literatuur toon.
James 1:16–18 presents a theory of divine generation, which has been interpreted variously. Most commonly, this passage is taken as a reference to Christian conversion, God’s creation of the cosmos, or the creation/election of Israel. While each of these readings is possible, none accounts for all the evidence. By contrast, placing James’s theory of divine generation into conversation with Middle Platonists on the same topic yields some fruitful parallels, both in its theory and significance. This comparison suggests that interpreting James 1:16–18 should produce a synthesis of previous interpretation. James here emphasizes God’s on-going procreative act as the generation of new, divinely-originated creatures of virtue, oriented towards obedience of God’s law.
For centuries, the authorship claims of certain New Testament epistles have been defended by postulating the use of a secretary. According to the amanuensis hypothesis, secretaries in the Greco-Roman world were afforded varying degrees of compositional freedom during the letter-writing process. Proponents of this view maintain that such a consideration invalidates the practice of making authenticity judgments based on the style or even content of a given letter. To better understand the merits and limitations of the amanuensis hypothesis, this article outlines its earliest formulations, traces the development of its evidential basis, and examines the various ways it has been applied within modern authorship debates.
This bibliography, which is a work-in-progress, is being prepared as part of my study of the letters of Jude and 2 Peter. If there are corrections that need to be made-and I'm sure that there are quite a few-or if there are other works that should be added to this list, please let me know.
How do we know what we know about the origins of the Christian religion? Neither its founder, nor the Apostles, nor Paul left any written accounts of their movement. The witnesses' testimonies were transmitted via successive generations of copyists and historians, with the oldest surviving fragments dating to the second and third centuries - that is, to well after Jesus' death. In this innovative and important book, Markus Vinzent interrogates standard interpretations of Christian origins handed down over the centuries. He scrutinizes - in reverse order - the earliest recorded sources from the sixth to the second century, showing how the works of Greek and Latin writers reveal a good deal more about their own times and preoccupations than they do about early Christianity. In so doing, the author boldly challenges understandings of one of the most momentous social and religious movements in history, as well as its reception over time and place.
In this book, Benjamin Wold builds on recent developments in the study of early Jewish wisdom literature and brings it to bear on the New Testament. This scholarship has been transformed by the discovery at Qumran of more than 900 manuscripts, including Hebrew wisdom compositions, many of which were published in critical editions beginning in the mid-1990s. Wold systematically explores the salient themes in the Jewish wisdom worldview found in these scrolls. He also presents detailed commentaries on translations and articulates the key debates regarding Qumran wisdom literature, highlighting the significance of wisdom within the context of Jewish textual culture. Wold's treatment of themes within the early Jewish and Christian textual cultures demonstrates that wisdom transcended literary form and genre. He shows how and why the publication of these ancient texts has engendered profound shifts in the study of early Jewish wisdom, and their relevance to current controversies regarding the interpretation of specific New Testament texts.
The stichometric list inserted into the sixth-century Codex Claromontanus presents a NT list of 27 books, but not the familiar canonical collection. Alongside one OT (Judith) and five NT titles (ad petrum prima, Barnabas, the Shepherd, the Acts of Paul, and the Revelation of Peter) horizontal dashes have been placed, which are commonly said to denote secondary status. A history of misunderstanding surrounding these obeli, originating with Tischendorf in the nineteenth century, has obscured the stichometry’s role in the history of the NT canon. This article traces that history, showing that the later addition of the obeli indicates precisely the opposite of what has often been claimed of the stichometry – that it should resemble nearly or exactly the later-canonized NT list. Rather, the original inclusion of four alternative scriptural texts in the stichometry indicates a lasting interest in such texts and the continued elasticity of the NT canon.
James' teaching about faith has been downplayed for so many years. Since the concept of faith in the NT has been read mainly in light of Paul's theology, scholars ignores James? teaching on faith, which has different emphasis from Paul. Biblical scholars and theologians have tried to solve the tension between Paul's teaching about faith and James'. While historical approach applied to deal with this issue has lead NT scholarship to enless debate, this study proposes that the Letter of James was not sent to handle problems that occur because of Paul. This essay uses discourse analysis to understand how the the concept of faith in James 1 and 2 should be grasped. This work finds that James addresses his letter to pastoral believers? community and help them to understand sufferings in their lives. James emphasizes that faith is not only a confession but also a commitment to live in accordance with the true belief.
Should the Catholic Epistles be read in isolation from each other, taking their individual historical situations as the guiding principle for their interpretation, or rather, do their literary and theological character as a discrete canonical collection constitute the context within which they should be read and interpreted? Though the modern era has been dominated by the historical-critical approach to biblical interpretation that considers these texts in isolation from one another, a vibrant discussion arguing that the Catholic Epistles should be read as a discrete canonical collection has been developing. This article offers a status quaestionis by outlining recent proposals for reading the Catholic Epistles as a collection, specifically considering the work of Peter Davids, Karl-Wilhelm Niebuhr, Carey Newman, David Nienhuis and Robert Wall, and Brevard Childs.
In an infamous passage in his Letter to the Galatians (2.11–14), Paul called out Peter as a ‘hypocrite’. This passage, especially when read in light of Paul's own appeal to himself as ‘all things to all people’ in 1 Cor 9.19–23, was to cause deep trouble for later Christian interpreters, who sought to defend their movement against charges from outsiders that it had a cracked and unstable foundation in dual ‘hypocrites’. This essay will introduce this ‘pagan’ critique and the cultural force it had, and the various solutions to the inherited dilemma from their scriptures that were offered by patristic authors (Clement of Alexandria, Tertullian, Jerome and Augustine). In light of this context, we turn to a sustained analysis of an untranslated homily by John Chrysostom, hom. in Gal 2.11 (In faciem ei restiti), which addresses not just the hypocrisy of Peter and Paul, but also the sticky problem of the hypocrisy of the Christian who reads this text approvingly as Paul's ‘in your face’ to Peter. Chrysostom does this by engaging in a convoluted pretence of his own.
Recent studies on the Letter of James have been characterised by a departure from the »Pauline perspective«. Instead of judging the Letter on the basis of the position it takes on Paul, presentday scholars increasingly view it as an autonomous and signifi cant document of New Testament theology. In doing so, they consider the meaning of the opening words and the naming of James as its author to be of particular importance, regardless of how one chooses to judge the epistle's authorship from a historical standpoint. In any case, from the point of view of its addressees the Letter of James must be understood and interpreted as a letter from one of the brothers of the Lord, even if one considers it to be a pseudepigraphic document. The Letter's autonomous theological concern lies in the instruction and encouragement of believers to a sustained and active faith, which received its fundamental impulse from Jesus and is rooted in the Easter event.
IT is customary to divide the second chapter of the Epistle of James into two sections, verses 1–13 and 14–26. The question whether these two sections have any connection with each other was answered negatively by Martin Dibelius. Dibelius argued his case, first of all, by denying that the parable in 2: 15, 16 — with its contrast between speaking and doing (cf. 2: 12) — represents the point of 2: 14–26. Along with other commentators, Dibelius understood this section to treat faith and works and the connection between the two in the light of the Pauline theological treatment of them. Thus, e.g., he argued that the author of James employed the Abraham example in the manner of Jewish tradition, but whereas in the Jewish tradition the faith of Abraham is itself a “work,” it is not so in James: Dibelius found his solution by assuming that this discussion presupposes Paul's treatment of πίστιϛ and ἔργα. But ἔργα for Paul means “works of the law” (e.g., circumcision), which is not the meaning for James. Therefore, James must presuppose a misunderstood Paulinism. When James 2: 14–26 is approached in this way, the parable in 2: 15, 16 appears as only an example, somewhat incidental to the main thrust of the section. Thus, the connection of 2: 14–26 with the foregoing verses cannot be affirmed, even though it appears that the parable in 2: 15, 16 is similar to 2: 12, 13.
A partir d'une analyse de l'epitre de Jacques, l'A. affirme qu'il existe peu de raisons de lier l'ethique de l'epitre a la figure d'un Dieu immuable. Jacques 1:17 ne decrit pas l'etre mais l'amour de Dieu decrit comme ferme et sans changement. Cet amour garantit la gloire future des douze tribus de la diaspora. En evoquant un theme familier de la benediction exaltant la creation divine et le gouvernement des lumieres celestes, Jacques 1:17 reprend les themes des prieres juives matinales. Jacques enjoint ses lecteurs a affirmer la misericorde protectrice de Dieu
The epistle contains three OT quotations as well as several biblical allusions and examples; other sources (such as Ben Sira) are not discernible. James collected excerpt-material from a wide background, not just by oral tradition - hence 'intertextuality'. In a similar way the OT quotations, all combative in nature, seem to have been taken from secondary sources, viz. from Pauline (ch. 2) and 'Petrine' (ch. 4) traditions. Probably James had no direct access to a full OT text or longer parts of it. Nevertheless he uses 'scripture' as an authority and may have had a concept of canon.
L'A. developpe l'hypothese selon laquelle l'Epitre de saint Jacques n'est pas une lettre : ce serait la redaction finale qui lui aurait donne cette forme ostensible. En fait, elle se reduirait a un ensemble compilatoire de prescriptions, encore que la notion de compilation de documents anterieurs est a mettre a l'epreuve de la critique. Harnak elabore a ce propos trois hypotheses de travail qui servent a l'A. de point de depart. S'il conclut au caractere tardif de Jacques 1:1, il montre que la theorie de la compilation n'est precisement qu'une theorie encore fragile
During the modern period, the authority of 2 Peter for Christian theological formation has been challenged by the reconstructions of historical criticism. The verdict of biblical scholarship has been largely negative: the theological conception of 2 Peter comes from a person and for a setting that does not easily cohere with the rest of the New Testament writings. The present essay seeks to rehabilitate the status of 2 Peter for use in biblical theology, independent of the historical problem it poses for the interpreter, by approaching its theological subject matter within the setting of the New Testament canon, where its theological perspective functions as complementary to and integral with 1 Peter in forming Scripture's Petrine witness to the faith.
J. H. Ropes has written of James: ‘As in the diatribes, there is a general controlling motive in the discussion, but no firm and logically disposed structure giving a strict unity to the whole, and no trace of the conventional arrangement recommended by the elegant rhetoricians’. Challenging Rope's assessment, the thesis of this study is that James 2 is constructed according to a standard elaboration pattern for argumentation discussed by the Greco-Roman rhetoricians.
The natural starting point for any interpretation of the Epistle of James is its praescriptio, where the author defines for his readers their own communal identity by addressing them as ‘the twelve tribes in the diaspora’. Whatever intentions may have lurked behind the attributive expression , the peculiar designation of the authorial audience as ‘the twelve tribes’ casts the readership with surprising clarity in the role of the true Israel. Although the author does not make further comment upon the relationship of his intended readers to the dominant Judaism of his day, it is surely correct to assume that an organizational separation had occurred. The community which James elsewhere refers to as the κκλησα (5.14) and which boasts its own teachers (3.1) and elders (5.14) had most certainly set itself apart in some degree from the entity whose title it is said to possess.