Introduction to the Epistle of James

Name: Introduction to the Epistle of James
Uploaded: 2025-06-29T22:35:21+00:00
Duration: 1 h 9 min 4 s
Channel: American Torah

American Torah

6/29/2025

Who wrote the letter of James to the Twelve Tribes in Dispersion? Why was it written? Where? When?

In this study, the Common Sense Bible Study crew discuss the authorship, audience, structure, and other "meta data" of the Epistle of James.

From Jay Carper at Common Sense Bible Study (https://CommonSenseBibleStudy.com) and American Torah (https://www.AmericanTorah.com).

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00:00:00Welcome to Common Sense Bible Study, and this is our first night talking about the Epistle of James.

00:00:09And this isn't, it's one of the smaller books of the entire Bible, and even the New Testament.

00:00:17It is, you know, the New Testament is divided up into several sections.

00:00:21You have the Gospels, which frequently the Book of Acts is included in there.

00:00:25You have the Pauline Epistles. Those are the letters written by Paul.

00:00:30And then you have what are called the General or Catholic Epistles.

00:00:35And Catholic doesn't mean having anything to do with the Roman Catholic Church.

00:00:38It means the universal, and it essentially means the same as general.

00:00:43And these are the letters written by everyone else.

00:00:46So Peter, John, Jude, and James.

00:00:50And then finally, we have the Book of Revelation.

00:00:55Or the Apocalypse, depending on who you ask.

00:00:58So we're focusing on James now, because it seemed like, you know, a good, fairly short book,

00:01:07but one that was just long enough to have some sections that we could really dig into separately, pericopes.

00:01:14And we are doing this in order to put to use some of the lessons that we learned

00:01:19in the Common Sense Bible Studies Essentials course.

00:01:22So we're not really studying the book itself.

00:01:27I mean, we're not studying the text quite yet.

00:01:29We're going through the process of kind of the meta study of the book.

00:01:38We're learning things about the book instead of learning what the book says.

00:01:42So I know we have, I created some charts and worksheets.

00:01:50I should have had those open already.

00:01:54Where's my, welcome, Scott.

00:01:58Hello.

00:01:58Okay, so I know that this is way too small for you to see.

00:02:13Zooming in.

00:02:13And the first steps, things that you were supposed to have done, is read the whole Bible.

00:02:25And I assume that you got that done this week.

00:02:28I'm just kidding.

00:02:30You know, we've all been in this walk long enough that I would expect that we've all probably read the Bible at least once.

00:02:36And maybe not straight through, cover to cover, but we've read pretty much everything in it.

00:02:42And it's definitely better if you read it straight through sometimes, because you get a better idea of how the history progresses.

00:02:50And the Bible isn't necessarily organized in chronological order, but it's pretty close.

00:02:56Let's see.

00:03:00And then, of course, reading the book of James, since that's the one we're studying.

00:03:05So I read it.

00:03:07Well, I listened to it in New King James and New American Standard, and then I read it in the English Standard Version.

00:03:15So I'm curious if any of you read through the whole book of James in the last couple of weeks, what translations did you read it in?

00:03:23ESV and New Living Translation, which I haven't listened to for a while.

00:03:34It was interesting.

00:03:36Good.

00:03:37But what did you think about the difference between those two?

00:03:40New Living Translation was more conversational.

00:03:43It was more, just came across as, you know, somebody just talking to you.

00:03:49Because it's, you know, it's not as word for word, obviously.

00:03:55Yeah.

00:03:56So, Ron, how about you?

00:03:59I did the Legacy Standard Version, which is the ESV and the ESV.

00:04:07And they seemed a lot the same.

00:04:09Yeah, those are both pretty literal.

00:04:11So, not word for word literal, but, yeah.

00:04:17Okay, cool.

00:04:18Anybody else read it or listen to the book of James this week or within the last couple of weeks?

00:04:24You really want me to tell you?

00:04:28Well, okay.

00:04:31I'm just going to mark a few numbers off your grade.

00:04:35Okay.

00:04:35All right.

00:04:39So, after having read it, see, preparing for Bible study, we can skip that one for now.

00:04:48The first step in the inductive Bible study method is to observe.

00:04:53So, you read the book, you survey the text, looking for characteristics of the text.

00:04:59You know, how is it written?

00:05:01What seems to be the author's theme?

00:05:03What kind of style?

00:05:06What is the author's tone?

00:05:09Are there any major themes, people, places, those kinds of things mentioned?

00:05:14And one of the things that is not on this checklist here, whatever you want to call this infographic, is researching the author itself.

00:05:28Because that's a really important part of understanding the context.

00:05:32Who is writing this and who are they writing it to?

00:05:35So, I will probably have to add that in here.

00:05:37You know, that's part of the step two, the interpretive, because you get into more of that during those seven hermeneutical principles.

00:05:46But I think it's a good thing to research before you even start really getting into the text, is figuring out who you're listening to.

00:05:55Who is this person who's trying to tell you stuff?

00:05:57And is it really you?

00:05:58Or is it somebody else in particular that they're trying to talk to?

00:06:02And if so, what are the peculiar circumstances that the author and the intended audience were involved in that could change what the letter means?

00:06:14So, that's one of the things that I want to look at first tonight, is who wrote the book of James?

00:06:22Before we get to that, just real quick, what were your first impressions about this book?

00:06:29What do you think the author is trying to get at?

00:06:31What do you think his attitude is?

00:06:34And what is his relationship to the people he's talking to?

00:06:42He's trying to encourage faith in...

00:06:47He spoke class, not warfare, but he spoke to various stations within society,

00:06:55trying to encourage and promote those who were considered poor.

00:07:05And he really kind of demeaned those who were considered rich.

00:07:10That's how I saw it, at least.

00:07:12And it's an interesting read in that regard, because, you know, I don't aspire to be poor.

00:07:22But, yeah, certainly there's an attitude that's involved in being, quote unquote, rich that he was addressing.

00:07:31Yeah, I'm not rich.

00:07:33I'm not poor.

00:07:34But, yeah, I can see within a certain context where James's words would come across as maybe a little bit offensive or irritating in that, you know, why are you focusing on these people?

00:07:48What about those people?

00:07:50Don't the poor have their own issues?

00:07:52I mean, look at all the terrible things that happened with communism in the 20th century.

00:07:59This was essentially class envy of the poor people taking it out on the rich.

00:08:03And lots of really bad stuff happened.

00:08:05So it can go either way.

00:08:07But, you know, you just have to consider who is writing this and who is he writing it to in their cultural circumstances at the time.

00:08:13And maybe there are some mitigating factors that explain why it seems kind of one-sided.

00:08:20Anybody else have some initial thoughts, impressions about the epistle of James?

00:08:25Okay.

00:08:33You know, I saw some of the same stuff that Scott mentioned, and he really seemed to be focusing on pride.

00:08:40Like, you know, you guys think you're better than those guys, and you guys are talking bad about these people over here.

00:08:46Just everybody calm down and, you know, adopt a little bit of humility and realize that you're really not all that special.

00:08:56I mean, you're all chosen by God.

00:08:57You're all adopted into his household.

00:09:02So you really have no grounds to be lording anything over anybody else or to be talking down at anybody.

00:09:11So that seemed to be where he was coming from as I was reading it.

00:09:18But let's go ahead and let's talk about some of the who, what, when, where, and why, and then we'll get to the author.

00:09:28So we know that this was written by somebody named James.

00:09:35So anybody have any thoughts about who this James is?

00:09:45You can just speak up if you do.

00:09:48Can I guess it's the half-brother of Jesus that was a leader in the Jerusalem congregation?

00:09:54You can guess whatever James you want.

00:09:55So we'll get to the facts as much as we can later.

00:10:02Was it not King James?

00:10:05I was waiting for that one.

00:10:08Good one, Scott.

00:10:10That was good.

00:10:12Yeah, interesting thing there is that there's this kind of recurring conspiracy theory I see online where people say that the book of James was renamed

00:10:23for, because King James wanted his name in the Bible.

00:10:27So they changed the name of Yaakov, which is the Hebrew version of James, to James.

00:10:34So, you know, just to kind of give King James some extra street cred or something.

00:10:42That's really not what happened at all.

00:10:45The name James really is connected to the Hebrew name Yaakov.

00:10:48And it was spelled James in English Bibles before King James was even born.

00:10:55So there was the Bishop's Bible and other not-so-great translations into English before the King James.

00:11:03And they all used the name James for Jacob.

00:11:05Of course, it didn't have a little curly Q on the end of the J.

00:11:09It was just a capital I-A-M-E-S.

00:11:11But it was still pronounced James.

00:11:16Got to bring up the chat here because somebody sent a chat message.

00:11:19Yep.

00:11:19Joseph's still agreeing with me.

00:11:21The name James, you know, just like Jesus, it took a long convoluted route through history to become James from Yaakov.

00:11:34And the first step was being transliterated, not translated, but transliterated from Hebrew into Greek.

00:11:42Well, Greek doesn't have the same letters, obviously.

00:11:46And so they retelled it the best they could with Greek letters and added a Greek grammatical ending on it.

00:11:54So it became Yaakovus or Yaakovus or something like that.

00:12:00I don't remember exactly.

00:12:01And then that was transliterated again into Latin characters, which was still pretty similar.

00:12:07But then these Spanish and French and, well, they weren't French then, you know, Gaelic, different Celtic tribes, they started learning about Christ and, you know, coming into the Christian church.

00:12:25And so they called him Yaakovus, and over time, the B became the M, and then the K got dropped out, and now you've got Yaakovus.

00:12:36It's just a shortened slang version of Yaakovus.

00:12:40And there was some sound shifts in the English language over time, and whether these were adopted from French when the Normans came over, or whether they were brought in from the Celtic languages that were indigenous to the British Isles, I'm not really sure.

00:12:58Either of those sounds seems pretty plausible.

00:13:00But the initial consonant I sound, the Ya, at the beginning of a name, started being sounded like J.

00:13:11So instead of Yamas, you had Jamas.

00:13:14And eventually that sound got hardened, so now we have James instead of Yamas.

00:13:22So it's kind of convoluted, and it's hard to see when you just look at them at first how Yaakov could become James.

00:13:28But language is weird.

00:13:32You add a few thousand years in four or five different languages and three alphabets, four really, because the Latin alphabet has really changed over time, you can come up, you can get some really strange contortions of words over time.

00:13:49Anyways, that's the story of how Yaakov became James.

00:13:55So we do have a few possibilities of who the author could be.

00:14:00We've got James the just, brother of Yeshua, half-brother of Yeshua, as Ron pointed out.

00:14:07James, the son of Zebedee, who is also the brother of John.

00:14:14James, son of Alphaeus, who is one of the twelve disciples, but doesn't really get a lot of mention in the New Testament.

00:14:19And there's another James who doesn't have an active role anywhere except in his relationship to his mother.

00:14:28He's called James the Younger, son of Mary.

00:14:31This isn't Mary the mother of Yeshua, it's a different Mary.

00:14:34And she is known because her son is James.

00:14:37So her son is important.

00:14:39He's somebody that the gospel writers all expected to know.

00:14:42Well, we just don't know anything about him.

00:14:45She's called Mary the mother of James in all four gospels.

00:14:50Why?

00:14:51I don't know.

00:14:52Nobody seems to know anything much about him.

00:14:57What is the letter of James?

00:14:59Well, it's an open letter.

00:15:00He didn't address it to any specific group of people.

00:15:04It's not like Paul's letters where he addressed the letter to a specific congregation or the believers in a specific city.

00:15:10He addressed it to the twelve tribes in the dispersion.

00:15:16And there's some debate about whether that means he was writing to Jewish believers, all Jews, or whether he was writing to all believers, just considering them as part of Israel and using this twelve tribes in the dispersion as a generic term for all believers.

00:15:33There's a lot of disagreement about that.

00:15:34And we can talk more about what we think that is later.

00:15:38So the next question is, when was this book written?

00:15:44Well, there's some controversy here, too.

00:15:47The most common assumption is that it was written sometime between A.D. 49 and A.D. 62.

00:15:5449 is when the Jerusalem Council happened.

00:15:59And 62 is when James the Just died.

00:16:01I'm kind of giving away some of the plot there.

00:16:05Most scholars believe James the Just, the half-brother of Yeshua, wrote this.

00:16:11They're not all in agreement, but that's what most scholars believe.

00:16:13Well, I should say most Bible-believing scholars.

00:16:16Most non-Christian scholars will say that it's pseudepigraphal.

00:16:20Some other guy wrote it, like, 100 or 200 years later.

00:16:25The reason for that is that there are no quotes or references to the book of James until Oregon,

00:16:32who I think wrote in the last half of the second century and beginning of the third.

00:16:37So there's 150 years between what would be the death of James and the first dimension of his letter in any other historical writings that we have.

00:16:49So some people interpret that to mean that James could not have been written until the lifetime of Oregon,

00:16:58who was the guy who mentioned him.

00:17:02That's not really true, because if Oregon is going to quote from the book of James to other people,

00:17:07then he's expecting that they are already familiar with it.

00:17:10And they didn't have printing presses.

00:17:12They didn't have Amazon Prime, where you could just, you know, download a Kindle book.

00:17:17Things had to be written out by hand, and it was expensive.

00:17:21So it could take centuries for a small letter like this one to become well-known.

00:17:28So the fact that Oregon could write about James and quote the letter of James and expect other people to know who he's talking about

00:17:36means that this letter was already well-known at the time that Oregon wrote.

00:17:41Now, there are other quotes from other books much earlier than that.

00:17:48We have quotes from some of the Gospels and Revelation much earlier than we have quotes from the Epistle of James.

00:17:54So, you know, that introduces a little doubt into people's minds.

00:17:58And this is one of the reasons that Martin Luther said that the book of James shouldn't even be in the Bible,

00:18:05that it's a fake.

00:18:07I disagree with him, and I disagree with Martin Luther about a lot of things.

00:18:11That's another topic.

00:18:14We'll talk a lot more about that, too, because there are some good reasons to trust it.

00:18:18So if it was not written to any one or location-specific, but rather the 12 tribes, where would they have found this epistle?

00:18:35That's a very good point.

00:18:37And that's one of the reasons that I think it's understandable that James would not be quoted or well-known for a long time.

00:18:44When Paul wrote a letter, he wrote it to a specific congregation.

00:18:49He sent it to them and said, okay, you guys read this.

00:18:53Make sure you understand it.

00:18:54And then pass it on to this other congregation.

00:18:57When James wrote, he probably wrote, well, maybe he had multiple copies made.

00:19:02I don't know.

00:19:02But he wrote a letter, and we don't know what happened to it after that.

00:19:07Maybe he just wrote it down and passed it around his inner circle in Jerusalem and said, you guys, when you go out teaching, here's a guide for you.

00:19:17We don't know whether they actually carried this letter out and made copies and sent it because James didn't really give any directions for what you were supposed to do with it.

00:19:25So it's very possible that because it wasn't specifically directed to a specific group of people, that nobody really knew what to do with it.

00:19:38And they didn't feel like they were supposed to copy it and distribute it because they didn't have wholesalers and book distributors the way that we do.

00:19:46Their culture just didn't work that way.

00:19:47If you wanted a copy of a book, you went and found somebody who had a copy, and you rented the book from them and had somebody copy it for you.

00:19:57And maybe they would let you do that.

00:19:58Maybe they wouldn't.

00:20:00But you couldn't just say, you know, go down to the local book publisher and say, hey, I need 100 copies of this.

00:20:06So it was, I mean, I think that's just one more thing, one more characteristic of this letter that makes it understandable that it wouldn't be widely known.

00:20:21Like this book isn't written to me.

00:20:22So a lot of people are going to maybe not pay as much attention to it, especially since he says the 12 tribes in the dispersion.

00:20:32And most of the believers in the second century were Gentiles and didn't want anything to do with the Jews.

00:20:45All right, let's move on to where.

00:20:48Where?

00:20:48Probably in Jerusalem.

00:20:50Nobody really knows for sure.

00:20:52But as far as we know, that's where all of these Jameses lived.

00:20:56None of them were going out on long missionary journeys that we know of until much later.

00:21:02Now, it's possible that James, son of Alphaeus or James, the younger.

00:21:09Did do some missionary trips, but we don't have any real historical records of that.

00:21:16We don't really have any historical records of those two guys at all.

00:21:20So we're just assuming that it was written in Jerusalem because it was written by a Jew.

00:21:24Addressed to the 12 tribes in dispersion, which, you know, it might make you think that the author is not in the dispersion.

00:21:33Doesn't necessarily mean that, but feels that way.

00:21:36But it's really an assumption.

00:21:39We don't know.

00:21:40If James, the just wrote it, the half brother of Yeshua, then it was written from Jerusalem because that's where he spent his whole life after Yeshua's resurrection.

00:21:48And the last question, why?

00:21:53And we talked about this a little bit already, but the book seems to have been written to address conflicts that were arising from all these new congregations springing up all over the empire.

00:22:04And one of the unique characteristics of the way, I hesitate to call it Christianity because it wasn't called Christianity when this book, when this letter was written, they were referring to themselves as the way or the sect of the Nazarenes or something like that.

00:22:25One of the characteristics of their congregations is that they had a lot of people from different backgrounds coming together.

00:22:32You know, in the synagogue, you would have some of that, but there was also some some class distinctions.

00:22:38You'd have people with their own special seats.

00:22:43If you go into many churches, Catholic churches, Lutheran, things like that, a lot of old school churches, you'll find pews with people's names on them.

00:22:53And it's because those people contributed some money to the church.

00:22:57And so they put a pew there.

00:22:59And this is those people's reserved seat.

00:23:01And it's usually for a family.

00:23:04So there was a lot of that kind of thing going on.

00:23:09If you were if you were poor, then you were probably relegated to the back.

00:23:13And people just accepted this.

00:23:15It's just the way that life was.

00:23:17If you were a pagan going to the pagan temples, same kind of thing.

00:23:20You would have been treated very differently if you were a wealthy patron than if you were a slave or essentially a serf.

00:23:31You just didn't have the same rights other people did.

00:23:33But in the congregations of the way, everybody was supposed to be equal.

00:23:41And you had slaves and freedmen and Romans and Jews.

00:23:45And you had nobles and commoners all mixing together in a single congregation.

00:23:53And it was creating a kind of conflict that wasn't even a thing for most other people.

00:23:59So it seems to me that that seems to be James's primary reason for writing is to help people navigate these conflicts and maybe not so much help them as tell them, here's what you're going to do.

00:24:15You people are screwing up.

00:24:16Get it straight.

00:24:17Get it straight.

00:24:18Get it straight.

00:24:19Get it straight.

00:24:20Get it straight.

00:24:21Okay.

00:24:22Any questions about these five questions, the who, what, when, where, and why?

00:24:30I think to whom he addressed it may speak to his focus upon trials in the rich and the poor and so forth.

00:24:44I'm assuming that the 12 tribes that he is in his mind are referring to it was dealing with some sort of difficulty in maintaining their faith in the dispersion.

00:24:57Mm-hmm.

00:24:59Yeah.

00:25:00And I would suspect that a lot of these people aren't observant Jews that, you know, they're Hellenized Jews.

00:25:06They, they are conscious of, of being Jews, you know, just like a lot of Jewish people are today, you know, reformed Jews, you know, whatever kind of flavor of Jewish they are.

00:25:16They're very conscious of being Jewish.

00:25:19It's a huge part of their identity, even if they don't do anything they're supposed to do as a Jew.

00:25:25Well, the fact that they're dispersed, they're going to be feeling pressure from whatever culture they're living in to, to, you know, become indoctrinated.

00:25:35So, there, I think that transition would have been a difficult thing to, to try to maintain your identity.

00:25:44And this was certainly an effort to encourage people to, to do that, I suspect.

00:25:49Yes, no doubt.

00:25:53Any other thoughts or questions on these five questions?

00:25:56All right, we will have plenty of time to get into more detail on some of these later, but right now, let's see, what's my next slide?

00:26:11Okay, yeah, the next slide, we're going to focus on the four Jameses.

00:26:16There's actually a fifth James that I didn't mention, but I don't think anybody believes that he could have been the author of the epistle of James.

00:26:24And one of the disciples' name was Judah, or Yehuda.

00:26:28In most English translations, call him Judas.

00:26:31There were two Judases, two Jameses.

00:26:35They recycled names a lot.

00:26:38But this other Judah was called Judah the son of James, or Judah the son of Jacob.

00:26:45But he was, that James, as far as we know, didn't really have anything to do with Yeshua or the way.

00:26:53He was just, this is how we know this James from that James.

00:26:57This one is James, the son of Zebedee.

00:26:59This one is James, the younger.

00:27:01And this one is James, the son of, or this one is Judah, the son of James.

00:27:07So it wasn't a way to differentiate the Jameses.

00:27:12It was a way to differentiate the Judas.

00:27:14Sorry, I got a little backwards there.

00:27:15So they had Judah, the son of James, and Judah is Cariot, the one we normally think of as Judas.

00:27:22But anyways, that's just an aside, because like I said, nobody really thinks that James wrote this letter.

00:27:28Okay, so let's take a little bit closer look at these four Jameses.

00:27:38James, the younger.

00:27:40He was not one of the 12 disciples.

00:27:43And the only thing that we know about him is that he was the son of Mary.

00:27:47And he's not even the one that this text is talking about.

00:27:50It says Mary, the mother of James, the younger, not James, the son of Mary.

00:27:58We know he had a couple of siblings, at least, Joseph and Salome.

00:28:02Now, these people wouldn't be mentioned in the scriptures if other people around didn't know who they were.

00:28:08Nobody would say this is Mary, the mother of James, if the other person didn't know who James was.

00:28:15Now, sometimes it would go the other way around.

00:28:17You would introduce somebody as the son of and their father's name.

00:28:21And that was used like a last name.

00:28:22You didn't necessarily need to know anything about his father.

00:28:25You just know if you want to talk to this guy, you ask for James, the son of Zebedee.

00:28:30Or James, the son of Alphaeus.

00:28:32But you wouldn't say, this is Zebedee, the father of James, unless the person you're talking to knew who James was.

00:28:40So even though this James, the younger, he was not one of the 12 disciples.

00:28:45The 12 disciples all knew who he was.

00:28:47He, I would guess that he was probably one of the 72 disciples.

00:28:53So he's part of Yeshua's entourage.

00:28:56He's just not part of his inner circle.

00:28:58And I would say the same is probably true of Joseph and Salome, but they're not mentioned every time.

00:29:06Sometimes the text will say, this is Mary, the father, or Mary, the mother of Joseph.

00:29:11Sorry.

00:29:11Mary, the mother of James.

00:29:12Sometimes it says, Mary, the mother of James, Joseph, and Salome.

00:29:18And then Salome is actually listed separately by herself after the crucifixion.

00:29:23When the women all go to the tomb, this is where Mary, the mother of James, comes up.

00:29:28But in one instance, it says, Mary Magdalene, Mary, the mother of James, and Salome.

00:29:36And it's probably the same Salome who was James, the younger sister.

00:29:39He was not an active character in the gospel narrative.

00:29:46We don't know anything about what he did.

00:29:48We don't know why everybody knew who he was.

00:29:50I'm just assuming that he was probably one of the 72 disciples.

00:29:55There is no historical attestation that he wrote the epistle of James.

00:29:59As far as I know, nobody believes he did.

00:30:03It's just a possibility since the book itself doesn't say which James it is.

00:30:07All right.

00:30:09And then there's James, the son of Zebedee.

00:30:12Give me a sec here while I pour some water.

00:30:25Does everybody remember who James, the son of Zebedee, was?

00:30:32Or what are their names?

00:30:32One of the sons of thunder?

00:30:34Yeah, exactly.

00:30:35James and John, the sons of thunder.

00:30:37Zebedee was a fisherman, and James and John were his sons, and they were involved in the family business when Yeshua called them.

00:30:46And he was one of the 12.

00:30:48And in fact, he was one of Yeshua's inner circle.

00:30:51There were three disciples that were always there whenever Yeshua went and did something.

00:30:57James, John, and Peter.

00:31:00So, before the crucifixion, and probably for a while after the crucifixion, these three were kind of the inner circle of the way.

00:31:11I mean, when Yeshua was there, obviously, he was at the head.

00:31:15After Yeshua was gone, James, John, and Peter were the authorities.

00:31:20These were the people that everybody looked to.

00:31:22Except that he died around 44 AD.

00:31:27Just over 10 years after Yeshua was crucified and resurrected, James, the son of Zebedee, was killed by the sword.

00:31:35Herod had him killed.

00:31:36And we read about this in Acts 12.

00:31:38And most people believe that the letter of James was written long after this.

00:31:43So, it's unlikely that James, the son of Zebedee, wrote it.

00:31:47And there's no historical attestation that he did.

00:31:51As far as I know, there's not a single church father who believes that the epistle of James was written by the son of Zebedee.

00:31:59Next, we have James, son of Alphaeus.

00:32:01And he was also one of the 12 disciples, but he gets almost no mention.

00:32:07He's not an active character in the gospel stories.

00:32:10The only place he's actually mentioned is in the list of disciples.

00:32:14Let's see, I've got a table here.

00:32:18So, at the beginning of Matthew, Mark, and Luke, he's listed when the gospel writers give the names of all the 12 disciples.

00:32:26And then, at the beginning of Acts, when they talk about, here are the disciples who's left, and now we've got to pick a replacement for Judas.

00:32:35James, the son of Alphaeus, was there.

00:32:38So, he is an important character.

00:32:41He's just, we don't know anything about him, other than that he's the son of Alphaeus.

00:32:45Some people believe that he could be the same as James the Younger.

00:32:56And in some of the early church fathers, they get him confused.

00:33:00They will conflate the two as if they're the same person.

00:33:03I don't think that could be true, because all of the gospel writers talk about James the Younger and James the son of Alphaeus.

00:33:11They don't say, marry the mother of James, the son of Alphaeus.

00:33:16They say, marry the mother of James the Younger, and then there's James, son of Alphaeus, as if they're two different people.

00:33:22They're never mentioned together, because one is a disciple and one is not.

00:33:26But I don't think that they could really be, I don't think it's reasonable to say that they're the same person.

00:33:34All right, so, and there's no historical attestation that he wrote the letter of James.

00:33:39So, that leaves James the Just.

00:33:43He was the half-brother of Yeshua.

00:33:48It's possible that he was a cousin or, you know, a brother or rather a son of Joseph, but not of Mary.

00:33:59And that's the Catholic explanation, that James was a son of Joseph from a previous wife who had died.

00:34:09There's nothing in scripture to support that.

00:34:12And he is called the brother of Yeshua in multiple places.

00:34:15Is there any historical evidence that Joseph was married or had a wife prior to Mary?

00:34:22There are a couple of early church fathers who speculate about it, who say that he had a, that he was a widower before he married Mary, and that he had other children.

00:34:35But this is hundreds of years after the fact, and the further you get from the actual events, the less I trust their testimony.

00:34:46When it comes to historical fact, I don't put a lot of credence in the words of the early church fathers, because they had a tendency to build mythologies around the characters in the Bible.

00:34:58And especially Eusebius, who wrote a history of the church between, like, I don't know, the birth of Yeshua up until about the mid-fourth century.

00:35:10He, he took every name that he could find in the Bible and in mentions from early church documents like Clement of Rome.

00:35:21He took all of those names and he said, this person was the bishop of this city.

00:35:25This person was the bishop of that city.

00:35:26He, and he assigned them roles, but there's no real reason to believe that any of those people actually had the roles that he gave them.

00:35:34You know, a few of them there is, you know, like James the just.

00:35:37One of the, one of the things that we can say is that he seemed to preside over the council of Jerusalem.

00:35:44He's the one who seemed to make the rulings.

00:35:47He was, Paul also gave him some authority and said that it seemed to him that Peter and James were the guys in charge.

00:35:54So, but those are pretty obvious and we can get that from scripture.

00:36:01Eusebius and the other early church fathers, yeah, maybe they're right.

00:36:04Maybe they're not.

00:36:05I, I don't really have any way of knowing, but they're not scripture.

00:36:10Other things that we know, James had a brother named Jude.

00:36:14He also had some other brothers named Joseph and Simon, because we know that from scripture.

00:36:22And then we have the letter of Jude that says, Jude, the brother of James.

00:36:28So we assume that that one is also the half brother of Yeshua.

00:36:31The Jerusalem council, as I noted, noted, recognized his authority.

00:36:38This is in Acts 15 when there were believers who were, who were from the Pharisees.

00:36:47They wanted to make sure that all of these new Gentile believers were converting fully over into Judaism.

00:36:52They were getting circumcised and they were following all of the Jewish traditions.

00:36:57Otherwise, they were kind of kept outside the camp, so to speak.

00:37:01And Paul was very upset about this.

00:37:03And he took it to Jerusalem to say, you know, Peter, James and John would, and all the other disciples who were there.

00:37:09What do you have to say about this?

00:37:10And Peter talked about his vision and how he met with Cornelius and how God told him that there's no difference between you and the Gentile and Yeshua, that God accepts the Gentiles just as much as he accepts us.

00:37:26And so James then stood up and said, OK, here's what I say we should tell everybody.

00:37:32And then they accepted what James said.

00:37:34So it seems like they accepted that James was the guy in charge, or at least whether he was officially in charge or not.

00:37:42That's another thing.

00:37:43But they certainly treated him that way.

00:37:47And then Paul recognized this authority in Galatians.

00:37:51When Paul is talking about what he did after his conversion, he said that one of the first things he wanted to do was go to Jerusalem and talk to the disciples.

00:37:59And he said, and I went to Jerusalem and I didn't talk to anybody until I talked to James.

00:38:05And then he said, it seemed to me that Peter and James had authority.

00:38:11And later in the same book, he's talking about how when he encountered Peter at Antioch and Peter was treating the Gentiles with some disrespect.

00:38:20You know, he was acting differently with them than he did with the Jews.

00:38:24But those Jews had come from James.

00:38:27And it seemed like Peter was trying to impress James.

00:38:30And so even Peter recognized some authority in James.

00:38:38And there is historical attestation.

00:38:42Even though I said that I don't necessarily trust the word of the early church fathers, I don't disregard it either.

00:38:49But what the early church fathers say about the history of the apostles has way more credibility than what anybody in the middle of the Middle Ages said.

00:39:02So if I'm trying to think of some characters like St. Thomas Aquinas.

00:39:11If he wrote some history about any of the apostles, I haven't read his work, so I can't, I don't know whether he did or not.

00:39:18Let me let Kevin in here.

00:39:22So I don't know whether he did or not, but if he did, I don't think he has any grounds for saying so.

00:39:28Because he's separated by six, seven hundred years from the actual effect, from the actual events.

00:39:34Welcome, Kevin.

00:39:35So the closer you are to the events, obviously the more credibility you have.

00:39:41That changes a little bit in our modern context, because we actually have access to more records than they did.

00:39:49The believers of the second century, some of them, well, let's say the late second century and on, they didn't have the early apostles.

00:39:59They didn't have access to whole libraries of documents.

00:40:03All they had was oral tradition.

00:40:05Some of them had copies of different letters or gospels.

00:40:12But most believers in the late second century and the third century and on, all they had was what somebody told them.

00:40:18But now we have access to documents that those people didn't even know existed.

00:40:25So we can get more accurate information today about who was who and what did they do and who did they know than people who lived only a hundred years after them.

00:40:35So many historians writing today are more credible than historians writing in the third or fourth century.

00:40:40But none of the historians or the people writing back then, I don't think any of them that I could find, gave anybody credit for writing the epistle of James, except James the just, the brother of Yeshua.

00:41:03So I think since it seems to be pretty much unanimous, that's, that's pretty strong historical evidence.

00:41:12Usually if there was some argument, I mean, there were some people who said, we don't know who wrote it.

00:41:17And so since we can't tell for sure, let's just hold it at arm's length.

00:41:22But those who believe they knew, they all said it was James, the brother of Yeshua.

00:41:27Any questions about these four guys or, or this information?

00:41:41Okay.

00:41:43So let's talk some more about James the just, just so we know who he was.

00:41:50Now, we already know that he was the half brother of Yeshua.

00:41:53Now, whether he was the son of Mary and Joseph or just the son of Joseph, or whether he was a cousin, even, I mean, all of these are possible.

00:42:09I, the evidence seems to me that he was actually the son of Joseph and Mary, but the term brother was a lot fuzzier back then than it is now.

00:42:19So, you know, at church or, you know, even among friends, sometimes we call each other brother, but if we write things down, I don't say my brother, so-and-so, unless it's in a real churchy kind of document.

00:42:33And then we're calling everybody brother, this and sister, that, and it's pretty clear that that's what's going on.

00:42:40But I'm not going to write a letter to, you know, somebody who, that Scott doesn't know and say, my brother, Scott says this, or this is a letter from Jay, the brother of Scott.

00:42:52Nobody's, nobody's going to know what that's about.

00:42:55They're going to assume that Scott is my actual brother.

00:42:59But in ancient culture, especially in the ancient Hebrew culture, it was a little bit different.

00:43:05Your brother could be your cousin, your uncle.

00:43:08Any close male relative could be called your brother.

00:43:12Any male ancestor could be called your father.

00:43:15Female ancestor could be called your mother, even if she's your great-grandmother.

00:43:18So, the terminology can be a little fuzzy.

00:43:21So, I'm not going to say that there's no way that James could not be the half-brother of Yeshua.

00:43:29Because it's possible.

00:43:31We'd have to go back and ask some of the people who wrote these books to really know for sure.

00:43:38Anyways.

00:43:39I mean, even in the epistle, it says, Conor, I'll join my brothers.

00:43:42That's an example right there.

00:43:44Yeah.

00:43:44He was probably born before 10 AD, because if he was old enough to preside at the Jerusalem Council, that means that, you know, he was at least on a par with the other disciples.

00:43:59They're not going to promote, well, I won't say they're not going to, but, you know, Peter and John and Andrew, all these other guys who are, you know, now in their 40s or 50s,

00:44:11they're probably not going to promote a 20-year-old or a teenager to be the guy in charge.

00:44:18He is probably not too much younger than Yeshua.

00:44:22And if some of the other theories about what brother means are correct, he could have been older than Yeshua.

00:44:26And when he's listed with Yeshua's brothers, I believe that James is always listed first.

00:44:38I'd have to look that up to be sure, but I think he is, which seems to indicate that he was probably the oldest after Yeshua.

00:44:44One historian says that he was a Nazirite.

00:44:49It doesn't actually say he was a Nazirite.

00:44:51It says that he did not drink any alcohol or grape juice and that he shaved his head.

00:45:00Well, that sounds like a Nazirite.

00:45:01And it was this guy, Hegesippus.

00:45:05I'm sure I'm butchering it.

00:45:07Sorry, Hegesippus.

00:45:10He also said some other things about him that, you know, maybe, maybe not, said that James was also a vegetarian.

00:45:17That he didn't eat meat.

00:45:19That he was kind of an ascetic.

00:45:21That he kept a very, very strict life.

00:45:24He was a Jewish version of a Stoic.

00:45:26That's possible.

00:45:31And there's some evidence for that from the book of Galatians.

00:45:35Because, you know, in Galatians, Paul talks about how he met with James and Peter.

00:45:41And then how he had to rebuke Peter.

00:45:43And then he starts talking about, and, you know, you guys get all these rules about, you know, don't do this.

00:45:49Don't do that.

00:45:49And leave the rules.

00:45:51And I might be conflating that with Colossians, too, because that subject comes up there.

00:45:55And especially the thing about eating meat.

00:45:58I don't think that's in Galatians.

00:46:00But, you know, it's remotely possible that Paul went down that tangent.

00:46:04Or that he mentioned James specifically because he wanted to talk about the things that James practiced in his own life.

00:46:11And tell people, you know, just because James does this doesn't mean that you need to do it.

00:46:16But he also didn't say anything bad about James.

00:46:19Maybe that was just a sign of respect.

00:46:22Or maybe it just didn't have anything to do with James.

00:46:25I don't know.

00:46:26Well, the tone of James is somewhat stoic, too.

00:46:30So, you know, that goes hand in hand with what you're saying.

00:46:34Yeah.

00:46:34And his rebuke of the rich, especially, and all their finery.

00:46:41Let's see.

00:46:43Brother, half-brother, or cousin of Yeshua.

00:46:45I already mentioned that.

00:46:46He seems to have become a Torah scholar in his own right.

00:46:50And my speculation is that this was as a reaction to Yeshua.

00:46:56And I say that because the Gospels seem to say that he didn't believe that Yeshua was the Messiah until after the resurrection.

00:47:03And there's a couple other things that go into this.

00:47:09The Greek of the epistle of James is different than the Greek of other letters in the Bible.

00:47:15And it's not a different language.

00:47:17I mean, it's still Koine Greek.

00:47:18It's still compatible with first century.

00:47:21It's not that.

00:47:23It's that it's a very refined Greek compared to Paul's or Peter's.

00:47:28It's very colloquial.

00:47:30It's fluent.

00:47:31Whereas most of the Jewish writers of the New Testament, their Greek is a little stilted.

00:47:36I mean, Luke is an exception, obviously.

00:47:38And I think people say that Hebrews is the best Greek in the whole book.

00:47:44But the style of James is very different than the style of those other books.

00:47:49But one of the unique things about James is that his vocabulary and unique phrases that he uses seem to be derived from the Septuagint.

00:48:01So it's not just that he was fluent with Greek.

00:48:05It seems like he learned Greek from reading the Bible.

00:48:08Just like a lot of people used to learn English by reading the Bible or teachers used to teach them English from the Bible.

00:48:15James learned Greek from reading the Greek scriptures.

00:48:20At least that's the way it seems from his language.

00:48:23I'm not a linguist.

00:48:24I'm not fluent in Greek or Hebrew.

00:48:26So I'm just telling you what I've learned from articles I've read and videos I've watched.

00:48:36Getting a little windy outside.

00:48:38We might be getting a storm here pretty soon.

00:48:39So one of the things that the early church fathers say, including this Hegesippus and some other people, is that James was very strict about his religious observance.

00:48:52That he was a very strict Jew and he kept all of the Jewish traditions for himself, I mean, religiously, no pun intended.

00:49:01So he spent a lot of time learning what he was supposed to do.

00:49:07They say that he would go into the temple every day, whether there was anything going on or not.

00:49:13And that he was so well respected by the priests that they allowed him to go into the temple itself.

00:49:20And that he would go into the temple and pray there.

00:49:22And he was so well respected because he knew the scriptures so well that he could teach them.

00:49:33There were some other things about his language in the book that I'm trying to remember.

00:49:38Oh, yeah.

00:49:38They say that it's not just that his language is fluent and colloquial in Greek, but that he uses occasionally turns of phrase that a Greek person would not use.

00:49:49So it reads as if the person is so fluent he could almost be a native, but he uses odd grammar every once in a while that's not quite right.

00:50:02That a Greek person would never say it that way because somebody might misunderstand him.

00:50:07But it's very common for Jewish people in the first century to use these grammatical structures.

00:50:12So almost all of the scholars who write about the actual book of James and its authorship will say that clearly this was a Jewish person who wrote it.

00:50:24This was a Jewish person who knew the Septuagint very well, but was highly educated and fluent in Greek.

00:50:32Now, I would not necessarily expect James, the brother of Yeshua, to be fluent in Greek, except once he became a believer, once he accepted that Yeshua was the Messiah.

00:50:47And then the scriptures say that the disciples, when they were in Jerusalem, they immersed themselves in the scriptures.

00:50:55That day after day, they spent praying and reading, studying and discussing the scriptures.

00:51:00And outside of the synagogues in Judea and outside of the temple, the Septuagint was the scriptures that everybody used.

00:51:11People were coming, traveling from all over the empire to consult with the disciples and James there in Jerusalem.

00:51:18And so it would make sense for him to be reading from the Septuagint so that he could talk to them in the language that they were used to using.

00:51:25He couldn't speak to people traveling from Antioch or Cyprus in Hebrew because they didn't know Hebrew.

00:51:34He had to speak to them in Greek.

00:51:36So he immersed himself in the Greek scriptures and thereby became very fluent in it.

00:51:42I also read that his Greek was very similar to Philo's.

00:51:47Philo was another first century Jew.

00:51:49But Philo was a historian and he was a scholar.

00:51:55He was very well educated.

00:51:58But his writing is different in that it was very academic, you know, long, convoluted sentences, very poetic.

00:52:05Whereas James's writing is very straightforward and to the point.

00:52:09He's not wasting any time with complicated sentences like Paul does.

00:52:15He's saying, here's the problem.

00:52:17Here's your solution.

00:52:19But he does like to use analogies, very picturesque analogies, too.

00:52:24So all of that was to say that James seems to have become a Torah scholar before he wrote the letter of James.

00:52:32And there's lots of stuff in the book itself that refers back to Torah and the book of Joshua and other places in scripture.

00:52:42And that seems to be referencing some of the teachings of Yeshua, especially the Sermon on the Mount.

00:52:47That last point, that he probably didn't believe Yeshua was the Messiah until after the resurrection.

00:52:56In Mark 3 and in John 7, we have a couple of mentions that Yeshua's family didn't believe him.

00:53:06And in John, it actually says that they thought he was crazy.

00:53:08So it doesn't say that James wasn't part of those.

00:53:15So it seems reasonable to assume that James did not believe he was the Messiah.

00:53:20However, Paul in 1 Corinthians 15 says that after Yeshua rose from the grave, he showed himself to the women who came to the tomb.

00:53:30Then he showed himself to Peter in James and John, the disciples.

00:53:35Then he showed himself to the 12 disciples.

00:53:37And then he showed himself to 500 people in Jerusalem.

00:53:41And then he showed himself to James.

00:53:44So he went to his, you know, the women had come to the tomb.

00:53:48So he saw them first.

00:53:49Then he went to his disciples.

00:53:50And then he went to the other believers.

00:53:53And then he took, made a special point of visiting with his brother after he had rose from the dead.

00:54:02And whether that was a one-on-one conversation or, you know, what exactly the context was, we don't know.

00:54:10Because this mention in 1 Corinthians is the only mention we have of it.

00:54:15But it seems that Yeshua made a special point of saying, hey, James, you know, I know you didn't believe in me before, but here I am.

00:54:23You saw the crucifixion.

00:54:24You know what happened.

00:54:24And so now can we get all this straight?

00:54:28And then from that point on, James was a full-on total believer.

00:54:34And he became part of the inner circle and eventually at the, essentially the de facto head of the way in Jerusalem.

00:54:45Okay.

00:54:46Any questions about his pre-conversion life before we move on to the post-conversion?

00:54:51We don't have nearly as much information about James as we do about Paul, for obvious reasons.

00:55:02Paul wrote a whole lot more than James.

00:55:04And half of the book of Acts is almost a biography of Paul.

00:55:11All right.

00:55:12But let's go on to the post-conversion.

00:55:13So, as I mentioned, James had become a leader of the way within 10 years of the resurrection.

00:55:20And we know this.

00:55:22In Acts 12, we have the execution of James, the son of Zebedee, and then the arrest of Peter.

00:55:28So, when Peter is rescued from jail by an angel, he, the first thing he does is he goes to send word to James and Peter and John.

00:55:39And he doesn't mean James, well, he doesn't say Peter and John.

00:55:43He says, go tell James and the other disciples.

00:55:47So, he put James, the brother of Yeshua, in that same category with the disciples, but he set them apart.

00:55:54He didn't say, go tell the disciples or go tell the apostles.

00:55:58He said, go tell James and the other disciples.

00:56:03Now, Peter knew that James, the son of Zebedee, had been executed because he was still walking free when that happened, and he was arrested afterwards.

00:56:12So, this is clearly James, the just, that Peter is talking about.

00:56:15So, it seems that by that point, James was at least considered on a par with the other disciples and possibly separate in some kind of position of authority or respect because he was singled out that way.

00:56:31That's obviously a little bit of speculation because it doesn't say.

00:56:35By the Jerusalem council, he seemed to be widely recognized as a spiritual authority.

00:56:44He and Peter were the ones who spoke, and James is the one who made the ruling about what they were going to do.

00:56:50And everybody accepted what James said.

00:56:52Now, it doesn't say anywhere that James had any official position.

00:56:56It doesn't say that he was the pope or, you know, the head of all of the church or anything like that.

00:57:01It's just everybody looked to him as the authority.

00:57:03And that happens in almost every group of people.

00:57:07Even if one person isn't officially in charge, people tend to look to somebody in the group as the leader for whatever reason, either because of the person's personality or their knowledge or history or something.

00:57:20And in this case, it's probably all of the above.

00:57:23James was a leader in his family.

00:57:25He was a leader of the way.

00:57:27He was the brother of Yeshua.

00:57:29He grew up with him.

00:57:30He knew him better than anybody, probably.

00:57:33Speculation again.

00:57:35And it seems that he was there for a lot of Yeshua's ministry.

00:57:40Even if he didn't believe him, his letter shows that he had a good understanding of the teachings of Yeshua.

00:57:47And maybe he learned that from the other apostles after the resurrection.

00:57:50But I suspect that he probably had a lot of conversations with Yeshua over the years and maybe actually followed him around for a while to learn from him.

00:58:02And then there's the point in Galatians where Paul says that Peter and James seem to be the ones in authority.

00:58:09So finally, we have his death.

00:58:16It's like, you know, with Paul, we have this this long story.

00:58:21He went here and he went there and he talked to this person and he did these things and these things happened.

00:58:26With James, we have these punctuations in his life.

00:58:30We have a moment during Yeshua's ministry where he doesn't believe in Yeshua.

00:58:36Then we have a moment after the crucifixion where Yeshua appears to him personally.

00:58:42And then we have a moment where Peter sends word to him and a moment when the Jerusalem council looks to him for a ruling.

00:58:51We don't have his life story.

00:58:53We just have to fill in the gaps.

00:58:55But then we've got this.

00:58:58This isn't scripture.

00:58:59We don't have this from anything in the Bible, but we have it from multiple sources, one of which is Josephus, which is interesting.

00:59:09Josephus was not a believer, but he was a priest and he was alive at the time that this happened.

00:59:14So he would know.

00:59:16Josephus said that the high priest at the time, Anonis, the son of Anonis, his father was also a high priest.

00:59:25He took James up to the pinnacle of the temple and wanted him to tell everybody, say, renounce this Yeshua character and tell these people that he was not the Messiah.

00:59:36And maybe they knew since they knew who he was and that he did not recognize Yeshua until after the resurrection.

00:59:42Maybe they would say, OK, let's this guy's got some good sense.

00:59:48Maybe we can get him to go back to his roots and say, no, this wasn't the Messiah.

00:59:53And so they took him up on top of the temple and said, tell everybody, you know, shout it up here.

00:59:57He's not the Messiah.

00:59:58And he refused.

00:59:59He refused to recant.

01:00:00And instead, he gave his testimony, told everybody Yeshua is the Messiah from the top of the temple.

01:00:06And so priest got mad and threw him off.

01:00:11Unfortunately, the fall did not kill him.

01:00:14So then he ordered people to pick up stones and stone him to death.

01:00:20There's a couple of disagreements among some of the early church fathers about, you know, did the stoning kill him or did then they beat him?

01:00:26And the consensus seems to be that he was thrown from the top of the temple, survived the fall and then was stoned to death.

01:00:35And the beating was a later invention.

01:00:39Yeah.

01:00:41All it says talk about adding insult to injury.

01:00:45So that's really all we know about him.

01:00:47He didn't do any missionary journeys.

01:00:49He might have done some traveling to visit a few congregations here and there.

01:00:54But mostly he stayed in Jerusalem and acted as the oracle of the way, so to speak.

01:01:00Everybody would journey to Jerusalem and consult Peter and James.

01:01:04It seems like Peter did more traveling than James did.

01:01:08And then he was martyred.

01:01:10And that's pretty much it.

01:01:14So any thoughts on that?

01:01:16Anybody have any questions or any observations of their own?

01:01:18All right.

01:01:24Well, let's talk a little bit more about the book of James itself.

01:01:28I know Scott and Ron, you gave me some of your thoughts.

01:01:32Kevin, did you have a chance to read through the book of James this week?

01:01:36Or last week?

01:01:44All right.

01:01:45Kevin might not be able to unmute himself right now, so we can come back to that.

01:01:48We had talked about how James seems to be, he kind of has almost a prejudice against the rich, or at least it seems that way.

01:02:01But I don't think that's necessarily the problem.

01:02:04I think it seems to me that the problem he's really addressing throughout his letter is pride.

01:02:09That in wealth is definitely going to be a greater source of pride than poverty.

01:02:15I mean, some people are proud of being poor.

01:02:18And it's possible that James might have been one of those people at times.

01:02:21At least he's accused of being that with all of the stuff about his asceticism.

01:02:26You know, people who will deliberately dress in rags, you know, ashes and sackcloth and go out on the street corner and wail and moan.

01:02:37They're proud of being miserable.

01:02:41They're showing off their misery.

01:02:43And I don't think that James was that kind of person.

01:02:45I don't get that impression.

01:02:47But he was focusing in on the reasons that people are proud.

01:02:53And one of those is their wealth.

01:02:55Wealth, position, their ability to use language.

01:03:01That's a source of pride for some people.

01:03:04And so he talks a lot about how you use your language.

01:03:07How do you speak to people?

01:03:08Are you sharp with your tongue?

01:03:10Or are you kind?

01:03:15He talks about obedience.

01:03:18You know, some people are proud of their declaration of faith.

01:03:22And James is saying, well, you show me your faith by your lack of works.

01:03:29And I'll show you my faith by my works.

01:03:31And it was really a put up or shut up kind of guy.

01:03:36It seems the whole letter just seems very matter of fact.

01:03:39And James is a common sense guy who sees problems and is setting people straight.

01:03:47Like, it's a very relatable kind of book.

01:03:51Lots of very practical advice.

01:03:52And one of my own favorite things, bring my Bible over here on the screen so we can see it.

01:04:03All right.

01:04:04So in James chapter one, you have the greeting and then you have a passage about being steady in faith.

01:04:13You know, your life is hard, but you can endure.

01:04:15You can do it.

01:04:16You can get through it.

01:04:17And then a section about being a hearer, not a doer and watch your tongue.

01:04:23Be careful how you speak.

01:04:26Then you go a few chapters further on.

01:04:29You have another section about the tongue.

01:04:32Be careful how you speak because it can wreck your life and it can ruin the people around you.

01:04:39And then he talks about being proud and.

01:04:42Oh, where is the section I was just looking at?

01:04:59And I lost it.

01:05:01There might be multiple sections in here that I'm thinking of.

01:05:07Oh, yeah.

01:05:08Well, patience and suffering again.

01:05:09So he, he goes through, he recycles the same topics.

01:05:15He starts with a greeting and encouragement to endure through suffering and hardships and especially personal temptations.

01:05:26And then talks about how to speak.

01:05:29And then even in chapter five here at the very end, he talks about, you know, being patient and trials and then be careful how you speak to each other.

01:05:38He says it again and then says, keep the faith.

01:05:43Endure through suffering.

01:05:44Trials are going to come.

01:05:45So either he has organized this in a parallelism where he's going through the same points multiple times or it's organized in a chiastic structure or he just has multiple points that he's repeating in different ways.

01:06:02He's, he's got a plan.

01:06:06One of the complaints I saw from some people is that this book seems to be random.

01:06:11He randomly changes topics.

01:06:13I don't think that's the case at all.

01:06:15It really seems to me that he, throughout the entire book, he is addressing the same problem.

01:06:21And it's a problem of pride, whatever the source of pride, whatever the effect it has, that's the thing that you need to address.

01:06:29And he addresses it from multiple angles.

01:06:31And it seems like he's changing topic, but he's really just addressing the same problem from a different angle.

01:06:37That's my initial impressions.

01:06:40And we will, we'll find out more about exactly what James is saying over the next probably couple of months.

01:06:47I don't think we're going to get through this really all that quickly, but we will try to divide the book up into pericopes so that we can look at sections at a time.

01:07:00Instead of just going verse by verse, we're going to go through the inductive process of looking at a pericope, making sure we're in, we understand the context of that section.

01:07:11Then we'll look at the very specifics of that section before we move on to the next one.

01:07:17All right.

01:07:19Does that make sense to everybody?

01:07:25Anybody have any questions about James or any thoughts?

01:07:37Okay.

01:07:39Well, that's really all I have for tonight.

01:07:42And next time, uh, I think, uh, what I had mentioned earlier before you were all on the call is that the schedule this time is every other Thursday because I, I really just ran into a problem when we were doing Romans is that I just didn't have time for anything else.

01:08:01Uh, I spent all of my free time preparing for a Bible study and let a lot of other things that I shouldn't have fall to the wayside.

01:08:10So we're only doing this every other week because I've got other demands on my time that I need to take care of.

01:08:18Uh, I don't understand what you mean, Scott.

01:08:23Um, okay.

01:08:30Uh, okay.

01:08:31Um, so yeah, every other Thursday, hopefully that we don't lose our momentum, but we did pretty good over the last couple of weeks.

01:08:40I think we didn't, we didn't really lose anybody.

01:08:43Uh, June's not here tonight, so I'll have to check in on her, see how she's doing.

01:08:46Although, uh, I talked to Carlos yesterday and, uh, he visited with her a little bit recently.

01:08:52She seemed to be doing okay.

01:08:57And okay.

01:08:59I guess that's it.