A good commentary that will get you familiar with the many different interpretations of James, but will ultimately supply you with a rock solid study. Especially good is his treatment of the "problems" people often encounter with James 2.

There are plenty of footnotes that refer you to other works for further study concerning some opposing views, though not by any means an overkill on footnotes.

I am using this text in my "General Epistles" class at Lee University (Pentecostal - Church of God - Clevland, TN.) It should be noted though that this is not an academic level commentary, but is designed for lay and clergy alike. Hard as it may seem, Moo was able to squeeze out 191 pages of commentary.

Basically I use this book as my resource of the Sunday school
class. The more I read it, the more I like it. Moo is very careful in tracing the meaning of the texts by examining the
Old Testament, extra-biblical literatures and the context. If some texts are controversial, he is very even-handed in handling different solutions and comes up with a reasonable conclusion.

The even more important thing is he does not only render good
exegesis but also provide some good applications in christian life. I feel very impressed by his insightful prospectives.

Great book!!

This is the only commentary I have read on James, so I can't fairly compare it to others. But I can't imagine reading a more lucid, informed, intriguing, and just all around Godly understanding of what can be one of the most difficult books of the NT to understand. Moo handles each passage with clarity, being fair to different views and presenting his own conclusions. The book also has a well articulated introduction and discussion of time, place, and authorship.

I would have wished Moo had included Greek words in their original letters as well as their transliteration. I also wish he had interacted a bit more with the Greek text. Moo, however, was only staying true to the general format of the Pillar series, which assumes no previous Greek study on the part of the reader.

Both the hard cover as well as its dusk jacket are well manufactured and good looking. The pages are nice and the small size of the book makes it fairly easy to handle.

Overall, one of the best commentaries on any book that I have read.