Since James lived in Jerusalem for most, if not all of his Christian life, that city seems to be the most likely place of writing. I believe there is no substantial reason to doubt the traditional early date. Many scholars have taken James' lack of references or allusions to other inspired New Testament epistles as additional support for this position. 45-48, or even earlier, perhaps as early as A.D. It appears to many scholars that the epistle of James was probably the first divinely inspired one, and that James composed it in the middle or late 40s, perhaps A.D. According to tradition, however, James wrote early. Reference to the Jerusalem Council in this letter would have been unnecessary.

This is a very tenuous argument, however, since the issues James dealt with in this epistle are different from those the Jerusalem Council discussed. 49) suggests that he wrote before that meeting. Many commentators believed that James' lack of reference to the Jerusalem Council (A.D. So James wrote the letter before that date. Josephus did not record the date, but he identified James' death with that of Portius Festus who died in A.D. Several Jewish references in the book support the claim that a Jew wrote it to other Jews (e.g., 1:18 2:2, 21 3:6 5:4, 7). The recipients of this letter were the Jewish Christians of the Diaspora, Jews who had scattered from Palestine and had come to faith in Christ (1:1).

He would have been fluent in both Aramaic and Greek as a gifted Galilean. The fact that the writer wrote this epistle in very good Greek should not rule this James out. Some commentators believed that the similarities in the Greek of this epistle and James' speech in Acts 15 support his identification as the writer. He was the leading man in the Jerusalem church who spoke at the Jerusalem Council (Acts 15:13-21 cf. Neither was he the son of Alphaeus (Mark 3:18) or the father of Judas (Luke 6:16). This James was not the brother of the Apostle John, the son of Zebedee, who suffered martyrdom early in the history of the church (Mark 1:19 Acts 12:2). This was the opinion of many of the early church fathers and writers. 1:19) and the brother of Jude, the writer of the epistle that bears his name (cf. The writer of this epistle was evidently the half-brother of our Lord Jesus Christ (Gal. Interpersonal and Inner Personal Tensions 4:1-10 The uncontrollable nature of the tongue 3:7-8 The implication of our own judgment 2:12-13

Book of james background