The Anonymous Gospel Manuscripts

[Aractus]

It is written by a Jewish person, almost certainly an early leader in the church in Jerusalem, to other Christians and contains vital information that tells us about what their beliefs were at the time. But even more importantly, much of it is directly derived from the sermon on the mount as it appears in the gospels as well as other teachings of Jesus found in the gospels. It's probable that more of it is in fact based on direct teachings that Jesus gave when he was alive (perhaps even sections of the sermon on the mount that are not recorded for instance) that are not found within the four gospels. It shows that the church at the time this was written had a very Jewish doctrine.

Now there are two schools of thought among scholars. And your vested interests (Christians) would like the epistle to date after Paul's epistles. But this is very unlikely as both Paul and James, as well as Peter and everyone else important in the New Testament do not appear in history after 70AD, which is when I believe the Jerusalem church was destroyed, following direct persecution of the Christians by Rome in Jerusalem and greater Palestine from 66AD. Rather, Paul clearly wanted to differentiate himself and "his" churches from the central church. It couldn't have been written after 66AD because there were no Jewish-Christian churches for James to write to.

As it contains direct teachings from Jesus (or rather derived directly from the teachings he gave) and not from any other church authority or "council" this is what suggests this letter is written before the council. It doesn't appear to contain independent thought in regards to the teachings in the way that Paul's epistle do. Paul you could credit with coming up with new Christian doctrines and new ways of thinking, but James is just repeating what Jesus himself taught some 15-20 years earlier. Thus this epistle also demonstrates that what Jesus taught was well known - there didn't need to be "guesswork" at the time about what he said in his ministry. In the same theme as Jesus, it teaches from an overwhelming positive outlook, rather than a negative/punitive one. Like what Jesus taught, the Law of Moses is to be followed - unlike what Paul taught which is that the Law has been done away with. If Christians didn't have the latter part of Acts, or the Pauline epistles (including the pseudonymous ones and Hebrews), they wouldn't have justification to forget about the Law. This is an epistle written to Jews, and it is to remind them to be good Jews, unlike Paul's epistle which tells Christians not to be Jews at all. And there are obvious examples of this - James says that Abraham was justified by works and not by faith, whereas Paul says that Abraham was justified by faith not works.