…AND the Lord Jesus Christ

What the opening sentence of James reveals about where the brother of Yeshua was operating from, and what it means for the people he was writing to.

 

Those who have followed this body of work know that we have spent considerable time examining the pseudepigraphical (false authorship, documents written in the name of an apostle by a later writer) question in the New Testament. That research has identified insertions and interlopers that are pervasive in the apostolic writings, places where the voice, vocabulary, and theological register shift in ways that are inconsistent with the established voice of the named author. We have documented these carefully and at length.

This document addresses two observations that have emerged from the most recent phase of that research. The first is an observation about 2 Peter that those familiar with our pseudepigraphical work will immediately recognize as significant. The second is an observation about the opening sentence of the letter of James that carries an impact that cannot be overstated, and that reveals something about the post-cross apostolic community that the tradition has carefully avoided naming.

 

An Observation About 2 Peter 1

Those who have sat under the teaching on pseudepigraphical inserts in the New Testament will know that we have identified a consistent pattern, passages that do not match the established voice of their named author, that read as if lifted from a different theological register entirely, and that appear to have been inserted to blend the authority of one apostle with the theological content of another. The result of that blending is a New Testament that appears more unified in its theological declarations than the individual apostolic voices actually were, and a reading community that has no tools to identify the seams.

With that research context in mind, the following observation is made carefully and without overstatement. The opening of 2 Peter chapter 1 does not read like Peter. Those who know Peter’s established voice across 1 Peter and the rest of 2 Peter will recognize immediately that the theological register, the vocabulary, and the doctrinal precision of the opening chapter of 2 Peter 1 are not consistent with what Peter produced elsewhere. What they are consistent with, to a degree that our research suggests is not coincidental, is Paul.

The passage in question, 2 Peter 1:1-4 specifically, carries the kind of theological density and covenantal precision that Paul builds his major letters on. Divine nature. Precious and very great promises. Partakers of the divine nature. This is Pauline register in Petrine address. The same kind of blending our pseudepigraphical research has been identifying throughout the New Testament.

Those familiar with our pseudepigraphical research will recognize the pattern immediately. A voice that is not Peter’s, carrying a theological register that is Paul’s, in a letter attributed to Peter. The research that seemed bold when we first presented it finds another possible confirmation here.

We do not make this as a declaration. We make it as an observation for those who have the research context to evaluate it. The opening of 2 Peter 1 seems to support what the pseudepigraphical work has been pointing toward. The blending of apostolic voices, the insertion of Pauline content into Petrine address, appears to have been a deliberate strategy to produce a New Testament in which the theological distance between the apostles is invisible. A community that reads all the letters together without distinguishing the voices cannot see the seams. A community that has been taught to identify the seams sees something different.

 

The Devastating Opening of James

Now the observation that carries the weight this document was built to carry.

James 1:1. The entire letter. The opening sentence. Iakobos theou kai kyriou Iesou Christou doulos. James, a servant of God and of the Lord Jesus Christ.

Read it again. Slowly.

A servant of God, and of the Lord Jesus Christ.

God.  AND.  The Lord Jesus Christ.

Two entities. Connected by and. Grammatically separate. Theologically distinct. God on one side of the and. The Lord Jesus Christ on the other side of the and.

This is not a reading we are imposing on the text. The Greek is precise. Theou, God, genitive case. Kai, and. Kyriou Iesou Christou, of the Lord Jesus Christ, genitive case. Two separate genitives. Two separate objects of the servant relationship. God. And. The Lord Jesus Christ. Not one entity described by two titles. Two entities joined by and.

James 1:1 does not merely separate what Paul identified as one. James 1:1 separates what the Sh’ma declares as one. YHWH is echad. One. The unified wholeness that contains no and between the registers of the same divine reality. And James placed an and there. In the first sentence. To the people who most needed to hear there was no and.

Now consider who James was writing to. He addresses the twelve tribes in the diaspora (dispersion, the Jewish covenant people scattered throughout the Gentile world). The Jewish diaspora. People formed from birth by the Sh’ma, Hear O Israel YHWH our God YHWH is one. Echad. Unified oneness. The declaration that the greatest sin in the covenant is the fracturing of the divine unity, the worship of a second being alongside YHWH. These are the people who recited the Sh’ma every morning and every evening. These are the people who died rather than acknowledge a second divine being. These are the people who knew, with a precision that no Gentile community could match, exactly what the and in James 1:1 implied.

And James gave them the and.

God. And. The Lord Jesus Christ.

Two. Separate. Entities.

To the people whose entire covenant formation was built on the declaration that there is only one.

Yeshua himself said to the same community, I and the Father are one. He who has seen me has seen the Father. Before Avraham was, I am. No and. One. Echad. The Sh’ma arrived at its completion in the incarnate register. And his own brother opened his letter to the diaspora with an and that placed Yeshua on the other side of the divine name.

This is not a minor grammatical observation. This is the opening declaration of a letter from the brother of Yeshua, the man who had grown up in the same house, who had seen the resurrection, who was present at Shavuot (Pentecost) when the Ruach was poured out on all flesh, to the Jewish covenant people who most needed to hear that the one YHWH had arrived in the incarnate register. And the opening sentence separated what Yeshua himself had declared as one.

Paul saw this operating in the community Ya’akov led. Galatians 2:11-12, when Kefa came to Antioch I opposed him to his face because he stood condemned. For before certain people came from Ya’akov he was eating with the Gentiles. But when they came he drew back and separated himself fearing the circumcision party. The and that Ya’akov placed between God and the Lord Jesus Christ in his opening sentence is the same and he was enforcing at Antioch. God on one side. Yeshua and his community on the other. The covenant people on one side. The Gentiles who believed on the other. The and producing the table separation that Paul called what it was, hypocrisy, and a departure from the truth of the gospel.

Paul in Titus 2:13 wrote, our great God and Savior Yeshua Mashiach. One entity. One description. The same one YHWH in the incarnate register that Yeshua himself declared in every I am statement across the gospel accounts. Paul’s construction carries no and between God and Yeshua. Paul’s construction is the Sh’ma arrived at its completion. YHWH is one, and the one is present in the incarnate register, and the incarnate register is the fullness of YHWH in physical form, our great God and Savior Yeshua Mashiach. One. Echad.

Ya’akov’s construction is something else. It is the old covenant framework operating after the cross. The framework that could affirm Yeshua as Lord and as Mashiach, as an exalted figure at the right hand of God, without arriving at the declaration that Yeshua himself made and that the Sh’ma demands. That Yeshua is YHWH in the incarnate register. That there is no and between God and Yeshua because they are the same one. That the echad of the Sh’ma is not disturbed by the incarnation, it is expressed by it.

Ya’akov was the brother of Yeshua. He walked with him. He saw him risen. And his opening sentence to the Jewish diaspora placed an and between God and his risen brother that Yeshua’s own words would not allow. Not because Ya’akov was a villain. Because the full implication of what Yeshua declared, I and the Father are one, the complete totality of the divine nature dwelling bodily in the incarnate register, no and, no separation, echad, was a declaration that the institutional framework Ya’akov was operating from could not fully receive and transmit.

Paul named it. The enemies of the cross. Not enemies of Yeshua. People who believed in Yeshua and had not followed the full declaration of who Yeshua is to where it leads. The and in James 1:1 is the literary record of that incomplete following. In the first sentence. Of a letter to the people who most needed the complete declaration. From the brother of the one whose own words left no room for an and.

 

James 1:1 places an and between God and the Lord Jesus Christ. Written to the Jewish diaspora. People formed by the Sh’ma. The people who most needed to hear there was no and.

 

 

Yeshua said: I and the Father are one.

Yeshua said: He who has seen me has seen the Father.

Yeshua said: Before Avraham was, I am.

 

The Sh’ma says: YHWH is one. Echad. No and.

 

James 1:1 says: a servant of God AND of the Lord Jesus Christ.

 

Written to the diaspora.

People formed by the Sh’ma.

The people who most needed to hear there was no and.

 

The and that Ya’akov placed in his first sentence is the and Paul opposed to his face at Antioch.

 

The Gospel Revolution  •  Mike Williams Ministries

William Ethan Massengill  •  Michael Lilborn Williams  •  Daniel Thomas Rouse

Published by Audrey Williams