The Moral World of James: Setting the Epistle in Its Greco-Roman and Judaic Environments

In The Moral World of James, James Riley Strange compares the moral system in the Epistle of James with other Greco-Roman and Judaic texts. The author of the epistle prescribed moral practices in a world in which other people, both pagan and Jewish, had long been expressing similar concerns, and more would continue to take up the task centuries after Christianity was well established in the Roman Empire. In this fresh and thick analysis, Strange's systemic comparison of texts (among them works of Plato, Plutarch, Epictetus, and Aelius Aristides, as well as Greek Magical Papyri, tractates of the Mishnah, and the Community Rule of the Dead Sea Scrolls) reveals how James's vision of a distinctive way of community life was both part of and distinct from the moral and religious systems among which it emerged.

James Riley Strange received his PhD from Emory University and is an Assistant Professor of Religion at Samford University in Birmingham, Alabama. He is a member of the American Schools of Oriental Research, the Society of Biblical Literature, and Phi Kappa Phi honor society. He has served as Field Supervisor and Co-Director of the University of South Florida Excavations at Sepphoris, Israel, and is the author of The Emergence of the Christian Basilica in the Fourth Century (2000).