Traditional scholarship includes the book of Hebrews in this group, but it deserved its own study. Here we cover the rest: James; 1 & 2 Peter; 1, 2 & 3 John and Jude. Unlike some of Paul's letters, the contents of this collection address such broad and common faith issues they do not bear the stamp of answering particularly local needs.
James does identify his target audience as Jewish Christians wherever they may be. It's not as if Gentiles don't benefit from the teachings, but this message points out weaknesses peculiar to Jewish believers. Placing it in the proper context, we discover James is hoping to separate his fellow Jewish Christians from the Talmud. That's because the Talmud turned God's justice and Law into legalism, turned God into a slot machine, and sucked the life out a deeply symbolic covenant. While James does not mention the Talmud, he offers a regime impossible to obey while clinging to its teachings. It's not as if they taught it in their church meetings, but it had so deeply stained their thinking, it required pointed sharp commands to reawaken the ancient Hebrew mysticism.
Prevailing tradition notes the writer is the eldest half-brother of Jesus, the second born of Mary. Jesus visited him within a day or so of His resurrection, settling any previous doubts about His claim to divinity. This younger brother went on to become the chief elder of all the Jewish Christians in Judea, not a preacher like his brother. Thus, he writes this letter as the tribal chief of Jewish Christians wherever they were to be found. We understand this was written rather early, within a few years of 40 AD, and James was martyred around 65 AD in Jerusalem, proclaiming Jesus as the Messiah as his dying words.
Chapter 1 -- James opens with a summary of what he addresses in the letter.
Chapter 2 -- It is essential we destroy the Hellenist influence in discussing Christian faith.
Chapter 3 -- Not just words, but the mouth itself must be empowered by faith.
Chapter 4 -- Few people realize how utterly otherworldly this chapter is.
Chapter 5 -- In a climactic summary, James calls his fellow Jewish Christians to otherworldliness.
1 Peter is also to primarily Jewish Christians, as Peter was the Apostle to them, while he and Paul agreed the latter was sent to the Gentiles. He writes this first letter to those residing across the northern half of what is now Turkey. A great many of folks from these areas heard Peter's first sermon at Pentecost. Best we can tell, he writes from Rome, where he is working with Mark who has been there for some time. Peter no doubt had some help, since he used translators often when addressing Greek-speaking crowds. We sense Paul has been executed, and this is late in time, shortly before Peter's own execution. This places things during the persecution of Nero.
Thus, the letter is mostly about facing a very certain and severe oppression, primarily because of their faith. Jews understood social rejection, but had seldom faced official government wrath during the Roman Era. Peter's instruction here simply points them to the example of Jesus who faced danger from His government. It was a way unfamiliar to Jews in that time, the way of otherworldliness.
Chapter 1 -- Peter sets the stage by contrasting between this world and one to come.
Chapter 2 -- We don't have room on our plate for expending any energy at political reform.
Chapter 3 -- Our actions should manifest a totally otherworldly focus because Christ is there in that other world waiting for us.
Chapter 4 -- Peter reinforces the call to an otherworldly viewpoint.
Chapter 5 -- In his closing paragraphs, Peter reemphasizes the Kingdom business of sacrificial love.
2 Peter follows by only a couple of years the previous letter to the same audience. This one comes near the end or Nero's reign, say AD 67. We are told by experts the grammar is a bit different, and we sense Peter didn't have the same scribe and translator to help him the second time. In a few short years since his first letter, things in that region had changed quickly, and for the worse. There is full-blown heresy invading the churches through a collection of traveling teachers.
These teachers, Jewish Christians, were likely former rabbis who had brought the whole of their Hellenism over to Christianity. Thus, we see the birth of Gnosticism, which was such a short step from Talmudic Judaism. We can scarcely separate the Judaizers from the Gnostics at this point. It's no longer simply a drive to recapture them for Judaism, but using similar teachings to destroy faith itself, to make it a slave of human logic. No doubt they were very entertaining speakers, hoping to make a living off heresies. By the very logic of marketing, they knew teaching the same old truths would not spark as much response as something new, which by definition was a departure from the truth. And it all sounded so reasonable! Peter warns it is also so deadly.
Chapter 1 -- Peter opens with a powerful reminder this business of following Christ does not follow the rules of this human plane of existence, but comes down from Above.
Chapter 2 -- We are treated to a broad image of the Gnostic false teachers.
Chapter 3 -- Peter explains the divine logic in how we should look for the Lord's Return.
1 John was penned late in the first century, perhaps around AD 85. Ephesus had become the center of gravity for Christian faith. We know John stayed in Jerusalem to keep Jesus' command to adopt His mother Mary. Sometime after her death, John was driven out of town by the warfare attached to the Roman destruction of the Temple in AD 70. While the church in Syrian Antioch continued as the easter capital of faith, Ephesus seemed to draw a very large number of Christians. They would have naturally spread out to nearby communities. As John was the last living Apostle in the region, his leadership in Ephesus turned a great deal of Christian attention there.
Sadly, it was also the hotbed of the greatest heresies. We are aware to two prominent threads, both of which are characteristic of the immoral host to the Temple of Diana, a brothel in the name of religion. The Nicolaitans claimed to arise from following the Elder Nicolas from the first church in Jerusalem, one of the so-called Seven Hellenistic Deacons. Most likely they simply misinterpreted some things he had said. About all we know of this short-lived sect was their libertine lifestyle. But they were hardly so different in conduct from the cult led by Cerinthus. He was the most infamous of those who blended Talmudism with Christian teaching, and was the first full-blown Gnostic. His was extreme Dualism. He embraced the Letter to the Hebrews, for example, but insisted Christ was a spirit who worked with Jesus the man, and departed prior to the crucifixion. His teaching is an example of what happens when human logic is allowed to disregard clear revelation from God. He insisted flesh was inherently evil, so could do what it pleased without affecting the spirit. John encouraged his readers to avoid this pernicious doctrine.
Chapter 1 -- John wastes no time attacking the heresies of all types by a firm declaration of the truth.
Chapter 2 -- John wonders aloud how anyone can claim spiritual communion with God while living such a worldly life.
Chapter 3 -- The divine logic of righteousness and sacrificial love as marks of spiritual birth.
Chapter 4 -- The marks of the Spirit of God in a person are confessing Christ and showing His sacrificial love.
Chapter 5 -- There is a jolting difference between the life of the Spirit and that of the world.
Two letters of the same sort to different individuals. Both of these were well known sponsors of traveling preachers and missionaries. The first is an unnamed lady of high standing and the second is Gaius, whom tradition says was senior pastor at Pergamon. The letters were sent at roughly the same time as 1 John, and are abbreviated restatements of similar content.
2 & 3 John -- Personal notes prior to a personal visit from the Apostle.
Yet another letter addressing the evil of Gnosticism, we find the brother of Elder James and half-brother of Jesus Christ has become quite the well read scholar. Written sometime after Peter's letters, but perhaps a while before John's on the same subject, we have a strong polemic against heresy written for some unknown audience. We can safely assume it was mostly Jewish, because Jude cites external, non-canonical Hebrew literature to illustrate his points. Mostly he characterizes the Gnostics, rather than describes their heresies.
Jude -- A warning against the heresy of Gnosticism.
By Ed Hurst
16 July 2011
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