Toward the end of his Epistle, James exhorts his readers to pray with faith for the healing of the sick. When we read that “the prayer of a righteous man has great power in its effects” (James 5:16), we might have expected James to cite the example of Abraham. Genesis 20:17 might have served as the perfect prooftext: “Abraham prayed to God; and God healed Abimelech.” …The example of Elijah that was provided by James, however, seems less obvious and more difficult.
Essenic Piety and the Epistle of James
A close look at both the Epistle of James and the extrabiblical traditions concerning James “the first bishop of Jerusalem” reveals several points of contact with Qumran.
New Testament Canon
While God had used individual writers to record the books themselves, the actual acceptance of those books as being from God was subject to a long transition, a process of testing.
Discovering Longer Gospel Stories
Research by Robert L. Lindsey has helped clarify the process by which gospel texts were preserved and transmitted. Luke desired, he said in his prologue, to present to Theophilus an “orderly” account. Such ordering is to be noted in Matthew and Mark, as well. These attempts at ordering help us understand why so many of the synoptic gospel stories appear in a different chronological order from gospel to gospel.