Looking for a Jas commentary recommendation

Would anyone know of a Jas commentary by an Anglican, Episcopalian, Catholic or a proponent of "Gnosticism". Or possibly Presbyterian Church in Canada. Which commentary would You recommend? It can be in either print, Logos/Verbum or Accordance.
I have for example that volume in the New Testament Readings series (Routledge) by Richard Bauckham, which I've suggested to Logos a couple of times (it's excellent). I have the New Interpreter's Bible by Luke Timothy Johnson and Anchor Yale Bible Commentary also by Luke Timothy Johnson, both in Accordance. Those are probably the most recent ones I've got and perhaps they are enough.
I usually don't buy from series such as Pillar, Word Biblical, Catholic Commentary on Sacred Scripture.

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Don Awalt

If you are looking for a Catholic recommendation, the Catholic ones I think best are:

Johnson, Luke Timothy. The Letter of James: A New Translation with Introduction and Commentary. Vol. 37A. Anchor Yale Bible. New Haven; London: Yale University Press, 2008.

Hartin, Patrick J. James. Edited by Daniel J. Harrington. Vol. 14. Sacra Pagina Series. Collegeville, MN: Liturgical Press, 2003.

The Catholic Letters. The Navarre Bible. Dublin; New York: Four Courts Press; Scepter Publishers, 2005.

As a good test for evaluation, I can give you a sample from James 2:26, a very controversial verse that has a very Catholic or non-Catholic interpretation (not that other faiths don't agree with the Catholic position) - and that is, that works are an expression, a loving/charitable response, to faith. Works do not save, the gift of faith from Christ does, but it is not that works don't matter. Given that, here is what the three have to say about that verse (and the books have broader writings as well as verse by verse):

Anchor: The adjective nekra picks up the same term from 2:17. The point is not that deeds give life, but that they express life, “demonstrate” that life is present. The obvious assumption is that whatever is living also acts. The ultimate expression of the harmonizing tendency of the patristic tradition can be found in the Pauline/Jacobean tag, “as faith without works is dead, so are works without faith dead,” found as early as John Chrysostom, In Genesin I, Homilia II,5 (PG 53:31), and used frequently thereafter.

Sacra Pagina: just as the body apart from spirit is dead: This is a summary of James’s argument. The sōma/pneumatos (“body/spirit”) reference clearly illustrates a Jewish anthropology that is exemplified in the Genesis creation narration (Gen 2:7), where the human being is constituted from body and breath. The word pneuma is without an article, indicating the life-giving force within the human being. As Ropes defines it, it is “the vital principle by which the body is animated” (225).

so faith apart from works is also dead: This forms an inclusio with 2:17. James’s main point in the whole argument emerges here. A living faith by its very nature expresses itself in works, and the actions become a demonstration of the living nature of the faith.

Navarre: In speaking of “the spirit” St James is referring to the “breath of life”, “breathing”. The comparison (like all those in the letter) is very graphic: we recognise a body to be alive by its breathing; if it is not breathing it is a corpse; similarly, a faith that is alive expresses itself in actions, especially in acts of charity.

“Just as when a body moves we know it is alive,” St Bernard explains, “so too good works show that faith is alive. The soul gives life to the body, causing it to move and feel; charity gives life to faith, causing it to act, as the Apostle says, ‘faith working through love’ (Gal 5:6). Just as the body dies when its soul leaves it, so faith dies when charity grows cold. Therefore, when you see someone who is active in good works and happy and eager in his conduct, you can be sure that faith is alive in him: his life clearly proves it to be so” (Second Sermon on the Holy Day of Easter, 1).

Unix

https://community.logos.com/discussion/comment/675053#Comment_675053

Any more opinions?

Joseph Turner

https://community.logos.com/discussion/comment/675280#Comment_675280

The new ICC upgrade has the volume on James by Dale C. Allison, Jr. I don't know anything about it, but it is very recent.

SineNomine

https://community.logos.com/discussion/comment/675280#Comment_675280

From John MacEvilly, An Exposition of the Epistles of St. Paul and of the Catholic Epistles, vol. 2 (Dublin; New York: M. H. Gill & Son; Benziger Brothers, 1898), 287–288, on James 2:26

OBJECTION.—Does not this verse show that dead faith, or, as Catholics term it, fides informis, is no faith at all, as a dead man, properly speaking, is no man?
ANSWER.—Faith is compared not with a dead man, but with a dead body, which, although dead, and not animated by the soul, is still a real body. Hence, dead faith is real, genuine faith, in the sense already given in this chapter.

Rosie Perera

Hi Unix,

I asked my friend Mariam Kamell, who is the co-author of the Zondervan Exegetical Commentary on the New Testament: James with Craig Blomberg. I figured if anyone would know about James commentaries, she would!

Here's her reply:

Hey! a fun question, definitely!

I'm not sure of anyone that's a proponent of gnosticism that's writing on James. Sophie Laws, in her Blacks NT Commentary, at least argues for a Stoic reading in Jas 1 regarding the "first fruits of creation" and the "implanted word" (for more in-depth on that argument, one can also see Matt Jackson-McCabe's work on Logos and Law in the Letter of James, but that's a monograph, not a commentary.

In terms of Catholic, Luke Timothy Johnson is actually a Catholic writer, but fairly evangelical Catholic. Patrick Hartin, writing in the Sacra Pagina series, is a more "traditional" Catholic, but again that doesn't affect a ton of interpretive differences.

Doug Moo (both the Tyndale and the Pillar) shows a more traditional "Pauline" reading of the discussion around justification in James 2, which may be of interest. And Scot McKnight (new NICNT) reads the book heavily through the lends of wealth and poverty.

Beyond that, I don't much know people's theological stands. James is a book that (thankfully) escapes some of those clear denominational delineations, focusing instead on wisdom and wise actions, so I'm not sure how clearly I can distinguish between an Anglican and a Catholic reading!

Hope this helps a bit!