The audience provides additional support for apostolic authority. Who better than James to write to this Jewish Christian audience in the dispersion. The authoritative tone combined with the several admonishments in the letter rightly points to a James; the half-brother of the Lord; the bishop of the church in Jerusalem; the James associated with Peter and John in their mission to the Jews. 
The internal evidence makes a strong case for the authentic apostolic authority of the epistle’s internal evidence from authorship, audience, authorial background, and audience. So why has the book been listed as disputed and antilegomena in church history? One biblical scholar wrote, “There is no writing in the New Testament, on which critical opinion has varied so widely.”  Where does this variation of critical opinion concerning James originate? Two extensive periods of time in Church history have produced critics that see the Epistle of James as a contestable book, The Patristic Period, and later in the Protestant Reformation. The Protestant Reformation produced the harshest critique of James in Martin Luther. We will now investigate both periods investigate the dissonance.    
Internal evidence of James’ apostolic authority and canonicity is strong. However, the external evidence has not always been in agreement as such. Some of the early church fathers during the Patristic Period considered James a contested book. Nonetheless, this was only a few church fathers and early on in this time of Church history.  The early church father Origen is first to mention the epistle of James and Origen also considered it scripture. Eusebius and Jerome refer to James as scripture and apparently accept it as from the hand of James, the Lord’s brother. Eusebius, however, classes it among the antilegomena and Jerome seems to imply that someone else wrote in James’ name or perhaps later edited the work.  Before Origen, however, there appear to be few references to James in early Christian writers, especially Clement and Hermas. In the first centuries of the church, the legitimacy of James was doubted by some Church Fathers, including for example by Theodore, Bishop of Mopsuestia in Cilicia. It is also missing in the Muratorian fragment which is the earliest list of New Testament books.  
However, unanimity soon occurs in time as the Epistle of James was included among the 27 New Testament books first listed by Athanasius of Alexandria and was confirmed as a canonical epistle of the New Testament by a series of councils in the fourth century.  Doubts concerning the canonicity of James were settled by the fourth century, and at the third Council of Carthage in 397 A.D. when it became commonly acknowledged.  The slow inclusion of James into the canon, the thorough screening, and the scrutinizing that it endured in the first two centuries should attest to the epistles integrity and canonicity not cast further doubt upon it.   

Of the third century, there is an evident rise in references from the “inspired” writings that eventually become the New Testament, and far fewer citations from works that do not make it into the New Testament. The most abounding third century authors “are Tertullian, Hippolytus of Rome, Origen of Alexandria and Cyprian of Carthage.”  An upsurge of Christian works originate in the fourth century with “Lactantius, Eusebius of Caesarea, Athanasius of Alexandria, and the Cappadocian Fathers (Basil of Caesarea, his brother Gregory of Nyssa, and Gregory Nazianzus), John Chrysostom, Jerome, Rufinus, and the great Augustine of Hippo (his Confessions was written in 396- 97 AD).”  All of these writers illustrate how the New Testament had become settled with thousands of citations from the 27 “inspired” writings and fewer citations outside that list.  R. A. Baker writes this of the time, “The New Testament developed, or evolved over the course of the first 250-300 years of Christian history. No one particular person made the decision. The decision was not made by a church council. The particular writings that became those of the New Testament gradually came into focus and became the most trusted and beneficial of all the early Christian writings.” 
