Abstract
It is nearly a century since James Hardy Ropes’ ICC commentary on James was published, and much has happened in the discussion of this short epistle. Dale Allison has been working on the new ICC of James for over 15 years. His lengthy tome is marked throughout by the dedicated, humble labour of those years. It is meticulous and profoundly learned, in keeping with the series. Despite the stark oppositions in scholarship on James, Allison is optimistic about finding the probable solution to thorny problems concerning such matters as date, authorship and Sitz im Leben. He argues that James is pseudepigraphal, dating probably to 100-120 CE. He has a nuanced and original interpretation of the Jewishness of James and its striking reticence about Christ after the first verse. Whereas most commentators interpret the address to ‘the Twelve Tribes of the diaspora’ as a metaphorical reference to Christians, Allison underscores perceptively that the audience is as fictional as the author. The real audience is intended to listen in on this fictional correspondence between the brother of Jesus and the Jewish tribes. He suggests that the intended audience is in reality a community of Jews, of whom some are Christian, others Jewish, and the epistle is intended to cultivate good relations between them. While many of the comparisons he draws are with Qumran texts, he also points out that the traditions in James resemble those in the Pseudo-Clementine literature, especially Recognitions 1.27-71, and suggests tentatively that the epistle may have been written for Ebionites. At a literary level, he finds similarities between James and Hebrew poetry, which give the book ‘a biblical feel’. Like Dibelius, he thinks its purpose is paraenesis rather than prosyletism. He explains its jumbled character in terms of its goal of ‘presentation … it is a sort of sampler, being someone’s collection of what he wants Jews to know about Christians’.
Allison surveys new developments in the study of James briefly, but engages little with themes that have come to the fore in recent scholarship, such as the canonical character of the letter. Rather, his attention returns ever and again to its reception, with particular attentiveness to its homiletic and devotional use. His quick and compassionate eye for this, informed by extensive research, is what most marks out his commentary and makes it a delight to read. Each section begins with a discussion of the ‘history of interpretation and reception’, where its use from antiquity to modernity is presented with a view to conveying the significant insights of any age, rather than an exhaustive treatment of every age. He draws attention to what is disturbing or challenging in verses often read lightly, quickly, or not at all, such as the call to rejoice in tribulation (or ‘temptation’, Jas 1:2). While treating contemporary academic study of James with respect, he gently and wisely suggests that ‘the most important and far-reaching business with James’ in modern times has been its contribution to the foundation of Alcoholics Anonymous, whose early members had even wanted their society to be called ‘The James Club’.