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The Stoic Paradox of James 2.10*

Published online by Cambridge University Press:  05 February 2009

Marjorie O'Rourke Boyle
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Extract

‘For whoever keeps the whole law but fails in one point has become guilty of all of it.’ This hard saying has been attributed by the consensus of commentators in this century to rabbinical teaching. Obedience or disobedience to certain laws, such as that about fringes and phylacteries, had the status in late Judaism of observing or transgressing the entire code. The rule of the epistle, then, merely repeats current midrash. In an earlier century, however, the association of this verse was Hellenistic rather than Judaic. Corresponding with Jerome concerning his perplexity about its meaning, Augustine indicates the affinity of James 2. 10 with the Stoic paradox that all virtues and vices are equal, and its corollary that he who has one virtue has all while he who lacks one has none. A Stoic source for this verse was still evident more than a millennium later to the editor of the first Greek New Testament to be published (1516), Erasmus of Rotterdam. In the same era another distinguished exegete, Martin Luther, likely considered James 2. 10 a Stoic paradox. At the turn of this century Joseph B. Mayor reported Augustine's attribution neutrally and catalogued numerous resemblances between the theories and maxims of Stoicism and this epistle. Martin Dibelius deliberated to indecision about its source, conceding that while the Stoic paradox and the rabbinical praxis were in origin distinct, by the time of Philo at least they had become indistinguishable teaching.

Type
Short Studies
Information
New Testament Studies , Volume 31 , Issue 4 , October 1985 , pp. 611 - 617
Copyright
Copyright © Cambridge University Press 1985

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References

Notes

[1] See Mayor, Joseph B., The Epistle of St. James (3rd ed.; London: Macmillan, 1910), 92–3, for many citationsGoogle Scholar. This opinion was repeated and elaborated by Blackman, E. C., The Epistle of James (London: SCM, 1957) 85–6Google Scholar; Barclay, William, The Letters of James and Peter (Edinburgh: St Andrew Press, 1958) 81Google Scholar; Dibelius, Martin, A Commentary on the Epistle of James, rev. Heinrich Greeven, ed. Koester, Helmut (Philadelphia: Fortress, 1976)Google Scholar, trans. Williams, Michael A. from Der Brief des Jakobus (11th ed. rev.; Göttingen: Vandenhoeck and Ruprecht, 1964) 144–6Google Scholar; Mitton, C. Leslie, The Epistle of James (Grand Rapids: Wm. B. Eerdmans, 1966) 92–3Google Scholar; Sidebottom, E. M., James, Jude and 2 Peter (London: Thomas Nelson, 1967) 42Google Scholar; Adamson, James B., The Epistle of James (Grand Rapids: Wm. B. Eerdmans, 1976) 116–17Google Scholar; implicitly by Reicke, Bo, The Epistles of James, Peter, and Jude (Garden City: Doubleday, 1964) 29Google Scholar; and Laws, Sophie, A Commentary on the Epistle of James (London: Adam and Charles Black, 1980) 111–12Google Scholar. There does not appear to be a recent article devoted to this verse.

[2] Augustine, , Epistola CLXVII; PL XXXIII, 733–42.Google Scholar

[3] In identifying Luther's dogma that ‘whatever is outside of grace is equally damnable’ as a Stoic paradox, he argues explicitly from Augustine's letter on James 2.10, ibid. Erasmus, Hyperaspistes diatribae adversus servum arbitrium Martini Lutheri (1526, 1527), in Opera omnia, ed. Clericus, J. (11 vols.; Leiden, 1703–6), 10, 1527A-FGoogle Scholar. See my ‘Stoic Luther: Paradoxical Sin and Necessity’, Archiv für Reformationsgeschichte 73 (1982) 69–93.Google Scholar

[4] For the argument that his citation of James 2. 10 occurs in a context of Stoic epistemology and paradox see Boyle, ‘Stoic Luther’. The citation is in De servo arbitrio, ed. Clemen, Otto, in Lathers Werke in Auswahl (6 vols.; Berlin: Walter de Gruyter, 1950), 4, p. 111 1. 40–p. 112 1. 3Google Scholar. Luther did not write a commentary on this ‘epistle of straw’. For a brief history of the contest concerning its apostolic authenticity from Erasmus to the Westminster Confession see Ropes, James H., A Critical and Exegetical Commentary on the Epistle of St. James (New York: Charles Scribners' Sons, 1916) 104–9.Google Scholar

[5] Mayor's commentary, 93 and see his index under ‘Stoics’.

[6] Dibelius', commentary, 146.Google Scholar

[7] Plummer, Alfred, The General Epistles of St. James and St. Jude (New York: A. C. Armstrong and Son, 1903), 133Google Scholar. See also his uncompromising rejection of a Stoic meaning for 1. 2, p. 66; 5. 13. P. 315.

[8] Ropes', commentary, 200.Google Scholar

[9] Stobaeus 2.7.11k, probably dating to the early fifth century.

[10] Seneca, De beneficiis 5.15.1, 4.27.1. Its converse appears in Diogenes Laertius, Vitae philo-sophorum 7.125 (cf. Stobaeus, Ecl. 2.7.5b5), Cicero, De officiis 2.10.35, Philo, Vita Mas. 2.7, all noted in Dibelius' commentary, 145 n. 114. He does not have the references in Seneca, however.

[11] OCD, 2nd rev. ed., 976.Google Scholar

[12] For extensive discussion of the problems of dating see Mayor's commentary, cxliv–ccv. The most recent argument is for a pseudonymous authorship with A.D. 62 as the terminus a quo and the Shepherd ofHermas as the terminus ad quern. Laws' commentary, 38–42; cf. Ropes, 1.

[13] Mayor, cxliv–clxxvii, followed e.g. by Ross.

[14] Blackman's commentary, 85. Laws writes of this verse: ‘This introduces a new idea, but it is probably intended to add further seriousness to his previous warning’, 111.

[15] Seneca, De beneficiis 1.6.1; trans., Basore, John W., Moral Essays (3 vols.; Cambridge: Harvard University Press; London: William Heinemann, 1935), 3, 23.Google Scholar

[16] Ibid. 1.1.9; trans., p. 7.

[17] Ibid. 7.31.3–4; trans., pp. 523–5.

[18] Ropes', commentary, 198.Google Scholar

[19] The examples in James 2.2–3 have been noted as characteristic of the rhetorical style of the classical diatribe, which was appropriated for popular moralizing by Stoic philosophers. Dibelius', commentary, 124–5Google Scholar. For full discussion of this epistle with respect to that genre see Ropes', commentary, 10–16Google Scholar; and for the genre itself, Oltramare, André, Les origines de la diatribe romaine (Geneva: Imprimeries Populaires, 1926).Google Scholar

[20] Seen. 6.

[21] Ed., The Apocrypha and Pseudepigrapha of the Old Testament, according to Laws' commentary, 112.Google Scholar

[22] See Rist, J. M., ‘All Sins Are Equal’, in his Stoic Philosophy (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 1969) 81–96.Google Scholar

[23] Ross captures this idea in commenting on πταίση: ‘This word is used to describe transgressions of the Law of God cf. 3. 2 and Rom 11. 11. To cross over the line which marks the “way” is to become a transgressor (verse 9), and the picture here may be that of a transgressor tripping over the border which marks the way’, his commentary, 48 n. 8.

[24] See my ‘The Covenant Lawsuit of the Prophet Amos: III I–IV 13’, V.T. XXI (1971) 338–62, esp. 358–60. This research has been overlooked in commmentaries on James published since, e.g. Laws who repeats the conventional attributions in arguing that Yahweh sabaoth is a mere ‘biblicism’. Similarly, concerning the following verse she states that ‘it is unlikely that the day of slaughter was a familiar technical term for the day of judgment, even if it has that meaning in I Enoch XCIV’, 204. Again, the equivalence of the day of judgment with the day of slaughter in battle has been amply demonstrated concerning the rîb-pattern in my article and Julien Harvey's monograph as cited there, 355–8. Law's argument that the day of slaughter refers to the starvation of the poor seems less convincing.