Ancient Book Culture and the Literacy of James: On the Production and Consumption of a Pseudepigraphal Letter.

This article inquires into the implicit pseudepigraphal construction of James the brother of Jesus as highly literate in the canonical letter attributed to him. Traditional, form-based approaches to the letter genre are set aside in favour of appreciating the production and composition of (pseudepigraphal) letters within the context of Ancient Mediterranean book culture, particularly the association between scribal literate ability and social status. The pairing of James' literary ability with the transmission of Jesus tradition is an image propagated in other early Christian literature, including the Apocryphon of James and the pseudo-Clementine Epistula Petri. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]