From Jim McGuiggan... Who did James write to?

Who did James write to?

 I think James wrote his letter precisely to the people he said he wrote to. He said he was writing to "the twelve tribes scattered among the nations." It doesn’t get any plainer than that. He wasn’t writing to the nations (the Gentiles) and he wasn’t writing to Jews that lived in Palestine. More than that, he wasn’t writing just to Christian Jews. He was writing to all the Jews that lived outside Palestine. It is a general letter though I suppose he must have sent it to some location in particular. When he says the "twelve tribes" that are of the Diaspora he means to embrace all his people, Christian or non-Christian, who live outside Palestine.

There’s no dispute that he is writing to Christian Jews because he calls them "believers in our glorious Lord Jesus Christ (2:1) and he reminds them that there are those who blaspheme "the noble name of him to whom you belong" (2:7).

But I think there’s good reason to believe that James was like the Old Testament prophets who addressed not only the righteous remnant within Israel but also the entire people. This is one of the difficulties of Old Testament reflection and teaching. It appears that one moment the prophet is praising the people to the high heavens for their righteousness and devotion and the next he is ploughing them under for apostatic behavior. Isaiah 42:18-20 chides Israel, God’s servant, for being blind and deaf while in 49:1-12 the servant is God’s devoted servants to redeem the world.

James as we’ve seen addresses believers in the Christ but he also addresses the people of 5:1-6 who have condemned the just, robbed the poor and heaped up justice against themselves. The description in 4:1—4 has difficulties (are the sins all literal or are metaphors employed?) but it makes more sense to me that James addresses Jews without always distinguishing between Christians and non-Christians. No one disputes that the book is as Jewish as any book in the NT and more like an address to Jews in a kind of wisdom literature. There are those who insist it is even more Jewish that 1 Peter.

©2004 Jim McGuiggan. All materials are free to be copied and used as long as money is not being made.

Many thanks to brother Ed Healy, for allowing me to post from his website, theabidingword.com.