The Message of James: The Tests of Faith (Bible Speaks Today)

Rating:
Summary: Excellent popular exposition
Review: Alec Motyer is one of the best biblical expositors out there. His greatest strength in biblical scholarship has been in the structure of biblical works, something most people have found entirely lacking in James. Motyer reconstructs what may well have been the connections in the mind of James between seemingly unrelated teachings. In this book, James no longer seems to be a collection of miscellaneous proverbs but is more a summary of a thought process that moved from one thought to the other very quickly and without explicitly tracing the connectiuons, but Motyer shows the connections behind such moves.

The unity of the book of James thus comes out very strongly, and Motyer's thesis that James is a summary of a sermon or series of sermons makes much sense. On the level of details, Motyer does a great job explaining the text and its significance for daily life. He explains the theology behind James's thinking, something many scholars have assumed is not present in this book, and he presents his material in an easily readable manner without sacrificing the quality of his comments or the grounding of what he says in the actual text of James and the light of biblical theology.

This is certainly not the most in-depth commentary on James or maybe even the best. The work by Luke Timothy Johnson in the Anchor Bible series and Douglas Moo's Pillar Commentary (as opposed to his earlier, more brief Tyndale volume) are probably the best works on this epistle. However, Motyer is an excellent place to start for a more popular level and provides a nice complement to those works.

Rating:
Summary: A way in to James' letter
Review: Alec Motyer [pronounced "me TEER", by the way] has written many helpful commentaries on the bible, and this is another useful one.

He gives a helpful outline, which seems logical and makes sense of the seemingly disconnected thoughts in James' letter.

If you read bible commentaries to get to know the bible better, because you want to serve Christ more faithfully, you will appreciate this volume.

Other helpful books on James include the volume by Donald Burdick in the Expositor's Bible Commentary [which you can buy for not much more than a single book on a CD ROM that includes the entire 12 volume set] and Peter Davids' commentary on James in the New Bible Dictionary, 21st century edition. This is also available for an attractive price in the IVP Essential Reference Collection CD ROM, which also includes 20 other books, including the New Dictionary of Biblical Theology, the Dictionary of Biblical Imagery and other helpful works.