James the Just, Brother of Jesus, Head of the Jerusalem Church

I'd wanted to write a post on the Epistle of James, ever since I first heard of The Consevative Bible Project (brain child of Andrew Schlafley and his "Conservapedia").  Here are some actual verses from the "Conservative Bible"

The Conservative Bible Project is a reaction against the "Liberal" bias of modern Bible translations,  which I guess includes ALL of the "Modern Era" (basically everything since the King James!). In a Beliefnet article Conservatizing the Bible, Conservative theologian Rod Dreher put it best:

You really need to read the whole Conservapedia entry to grasp how crazy this is. It's like what you'd get if you crossed the Jesus Seminar with the College Republican chapter at a rural institution of Bible learnin'. 

The project explicitly aims at censoring Bible passages which are too "left wing".  This may include even ancient passages universally recognized  within the Chistian canon.  The editors argue that these "liberal" passages are invalid when they are not found  in the earliest manuscripts.  So they are happy to eliminate the pinko-commie anti-death-penalty sentiment of the statement: "Let he who is without sin cast the first stone"! 

Admittedly this statement is most likely a later addition into the Gospel of John.  But it is an addition which was embraced by the Church Fathers and included in the  canon.  If they were to apply this same standard to every canonical biblical text of questionable origin, they would have to delete much that upholds their conservative political and theological viewpoints.

For example: The epilogue of Mark (the oldest Gospel) is not found in any reliably early manuscripts.  It is a later addition which asserts the bodily ressurection of Jesus, thereby corroborating the assertions of the later Gospels which which lacked some of the historical veracity of Mark's early account.  By the same  standard used by the Conservapedia, this section should be DELETED ENTIRELY, casting doubt on the orthodox theological premises which conservatives cherish. 

 Where do they draw the line?   Sometimes they must take liberties, and drastically distort the meaning of the Greek original. Case in point, a quotation from the War Room post, Actual verses from the "Conservative Bible"

Conservapedia's editors faced another problem -- how to deal with verses in which Jesus is quoted as saying things that are less than Republican. Take, for example, Mark 10:23-25, which in the translation they're basing their work off of, reads:

 [...]

It is easier for a camel to go through the eye of a needle, than for a rich man to enter into the kingdom of God."

Here's how Conservapedia has edited that:
[...]

 It is easier for a camel to go through the eye of a needle, than for a man who cares only for money to enter into the kingdom of God."

The last bit of that new translation inspired the comment, presumably from another Conservapedia edtior, "very nice improvement of the imprecise term 'rich.'"

This use of editorial license touches on the fact that there is an element of class warfare in the actual words of Jesus.  The messianic apocalyptic movement in first century Judaism (of which Jesus and John the Baptist were proponents) was aimed at social leveling and the overthrow of the Roman ocupiers and their Jewish collaborators--which brings meto my next point.

 The Epistle of James, Class Warfare, and Liberation Theology

 I notice that the Conservative Bible Project editors have not yet made the effort to "conservatize" the Epistle of James. This is no surprise, as this letter (likely written by Jesus' own brother) is one of the the most blatantly "lefty" documents in the Bible.  It is for this reason that conservative theologians (like Martin Luther) classified it as inferior to the rest of the Bible.  It's the so-called  "epistle of straw". 

In his essay "Beyond Good and Evil", Nietzsche contemptuously wrote of the lower class origins of Christianity which he said smelled of the "wretched plainness and hovel smoke" of existence in first century Palestine.  It is the sentiments voiced in James and the similar statements of the historical Jesus, which would most offend those (like Nietzche) in the "fat-cat" camp of the perennial "class war".

James is a problem for conservative theologians for two reasons.   First, his letter is too "Jewish".  Second, his letter prophesies the downfall of the rich, i.e. the Roman occupying forces that killed Jesus, and the illegitimate puppet government in Jerusalem (the Herodian Dynasty).

1. The Jewishness of James

The document is essentially Jewish-Christian, i.e. it lacks the Pauline Christian theology which characterizes most of the New Testament documents.  It contains nothing which supports commonly-held views about salvation through faith alone.  It emphasizes real-world action rather than other-worldly doctrine.  It is a rhetorical conterpoint to the dominant Pauline flavor of the New Testament epistles.

 Unlike Paul, James never refers to Jesus (his biological brother) as "Lord" in the same sense that YHWH  is Lord, but rather as "lord"; i.e. "master" or "great teacher".  This text was popular among the undifferentiated Jewish-Christian communities who were excluded from Paul's Gentile Mission.  Content-wise, James is closer than any other N.T. text to the actual sayings of Jesus, as reconstructed in the lost "Q" source.  Jesus died an observant working-class Jew, at the hands of the elite Romans and their elite Jewish puppet government. 

 In contrast, much of the distinctively Christian content of  the New Testiment originated long after the death of Christ, and was aimed at recruiting affluent gentiles to the movement.  It reflects post-second-century "spin" which blames the Jews for Jesus' death and apologizes for the "hapless" Romans.  It also seeks to downplay the class-warfare message of the early Jesus movement.

2. Class Warfare and Liberation Theology in James

 If the Conservative Bible Project has a problem with the "anti-rich-bastards" sentiments of Mark 10:23-25, then they surely want to delete the ENTIRE epistle of James.  Contempt for material wealth is a running theme throughout the document.  For example, see James 1:9-11

Let the brother of low degree rejoice in that he is exalted; But the rich, in that he is made low: because as the flower of the grass he shall pass away. For the sun is no sooner risen with a burning heat, but it withereth the grass, and the flower thereof falleth, and the grace of the fashion of it perisheth: so also shall the rich man fade away in his ways. 

 There are several others, but the most shocking example is James 5:1-6

Go to now, ye rich men, weep and howl for your miseries that shall come upon you. Your riches are corrupted, and your garments are motheaten. Your gold and silver is cankered; and the rust of them shall be a witness against you, and shall eat your flesh as it were fire. Ye have heaped treasure together for the last days.  Behold, the hire of the labourers who have reaped down your fields, which is of you kept back by fraud, crieth: and the cries of them which have reaped are entered into the ears of the Lord of sabaoth. Ye have lived in pleasure on the earth, and been wanton; ye have nourished your hearts, as in a day of slaughter. Ye have condemned and killed the just; and he doth not resist you.

Could they just delete this stuff, like they did with John 8:7?

Actually, the Conservapedistas might have a historical argument for ditching James entirely. After all, like the "adulteress" episode in John, this text was not included in the earliest Bible manuscripts, and some historians believe it was an anti-Paulist tract written much later than the other epistles, by a Jewish-Christian faction.

 However, it is just as likely that the contrast between James and the Paulist canon is not a reaction against Paul's teachings, but the other way around, i.e the Pauline tradition gradually diverged from that of James and the Jews who controlled the early Jerusalem Church. The decision of early Bible-compilers to exclude this early epistle may have simply reflected the fact that they were not members of the heavily Jewish communities where this letter was read.   Alternatively, they could have rejected it on the same theological grounds that other theologians have found it problematic.  Remember that the Bible (as we know it) is a fourth century document.

The Paulists eventually retroactively  "demoted" James in favor of Peter as the leader of the Church, but Paul himself always acknowledged the supremacy of James in early Church leadership. Rejecting "James" is rejecting the emancipatory spirit of first century  Christianity in favor of the elitism of fourth century Christianity.

What does James have to say about "Imprecatory Prayer" as described in the disturbing Salon article, Praying for Obama's death ?

 The Bible does not have a single agenda-- it reflects a politically divided world, and the various strains of Semitic monotheism have left fingerprints all over the Old and New Testaments. Imprecatory prayers were not universally supported by Bible authors; just as modern theologians have been uneasy about them, so were many ancient Bible authors.