Years ago, when I was first reading the Epistle of James, a
couple of verses in chapter five jumped out at me. James didn’t give any
indication that he was quoting Jesus, but I clearly recalled the same words in
Christ’s Sermon on the Mount:
Epistle of James
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Gospel of Matthew
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But above
all, my brethren, do not swear either by heaven or by earth or with any other
oath, but let your yes be yes and your no be no, that you may not fall under
condemnation. (5:12)
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Do not swear
at all, either by heaven…or by the earth…Let what you say be simply ‘Yes’ or
‘No’; anything more than this comes from the Evil One. (5:34-37)
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Your riches
have rotted and your garments are moth-eaten. Your gold and silver have
rusted and their rust will be evidence against you and will eat your flesh
like fire. (5:2-3)
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Do not lay up
for yourselves treasures on earth, where moth and rust consume and where
thieves break in and steal (6:19)
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Huh. Why didn’t James identify his source? Over the years,
as I dug deeper into James’ epistle, I saw other places where he appeared to
use Jesus’ words without any attribution. (Compare James 1:22 and Matthew 7:24;
or James 3:12 with Matthew 7:16 and Luke 6:44.) What was going on here?
A couple of things occurred to me. The first was to realize
that James, who was martyred in 62 A.D., probably composed his epistle in the
late 40s or very early 50s – likely before Paul penned his first epistle and more
than a decade before any of the gospels were written. Ironically, if I didn’t
have those later gospels with which to compare James, I would never have known James
was quoting the Lord! This leads to a second important realization: James wrote
at a time when the Gospel existed purely in oral form, in Tradition.
That is extremely important, because Christianity was
constituted, not as a religion of the book, but of the Word made flesh – alive and active in the ministry of the apostles.
Jesus did not record his moral teaching or parables, nor write a monograph
about the significance of his death and resurrection. Nor did he send forth the
apostles with a command to write. Rather, his command was to make disciples of
all nations, baptizing and teaching them to observe all that He had
commanded (Mt 28:18-20).
When the apostles preached, each drew from the Tradition those
words and actions of Jesus that best met their individual audiences’ needs. It
wasn’t necessary to stop and identify every time they quoted Jesus’ earthly
teaching; because when James and the other apostles preached, it was received
by the Church as Christ speaking in and through them (Lk 10:16).
Initially, their preaching focused upon Christ’s redemptive
sacrifice and resurrection. But those required an explanation, and that was
found in what preceded it – Christ’s life, teaching and miracles. Each apostle
had his own recollections of Jesus and manner of recounting them, his own
personality and theological emphases. [1]
We must keep this apostolic preaching in mind when reading
the gospels, since the same principles hold true. Sacred Tradition – the deposit
of truth entrusted to the apostles – was the source from which the four evangelists
drew Christ’s words and actions in the construction of their narratives. Luke,
who was not an eyewitness to Christ’s life, began his gospel by stating, “I
myself have carefully investigated everything from the beginning…just as they were handed down to us by
those who from the first were eyewitnesses
and servants of the word” (Lk 1:3,2). Even though the four evangelists were
inspired, the Spirit did not spare them the effort required of all authors; and
that meant digging into the Tradition Christ had entrusted to the Church.
Each gospel bears the mark of its human author. “Of the many
elements [the four evangelists had] at hand they reported some, summarized
others, and developed still others in accordance with the needs of the various
churches.”[2] This accounts for many of the so-called
contradictions between the four gospels. The sequence, for instance, in which
the evangelists narrate Christ’s life differs in some respects. This is not a
challenge to a Catholic’s faith in the inerrancy of Scripture. The Church has
always understood that the order in which the evangelists recounted Christ’s
words and actions were not meant as a rigid assertion of chronology. Catholics
are also not shocked to discover subtle differences in the wording of Christ’s
sayings. We are used to reading modern historical texts, but the evangelists
were inspired to write according to the conventions of their time. There were no audio recorders in the first century, and
the apostles were not stenographers. When the sacred writers drew from the
Tradition, they sometimes communicated the sense
of Jesus’ words instead of exact quotations:
James 3:12
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Matthew 7:16
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Luke 6:44
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Can a fig
tree, my brethren, yield olives, or a grapevine figs?
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You will know
them by their fruits. Are grapes gathered from thorns, or figs from thistles?
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…for each
tree is known by its own fruit. For figs are not gathered from thorns, nor
are grapes picked from a bramble bush.
|
The meaning asserted by each of the inspired authors is the
same, even if the phrasing differs. Another example: When Jesus sends out the
Twelve in Matthew 10:9-10, he tells them to take nothing for the journey, “no
gold, nor silver, nor copper in your belts, no bag for your journey, nor two
tunics, nor sandals, nor a staff; for
the laborer deserves his food;” and yet in Mark 6:8-11 we read, “[Jesus]
charged them to take nothing for their journey except a staff; no bread, no bag, no money in their belt.” Whether
Jesus said to take a staff or not, the memory drawn from the Tradition, and positively asserted by both inspired authors,
was that Christ instructed the Twelve to look to God to supply their material
needs. There is no true
contradiction.
It’s funny how a couple of verses in James can lead to such
heady subjects as inspiration and inerrancy and how Scripture is dependent upon
Tradition – not just to be correctly interpreted, but to be written! That’s the
way it was with God’s Revelation, though; it is all connected.
[1]
Augustin Bea, The Study of the Synoptic
Gospels: New Approaches and Outlooks (New York: Harper & Row, 1965),
37.
[2]
Pontifical Biblical Commission, The Historicity
of the Gospels (1964), http://www.ewtn.com/library/curia/pbcgospl.htm
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