Abstract
Despite wide-ranging views among commentators, 'above all else' was intended to focus attention on the call for verbal integrity which follows in Jas 5.12. This may be seen by the literary context which shows the call for verbal integrity to be the last in a series of appeals, beginning in 4.11-12, for the readers to control their speech in various ways. The early church context also heightens verbal integrity as an essential principle in Christian behavior. Finally, a survey of the representative literature of Jews, Greeks, and even early Egyptians and Babylonians reveals nine cross-cultural principles regarding verbal integrity and the outlawing of oaths from which Jas 5.12 derives.
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