The Anonymous Gospel Manuscripts

[The Grand Nudger]

It is written by a Jewish person,

-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.

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.

I'd quibble there, but it would make no difference between us effectively.  It is either the position off some groups leader or an executive summary of a groups position espoused by someone who feels qualified to offer it.  Regardless of either of those possibilities I also think it tells us what the beliefs of that group were at the time of it's composition.  

 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.

So, the "lost tapes of christ", you think?  Speaking of christ, I still think that the "set of instructions" are decidedly christian.  They routinely espouse what is  blasphemous in judaism.  That said, that proto christians were more "jewish" than they were "egyptian" isn't anything I'd dispute in this "set of instructions" or by any other narrative.  

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.

The positioning of the church is, I think, like most of the above, no point of disagreement between us in this context.    

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.

James is repeating alot of things about jesus.......the christ bit stands out.  But I'm not sure what this to do with the questions I've been asking?  I don't think that the author of james came up with the christ narrative any more than you do......but what you're telling me know..is that james isn't just a history of what people believed...as we agree to up above, but that's it's the history of actual events?  Perhaps even otherwise unrecorded ones, those lost tapes of christ above.  Why do you believe this to be so?  This is what I'm asking.    

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.

I don't think that you and I disagree on any of this...and where we do I think that those disagreements amount to little practical change.  

I think that you might agree with me here, so I'll float it...james is, essentially, epigraphical to some set of beliefs held by a group of christians or proto-christians.  "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?  

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?