The writer of this epistle was evidently the half-brother of our Lord Jesus Christ (Gal. 1:19) and the brother of Jude, the writer of the epistle that bears his name (cf. Matt. 13:55). This was the opinion of many of the early church fathers and writers.1This James was not the brother of the Apostle John, the son of Zebedee, who suffered martyrdom early in the history of the church (Mark 1:19; Acts 12:2). Neither was he the son of Alphaeus (Mark 3:18) or the father of Judas (Luke 6:16). He was the leading man in the Jerusalem church who spoke at the Jerusalem Council (Acts 15:13-21; cf. 12:17; 21:18; 1 Cor. 15:7). Some commentators believed that the similarities in the Greek of this epistle and James' speech in Acts 15 support his identification as the writer.2The fact that the writer wrote this epistle in very good Greek should not rule this James out. He would have been fluent in both Aramaic and Greek as a gifted Galilean.
The recipients of this letter were the Jewish Christians of the Diaspora, Jews who had scattered from Palestine and had come to faith in Christ (1:1). Several Jewish references in the book support the claim that a Jew wrote it to other Jews (e.g., 1:18; 2:2, 21; 3:6; 5:4, 7).
Josephus said that James died in A.D. 623so he wrote the letter before that date. Many commentators believed that James' lack of reference to the Jerusalem Council (A.D. 49) suggests he wrote before that meeting. This is a very tenuous argument, however, since the issues James dealt with in this epistle are different from those the Jerusalem Council discussed. Reference to the Jerusalem Council in this letter would have been unnecessary. Traditionally James wrote early, however. It seems that his epistle was probably the first divinely inspired one and that James composed it in the middle or late 40s, perhaps A.D. 45-48. Many scholars have taken James' lack of references or allusions to other inspired New Testament epistles as additional support for this position. I believe there is no substantial reason to doubt the traditional early date.4
Since James lived in Jerusalem most if not all of his Christian life, that city seems to be the most likely place of writing.
