Who was ‘James’?: Essays on the Letter’s Authorship and Provenance

This volume takes up the current scholarly debate on the literary profile and the author of the Letter of James. The approach reaches beyond the conventional historical quest for James’ epistolary authorship and intellectual provenance by combining observations about the explicit, the implicit, the historical, and the literary author with studies on style, rhetoric, literary criticism, genre criticism and literary history, religious profiles, literary patterns of authorship, and communicative structures. The essays of this volume present new insights into James’ literary concept and multifaceted authorial profile based on the latest research in ancient (epistolary) author-literature, provide new methodological perspectives on early Christian epistolary authorship, and situate the Letter of James within the context of an emerging Christ-believing literary culture.