. The style is vivacious and
forcible. It contains many rather unusual Greek words, including six
which are neither in the Septuagint version of the Old Testament nor in
the rest of the New Testament, a long list of words which are found in
the Septuagint and not in the New Testament, and seven rare classical
or late Greek words. The whole question of the style of the Epistle
requires the most delicate handling. But the style is distinctly
unfavourable to the theory that the Epistle was written at a late date
in a centre of Gentile Christianity. The Greek is neither the flowing
Greek of a Greek, nor the rough provincial Greek which St. Paul spoke
and wrote. It is slow and careful, with short sentences linked by
repetitions. One epithet is piled effectively on another (_e.g._ iii.
15, 17), and abstract statements are avoided. Galilee was studded with
Greek towns, and in Jerusalem Greek was well known. The Epistle might
well have been written by a Jew of Palestine who had made a good use of
his opportunities. And the introduction of some rare words in the
midst of a simple moral exhortation is by no means a proof of complete
mastery over Greek. It points, not to a mastery over the language, but
to a painstaking familiarity with it.

These facts seem compatible with the few details which we know about
St. James. Their full significance can only be appreciated when we
know the difficulties which have beset the commentators who assign to
the Epistle a date outside his lifetime.

Before considering the question of the date more minutely, we may
collect together some points of interest connected with St. James.

St. James, like the other "brethren" of our Lord, watched the
development of our Lord's career, but was unconvinced of the truth of
His mission. After the Resurrection, our Lord, St. Paul tells us, "was
seen of James." Perhaps this was the turning-point of his life, he,
like St. Thomas, "saw and {228} believed." The Gospel according to the
Hebrews, one of the oldest of the Apocryphal Gospels, says that our
Lord, after His Resurrection, "went to James and appeared to him--for
James had sworn that he would not eat bread from that hour in which he
drank the cup of the Lord, until he saw Him rising from the dead;--and
again after a little while. 'Bring hither, saith the Lord, a table and
bread.'" . . . "He brought bread, and blessed and brake it, and gave it
to James the Just, and said unto him, 'My broth