Epistle of James - Canonicity

Canonicity

The Epistle was first explicitly referred to and quoted by Origen of Alexandria, and possibly a bit earlier by Irenaeus of Lyons as well as Clement of Alexandria in a lost work according to Eusebius, although it was not mentioned by Tertullian, who was writing at the end of the second century.It is also absent from the Muratorian fragment, the earliest known list of New Testament books.

The Epistle of James was included among the 27 New Testament books first listed by Athanasius of Alexandria in his 39th Festal Epistle (AD 367) and was confirmed as a canonical epistle of the New Testament by a series of councils in the 4th century. Today, virtually all denominations of Christianity consider this book to be a canonical epistle of the New Testament.

In the first centuries of the Church the authenticity of the Epistle was doubted by some, including Theodore, Bishop of Mopsuestia in Cilicia. Because of the silence of several of the western churches regarding it, Eusebius classes it among the Antilegomena or contested writings (Historia ecclesiae, 3.25; 2.23). St. Jerome gives a similar appraisal but adds that with time it had been universally admitted. Gaius Marius Victorinus, in his commentary on the Epistle to the Galatians, openly questioned whether the teachings of James were heretical.

Its late recognition in the Church, especially in the West, may be explained by the fact that it was written for or by Jewish Christians, and therefore not widely circulated among the Gentile Churches. There is some indication that a few groups distrusted the book because of its doctrine. In Reformation times a few theologians, most notably Martin Luther, argued that this epistle should not be part of the canonical New Testament.