Epistle of James: Encyclopedia II - Epistle of James - Authorship

Epistle of James - Authorship

The author identifies himself in the opening verse as "James, a servant of God and of the Lord Jesus Christ". Of the several people named James in the New Testament, three have garnered support as being this James:

1. From the middle of the third century, patristic authors cited the Epistle as written by James the Just, the brother of Jesus. This James was not one of the Twelve, but Paul described him as "the brother of the Lord" in Galatians 1:19 and as one of the three pillars of the Church in 2:9.
2. John Calvin and others suggested that the author was James, son of Alphaeus, apparently the brother of Matthew, aka Levi. It is feasible that James of Alphaeus is the same person as the author of Mark 15:40. Since very little is known about this person, this proposal does not tell us very much about the author.
3. It is rarely but occasionally argued that this James was the apostle Saint James the Great, brother of John, son of Zebedee. However, most conclude that the author was not the apostle James, because he died too early. Specifically, James must have been killed before 44, but the Epistle of James seems to be written in order to clear up misconceptions about Paul's teaching on justification by faith in the 50s.

Many modern, critical scholars consider the epistle to be pseudepigraphical and so the author could have been anyone, but they generally agree that "James, a servant of God and of the Lord Jesus Christ" was intended by its author to refer to James the Just, the patriarch of the Jewish Christians at Jerusalem.

Adapted from the Wikipedia article "Authorship", under the G.N U Free Docmentation License. Please also see http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki