B. Date

readers face. But it is finally the spiritual issues that are brought to the surface in these challenges that James focuses on particularly.

The book of Acts may provide indirect evidence for the specific situation that James addresses. Tasker makes the attractive suggestion that Acts 11:19 may provide the specific background against which we should understand James’s use of diaspora. Here Luke tells us that, as a result of the persecution connected with the stoning of Stephen, many Jewish Christians were “scattered” (diaspeirō, the verb used here, is cognate to diaspora) and “traveled as far as Phoenicia, Cyprus and Antioch, spreading the word only among Jews.” We can imagine James, the leader of the Jerusalem church, sending a pastoral admonition to these believers from his “home” church who had been scattered abroad because of persecution.83 This theory cannot be proven, but it does fit remarkably well with the nature and circumstances of the letter, as well as with the date I will suggest for the letter.

B. Date

Scholars who think that James is pseudepigraphical usually date the letter sometime in the late first or early second century.84 If James the brother of the Lord wrote the letter, as I have argued, it must be dated sometime before AD 62, when James was martyred. Most scholars think that the letter was probably written very close to this date.85 They note the many similarities between James and 1 Peter and think that the problem of worldliness that surfaces repeatedly in the letter reflects a “settled” situation in the churches. But the letter contains parallels with many Jewish and Christian books, dated all the way from 100 BC to AD 150. As noted earlier, these parallels usually involve traditional teaching that was common stock among early Christians. The parallels with 1 Peter are all of this nature. Furthermore, it is not clear that the Christians to whom James writes have been settled in their faith for a long time. None of the problems that arise in the letter are unusual among fairly young Christians. Temptations to compromise one’s faith with the world afflict the believer almost immediately after conversion, and this is especially true

83. Tasker, 39; see also Burdick, 162–63. Bauckham (James, 16–23) is among many who argue for a Jerusalem provenance for the letter. See, for a contrary view, Allison, 9. 84. E.g., the last third of the first century (R. E. Brown, An Introduction to the New Testament [New York: Doubleday, 1997], 741–42); or AD 100–120 (Allison, 28–32). 85. E.g., Tasker, 31–32; see also Hengel, “Jakobusbrief,” 252.

when the convert has been taken out of his or her original nurturing context, as the readers of this letter have been.

Two indications suggest that, in fact, James might have been written at a fairly early date, sometime in the middle 40s. First, and most important, is the probable relationship between James’s teaching on justification in ch. 2 and Paul’s teaching on the same topic. As I have argued above in the section on authorship, James shows awareness of Paul’s distinctive emphasis on “justification by faith alone” but does not really come to grips with what Paul meant by this doctrine. Such a misunderstanding of Paul’s teaching was unlikely after the two had met and hashed out a consensus on the requirements to be imposed on gentiles for entry into the people of God at the Apostolic Council in AD 48 or 49 (Acts 15).86 The historical scenario I suggest is that Paul’s preaching in Tarsus from circa 36 (Acts 9:30; Gal 1:21) and Antioch from circa 45 (Acts 11:25–26) on had been misunderstood by some who heard him. They were apparently using the slogan “justification by faith alone” as an excuse for neglecting a commitment to discipleship and practical Christian living. It is this “perverted Paulinism” that James attacks in ch. 2. James might not even have known that Paul’s teaching was the jumping-off point for the view he is opposing. He would have attacked such a perversion, of course, at any date. But had he known what Paul truly preached (as he would have after AD 48), he would have put matters differently than he did.

A second indication of a relatively early date for the letter is the relatively undeveloped nature of the theology suggested by the letter.87 The early stage of theological reflection is revealed especially in James’s way of referring to the law without any indication of the debate over torah that erupted in the early church as a result of the gentile mission. Again, it was in about AD 47–48 that this issue first came to the forefront in the early church. “Certain people came down from Judea to Antioch and were teaching the believers: ‘Unless you are circumcised, according to the custom taught by Moses, you cannot be saved’” (Acts 15:1). Gentiles, of course, had been admitted to the church before this time (Cornelius in Acts 10), and the Jerusalem apostles had discussed the matter (Acts 11:1–18). But it is clear from what transpires in Acts 15 that the crucial issue of the basis on which gentiles should be admitted to the church

86. According to Gal 1:19, Paul had met James some years earlier; but the visit was probably brief and did not extend to theological discussion. 87. McCartney, 8. The nature of James’s use of the Jesus tradition and his dependence on Jewish sources could also point to an early date; see Penner, Epistle of James, 264–77; Hartin, 148–64.