- Chapters
- 5
- Verses
- 0
- Where it sits
- The Catholic Epistles
What it is
Closer to the wisdom books — Proverbs, Sirach — than to anything of Paul’s. It is addressed to the twelve tribes in the dispersion, and it is written for a community under strain and split between rich and poor.
It is blunt in a way little else in the New Testament is: about the tongue, about favouring the well-dressed visitor, about employers who hold back wages, and about people who wish the poor well and give them nothing.
Known for
1:17. 2:14–26, faith and works. 3:1–12, on the tongue. 5:14–15, on calling the presbyters to anoint the sick with oil — the scriptural ground of Holy Unction.
Where it sits
Tradition holds it was written by James the brother of the Lord, first bishop of Jerusalem. The open question is its Greek, which is polished and rhetorically trained — and scholars ask whether that fits an Aramaic-speaking Galilean who led the Jerusalem church. It was among the books Eusebius listed as disputed, though the East received it comparatively early. There is more on the man himself on his page.
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