Salvation by Faith alone? Parable of the vineyards

[agricola]

I actually found the idea that Jesus was a Jew talking to Jews, occasionally talking to Samaritans (Jew-adjacent) and only RARELY talking to non-Jews of any type, very useful in understanding the gospels - if less useful for Paul etc.

Seriously - no matter what else - assuming Jesus existed at all, as a person in Judea/Galilee in the first century, as a Jew talking to Jews, he literally HAD to be saying stuff that was somewhat understandable to his audience.

How Paul etc interpreted that for a gentile audience is a whole other topic.

Preachers are far too fond of grabbing verse X from the gospels (Jesus says X) and then pulling some verse elsewhere (in the letter of Paul to the whosis folks, he says Y WHICH MEANS....) but seriously, unless X meant something to the Jews at that time, all that 'it means Y' is at least subject to question.

This is - I think - one of the reasons that Jesus Committee cast doubts on certain statements attributed to Jesus in the gospels - they just weren't something a first century Jew would conceivably actually say and hope to be understood, because it was just too outlandish (example: anything attributed to Jesus conflating him with God - that is simply not just 'weird' but positively impossible in that culture - it would have been clearly understood all right - if his audience were Greek or Roman pagans).

[B.H.]

Let me assist with this a little bit.

In Hebrew, the word 'faith' is a verb. It isn't something you mentally assent to. It is the way you ACT, what you do, not what you say about your 'beliefs'.

James is often described as 'the most Jewish letter' because it literally is the most 'Jewish' approach compared to lot of the rest of the New Testament.

Who actually wrote it, I don't know. But that 'faith without works is dead' is spot on. It isn't faith, if it isn't 'action'.

James even used the Greek synagogea for assemblies when he speaks of how the wealthy should treat the poor at church services.