c. 1996 Religion News Service

(RNS)-Is a brother of Jesus the real author of a letter attributed to him in the New Testament?

Luke Timothy Johnson, a Catholic who teaches at Emory University’s Candler School of Theology, is bucking conventional wisdom by proposing that James-called the”brother of the Lord”by the apostle Paul in the New Testament-is the true writer of the Letter of James, a series of exhortations known for the line”faith without works is dead.” Many scholars say the Letter of James was written decades after James’ death by an unknown author who put James’ name on it to give it authority.

A letter attributed to another reputed brother of Jesus-the Letter of Jude-is commonly regarded as having been written long after Jude’s lifetime. And many scholars-especially those in liberal biblical scholarship-say the four Gospels were written not by contemporaries of Jesus but by evangelists who came later.

If Johnson is right, the Letter of James could be the only book in the New Testament written by someone who knew Jesus during his lifetime.

Johnson advanced his thesis in an Anchor Bible commentary on James published in November by Doubleday.

Although the book placed him among Catholic scholars who indicated that they viewed James as an actual”brother of the Lord”contrary to church doctrine, Johnson spent more words on trying to build a case for an epistle with potential to shed light on early church affairs.”If James’ authorship were taken as historically accurate,”Johnson wrote,”… we are also given valuable evidence for Palestinian Christianity”in the period between Jesus’ crucifixion about 33 A.D. and James’ death by stoning in 62 A.D.

The Letter of James is a relatively neglected part of the Christian Bible, usually because many church leaders in history said it added little to Christian theology. Protestant reformer Martin Luther derisively called it”an epistle of straw.” However, its minimal statements about Jesus’ divinity tend to bolster an argument for its composition at an early date, conceded British scholar Sophie Laws.”Its lack of sophisticated theology, its practical Old Testament morality, and its echoes of the teachings of Jesus … would all be consistent with an early, Palestinian origin,”Laws wrote in an introduction to the Letter of James in the HarperCollins Study Bible.

The first objection usually raised against James’ authorship is that the”well-schooled Greek style could not have been composed by a Galilean craftsman,”in the words of Boston College’s Pheme Perkins, whose commentary on James and three other letters was published in 1995 by John Knox Press.

The usual picture of Jesus’ upbringing in Galilee has been of an Aramaic-speaking family of craftsmen, but recent archaeological excavations in that region have shown a greater influence of Hellenistic, or Greek, culture than previously thought.

Johnson, a former Benedictine monk and priest, may get his strongest backing for James as the actual author from evangelical scholars, who tend to date Bible documents earlier than their Catholic and liberal Protestant colleagues.”I think he’s right,”said Craig Evans of Trinity Western University in Langley, British Columbia, who is active in historical Jesus research.”I think the pendulum is swinging away from academic skepticism.” Another New Testament scholar open to Johnson’s arguments is David Scholer of Fuller Theological Seminary in Pasadena, Calif.”It’s an excellent commentary,”Scholer said.

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