The Anonymous Gospel Manuscripts

[Aractus]

-ish.....it identifies christ and lord in pretty short order, maybe somebody who was once jewish, - what we would identify today as a convert.  The speaker is definitely christian within the text , espousing clearly christian opinions throughout it's entirety.  As is to be expected given it's provenance.

Well I said he was Jewish and an early church leader didn't I? That implies he was a "Christian" or proto-Christian.

But at the time they were more a Jewish sect than they were a separate religion.

They routinely espouse what is  blasphemous in judaism. 

What specifically? in James is blasphemous in Judaism?

James is repeating alot of things about jesus.......the christ bit stands out.

No he isn't, he isn't telling us about the character of Jesus, but rather delivering teachings directly derived from those preached by Jesus. Do you notice that he says "hold to the faith that our lord held to" and not "hold to the faith that we have in our lord" which is what Christians now say?

but that's it's the history of actual events?

The writing of James is a historical event with a historical setting. The letter tells us what the beliefs and theology of the church that James was a part of in the first century were. Theists might try to reconcile this with the later teachings of Paul given to constitute churches outside of the Jewish lands, but what we sceptics can take from it is what the theology of the church was before Paul began messing about with them.

"You've heard this, now do this and don't do that on account of it."  Would that be fair, to you, if I described the general form of the text in that manner?

Well, not so much. It's just a series of teachings taken directly from what Jesus taught (in some instances you would call his citations quotations, had he bothered to mention that "Jesus said ...")

What I've been wondering is how we go from "you've heard this" to "this is history"? Not semantically or specifically in the minds of believers, but in actuality?

I'm not sure exactly what you're asking here. But if it's how do we go from James to establishing the historicity of Jesus, the case is that we have a short epistle written in the mid first century, probably within 20 years of the execution of Jesus. It contains several teachings derived directly from teachings that are uniquely found to be attributable to Jesus in other texts (i.e. the four gospels). Therefore there had to have been an early proto-Christian church for James to write to, it had to have been in existence prior to Paul's interference with it, and there had to have been past teaching from Jesus available from which James could draw to write his letter. Therefore this one epistle demonstrates there had to have been a historical Jesus, and he had to have delivered at least some of the teachings attributed to him in the gospel accounts, such as the Sermon on the Mount as I've repeatedly mentioned. Without the Sermon on the Mount and other NT quotes of Jesus it is impossible to explain the composition of the Epistle of James, and why these teachings were not attributed to someone else - such as James himself. But James, in his letter, does not claim that these are his original thoughts. He is disinterested in personal attribution for these teachings, which is why he mentions Jesus in his introduction, and also why he barely says "I". Contrast this to Paul's Epistles which has "I" everywhere in them, and frequent references receiving teachings by "revelation".