Patrick Hartin: James as Heir of the Wisdom of Israel and Jesus

Patrick J. Hartin, James, SP 14 (Liturgical Press, 2009), 80.

Not only does James show himself to be heir to the traditions of Israelite wisdom, he is also heir to the way in which Jesus appropriated the Israelite wisdom traditions. Like Jesus, James shows a decided concern for and identification with the poor. [Ben] Witherington identifies James as a “sage from below” [in Jesus the Sage: The Pilgrimage of Wisdom (Fortress Press, 1994)] (165). Just as Jesus preached countercultural values, so too does James: God has chosen the poor in the world (2:5); his hearers/readers are called to be peacemakers (3:18; cf. Matt 5:9) who place total trust in and dependence on God (4:7). Above all, the wisdom of James aims at the reconstitution of God’s twelve-tribe kingdom, which is the whole focus of Jesus’ choice of the twelve disciples: the renewal of God’s own people. [Richard] Bauckham [in James: Wisdom of James, Disciple of Jesus the Sage (Routledge, 1999)] expresses in an insightful way this closeness of James to Jesus’ appropriation of wisdom: “His (James’) wisdom is the Jewish wisdom of a faithful disciple of Jesus the Jewish sage. He is the disciple of whom Jesus said: ‘The disciple is not above his master, but every one when he is fully taught (or more literally: ‘made complete’) will be like his master’ (Luke 6:40)” ([1999] 108).