vrijdag 25 januari 2013

Review of: L.T. Johnson, Letter of James: A New Translation with Introduction and Commentary (AB 37a), Doubleday, 1995

L.T. Johnson, Letter of James: A New Translation with Introduction and Commentary (AB 37a), Doubleday, 1995.

Review in: The Journal of Religion
Gevonden op: http://www.academicroom.com/bookreview/letter-james-new-translation-introduction-and-commentary

LUKE TIMOTHY. JOHNSON, Letter of James: A New Translation with Introduction
and Commentary. The Anchor Bible 37a. New York: Doubleday, 1995.

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The publication of this second Anchor Bible commentary on James is intended on one hand to standardize the series, which has become more scholarly in character since the publication of Bo Reicke's The Epistles of James, Peter and Jude (Garden City, N.Y., 1964) and on the other to devote more singular attention to James than Reicke's more broadly conceived contribution permitted (pp.???).

An introduction aimed at elucidating various aspects of the "voice" of the letter constitutes nearly half the volume. Luke Timothy Johnson views James as a 'Jewish Christian" work "of the first Palestinian generation," an authentic composition of James the brother of Jesus (p. 159; cf, pp. 89-123). Literarily, it is "a form of protreptic discourse in epistolary form" (p. 159; cf. pp. 16-26). No elaborate account of its structure is offered, though James 1 is viewed "as something of an epitome of the work as a whole" (pp. 174-75, emphasis his) which anticipates the themes addressed in the series of "essays" which make up the remainder of the letter (see pp. 11-16). At the same time, M. Dibelius's more atomistic approach to James's content is rejected in favor of a reading which assumes "a surface and syntactically discernible connection between statements" and larger sections until "rigorous analysis" fails to yield one (p. 14).

The commentary proper contains little that is new beyond what Johnson has previously published in his series of essays on James. The details of his generally judicious exposition cannot in any case be dealt with in this short review. Given this practical consideration, and the importance of the James-Paul problem in the history of the interpretation of the letter, the remainder of this review will focus on one remarkable-if not wholly unprecedented-position forwarded in the book: namely, "There is absolutely no reason to read . . . [2:14-26] as particularly responsive to Paul" (p. 249).

This strong claim rests on two shaky propositions. First, Johnson holds that, despite appearances, James and Paul are not treating the same topic (p. 250): he is emphatic, that is, that unlike Paul, "James never connects erga to the term 'law"' (p. 60, emphasis his; cf. pp. 30, 63, 242). Note in the first place that, even if this were true, the historical conclusion that James is not in some way interacting with Paul does not follow; in fact, perhaps the most popular view of 2:14-26 sees its author as interacting with a misunderstood Paul. Moreover, such a distinction between the "works" of James and those of Paul, while common, is problematic, and Johnson's view that 2: 14-26 is not a "special topic" disconnected from the rest of the letter (p. 249) and, in particular, his recognition of both the thematic link between 2:14-26 and 1:22-25 (p. 246) and the fact that "a single argument" concerning "faith and its deeds" is developed over 2:l-13 and 2:14-26 (p. 219) only make it more so. What of the fact that according to James 1:25 it is precisely (s)he who "looks into the perfect law which is of freedom and remains" who becomes ??? ? And what of the fact that the climactic argument against the practice of partiality in 2: 1-13 is its proscription by that law which will form the standard ofjudgment (23-13)? Despite his laudable view that the interpreter of 2: 14-26 should first and foremost "keep focus on James' text on its own literary terms" rather than on comparison with Paul (p. 246), Johnson's insistence on the complete separation of the themes of law and ??? in James-as already, incidentally, for Erasmus (see p. 141)-would appear to owe more to his interest in the James-Paul problem than James's own logic.

Second, Johnson feels that "the remarkable points of resemblance" in the language of the two authors (p. 64) are better explained by "the simple fact that both James and Paul were first generation members of a messianic movement that defined itself in terms of 'faith in Jesus"' and that both were Jews who "interacted primarily with Palestinian Judaism" than by some "hypothetical power struggle" or "subtle literary polemic" (p. 250). Curiously, such an appeal to a general shared milieu to explain the "unusual concentration" of shared elements in James and Paul (p. 250) is rather reminiscent of "the appeals to a vague 'common property of primitive Christianity"' made by Dibelius and others to explain the similarities between James and later works like 1 Clement and Hermas, which Johnson pointedly critiques (pp. 66-67). In any case, even granting both the early dating of James and Paul's primary interaction with "Palestinian Judaism," it is noteworthy that, while a "necessary unity between attitude and action" is indeed characteristic of ancient exhortation generally (p. 247), the couching of this theme specifically in terms of "faith" and "deedsn-let alone a discussion of the efficacy of "faith apartfrom deeds" (cf.James 2: 18,20,26 with Rom. 3:28; 4:4-6)-is scarcely typical. In fairness to Johnson, he concedes that a "convincing" explanation of his position cannot be offered in the "limited space" of his commentary (p. 250). But it is suggestive that, of the passages to which he does refer in this connection (see p. 238), only two actually pair "faith" and "deeds" (4 Ezra 9:7; 13:23); only one of these arguably envisions a theoretical separation of the two (4 Ezra 9:7); and none address the issue of the efficacy of faith apart from deeds (though see 1 Clem. 32.4).

If Johnson's exposition thus seems at times to be guided by a concern to eliminate the problem which the presence of James alongside Galatians and Romans in the canon has historically posed for Christians, his constant attention to the letter's points of contact with Greco-Roman exhortation, as well as his perceptive grasp of the relation of its exhortations to its religious thought, make this a valuable contribution to the study of James. An engaged and engaging commentary, this is a fine addition to the Anchor Bible series.

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