Published: February 2, 2023 | Speaker: Dr. Chuck Hartman | Series: The Epistle of James - Part 2 | Scripture: James 1:1; Acts 8:1-4
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to be in the Epistle of James we pray that your spirit would open our minds and our hearts to understand this letter and to grow by reading it and studying
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it that we would as James himself exhorts that we would not be hearers only but doers that you would teach us how to walk in
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the light of your word by the grace and the power of your Holy Spirit we do pray for those in our family our church family that are sick we ask for
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healing and good health strength of body that we might serve you and one another we always we ask these things in Jesus name amen
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all right so the fact that we are still in James 1 verse 1 does not mean that we're not going to get through the Epistle of James in one session we're just getting a slow start
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but we are still in the first verse and we're going to look at again at the salutation James a bond servant of God and of the Lord Jesus Christ
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to the 12 tribes who are dispersed greetings last week we looked at James and which James is the author of The epistle
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concluding that it was James the Lord's brother who as it turns out is probably the most famous man of all the New Testament characters in terms of written
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documentation about him he is the most well attested of of any of the men including
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biblical literature Josephus for example doesn't mention Paul but he mentions James so not not looking just at the New Testament where Paul does seem to you
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know obviously dominate in in terms of having written so much of the New Testament but in terms of of being well known James was more well known than
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Peter so I think it's uh it's it's like the Holy Spirit was guarding our Minds in terms of wondering who was
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famous enough to Simply write a letter with the name James or yaakov but now we're going to look at the second part of the greeting where he addresses his
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letter to the 12 tribes of the diaspora of the
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wow I took that out of the box 30 minutes ago
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let's see here see if there's anybody all right
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you've made much of he can just say his name and it was Paul just says his name right and it's
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he doesn't actually mention his name so why make so much of the fact that James can just say James if because there were so many James's that's all they were you know there were two Apostles named James neither of who so
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the only reason that you make so much of it is because they were a very it's a very common name but then there there were in the New Testament how many palls are there are there you know how many Simon Peters won so
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um yeah that's the only reason but and
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Paul Paul we know was famous he's the he's the Apostle to the circumcised or the uncircumcised the Gentiles Peter we know is famous because Upon This Rock I will build my church and all that so those two obviously uh John doesn't
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actually I think mention himself by name uh we looked at that in um looking at the Gospel of John that he he never even when he mentioned the other disciples never mentioned himself
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uh so he was he was you know but James because there are so many of them and because as it turns out um he's not one of the Apostles and yet obviously he can write this
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letter without having to say and even Jude says you know Bond servant of Christ Jesus and the brother of James so we're looking at someone who who was clearly very well known
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um in that era and he addresses the letter to the 12 tribes of the diaspora now obviously I mean what do you think of when you think of the 12 tribes
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it's Israel right so he's he's starting out by using a a phrase a phrase that would have been interpreted in that day as the Israelites as the Jews
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so who are
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who's he writing the letter to it's not like Paul's letters where you know he he says to the church in Corinth or in Rome or whatever this letter doesn't say that it doesn't say
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doesn't say who his recipients are he also mentions the dispersion or the
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this again was a technical term that would have been immediately in the first century would have been recognized as not only Jews but Jews living outside of
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Palestine Jews who um would have included Saul of Tarsus because Tarsus is not Jerusalem and his family were of the diaspora they
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were the Jews who had been exiled either ages ago by the Assyrians although many of them are lost to history then by
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Babylonians those who didn't come back then scattered by the Greeks or by the Romans or those who simply left Palestine in order to make a living
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within the Mediterranean world we know that there's a large Jewish community in Alexandria at this time in in Egypt there's obviously Jewish community in Philippi and in Corinth and obviously
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one in Rome these are all diaspora Jews so the the initial salutation makes it very much sound like it's a
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letter written to choose
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well there's two ways there there the letter as you get into it is obviously a Christian letter Christian letter but it starts out as Jewish as any book in the New Testament and several commentators have commented
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and said this is the most Jewish book in the New Testament okay and we're going to look at why that is and how they can say that but it it it is very very Jewish and then to start out by
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addressing your letter to the 12 tribes of the diaspora we there's no mention of Gentiles in the entire letter entire letter in fact um
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if James is the author one of the reasons why scholars believe it was written prior to ad 50 is because there's no mention of the Jerusalem
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Council there's no mention of Gentiles coming to the Lord by faith and there's but there's also no mention of circumcision or the Sabbath or the dietary laws and we'll get into that in chapter two but
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it's it's just a very very Jewish letter letter and it starts out that way so who to whom is it written well
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to Christians but we wouldn't know that from the greeting we have to get into the letter to find out because he doesn't really mention Jesus very often
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very often okay in fact two or three times as Christ mentioned okay so it's written to
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but we don't know that in the first verse does that make sense
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if we just look at the first verse and ask to whom is this written the answer would be Jews okay and and I think we have to conclude
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it is written to Jews it is as I said and I'll put this in quotes because it's
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it's several it's several commentators on James the most Jewish
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or document of the New Testament very very Jewish in fact I think that is
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an aspect of the book that is often overlooked in its interpretation and also just in its reading because the logic
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seems to escape us as we read it the flow the development of theme or whatever the purpose often seems to escape us because of the
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manner in which it is written so it's a very Jewish document and so what do we do if we put these three together
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if we put these three aspects of the letter and add them up no I would not because of this letter is
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written as if the writer was a rabbi Jude is actually more apocalyptic which was not unique to the Jewish
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writing and Peter um is is not he does not format his letter his letter actually flows more like one of Paul's than of
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James I mean certainly they're all Jewish except Luke's Okay so Okay so I'm not trying to say that the other
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letters aren't Jewish or there aren't Jewish like Matthew is considered to be a much more Jewish gospel than certainly Luke's but of all the New Testament
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writers they were all Jews except Luke so now we don't misunderstand what I'm saying I'm saying among the Jewish literature of the New Testament
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this one is considered to be the most Jewish now maybe Peter comes in second in June 3rd but I don't know who's running the race but it's just the point
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being is it it's very rabbinic in its style and content and that's what I'm trying to lay out early on is that this this is not an
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epistle like Paul's letters it's not framed like it it's not um presented as as one of Paul's letters the greeting is very brief
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and vague and the ending is abrupt the the last verses of chapter five
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it's just we're done okay so what kind of a letter is this well let's these These are people who are scattered from Jerusalem and from Palestine
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these are we know that they're Christians as we read into the letter we realize no this is a Christian document but the address is to
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Jews so the answer if you put them together is that these are Jewish believers
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and I'm going to say on the basis of last week's last week's lesson where we learned about James and the fact that he spent pretty much his entire life as far as we can tell
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in Jerusalem right so he's he's the president of the of the little Sanhedrin in Acts
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15. um he's still the leader of the pack in Acts 21 when Paul makes his last trip and even Peter and John are not there anymore wherever they are we don't know but they're they're apparently not in
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Jerusalem so I'm going to say they've been scattered not just from Palestine but from
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okay now I can't I can't prove any of this from the document itself we're trying to trying to establish when you're when you're dealing with an epistle
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interpreting an epistle these kind of questions are your your starting point starting point who wrote it tomb was it written why was it written does that make sense
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we learned that many of Paul's letters are what they call occasional letters they were written in response to an occasion now in the the Epistle of Romans appears
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to be written in preparation for an occasion his eventually visiting Rome and from there hopefully going on to Spain he says that
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himself um so we we call this the Epistle of James but I think I hope we've all recognized that it doesn't really read like
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in fact I think oftentimes we're not really sure how it reads it's not apocalyptic it's not a revelation it's not even like Jude it doesn't mention any of the apocryphal writings it just it's very terse
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almost um staccato um staccato sometimes it you feel like James is yelling at you is that that a fair statement you know it's it's a tough little book
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and it's hard to outline isn't it isn't it yeah it's very hard to outline at least not the way we outline because it's thought doesn't seem to
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progress in a linear manner so finding out who wrote it and then finding out to whom it was written is going to kind of set the pillars on
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which we're going to build the foundation as to why and how why was it written in how is it written and find out that it's really not I'm not even sure that we should call it
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an epistle an epistle in the in the sense that we've understood Paul's Epistles that this letter definitely was addressed to a group of people
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but that group of people was not residing in a particular City but rather but rather the point was they were no longer residing in a particular City
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now why would James write a letter to believers who had been somehow scattered somehow scattered so think about that for a moment because what we're going to do now is look very briefly at why
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were these were these Jewish Believers scattered because that's going to establish a Baseline
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a Baseline for the Bad actors that James refers to in his letter especially the rich
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the rich okay and that's one of the things who are the rich you know is he talking about Bill Gates yeah yes but no I mean we tend to generalize it and even allegorize it but
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I think James had a particular group of people in mind when he wrote what he wrote about the rich aren't they they're aren't isn't it the ritual press you and drag you into court
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this is something these people had
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Jerusalem were waiting for a specific sign to be first and it seems like the third part of the Great Commission you you'll be that you'll breach in
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Jerusalem and then um yeah judeo and Samaria and then the uttermost parts of the world the world um and and I've I've said before people consider Matthew 28 to be the Great
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Commission and that the imperative there to many people especially a missionary Mission conferences the imperative there is go well in fact in the Greek that's not an imperative the imperative is make
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disciples go is a participle literally it's having gone or wherever you go make disciples make disciples the historical side of of the argument
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is if Christ was commanding his disciples who would be his Apostles to go they disobeyed him for many years and
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they didn't go anywhere they stayed in Jerusalem and and even after the persecutions began but there are two we go back to the book of Acts and we find that the church did have a
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period Acts chapter 10 we looked at that briefly last week that there was a time when the church had peace on all sides and was growing and was prosperous and was in favor well that didn't last long
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in fact it wasn't the condition from the beginning because that's actually after we read about Saul's persecution of the church but we do have two incidents
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that we can turn to and say this is a time in fact Luke actually tells us that many of the disciples left and as they were scattered
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which is the verb form of the diaspora they went about preaching and teaching about the Lord Jesus Christ okay so Luke actually mentions the fact of a
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scattering first there is the the under we say under Saul of Tarsus and he does seem to be the big cheese in terms
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of of of orchestrating and um propagating this persecution against the sect of the nazarenes and then there's also the
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persecution that erupted under the reign of of Herod Agrippa so one one of them is a Pharisee the other is uh a half-breed king okay what
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is in common uh with this well what is in common between these two is the backing of the high Priestly class
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even Saul the Pharisee had to go to the high priest to get his letters of Mark and allow him to go and haul not
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gentiles he wasn't going after Gentiles he was going after Jews who professed Jesus as the Messiah of Israel okay we have no evidence at all that he was at least
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been interested if there if there were many Gentile Christians at that time he wasn't going after them he was persecuting his countrymen and when we were studying
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Paul we looked at how that fulfilled the um the Zeal of the Pharisee the remember the the Finney house and how he was zealous for the Lord by
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killing the Israelite man who was who was in bed with a gentile woman um you know and that that the Zeal of Phineas was was one of the motivating
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factors of being a Pharisee okay so that Saul is breathing threats and murder and murder and Agrippa sees how seizing James the
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son of Zebedee and killing him pleased the Jews well who were the Jews again when we were studying the Gospel of John we looked at Jews doesn't mean descendants of Abraham Isaac and Jacob
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typically Jews as used in Luke or in the gospels means the unbelieving Israelites okay the Jews and in the case of Herod a
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grip-up there's a strong case to be made that what he was looking for he was ingratiating himself ingratiating himself with the leadership the Sadducees the high Priestly family the what the movers
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and the Shakers not so much the rabble hey what he did to James didn't please the rabble Josephus tells us that
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okay this is later on James the brother of Jesus is killed but what what he does to James the son of Zebedee pleases the leaders who are trying to stamp out this
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sect okay they they've gone to Great pains to try to prevent what was happening not just in Killing Jesus but having him killed as a Criminal by the Romans
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having him buried and the tomb sealed you know just in case someone comes and steal the body in the latter situation is worse than the former you know they're they're paranoid about this and then all
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of a sudden this thing out breaks out so the commonality here is
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there is a party within the second temple culture of the 40s and 50s prior and it's getting worse because it's going to lead to the Jewish rebellion in the 60s
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but there's a growing party of Jewish nationalists and many of them are among the Sadducees okay these are the rich
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and Powerful of the Jews these are the people who as it turns out
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they were they were they were able
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to get the Romans to do what they wanted even in terms of Rome's own governors but certainly in terms of the client Kings see Agrippa was a client King to Rome
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he wasn't even King over Jerusalem he was a tetrarch he was up in the north nonetheless if the if the Jews were in any way upset with him they could arrange for him to lose his
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position and be given to another because it was this group that was according to Rome's thinking this is the group that will maintain the taxes
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which is all they cared about and also in order to maintain the taxes they're going to maintain the peace and therefore I don't have to throw five Legions into Palestine when I need him
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in Germania or I need him in Gaul or I need him someplace more important exactly he would be responsible to the emperor if this should happen and so
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when when we talked about James the Lord's brother when he was murdered one of the first things that happened was the high priest was deposed
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by the Romans at the behest of the rest of the Jews so the Jews were not powerless they had they they had the the influence of the it's kind of like
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in a slave culture and I I this is not going to sound right however I say it this I think I can say it the way it would sound correct
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the slave population has only one weapon fear because in slave cultures the slaves
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typically outnumber by a significant faction or factor the slave owners and you could read about this in the Southern Culture here okay about the fear of slave revolt well
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the same thing is true for an imperial oppressor about the only thing the oppressed have is the threat of insurrection which eventually will get put down at
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the loss of many Roman lives and also the dissipation of Roman money and the prevention of other Roman goals someplace else someplace else okay so there's it's not like they're
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completely without weapons and so that's why they had client Kings and that's why they would they would um Foster the the good opinion
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of the ruling class among the conquered and that would be your Sadducees that would be your high Priestly Clan they were the rich and they were the oppressors
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and they had always been that way these are the ones that the prophets railed against the ones who withheld the wages of their workers right the ones who oppressed the Widow and the orphan and
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the alien it hasn't changed but that's the backdrop of James's letter he's writing to Jewish believers who had suffered under this oppressive regime of
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their countrymen their countrymen and so you know we think of of of the persecution of Christians and we tend to think oh Nero you know Emperor Nero um or maybe
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um glarius or you think of the you know Fox's book of Martyrs and we think of Bloody Mary and you know that yeah there were lots of persecutions but the first persecutions weren't by the Romans
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and when we read Paul's letters and the book of Acts we realize when Paul went from place to place the Romans were the least of his problems
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it was the Jews that gave him so much trouble so that sets us in uh and and this is one of the reasons why liberal Scholars
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who think that all these books were written in the second century they do not deserve the title scholar because that situation by the second
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century didn't exist anymore we have already had two Jewish Wars Jerusalem has been conquered plowed under and renamed
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okay twice you know the first time it was renamed the second time but two Jewish Wars has been destroyed the Jews have been scattered you know they're not they're no longer the persecuting class
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and so when you realize that what James is writing about what Paul is experiencing that wasn't something that someone in the mid second century would ever reminisce over
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reminisce over okay this is this is these are eyewitness accounts of what was happening in the early Decades of the church when the enemy wasn't Rome it wasn't the pagans because they just viewed it as a sect of Judaism
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for which they had absolutely no respect but it was legal okay and so these are you know these are Christian Jews and these are non-Christian Jews but they're all Jews
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and they all worship the same God and so Rome was like whatever in fact we even read that in the book of Acts where uh even even pilate says this is the matter of your own religion
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that was kind of the Romans this is a matter of your religion get take it away from me I don't want to deal with it it's the Jews that were the problem it was the Jews who took a vow of fasting
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until they would kill Paul the Apostle Paul he was the Jews they were so much trouble so the setting here is Jewish persecution
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we would have a very valid question in that why is this letter in the New I mean God knew that the church would transition to not only partially Gentile
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but before long predominantly Gentile and so a letter written by a Jew to Jewish believers
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who had suffered under Jewish persecution in the early church it seemed like a non-starter in terms of a canonical book
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and the reason I think that it is in the New Testament and I'm speaking in in human terms I think he was
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from my reading of its path to being officially recognized eventually there really was never much doubt that it was canonical that it is alluded to very early on it
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is quoted very early on it's attributed to James the Lord's brother very early on and and so we we only doubt it because Luther
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doubted it Luther only doubted it because he had a laser vision one Doctrine and anything that didn't seem to match with that Doctrine was at the very least suspect okay but that's not
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the way it was in the first centuries so we're not calling into question it's canonicity rather we're asking what does it have to say to us
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in that we are I think everybody here is a gentile believer we have any I don't think we have any I don't know I haven't gotten my DNA
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survey back yet so I don't know if I have any have any Jewish blood but um as far as I know this this letter and I think because of the way it's written and even its
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emphasis of of Jew to Jews makes it one of the more difficult letters to read in the New Testament it just sometimes it seems like it doesn't quite connect or we don't quite
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connect with it maybe that's just me but I think it's something that that others have attested to before and so it's a conclusion of several commentators of of
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different Generations different Generations um one contemporary and one from the um the 19th century but that that this letter was was dealing
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with the context in which wealthy and Powerful Jews in Jerusalem were wreaking havoc on the church either through their agent
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Saul of Tarsus or through their agent Herod Agrippa it didn't really matter to them they had already used the Romans to kill this Messiah and now they're using
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other actors a Pharisee or a client King whatever they don't even want to get their hands dirty but they're persecuting these nazarenes the the sect
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of the nazarenes and that's causing the dispersion to which James now writes now why would James write to these people
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well it seems fairly clear that his position in the Jerusalem Church was one of what we might call today senior pastor
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okay I don't think he would have called it that that all but it's quite obvious in the in the um historical narratives of the Jewish of the church in Jerusalem which was
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entirely Jewish entirely Jewish James was James was a very influential leader even more so than the apostles
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okay I think it's fair to say that he was but we might say more reasonably he was a pastor of that church and so those of his flock
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who are scattered are still his sheep does that make sense their well-being is still his concern
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he's no longer able to meet with them at least for the time being he's no longer able to meet with them on a regular basis face to face but he can write letters or he can have his teachings distributed
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to those who have been scattered and it's quite possibly that second description that is more accurate than calling it a letter that James's teachings in particularly
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in this letter James is teaching on Leviticus chapter 19.
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was then distributed to his flock in the diaspora to call him the 12 tribes was just simply a way a metaphor euphemistic way
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for him to refer to the fact that they were Jews were Jews and I think it may have been very important to hear that from their
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perspective because they were being persecuted by Jews and they were being persecuted by those Jews under the claim that they were
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blasphemers meaning they were no longer Jews but in fact as Paul teaches they are true Israel true Israel so for James to call them the 12 tribes
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was very pastoral you know he's saying he's saying you are the true Israel even though you've been persecuted for your faith in Christ and
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then scattered from your Homeland now being scattered from your Homeland then was even worse than it is today but we see reports of you know in Ukraine and then in Syria a few years
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ago the refugee crisis right it's never been easy to be kicked out of your home and your land
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was cast in terms of Israel and Judah united into one paper so to call them the 12 tribes of Israel is calling up that Messianic promise yeah it's calling up the Messianic promise of a United not a
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divided Kingdom but a once more United Kingdom Under the one Shepherd David that's the context of that promise Jeremiah 31 and Ezekiel okay the promise
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that Israel and Judah which for centuries had been two Nations coming back so 12 tribes was a was a common metaphor or euphemism in the second temple era it was eschatological it was
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Messianic it meant the reunion of the tribes but it also meant the true Israel the 12 tribes it was never the two tribes of of Judah you
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know and Benjamin or the ten tribes Israel was never divided that way and and we read that even after the rebellion of of jeroboam under you know
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rehoboam that when jeroboam set up the idolatrous calves in Dan and Bethel we read that many Jews fled the northern
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kingdom from every tribe and came down to Jerusalem so that the 12 tribes were still represented in that realm that was ruled by the
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house of David God preserved his Remnant even though the ten Northern tribes were eventually scattered to the winds 12 tribes were still together
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the prophecy was still whole okay but I I think again I think it would have been a very
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greeting to those who had suffered not just because they were Jews but because they were Messianic Jews okay so um we're setting the context
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here um I'll read a couple of quotes a Galatians 2 is very important here because I'm not going to read the whole thing again we've looked at it last week but one of the decisions that was made
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when Paul went up to Jerusalem met with the reputed pillars James and Peter and John we looked last week at the fact that that James was most likely James
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the Lord's brother because James the son of Zebedee was probably already dead by that point that point but at the end of that we read that um they gave me and Barnabas the
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right-handed Fellowship that we should go to the Gentiles and they to the circumcised we have no evidence either biblical or extra biblical that James
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ever proselytized or evangelized among the Gentiles he was Jewish a Jewish believer and he
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ministered to the circumcised just as we read in in Paul's letter but um looking at this the situation that would bring about this this letter or
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what we call a letter
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okay I have a page number down all right here it is okay the scattering of the church must have happened very early if the early Believers represented a cross-section of the group mentioned in Acts 2
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Acts 2 the church we know that from the very beginning many of at Pentecost many of the Jews that were there were from the diaspora but I don't actually think that's the ones those are the ones
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necessarily to whom Paul or James is writing I think it has more to do with the persecution the church at Jerusalem at any rate surely saw the diaspora and
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the scattering of Acts chapter 8 that's Saul okay Saul okay as producing a diaspora despite the fact that later history makes it look limited
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this forced scattering resulted from persecutions by men whom the church would have described as the rich thus it is probable that during the pre-ad-70 period the Jerusalem Church
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and the Palestinian Church in general suffered sporadic persecution from Rich Jews because the rich often oppress the poor if for no other reason that's what they
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do thus while the description could Envision official persecution by Romans against a widespread Church it also fits the situation of sporadic persecution of
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Christians in the vicinity of Palestine by wealthy Jews the point of this author is to say the tendency now and and for many generations in the
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Gentile Christian Church the tendency has to been to to spiritualize that phrase and to say well it's just referring to
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Christians that we're we're true Israel right we've been grafted in but nowhere does Paul for example ever refer to Gentile Believers as the 12
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tribes we've been grafted into Israel but not into any particular tribe does that make sense you know I haven't been grafted into Judah
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you know I I I haven't been grafted into Simeon I've been grafted into Israel okay so the the phrase the 12 tribes doesn't really apply and never did
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but again the here's a word gentilization of the church resulted historically in a lessening of the Jewish influence of
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Christianity and the Jews were actually eventually castigated as Christ killers and persecuted by Christians and so reading the entry or the first verse of James
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we did not want to think that it was written to Jews and so the conclusion of many commentators is this is just another way of referring to Christians
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no not really you can refer to Christians as a chosen people a holy nation you can refer to Christians as Peter does in many of the terms that are used of
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Israel in general in general but the 12 tribes is talking about Israel in particular does that make sense and so when we when anybody would have
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read this in the first or second century and read the 12 tribes they would not have said oh that's a spiritualization of the church we are now the true Israel that's that replacement theology that
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Israel is no more and now it's the church that's not how James thought that's not how Paul thought
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God's choosing of Israel did not end with the coming of Israel's Messiah and so James is writing I believe that he is writing to Jewish believers
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but I think the the way the letter is written helps us understand why it's in our Canon our being Jewish and Gentile the church
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is Canon what can we gain if all scripture is profitable what prophet is there in James if it's written by a Jew to Jews
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to Jews well it's because it's not really a letter by a Jew to Jews it is more a rabbinic
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commentary on a passage from the Old Testament that is one of the most um Timeless in its application
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and that is Leviticus 19. now Leviticus 19 is the heart of what's known as the Holiness code and it has to do more than perhaps any
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other passage in the pentateuch with the right Behavior of the people of God and in Leviticus 19 that whole section
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there the reason it's called the Holiness code is because after every injunction or almost everyone you have the phrase
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for I the Lord am Holy am Holy you shall not glean into the corners of your field or harvest into the corners of your field you shall not beat your fig trees twice for I the Lord am Holy
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so in in in terms of New Testament Church talk Church talk this is where the the talk meets the walk and the walk meets the talk is Leviticus 19.
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Leviticus 19. now it shouldn't surprise us that James will say in this letter things like do not be hearers of the word only but doers as well
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he also says that you know faith without works is dead okay in fact there's a tremendous emphasis in this letter
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on the evidence of one's faith not just the profession of it and so um the the term
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that is used to describe this type of letter it's it's not really an epistle it's more of of what is called a a gal
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the word is actually currently used in in Hebrew in in Israel and apparently the word means backpack
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right I think that's one of the best descriptions of James's letter I've ever read it's a backpack that's what you put things in okay
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is a uh well let me let me give the definition uh from an actual Messianic Jew a Jewish person um David Friedman
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he says um okay here we go a compendium or collection of writings or teachings
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these are often the the highlighted Torah commentaries of a given Rabbi scholar or commentator
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so a yakud is is a backpack but it's not a backpack of everything it's it's not like Let's Make a Deal do you have a paper clip in there it's it's it's a compendium of a teaching by a rabbi
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and it's written in in um short phrases and sections
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that are not logically tied together
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but nonetheless are all United by an Old Testament passage that forms the basis of all this teaching okay now okay now the rabbis did not do commentaries the way we do commentaries
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so in other words you'll never find a rabbitic commentary on Leviticus that starts with Leviticus chapter 1 verse 1 then goes to verse 2 Then goes to verse 3 like our commentaries do
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as a matter of fact you're hard-pressed to find in a rabbinic mishnah in a rabbinic teaching rabbinic teaching a specific reference to a book or a verse
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because the rabbis tended to view the scriptures as a whole even when they were looking at part of it does that make sense they weren't trying to say okay here is
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where this is taught no this is taught everywhere we're just reading this part and so if you read the mishnah for example Rabbi Eleazar says this but Rabbi Simeon
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says this and they're all referring to a particular biblical theme or even passage without actually referencing it
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and the way you make the connection is by the phrases that are used okay so if we as we go through the letter of James the first thing we're going to say
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okay it's a it's a compendium
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can we accept that the earliest Jewish believers probably continued
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to meet the same way they had before in the synagogue and in a synagogue format so that I mean I don't think we really need to accept it because that's what Paul did whenever he came into a
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community first place he went if they had one was the synagogue and then they would ask because he was visiting Rabbi do you have something you want to say to the congregation but the synagogue had regular readings
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just like many Christian churches do we have a regular reading in the Bible different sections of the Bible and what they would do is they would then have a rabbinic teaching on that
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reading and the alcoot would be the compendium of a rabbi or a group of rabbis teachings on those readings
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so they they do have a foundation they do have a framework it's just not the theological framework that we tend to look for look for and it it is a it is not an explicit
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framework where framework where the rabbi is citing chapter and verse and see I think that's what throws us when we read a book like James or if you
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do read the mishnah it's like okay where is that well if you dig you'll find it it's there it's there they they were they they held fast to the Old Testament to the Pentagon to
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Torah but and I didn't always say the right thing about it but neither do commentators today it's just easier to find out that the commentator today is wrong because he specifically explicitly said I'm talking about verse 5 of
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chapter 14 of this book right the rabbis didn't do that
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yes I think we should check as a challenge sometimes chapter and verse has made our life too easy and has resulted in refrigerator magnet verses verses that we can now cherry pick and and say well this is the Bible
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because it's John 3 16. okay totally out of context not only of John 3 but of the whole scripture
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so yeah so yeah um I mean I I love it when the writer of Hebrew says somewhere it is written like Hallelujah okay Hallelujah okay I don't have to memorize all the verses
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somewhere it is written somewhere says something about a chicken um yeah it's it's a format that that does as Aaron says it does challenge us
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to know the scriptures because when you read Leviticus 19 Leviticus 19 and then you read James
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it's like Leviticus 19 is echoing through the writings of James he's using phrases in some cases they are identical in the Greek
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but in many cases it's simply a word or a topic that is clearly dealt with in Leviticus 19. and actually in our notes
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if you want to turn to them on page
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and this is not my doing this is the work of several other Scholars that I mentioned
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it simply looks at Leviticus 19 12. through 1918. through 1918. and shows the corresponding passages in James that are almost verbatim now the only one that's missing is verse
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14 of Leviticus 19. there doesn't seem to be any um direct correspondence between James and and that but for example James
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chapter 2 verse 1 do not show partiality Leviticus 19 15 do not show partiality that's one where the same phrase is used okay we don't catch that
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when we read James and that I think is to our shame it's not because we're not Jewish it's because we don't read our Old
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Testament but certainly we can acknowledge that a Jewish believer in the first century would have caught it and and so much of the New Testament whether it's Paul or John Peter or James
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they they would say three words that a Jew would understand as a whole Passage from Torah
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okay and that's why the New Testament is so incredibly deep if we would just dig but we've been taught especially by dispensationalism that the Old Testament doesn't have anything to do with us
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which means we have effectively over the last three or four generations because this is not something you'll find for example in the writers of the Reformation or of the Puritan Era who
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knew their Bibles and they made the connections between the New Testament writings and the Old Testament Heritage the Old Testament Revelation that undergirded that writing
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we don't have that anymore we've cut ourselves off from all of that and think now that we can look at the New Testament and begin its meaning from
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Christ onward Christ onward rather than understanding its meaning from God from the beginning okay so reading James as a yelkut as a
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as a midrash which is a rabbinic commentary of of the Old Testament Old Testament as which is the the application of Torah
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in other words if we read it in a Jewish setting it's going to make a whole lot more sense to us
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it's going to make the kind of sense of of of reading um Haiku as a I guess that's Japanese isn't it haiku it haiku Asian Chinese whatever
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um but but reading something within the culture in which that entire genre existed makes a whole lot more sense than reading it from some foreign perspective
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that we have actually foisted on it we have made the New Testament independent of the Old Testament Even in our Bibles our Bibles by dividing them by the weights and
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measures and the history of the inter-testamental period and the other things that are between an Old and New Testament and so many of our Bibles um but that that that's almost metaphoric to what we've done
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in our churches and through dispensationalism and we need to kind of recover that recover that by by seeing these books as as they really are and that is the New Testament
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is the Fulfillment of the old and that the New Testament writers when they said thus it is written or in order to fulfill you know they constantly are referring to their Heritage to the heritage of
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divine revelation that was given through Israel James is no different so he writes this way um and
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um and because he writes this way it's very hard to outline and I've looked at probably a dozen or so
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commentaries and that's one of the things you got to do in a commentary the first thing you gotta do is outline the book says who says who okay I mean do you outline do you write
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an outline before you write someone a now but Paul did didn't he what you would believe that he did if you read commentaries on Paul's
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Epistles right Epistles right because here's the outline you know I've got to give you the outline before I actually go into the verse by verse Exposition but the problem is no two commentators outline any book the same
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which should indicate that maybe you're on the wrong track to begin with but almost every commentator will admit that James is the hardest book in the New Testament to outline
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because he doesn't seem to follow any particular theme for more than a few verses and he does seem to Jump Around
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in different themes and even what I've put on page 25 you see that Leviticus 12 13 14 15 16 17 and
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18. do not correspond to a progressive reference in James
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written it is more stream of Consciousness than anything Leviticus 19 is the environment in which James is written
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but we can't say that James is a commentary on Leviticus 19. the book of Hebrews is immersed in Leviticus
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I would go so far to say the Book of Revelation is immersed in Isaiah that Isaiah is the is the heir that Revelation breathes
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Revelation breathes not to the exclusion of other references but very powerfully but not chapter and verse and not linearly starting in Isaiah 1