[Download] "Wisdom, 4Q185, and the Epistle of James." by Journal of Biblical Literature # eBook PDF Kindle ePub Free
eBook details
- Title: Wisdom, 4Q185, and the Epistle of James.
- Author : Journal of Biblical Literature
- Release Date : January 22, 1998
- Genre: Language Arts & Disciplines,Books,Professional & Technical,Education,
- Pages : * pages
- Size : 205 KB
Description
After nearly a century and a half of neglect, the tiny Epistle of James is suddenly attracting new interest among a small group of scholars committed to documenting sapiential influence on early Christianity. Although formal parallels between James's hortatory material and older wisdom documents have long been recognized, current scholarly attention is focused less on such formal analogies than on the themes and motifs considered to have been typical of sapiential circles. An important precursor of the new approach can be seen in a brief article by U. Luck, who suggested that the author of James's epistle "lebt im Horizont einer Weisheitstheologie." (1) According to Luck, the admonitions of the epistle proceed from a common, sapiential assumption that divine wisdom enters humankind to preserve the wise from transgression, a construct that was for Luck fundamentally opposed to the sola fide of the apostle Paul. The discussion that followed the publication of Luck's thesis in Germany frequently applauded his search for James's roots in the soil of the Jewish wisdom tradition, but divided along confessional lines in response to his reluctance to seek a rapprochement within the Christian canon. (2) Meanwhile, on the other side of the Atlantic, work was proceeding apace on the disorderly relationship between wisdom and apocalypticism in early Judaism. (3) This seemingly intractable problem was soon elevated to a new level of urgency by developments in the study of "Q" that blithely rent asunder what the scholars of early Judaism had been so diligently endeavoring to bring together. The ensuing debate quickly threatened to suck the Epistle of James, which was often perceived to be related to Q, out of its quiet backwater and into the vortex of controversy, thus providing an interesting North American echo to the Continental discussion. (4) But what constitutes "Weisheitstheologie"--or in terms of the North American debate, the "sapiential understanding of reality"? Here, as in the broader discussion of wisdom and apocalyptic literatures, scholarly discourse has struggled with the matter of definition. By the late Second Temple period, sapiential elements had so thoroughly penetrated the spectrum of Jewish reflection that the mere presence of sapiential terminology or forms does not easily translate into a particular theological perspective. Indeed, the pervasiveness of wisdom elements throughout all the literature of the Second Temple period suggests that the Epistle of James cannot be accurately grouped among the wisdom documents by merely pointing out sapiential motifs or by imprudently associating its structure with wisdom instruction. Valid insights into the character of the text must arise from a careful analysis of the author's controlling purpose.