Hey Bible readers, I'm Tara Lee Cobble and I'm your host for the Bible recap.

If you're doing our New Testament plan, you finished your fifth book today and if you're

doing the whole Bible, you finished your 44th book.

This book has a lot going on, so we'll only have time to hit the major points.

Let's get into it.

This book was written by the half-brother of Jesus, which is incredible given that his brothers

used to mock him.

But this book shows what an incredible change of heart James went through, because it

opens with the author calling himself a servant of God and of the Lord Jesus Christ, from

mocking him to serving him.

But spoiler alert, this book isn't actually by James, huh?

It turns out King James of King James Version fame wanted to see his own name in the Bible,

so he had the translators mis-translate the author's name and somehow we just let him

get away with it.

The real names of James and every other James in the Bible is Jacobus, which is something

like Jacobus in Hebrew and Jacob in English, so we'll call him Jacob because King James

is in the boss of us.

This letter is written to the church outside of Israel, and that's important.

It's written to believers.

If we take it out of that context, it sounds like this book is listing things we have to

do in order to earn God's approval instead of them being things that serve as markers

of knowing him.

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