Not By Paul Alone: The Formation of the Catholic Epistle Collection and Christian Canon

Not by Paul Alone has a twofold aim: it sets out to examine and explore the reception of the Letter of James within the context of the early Christian church; it also offers a theory to account for the late emergence of this Letter of James. This monograph is a light revision of the doctoral thesis that David R. Nienhuis completed under Professor Francis Watson of the University of Aberdeen. In a succinct introduction (1–28), Nienhuis sets out clearly what this study will embrace. His focus rests on that collection of seven writings generally referred to as the Catholic Epistles (James; 1 and 2 Peter; Jude; and 1, 2, 3 John). The hypothesis that he sets out to prove is that this Catholic Epistles collection was the result of an intentional design on the part of the canonizing community: “That is to say, this book proposes that the letter of James was written with the nascent apostolic letter collection in view, in order that it might forge together a discrete collection of non-Pauline letters, one shaped according to a particular logic or apostolic authority (that is ‘not by Paul alone’) in order to perform a particular function in the larger Christian canon (the correction of Paulinist misreadings of the whole apostolic message)” (5). [Full Review]