The Law in
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Abstract
For James, the law was not a major issue. He does refer to the law on three separate occasions (1:25; 2:8-13; 4:11-12), but in each of these instances he is not asking questions about the law itself but rather assuming its validity and using it to develop or illustrate the particular point he is making. It is perhaps because of this that most studies of the law in James seem to have some other issue as their primary interest, as for example Seitz, whose main purpose is to see how James’s use of the law affects the authorship question. It is interesting that the freedom with which James refers to the law accompanied by his lack of emphasis on it, illustrated by the fact that even in his discussion of the relation between faith and works in 2:14ff James does not mention the law, has led some to assume that James must have been written before Paul wrote and the question of the law became such a hot issue, whereas others are convinced by the same evidence that James is a much later document, written long after the controversy had died down.