James, brother of Jesus

James the Just

Saint James the Just (יעקב "Holder of the heel; supplanter"; Standard Hebrew Yaʿaqov, Tiberian Hebrew Yaʿăqōḇ), also called James Adelphos or the Brother of the Lord and sometimes identified with James the Lesser, (died AD 62) was an important figure in Early Christianity. According to tradition, he was the first bishop or patriarch of Jerusalem, the author of the Epistle of James in the New Testament, and the first of the Seventy of Luke 10:1-20. Paul of Tarsus in Galatians 2:9 (KJV) characterized James as such: "... James, Cephas, and John, who seemed to be pillars..." He is described in the New Testament as a "brother of Jesus" and "in the Liturgy of St. James, the brother of Jesus is raised to the dignity of the brother of the very God (Adelphotheos)" (Philip Schaff: History of the Christian Church, chapter 4, section 29).

Name

James was called "the Just" because of his ascetic practices, which involved taking Nazarite vows. The name also helps distinguish him from other important figures in early Christianty, such as Saint James the Great and Saint James the Less.

He is sometimes referred to as "James the Brother of Jesus." Jesus's brothers — James as well as Jude, Simon and Joses — are mentioned in Matthew 13:55, Mark 6:3, and probably Acts 12:17. James alone is mentioned as a brother of Jesus by Paul in Epistle to the Galatians 1:19.

The exact relationship between James and Jesus is a point of controversy. Several early writers (the Clementine literature, Hegesippus-Eusebius) consider him merely the half brother to Jesus. This view says that Joseph had children from a previous marriage, and that Mary, the mother of Jesus, was not James' mother. This claim is first described in the 1st and 2nd century texts The Gospel of the Nativity of Mary, The Protoevangelium of James, and in the 1st century Liturgy of St James.

Life

The canonical writings of the New Testament, as well as other written sources from the early church, provide some insights into Saint James' life and his role in the early church. The Synoptics mention his name, but nothing else about him, whereas the Gospel of John and early chapters of the Acts of the Apostles do not even mention James.

Acts of the Apostles, in later chapters, provides evidence that James was an important figure in the Christian community of Jerusalem. When Peter, having miraculously escaped from prison, must flee Jerusalem, he asks that James be informed (12:17). When the Christians of Antioch are concerned over
whether Gentile Christians need be circumcised to be saved, and they send Paul and Barnabas to confer with the Jerusalem church there, James played a prominent role in the formulation of the council's decision (15:13ff). And when Paul arrives in Jerusalem to deliver the money he raised for the faithful there, it is to James that he speaks, and who insists that Paul ritually cleanse himself at Herod's Temple to prove his faith and deny rumors of teaching rebellion against the Torah (21:18ff) (a charge of antinomianism).

Paul further describes James as being one of the persons the risen Christ showed himself to (1 Corinthians 15:3-8); then later in 1 Corinthians, mentions James in a way that suggests James had been married (9:5); and in Galatians, Paul lists James with Cephas (better known as Peter) and John, as the three "pillars" of the Church, and who will minister to the "circumcised" (in general Jews and Jewish Proselytes) in Jerusalem, while Paul and his fellows will minister to the "uncircumcised" (in general Gentiles). (2:9, 2:12). These terms (circumcised/uncircumcised) are generally interpreted to mean Jews and Greeks, who were predominate, however it is an oversimplification as 1st century Iudaea Province also had some Jews who no longer circumcised, and some Greeks (called Proselytes or Judaizers) and others such as Egyptians, Ethiopians, and Arabs who did.

In describing James ascetic lifestyle, Saint Jerome, De Viris Illustribus, quotes Hegesippus' account of James from the fifth book of Hegesippus' lost Commentaries:

"After the apostles, James the brother of the Lord surnamed the Just was made head of the Church at Jerusalem. Many indeed are called James. This one was holy from his mother's womb. He drank neither wine nor strong drink, ate no flesh, never shaved or anointed himself with ointment or bathed. He alone had the privilege of entering the Holy of Holies, since indeed he did not use woolen vestments but linen and went alone into the temple and prayed in behalf of the people, insomuch that his knees were reputed to have acquired the hardness of camels' knees."

Jerome adds, "He says also many other things, too numerous to mention." His conception that James went into the Holy of Holies, whether in linen or wool, shows how unaware Jerome was of the most basic Jewish practice, though some have used the quotation to support the argument that James was considered a high priest - the high priest of the temple alone was allowed to enter the Holy of Holies once a year, on Yom Kippur.

Death

A debated passage, often characterized as a Christian interpolation, in Josephus's Jewish Antiquities records James' death in Jerusalem as having occurred after the death of the procurator Porcius Festus, yet before Clodius Albinus took office (Antiquities 20,9)— which has thus been dated to AD 62. The high priest Ananus took advantage of this lack of imperial oversight to assemble a council of judges who condemned James "on the charge of breaking the law," then had him executed by stoning. Josephus reports that Ananus' act was widely viewed as little more than judicial murder, and offended a number of "those who were considered the most fair-minded people in the City, and strict in their observance of the Law," who went as far as meeting Albinus as he entered the province to petition him about the matter. Their agitations led to Ananus being deposed as high priest.

Eusebius, while quoting Josephus' account, also records otherwise lost passages from Hegesippus (see links below), and Clement of Alexandria (Historia Ecclesiae, 2.23). Hegesippus' account apparently varied from what Josephus reports: the Pharisees, upset at his teachings, first threw him from the summit of the Temple in Jerusalem, then stoned him, and at last broke his skull with a fuller's club. (Hegesippus' account may have combined three varying accounts of James' death.)

Vespasian's siege and capture of Jerusalem delayed the selection of Symeon, son of Clopas, to succeed James.

Influence

As early as Origen, James the Just has been given credit for writing the New Testament Epistle of James, although this epistle has also been ascribed to Saint James the Great and James the Less. A number of modern Biblical scholars, such as Raymond E. Brown, while admitting the Greek of this epistle is too fluent for someone whose mother tongue is Aramaic argue that it expresses a number of his ideas, either rewritten by a scribe or by a follower of James the Just.

Modern historians of the early Christian churches tend to place James in the tradition of Jewish Christianity, which was more conservative than the tradition Paul was part of refered to as Pauline Christianity; where Paul famously emphasized faith over actions or observance of Mosaic Law, which he considered a burden, James is thought to have espoused the opposite position which is derogatively called Judaizing. One corpus commonly cited as proof of this are the Recognitions and Homilies of Clement (also known as the Clementine literature), versions of a novel that has been dated to as early as the 2nd century, where James appears as a saintly figure who is assaulted by an unnamed enemy some modern critics think may be Paul.

Robert Eisenman has set forth a thesis that James and the observant Christian Jews were marginalized by Paul and the Gentile Christians who followed him, a thesis that has been widely criticized for his recreation of the hostile skirmishes between Jewish and Pauline Christianity, relating his reconstruction to "proto-Christian" elements of the Essenes, as represented in the Dead Sea scrolls. Some of the criticism deconstructs as Pauline apologetics, but Eisenman is equally harsh on the Christians at Jerusalem, whom he portrays as a nationalistic, messianic, priestly, and xenophobic sect of ultra-legal pietists.

Some scholars, such as Ben Witherington, believe that the conflict between these two positions has been overemphasized, and that the two actually held quite similar beliefs.

Some apocryphal gospels testify to the reverence Jewish followers of Jesus (like the Ebionites) had for James. The Gospel of the Hebrews fragment 21 relates the risen Jesus' appearance to James. The Gospel of Thomas (one of the works included in the Nag Hammadi library), saying 12, relates that the disciples asked Jesus, "We are aware that you will depart from us. Who will be our leader?" Jesus said to him, "No matter where you come [from] it is to James the Just that you shall go, for whose sake heaven and earth have come to exist."

Fragment X of Papias refers to "James the bishop and apostle". Epiphanius' Panarion 29.4 describes James as a Nazirite.

The pseudepigraphical First Apocalypse of James associated with James's name mentions many details, some of which may reflect early traditions: he is said to have authority over the twelve Apostles and the early church; this work also adds, somewhat puzzlingly, that James left Jerusalem and fled to Pella before the Roman siege of that city in AD 70. (Ben Witherington suggests what is meant by this was that James' bones were taken by the early Christians who had fled Jerusalem).

The Protevangelion of James (or "Infancy Gospel of James"), a work of the 2nd century, also presents itself as written by James — a sign that his authorship would lend authority — and so do several tractates in the codices found at Nag Hammadi.

Brother, half-brother, step-brother or cousin of Jesus

To many dispassionate outsiders, the number of the Jameses in the immediate circle of Jesus seems to have been multiplied, and Jerome's perhaps inadvertent remark, "Many indeed are called James" has a disarming frankness. The Catholic Encyclopedia (1910) divides the New Testament references to "James" among five separate personages [1], separating apart even a "James, the brother of Jude", by testimony of the Epistle of Jude 1:1, and remarking "Most Catholic commentators identify Jude with the 'Judas Jacobi', the 'brother of James' (Luke 6:16; Acts 1:13), called thus because his brother James was better known than himself in the primitive Church." Non-Catholic readers like Robert Eisenman (Eisenman 1997) may recognize in this "Jude" of the author of Luke and Acts Jude Thomas.

Quite aside from the literary doppelgänger, the relationship of James, one of the desposyni or the "heirs of the Master", to Jesus has been rendered problematic to many Christians. Due to the belief of Christians that Jesus Christ was the Son of God, born of a Virgin, many Christians believe James the Just and the other brethren of Jesus therefore must at best be half-brothers. Jesus's brothers—James as well as Jude, Simon and Joses—are unequivocably mentioned in Matthew 13:55, Mark 6:3 and, less unequivocally, by Paul in Galatians 1:19. Even in the passage in Josephus' Jewish Antiquities (20.9.1) the Jewish historian describes James as "the brother of Jesus who is called Christ", though this passage has been suggested as an interpolation.

However, the problem has become further compounded by the developing dogma of the Perpetual Virginity of Mary. Following the belief that Mary's virginity continued even after the Virgin Birth (not directly attested in the canonic New Testament), Eastern Orthodoxy treats James as a step-brother, being the son of Joseph, but not Mary and instead by a previous wife of Joseph, unmentioned in canonic texts.

Eusebius of Caesarea reports the tradition that James the Just was the son of Joseph's brother Clopas, and therefore was of the "brethren" (which he interpretes as "cousin") of Jesus described in the New Testament. The Greek word adelphos was not restricted to the literal meaning of a full brother in the Bible.[2] Jerome (died 420) argued vehemently (De Viris Illustribus, "On Illustrious Men") that James was merely a cousin to Jesus, the son of another Mary, the wife of Clopas and "sister" of Mary, the mother of Jesus, in the following manner:

"James, who is called the brother of the Lord, surnamed the Just, the son of Joseph by another wife, as some think, but, as appears to me, the son of Mary sister of the mother of our Lord of whom John makes mention in his book." Jerome's reference is to the scene of the Crucifixion in John 19:25.

Jerome's opinion has been embraced by the Roman Catholic church, and has the effect of suggesting an identification of James the Just with James the Less. Despite this, some biblical scholars tend to distinguish them.

James the Just, the only prominent Christian James in Jerusalem, is referred to by Paul as an Apostle. In Galatians 1:18 – 19, Paul, recounting his conversion, recalls "Then after three years I went up to Jerusalem to visit Cephas, and tarried with him fifteen days. But other of the apostles saw I none, save James the Lord's brother."

The ossuary

Main article: James Ossuary

In the November 2002 issue of Bible Archeology Review, André Lemaire of the Sorbonne University in Paris, published the report that an ossuary bearing the inscription Ya`aqov bar Yosef akhui Yeshua` ("James son of Joseph brother of Jesus") had been identified belonging to a collector, who quickly turned out to be Oded Golan, a forger posing as a collector. If authentic it would have been the first archaeological proof that Jesus existed aside from the manuscript tradition. The ossuary was exhibited at the Royal Ontario Museum in Toronto, Canada late that year; however, on June 18 2003, the Israeli Antiquities Authority published a report concluding that the inscription is a modern forgery based on their analysis of the patina. Specifically, it appears that the inscription was added recently and made to look old by addition of a chalk solution. Oded Golan has since been arrested and his forgery equipment and partially completed forgeries have been recovered. On December 29 2004, Golan was indicted in an Israeli court along with three other men - Robert Deutsch, an inscriptions expert who teaches at Haifa University; collector Shlomo Cohen; and antiquities dealer Faiz al-Amaleh. They are accused of being part of a forgery ring that had been operating for more than 20 years. Golan denies the charges against him.

External links

"The martyrdom of James, the brother of the Lord" Quotes from lost writings of Hegesippus in Eusebius.
Flavius Josephus Antiquities of the Jews Book 20, Chapter 9
Jerome, De Viris Illustribus ch.2, the second chapter, directly following Simon Peter.
Fragments of Papias
Catholic Answers: The Brethren of the Lord
Catholic Encyclopedia: St. James the Less, whom this article identifies with James the Just
Catholic Encyclopedia: The Brethren of the Lord
Jewish Encylopedia: James
Schaff on James, section 27
Robert M. Price's extended review of Eisenman, 1997

Bibliography

Raymond E. Brown. An Introduction to the New Testament. New York: Doubleday, 1997. ISBN 0385247672
Robert Eisenman. James the Brother of Jesus: The Key to Unlocking the Secrets of Early Christianity and the Dead Sea Scrolls. New York: VikingPenguin, 1997. ISBN 0-670-86932-5
John Painter. Just James. Columbia: University of South Carolina, 1997 ISBN 1570031746
Hershel Shanks and Ben Witherington, The Brother of Jesus. New York: HarperSanFrancisco, 2003. ISBN 0-06-055660-9
Francis Watson. Paul, Judaism and the Gentiles. Cultural background.
Biblical Archaeology Review Articles in various issues in 2004 and 2005 concerning the ossuary.