Points and Lines: Thematic Parallelism in the Letter of James and the Testament of Job

Abstract

This study re-examines the proverbial ‘patience of Job’, its function in the letter of James, and the hypothesis that the author derives the motif from the pseudepigraphical Testament of Job. Particular attention is paid to the use and abuse of the category of parallelism in the study of the NT and the literature of antiquity. While there is not sufficient evidence to settle the source-critical question, the recontextualization of the Job tradition in James sheds light on the relationship between eschatology and ethics in early Christianity and Hellenistic Judaism.