James, the poet?
Digging into the book of James is rocking my world.
Does it date me to use that phrase? Maybe. But, this book is not at all what I thought it was and it’s making me incredibly excited to keep going, not to mention curious about the man who wrote it.
You see, as I look more closely at the Greek that James was writing in, I’m starting to think James was a writer. I’m amazed at the language — it’s beautiful — poetic, even. And over and over again, just in the first chapter alone, James uses two of my absolute favorite literary devices: parallelism and antithesis.
“Parallelism is the use of components in a sentence that are grammatically the same; or similar in their construction, sound, meaning, or meter.”
“Antithesis, which literally means “opposite,” is a rhetorical device in which two opposite ideas are put together in a sentence to achieve a contrasting effect.” Antithesis is a form of parallelism.
To understand this better, we can look at a well known example of antithesis at work in literature, such as in the opening to Charles Dickens’ A Tale Of Two Cities:
“It was the best of times, it was the worst of times, it was the age of wisdom, it was the age of foolishness…”
This is a pretty obvious straight forward example of parallelism and antithesis at work. What you get in James feels subtler, but just as powerful.
In my last post I dissected the way James seemed to be repeating and contrasting these images of “staying under”, “remaining”, “drawing near”, with the image of “separating” or being split in two. But, this week I explored the end of this first chapter and I was equally awed by his use of language and choice of images.
This section starts out, “let every person be quick to hear, slow to speak, slow to anger.” Incidentally, the word for speak in the verse is laleó which is also sometimes translated as “preach” and in Classical Greek is used more like we would use the word “chatter.”
I really love how The Message translates this verse, “lead with your ears, follow up with your tongue, and let anger straggle along in the rear.”
Essentially, it feels like James is setting up a thesis statement for this coming section, because he moves from here to talk more about hearing vs speaking, but it doesn’t really play that way in English.
I’ve heard lots of sermons about these verses. And they generally have something to do with the whole “faith vs works” argument. But after looking at the Greek I feel like James is on a whole other level talking about something that is just inherently true and presenting readers with a beautiful invitation.
Here’s why it feels like that to me…
The word we translate as “doers” is the greek work poiétés, which, as you might be able to guess, literally means "poet.” The less literal translations of this word are “doer” or “maker,” but I think you lose some of the beauty and, for lack of a better word, poetry of James’ writing when you translate this word as doer instead of poet, because you lose the antithesis and parallelism.
Do you see it?
Be quick to hear and slow to speak (chatter). Don’t just be hearers, be poets — more specifically logos poets.
When we cut it down like this it’s so easy to see James is contrasting (using antithesis) a hearer, a listener, someone who’s just sitting in the audience, with a poet, someone who opens their mouth, who steps onto the stage, who makes and creates something.
When I think of poets I think of people who respond. They respond to the world around them, the world inside of them, by creating something beautiful. It makes me think of Paul saying we are “co-laborers with Christ.”
And then James uses a metaphor. He says those who are only hearers of the logos and not God poets, who hear and don’t respond with action, they are like a man who looks in a mirror and then goes away and forgets what he looks like.
I can’t help but think of the earlier language of separation and division that James used in this chapter when I read this metaphor, in particularly dipsuchos (double-minded, or two souled, or a person split in half). Someone who looks in the mirror and forgets who they are is like that, a person split in half, a person without identity, a person who is the opposite of the picture James paints of the whole, mature, complete person who remains under trials (perhaps, if I may take a little liberty, the person who makes poetry/beauty out of their tribulation).
James continues to carry this imagery of hearers vs. speakers/poets by ending with a warning about bridling the tongue. It’s like he’s saying, start with listening, don’t chatter away, listen to the Spirit (the logos), but also, don’t just listen, don’t stay silent, don’t just sit there and do nothing, stand up and speak, become a God Poet, create, make, do. But, hey as you’re doing that, don’t get carried away either, keep a bridle on your tongue — remember where we started, with being quick to listen and slow to speak.
Oh, and hey, if you don’t know what to do, if you’re not sure how to be a God Poet, or how to respond to the logos, look after orphans (the bereaved, those without a parent, teacher, guide) and widows (the word for widows is metaphorically a city stripped of its inhabitants or riches, basically those who are without) when they are thlipsis, which literally means “under pressure” and here again we have a harkening back to the beginning images of the chapter the idea of "steadfastness” which is to “remain under [pressure].”
Goodness, it all feels so tied together, so consistent and beautiful. It kind of makes me giddy.
Grace and peace,
Bethany
PS — I’m not a greek scholar and I’ve never been to seminary so this should probably all be taken with a grain of salt. It’s just me pouring over some greek dictionaries and digging in as best I can. If you have more knowledge on these things or if you think I am butchering James please, please reach out (shoot me an email) I want to know.