James, brother of Jesus
James the Just, or a variation of James, brother of the Lord, was, according to the New Testament, a brother of Jesus. James was personally known to Paul the Apostle. He was the first leader of the Church of Jerusalem. Traditionally, it is believed he was martyred either in 62 AD by being stoned to death on the order of High Priest Ananus ben Ananus, or in 69 AD by being thrown off the pinnacle of the Temple by scribes and Pharisees and then clubbed to death. James, Joses, Simon, and Judas are mentioned as the brothers of Jesus as well as two or more unnamed sisters.
Catholics, Orthodox, and some Protestants teach that James, along with others named in the New Testament as brothers of Jesus, were not the biological children of Mary, mother of Jesus, but were cousins of Jesus, or step-brothers from a previous marriage of Joseph. Others consider James to be the son of Mary and Joseph.
The Catholic tradition holds that this James is to be identified with James, son of Alphaeus, and James the Less. It is agreed by most that he should not be confused with James, son of Zebedee also known as James the Great.
Epithet
records that Clement of Alexandria related, "This James, whom the people of old called the Just because of his outstanding virtue, was the first, as the record tells us, to be elected to the episcopal throne of the Jerusalem church." Other epithets are "James the brother of the Lord, surnamed the Just", and "James the Righteous".He is sometimes referred to in Eastern Christianity as "James Adelphotheos", meaning "James the Brother of God". The oldest surviving Christian liturgy, the Liturgy of St James, uses this epithet.
Leader of the Jerusalem Church
The Jerusalem Church
The Jerusalem Church was an early Christian community located in Jerusalem, of which James and Peter were leaders. The predominant place and residence of James in the city are implied by Galatians 1:19. Clement of Alexandria, as recorded by Eusebius, says: "Peter and James and John, after the Saviour's ascension, though pre-eminently honored by the Lord, did not contend for glory, but made James the Just bishop of Jerusalem."According to Eusebius, the Jerusalem church escaped to Pella during the siege of Jerusalem by the future Emperor Titus in 70 AD and afterwards returned, having a further series of Jewish bishops until the Bar Kokhba revolt in 130 AD. Following the second destruction of Jerusalem and the rebuilding of the city as Aelia Capitolina, subsequent bishops were Greeks.
Leader
James the Just was "from an early date, with Peter, a leader of the Church at Jerusalem and from the time when Peter left Jerusalem after Herod Agrippa's attempt to kill him, James appears as the principal authority who presided at the Council of Jerusalem."The Pauline epistles and the later chapters of the Acts of the Apostles portray James as an important figure in the Jewish Christian community of Jerusalem. When Paul arrives in Jerusalem to deliver the money he raised for the faithful there, it is to James that he speaks, and it is James who insists that Paul ritually cleanse himself at Herod's Temple to prove his faith and deny rumors of teaching rebellion against the Torah. This was a charge of antinomianism. In Paul's account of his visit to Jerusalem in Galatians 1:18-19, he states that he stayed with Cephas and James, the brother of the Lord, was the only other apostle he met.
Paul describes James as being one of the persons to whom the risen Christ showed himself,. In Galatians 2:9, Paul mentions James with Cephas and John the Apostle as the three Pillars of the Church. Paul describes these pillars as the ones who will minister to the "circumcised" in Jerusalem, while Paul and his fellows will minister to the "uncircumcised" , after a debate in response to concerns of the Christians of Antioch. The Antioch community was concerned over whether Gentile Christians need be circumcised to be saved, and sent Paul and Barnabas to confer with the Jerusalem church. James played a prominent role in the formulation of the council's decision. James was the last named figure to speak, after Peter, Paul, and Barnabas; he delivered what he called his "decision". The original sense is closer to "opinion". James supported them all in being against the requirement and suggested prohibitions about eating blood as well as meat sacrificed to idols and fornication. This became the ruling of the council, agreed upon by all the apostles and elders and sent to the other churches by letter.
Modern interpretation
The Encyclopædia Britannica relates that "James the Lord's brother was a Christian apostle, according to St. Paul, although not one of the original Twelve Apostles." According to Protestant theologian Philip Schaff, James seems to have taken the place of James the son of Zebedee, after his martyrdom, around 44 AD.Modern historians of the early Christian churches tend to place James in the tradition of Jewish Christianity; whereas Paul emphasized faith over observance of Mosaic Law, James is thought to have espoused the opposite position.
According to Schaff, James was the local head of the oldest church and the leader of the most conservative portion of Jewish Christianity. Scholar James D. G. Dunn has proposed that Peter was the "bridge-man" between the two other "prominent leading figures", Paul and James the Just.
Josephus
According to Josephus, in his work Antiquities of the Jews, refers to the stoning of "James the brother of Jesus" by order of Ananus ben Ananus, a Herodian-era High Priest.The James referred to in this passage is most likely the James to whom the Epistle of James has been attributed. The translations of Josephus' writing into other languages have at times included passages that are not found in the Greek texts, raising the possibility of interpolation, but this passage on James is found in all manuscripts, including the Greek texts.
The context of the passage is the period following the death of Porcius Festus, and the journey to Alexandria by Lucceius Albinus, the new Roman Procurator of Judea, who held that position from 62 AD to 64 AD. Because Albinus' journey to Alexandria had to have concluded no later than the summer of 62 AD, the date of James' death can be assigned with some certainty to around that year. The 2nd century chronicler Hegesippus also left an account of the death of James, and while the details he provides diverge from those of Josephus, the two accounts share similar elements.
Modern scholarship has almost universally acknowledged the authenticity of the reference to "the brother of Jesus, who was called Christ, whose name was James" and has rejected its being the result of later Christian interpolation. Moreover, in comparison with Hegesippus' account of James' death, most scholars consider Josephus' to be the more historically reliable. Some scholars have noted Josephus is more sympathetic to James than to his brother.
New Testament
The New Testament mentions several people named James. The Pauline epistles, from about the sixth decade of the 1st century, have two passages mentioning a James. The Acts of the Apostles, written sometime between 60 and 150 AD, also describes the period before the destruction of Jerusalem in 70 AD. It has three mentions of a James. The Gospels, with disputed datings ranging from about 50 to as late as 130 AD, describe the period of Jesus's ministry, around 30–33 AD. It mentions at least two different people named James. The author of the Epistle of Jude notes that he is a brother of James in that epistle's opening paragraph.Epistle of James
The Epistle of James has been traditionally attributed to James the Just since 253, but, according to Dan McCartney, it is now common for scholars to disagree on its authorship.Pauline epistles
Paul mentions meeting James "the Lord's brother" and later calls him one of the pillars in the Epistle to the Galatians :A "James" is mentioned in Paul's First Epistle to the Corinthians, 1 Corinthians 15:7, as one to whom Jesus appeared after his resurrection:
In the preceding verse, the same Greek word "adelphos" is used, but not in a blood-relation sense:
Acts of the Apostles
There is a James mentioned in Acts, which the Catholic Encyclopedia identifies with James, the brother of Jesus: "but he , beckoning unto them with the hand to hold their peace, declared unto them how the Lord had brought him out of the prison. And he said, Go show these things unto James, and to the brethren. And he departed, and went into another place.When Peter, having miraculously escaped from prison, must flee Jerusalem due to Herod Agrippa's persecution, he asks for James to be informed.
James is also an authority in the early church at the Council of Jerusalem :
James is presented as a principal author of the Apostolic Decree of Acts 15.
After this, there is only one more mention of James in Acts, meeting with Paul shortly before Paul's arrest: "And when we were come to Jerusalem, the brethren received us gladly. And the day following Paul went in with us unto James; and all the elders were present."
Gospels
The Synoptic Gospels, similarly to the Epistle to the Galatians, recognize a core group of three disciples having the same names as those given by Paul. In the list of the disciples found in the Gospels, two disciples whose names are James, the son of Alphaeus and James, son of Zebedee are mentioned in the list of the twelve disciples:And he called to him his twelve disciples and gave them authority over unclean spirits, to cast them out, and to heal every disease and every affliction. The names of the twelve apostles are these: first, Simon, who is called Peter, and Andrew his brother; James the son of Zebedee, and John his brother; Philip and Bartholomew; Thomas, and Matthew the tax collector; James the son of Alphaeus, and Thaddaeus; Simon the Cananaean, and Judas Iscariot, who betrayed him.
The Gospel of Mark and the Gospel of Matthew also mention a James as Jesus's brother: "Is not this the carpenter, the son of Mary, the brother of James, and Joses, and of Judah, and Simon? and are not his sisters here with us? And they were offended at him."
The Gospel of John never mentions anyone called James, but mentions Jesus's unnamed brothers as being present with Mary when Jesus attended the wedding at Cana, and later that his brothers did not believe in him.