> 
> James, a servant of God and of the Lord Jesus Christ,  
> 
>  To the twelve tribes in the Dispersion:  
> 
>  Greetings. 
> 
> 
> 

Paul identifies one James as the brother of Jesus (Galatians 1.19; cf. Mark 6.3). He also implies (1 Corinthians 15.7) or says outright (Galatians 2.18-19; 2.9) that this James was significant leader in the Jerusalem church. This seems to be corroborated by the book of Acts, which identifies a leading figure in the Jerusalem church as James (Acts 12.17, 15.13, 21.18; though, unlike Paul, Acts doesn't explicitly identify James with the brother of Jesus).

This James is further identified with a James mentioned by Josephus, in [*Jewish Antiquities* 20.9.1](http://en.wikisource.org/wiki/The_Antiquities_of_the_Jews/Book_XX#Chapter_9). The passage calls this James 'the brother of Jesus, who was called Christ', but this is sometimes accused of being an interpolation.

This is the traditional identification of the author of James, and in this context one can see a didactic letter from such a respected leader being preserved in Christian circles, no different than Paul's letters to the Roman or Thessalonian churches.

However, I have seen from time to time the claim that the author's Greek is too 'sophisticated' to come from a Galilean peasant. This has some immediate merit, since the author of the letter only calls himself 'James, a servant of God and of the Lord Jesus Christ'; he doesn't identify himself as a *brother* to Jesus. Additionally, the name 'James' appears to have been common in Jewish culture at the time; we see several different men with this name in the Gospels and Acts.

Put simply, who is the author of the letter titled 'James'? Could it have come from a Galilean peasant who became a major religious figure in Jerusalem? Or are there factors that decidedly point away from Jesus' brother James? If so, is the identification with James brother of Jesus a deliberate conceit of the author (i.e. pseudepigraphical), or is it an accidental conflation of two men with the same name?