42 Huub van de Sandt nowhere else in James. Such symbolic language would differ from the imagery in the rest of the letter where it is precisely friendship and not marriage which is emphasized. James’ readers can be friends with God like Abraham (2,23), or they can be friends with the world (4,4). How then to satisfactorily explain the selection of the adultery image in Jas 4,4 (16)? The present paper shows that these difficulties can be solved by invoking the aid of the Two Ways tradition, that is, the section as reflected in Did 3,1-6. This is not as simple a task as it may seem. It is true, James’ letter is permeated with allusions to other sources such as the teaching of Jesus, the Bible, the Testaments of the Twelve Patriarchs, and the Wisdom of Solomon. It is a redacted work, a text which was constructed from separate blocks of tradition which were then re-arranged to become integral parts of a coherent structure (17). In most cases, however, there is no clear evidence to suggest the direct dependence of James on other writings since these parallels involve language or motifs that are found in more than one of these works. “Determining the precise provenance of any specific expression within James is commensurately difficult, since there are usually too many possibilities” (18). Rather than consciously alluding to the sources he used, James re-expressed, reformulated, and developed these traditional materials as his own teaching (19). (16) For elaboration of these and other problems connected with the term ‘adulteresses’ in this verse, cf. J.J. SCHMITT, “You adulteresses! The Image in James 4:4”, NT 28 (1986) 331-334. (17) DAVIDS, The Epistle of James, 22-24; ID., “The Epistle of James in Modern Discussion”, ANRW II.25,5 (Berlin – New York 1988) 3621-3645; esp. 3630; M.E. TAYLOR, “Recent Scholarship on the Structure of James”, Currents in Biblical Research 3 (2004) 86-115; esp. 105-106. (18) L.T. JOHNSON – W.H. WACHOB, “The Sayings of Jesus in the Letter of James”, Authenticating the Words of Jesus (eds. B. CHILTON – C.A. EVANS) (NTTS 28/1; Leiden 1999) 431-450; repr. in JOHNSON, Brother of Jesus, 136-154; esp. 136. (19) HARTIN, James, 82-85; DAVIDS, “The Epistle of James in Modern Discussion”, 3630. See also BAUCKHAM, James, 78-83; W.H. WACHOB, The Voice of Jesus in the Social Rhetoric of James (SNTSMS 106; Cambridge 2000) 116. According to J.S. Kloppenborg (“The Reception of the Jesus Traditions in James”, The Catholic Epistles and the Tradition [ed. J. SCHLOSSER] [BETL 176; Leuven 2004] 93-141) “the lack of verbatim agreement between a predecessor text and its re-performance” is due to “the rhetorical practice of performance … The differences between the predecessor text and the paraphrase are not due to the vagaries of oral transmission but due instead to deliberate and studied techniques of verbal and conceptual transformation” (221).