AKMA’s Random Thoughts

James More

I’ll keep this short today; yesterday I didn’t finish chapter 4 as I’d hoped to, so I really must finish it this morning.

In 1:12, James-Jacob invokes the subject of peirasmos generally translated as “temptation” in Christian writings. Jeffrey Gibson has persuaded me, though, that the habit of reading peirasmos as “temptation” should be reassessed, if not outright abandoned, in light of evidence he amassed to suggest that it never bears the hostile valence of “tempting” up to its usage in the New Testament, where it might well simply continue the more ancient sense of “testing.” James 1:13 (“No one who is being tested/tempted should say, ‘I’m being tested/tempted by God’ ”) provides a difficult test case for that hypothesis; if the peirasmos is neutral, then why not ascribe it to God? It makes more sense to refuse to ascribe peirasmos to God if that peirasmos is seen as intrinsically hostile. I have more decision-making to do about this; James 1 seems like a very tough challenge for taking peirasmos as “testing,” especially the end of v 13 where James says, “[God] tests/tempts no one,” when Scripture is explicit about God testing Abraham, the whole people of Israel, Hezekiah, and Job, whose example Jacob/James will cite in chapter 5 (although the Septuagint, the Greek version of the Old Testament, doesn’t use the word peirasmos or related terms). Moreover, God’s testing of people constitutes a major theme of wisdom literature — hmmm, maybe there’s an article in this, or maybe someone’s already written it up(I don’t have most of my reference books with me).

1:1X revisits the theme J/J opened in 1:5, wherein he characterizes God principally as the giver. J/J’s God “gives to all unstintingly,” and is the giver of “every good gift and perfect present,” just here in chapter 1. God’s identity as “giver” has been the subject of much discussion lately in light of analyses of “the gift” — don’t have time to open all that now, but James/Jacob provides a touchstone text in the New Testament for God and “the gift.”

Maybe next time I’ll take up the question of psyche and pneuma in Jacobean anthropology, but now I have a commentary to write. . . .

Posted by AKMA at August 24, 2004 10:45 AM | TrackBack