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183 As is well known, many if not most twentieth-century biblical scholars have denied the authenticity of the Letter of James. Until recently, the dominant viewpoint has considered the letter to be an eclectic and discontinuous string of general ethical exhortations, held together in many places by catchword associations, with an epistolary prescript attached. It was understood to have no overarching theological perspective, addressing no particular social context. Over the last thirty years, of course, this position has been partially dethroned. Karl-Wilhelm Niebuhr has recently noted that the deposing of this view is due at least in part to the removal of the “Pauline spectacles” that have dominated readings of the letter since the Reformation.1 James did not look like an actual letter and appeared to lack a robust theological perspective simply because it had long been read under the normative shadow of the Pauline Letters. The removal of this constricting lens has allowed interpreters to read James on its own terms, according to the way in which the letter presents itself, and as a result, a number of fresh perspectives have been generated that have taught us a great deal more about the text. Perhaps most notably, these new insights have enabled an increasing number of contemporary scholars to turn against the widespread modern opinion that the Letter of James is pseudepigraphic. Now it is more common to find interpreters Chapter 10 THE LETTER OF JAMES AS A CANON-CONSCIOUS PSEUDEPIgRAPH David R. Nienhuis 184 DAVID R. NIENHUIS who will argue that there is little reason to conclude that James, the Lord’s brother, could not have written the letter himself.2 Though we must be grateful for the work of those who have enabled a clearer understanding of the letter, a few concerns must be raised in response to certain aspects of this new perspective on James. First, the removal of the Pauline spectacles in the name of reading James on its own terms has in some cases led interpreters to quickly marginalize the possibility (and therefore the effects) of Pauline influence on the letter at all.3 If reading a text on its own terms means anything, it means reading it against the historical, literary, and theological terms appropriate to the presumed date and provenance of that text; and given the uncertainty surrounding the letter’s historical origin, as well as the quantity and quality of semantic and conceptual parallels it shares with those of Paul and other proto-New Testament letters (especially 1 Peter, but also 1 John), the notion that James should somehow be read in isolation from Paul needs to be challenged. Those who pursue a reading of James on its own terms by bracketing out Pauline influence sometimes seem to be less interested in James’ actual terms and more concerned to reverse the overly Paulinist readings of the letter that have dominated since the Reformation. Second, many recent champions of James’ authenticity have failed to contend adequately with the troublesome issues surrounding the letter’s historical reception. The question has been asked many times: if the letter was indeed written in the mid-first century by James of Jerusalem, the brother of the Lord, why is it that we can find no solid evidence for its existence until Origen championed it in the first half of the third century? This problem becomes increasingly troublesome when one considers the stature of James in the early centuries, for the picture that materializes is that of an apostolic leader whose influence on the developing traditions of Christianity cannot be underestimated.4 How could an authentic letter penned by him in the mid-first century have been lost or ignored for 150 years in the Eastern church, and even longer in the West? Advocates of an early date for the letter end up offering a wide variety of rationalizations for its late arrival, and while any of them might be argued to be possible , few if any seem truly plausible given the high stature of this figure in the second century. Finally, and perhaps most significantly for my own line of research, most James scholars consider the issues surrounding the origins and canonical reception of the letter in isolation from the historical development of the Catholic Epistles (CE) collection it heads.5 But what happens when we consider the origin of James in light of the phenomenology of ancient canonical collection building? I would suggest that many of the puzzling features of the letter...

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