James, brother of Jesus

Saint James the Just
Icon of James
Martyr, Adelphotheos
Born	unknown
Died	62 Jerusalem
Venerated in	All Christianity
Canonized	pre-congregation
Feast	May 3 (Roman Catholic), May 1 (Anglican), October 23 (Lutheran)
Attributes	fuller's club; man holding a book
Controversy	James is sometimes identified with James, son of Alphaeus and James the Less. There is disagreement about the exact relationship to Jesus.

Saint James the Just (Hebrew: יעקב) (Greek Iάκωβος), (died AD 62), also known as James the Righteous, James of Jerusalem, James Adelphotheos, or James, the Brother of the Lord, was an important figure in Early Christianity. He is generally identified by Roman Catholics with James, son of Alphaeus and James the Less. He was the leader of the Christian movement in Jerusalem in the decades after Jesus' death, but information about his life is scarce and ambiguous. Several early sources described him as the brother of Jesus, but he may have been Jesus’ stepbrother, cousin, or other relation. The oldest surviving Christian liturgy, the Liturgy of St James, called him "the brother of God" (Adelphotheos).

Apart from a handful of references in the Gospels, the main sources for his life are the Acts of the Apostles, the Epistles of Saint Paul, the historian Josephus, and the early Christian author Hegesippus. He is believed to be the author of the Epistle of James in the New Testament, the first of the Seventy Apostles, and the author of the Apostolic Decree of Acts 15. In the Epistle to the Galatians, Paul of Tarsus describes his first visit to Jerusalem where he met James and stayed with Cephas (Simon Peter). Hegesippus describes him as a vegetarian.

Name

James was called "the Just" because of his righteousness and piety. The name also helps distinguish him from other important figures in early Christianity of the same name, such as James, son of Zebedee.

He is sometimes referred in Eastern Christianity as "James Adelphotheos," i.e. "James the Brother of God" (Template:Lang-el), based on New Testament descriptions, though different interpretations of his precise relationship to Jesus developed based on Christian beliefs about Mary, the mother of Jesus, who was designated Theotokos by the 431 Council of Ephesus. Therefore, he may simply have been Jesus' cousin and referred to as "the brother of our Lord."

New Testament sources

The earliest New Testament sources on James the Just are the surviving Pauline Epistles from about the sixth decade AD, describing events roughly during 35 - 55 AD. The Acts of the Apostles, written between 70 AD to 100 AD, describes the same period. The Gospels, with a disputed dating ranging from about 70 AD to as late as 110 AD, describe the period of Jesus' ministry, around 30 AD.

Pauline Epistles

Letters by Apostle Paul are the only surviving first-hand primary source on James the Just. Paul met James a few times over the years. The first meeting was about 3 years after his conversion in the mid-30s AD. Roughly two decades after the event, Paul briefly mentions this meeting in the Epistle to the Galatians:

Then after three years, I went up to Jerusalem to get acquainted with Cephas and stayed with him fifteen days. I saw none of the other apostles—only James, the Lord's brother. I assure you before God that what I am writing you is no lie.

The second time Paul writes meeting with James was again many years later, during a dispute over acceptance of Gentiles in the church, possibly the same incident as the Council of Jerusalem described in the Acts of the Apostles. Notable is how Paul mentions James before Peter (Cephas):

James, Cephas and John, those esteemed as pillars, gave me and Barnabas the right hand of fellowship when they recognized the grace given to me. They agreed that we should go to the Gentiles, and they to the Jews. All they asked was that we should continue to remember the poor, the very thing I had been eager to do all along.

The third mention of James in Galatians is within the so-called "incident at Antioch." According to Paul, Peter was not only afraid of James, but also bent to his will.

When Cephas came to Antioch, I opposed him to his face, because he stood condemned. For before certain people came from James, he used to eat with the Gentiles. But when they arrived, he began to draw back and separate himself from the Gentiles because he was afraid of those who belonged to the circumcision group.

James is again mentioned in Paul's First Epistle to the Corinthians, as one to whom Jesus appeared after his resurrection. Notable is how Paul names only Peter and James among the disciples and others who saw Jesus:. This is generally taken as an indication that this James is James the younger brother of Jesus.

For what I received I passed on to you as of first importance: that Christ died for our sins according to the Scriptures, that he was buried, that he was raised on the third day according to the Scriptures, and that he appeared to Cephas, and then to the Twelve. After that, he appeared to more than five hundred of the brothers and sisters at the same time, most of whom are still living, though some have fallen asleep. Then he appeared to James, then to all the apostles --

Paul might also be referring to James earlier in the same letter:

Don't we have the right to take a believing wife along with us, as do the other apostles and the Lord's brothers and Cephas?

Gospels

The synoptic Gospels, in a manner similar to Paul's Epistle to the Galatians, recognize a core group of three disciples with the same names as Paul. However, the Gospels always list Peter first and leave the exact identity of "James" blurry:

When he [Jesus] arrived at the house of Jairus, he did not let anyone go in with him except Peter, John and James, and the child's father and mother.

About eight days after Jesus said this, he took Peter, John and James with him and went up onto a mountain to pray.

He [Jesus] took Peter, James and John along with him, and he began to be deeply distressed and troubled.

In the Gospel of Luke, a "James" is also mentioned in the list of twelve disciples:

When morning came, he called his disciples to him and chose twelve of them, whom he also designated apostles: Simon (whom he named Peter), his brother Andrew, James, John, Philip, Bartholomew, Matthew, Thomas, James son of Alphaeus, Simon who was called the Zealot, Judas son of James, and Judas Iscariot, who became a traitor.

However, both the Gospel of Mark and the Gospel of Matthew define the other James as James son of Zebedee.

The Gospel of Mark and the Gospel of Matthew mention a James as Jesus' brother:

"-- Isn't this the carpenter? Isn't this Mary's son and the brother of James, Joseph, Judas and Simon? Aren't his sisters here with us?" And they took offense at him.

Some Mary is also later mentioned as the mother of a James, both in the Gospel of Mark and in the Gospel of Matthew:

Some women were watching from a distance. Among them were Mary Magdalene, Mary the mother of James the younger and of Joseph, and Salome.

When the Sabbath was over, Mary Magdalene, Mary the mother of James, and Salome bought spices so that they might go to anoint Jesus' body.

Among them were Mary Magdalene, Mary the mother of James and Joseph, and the mother of Zebedee's sons.

Unlike the synoptic Gospels, the Gospel of John never mentions anyone called James. However, it lists Jesus' unnamed "brothers" being a part of his entourage.

It is unclear, accidentally or purposefully, if some or all of the short references to James, including Luke 9:54 and Mark 13:3, are to the James son of Zebedee and not to the James the Just, and vice versa. James remains a shadowy figure in the Gospels, without anything to say or do on his own.

Acts of the Apostles

Acts of the Apostles, written by the same author as the Gospel of Luke, starts by repeating the list of remaining disciples, a James included:

When they arrived, they went upstairs to the room where they were staying. Those present were Peter, John, James and Andrew; Philip and Thomas, Bartholomew and Matthew; James son of Alphaeus and Simon the Zealot, and Judas son of James.

When James son of Zebedee is mentioned killed in Acts 12:2, the later reference to James in the same chapter can be quite unquestionably assumed to be to James the Just:

Peter motioned with his hand for them to be quiet and described how the Lord had brought him out of prison. "Tell James and the other brothers and sisters about this," he said, and then he left for another place.

Then, without introduction or explanation, James suddenly emerges as the supreme authority in the early church. He is described deciding, alone and unchallenged, the outcome of the Council of Jerusalem:

When they finished, James spoke up. "Brothers," he said, "listen to me. Simon has described to us how God first intervened to choose a people for his name from the Gentiles. The words of the prophets are in agreement with this, as it is written:

'After this I will return and rebuild David's fallen tent. Its ruins I will rebuild, and I will restore it, that the rest of humanity may seek the Lord, even all the Gentiles who bear my name, says the Lord, who does these things' —things known from long ago.

It is my judgment, therefore, that we should not make it difficult for the Gentiles who are turning to God. Instead we should write to them, telling them to abstain from food polluted by idols, from sexual immorality, from the meat of strangled animals and from blood. For the law of Moses has been preached in every city from the earliest times and is read in the synagogues on every Sabbath."

After this, there is only one more mention of James, meeting with Paul shortly before Paul's arrest:

When we arrived at Jerusalem, the believers received us warmly. The next day Paul and the rest of us went to see James, and all the elders were present.

Life

The canonical writings of the New Testament, as well as other written sources from the Early Church, provide some insights into James' life and his role in the Early Church. There is mention of him in the Gospel of John and the early portions of the Acts of the Apostles. The Synoptics mention his name, but no further information. However, the later chapters of the Acts of the Apostles provide evidence that James was an important figure in the Christian community of Jerusalem.

Jerome, in his De Viris Illustribus, argued that James was not Jesus' brother but his cousin, son of Mary of Cleophas, "the sister of the mother of our Lord of whom John makes mention in his book." After the Passion, Jerome wrote, the Apostles selected James as Bishop of Jerusalem. In describing James' ascetic lifestyle, 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.

Since it was unlawful for any but the high priest of the temple to enter the Holy of Holies, and then only once a year on Yom Kippur, Jerome's quotation from Hegesippus indicates that James was considered a high priest. The Pseudo-Clementine Recognitions suggest this.

Jerome quotes the non-canonical Gospel according to the Hebrews thus: “'Now the Lord, after he had given his grave clothes to the servant of the priest, appeared to James, for James had sworn that he would not eat bread from that hour in which he had drunk the Lord’s cup until he should see him risen from the dead.' And a little further on the Lord says, ‘bring a table and bread.’ And immediately it is added, 'He took bread and blessed and broke and gave it to James the Just and said to him, "My brother, eat your bread, for the Son of Man is risen from the dead."’” And so he ruled the church of Jerusalem thirty years, that is until the seventh year of Nero, (See Jerome and the Early Church Fathers)

The Gospel of Thomas confirms that James was an important leader stating "The disciples said to Jesus: We know that you will depart from us; who is it who will lead us?" Jesus said to them, “Wherever you have come from, go to James the Just, for whom heaven and earth came to be."

Paul further describes James as being one of the persons to whom the risen Christ showed himself (1 Corinthians 15:3–8); later in 1 Corinthians, Paul 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 (2:9), 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)(2:12). These terms (circumcised/uncircumcised) are generally interpreted to mean Jews and Greeks, who were predominant; however, this 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.

When Peter, having miraculously escaped from prison, must flee Jerusalem due to Herod Agrippa's persecution, he asks that James be informed (Acts 12:17).

When the Christians of Antioch were concerned over whether Gentile Christians need be circumcised to be saved, they sent Paul and Barnabas to confer with the Jerusalem church. James played a prominent role in the formulation of the council's decision (Acts 15:13ff). James was the last named figure to speak, after Peter, Paul and Barnabas; he delivered what he calls his "decision" (Acts 15:19 NRSV)— the original sense is closer to "opinion". He supported them all in being against the requirement (Peter had cited his earlier revelation from God regarding Gentiles), 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.

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 (Acts 21:18ff) (a charge of antinomianism).

Tradition, supported by inferences in Scripture, holds that James led the Jerusalem group as its first bishop or patriarch. This is not necessarily a point against the primacy of Peter in the early Church, and subsequently Roman Catholicism. Though James and not Peter was the first bishop of that group, Roman Catholics believe the bishop of Jerusalem was not by that fact the head of the Christian church, since the leadership rested in Peter as the "Rock" and "Chief Shepherd". John Chrysostom opined: "If anyone should say, 'Why then was it James who received the See of Jerusalem?' I should reply that He [Christ] made Peter the teacher not of that See, but of the world." It has been suggested that Peter entrusted the Jerusalem community to James when he was forced to leave Jerusalem. According to the Church historian Eusebius, Clement of Alexandria in the late second century stated the following concerning the appointment of James to the Jerusalem episcopacy, "For they say that Peter and James and John after the ascension of our Saviour, as if also preferred by our Lord, strove not after honor, but chose James the Just bishop of Jerusalem". (See the Early Church Fathers and Jerome)

Death

According to a passage in Josephus's Jewish Antiquities, (xx.9) "the brother of Jesus, who was called Christ, whose name was James" met his death after the death of the procurator Porcius Festus, yet before Lucceius Albinus took office (Antiquities 20,9) — which has thus been dated to 62. The High Priest Ananus ben Ananus took advantage of this lack of imperial oversight to assemble a Sanhedrin (although the correct translation of the Greek 'synhedion kriton' is '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. In response, King Agrippa replaced Ananus with Jesus, the son of Damneus.

Though the passage in general is almost universally accepted as original to Josephus, some challenge the identification of the James whom Ananus had executed with James the Just, considering the words, "who was called Christ," a later interpolation. (See Josephus on Jesus.)

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 varies somewhat from what Josephus reports, and may have been an attempt to reconcile the various accounts by combining them. According to Hegesippus, the scribes and Pharisees came to James for help in putting down Christian beliefs. The record says:

They came, therefore, in a body to James, and said: "We entreat thee, restrain the people: for they are gone astray in their opinions about Jesus, as if he were the Christ. We entreat thee to persuade all who have come hither for the day of the passover, concerning Jesus. For we all listen to thy persuasion; since we, as well as all the people, bear thee testimony that thou art just, and showest partiality to none. Do thou, therefore, persuade the people not to entertain erroneous opinions concerning Jesus: for all the people, and we also, listen to thy persuasion. Take thy stand, then, upon the summit of the temple, that from that elevated spot thou mayest be clearly seen, and thy words may be plainly audible to all the people. For, in order to attend the passover, all the tribes have congregated hither, and some of the Gentiles also. To the scribes' and Pharisees' dismay, James boldly testified that Christ "Himself sitteth in heaven, at the right hand of the Great Power, and shall come on the clouds of heaven." The scribes and pharisees then said to themselves, "We have not done well in procuring this testimony to Jesus. But let us go up and throw him down, that they may be afraid, and not believe him.

Accordingly, the scribes and Pharisees

…threw down the just man… [and] began to stone him: for he was not killed by the fall; but he turned, and kneeled down, and said: "I beseech Thee, Lord God our Father, forgive them; for they know not what they do.

And, while they were thus stoning him to death, one of the priests, the sons of Rechab, the son of Rechabim, to whom testimony is borne by Jeremiah the prophet, began to cry aloud, saying: "Cease, what do ye? The just man is praying for us." But one among them, one of the fullers, took the staff with which he was accustomed to wring out the garments he dyed, and hurled it at the head of the just man.

And so he suffered martyrdom; and they buried him on the spot, and the pillar erected to his memory still remains, close by the temple. This man was a true witness to both Jews and Greeks that Jesus is the Christ.

— Fragments from the Acts of the Church; Concerning the Martyrdom of James, the Brother of the Lord, from Book 5.

Vespasian's siege and capture of Jerusalem delayed the selection of Simeon of Jerusalem to succeed James.

According to Schaff in 1904 this account by "Hegesippus has been cited over and over again by historians as assigning the date of the martyrdom to 69 AD" though he challenged the assumption that Hegesippus gives anything to denote such a date.

Josephus does not mention in his writings how James was buried, which makes it hard for scholars to determine what happened to James after his death.

Robert Eisenman argues that the popularity of James and the illegality of his death may have triggered the First Jewish-Roman War from 66 to 73 C.E. Eisenman also presents that the story about Stephen's trial by Sanhedrin and eventual stoning in Acts 6–7 are possibly a dramatisation of James the Just's trial and stoning, which the author of Acts deliberately or unknowingly misplaced.

Influence

The Epistle of James has been traditionally attributed to James the Just. 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, as rewritten either by a scribe or by a follower of James the Just. Other scholars, such as Luke Timothy Johnson and James Adamson, argue that the historical James could have had such fluency in Greek, and could conceivably have authored the Epistle himself.

Modern historians of the early Christian churches tend to place James in the tradition of Jewish Christianity; where Paul emphasized faith over observance of Mosaic Law, which he considered a burden, an antinomian disposition, 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. Scholar James D. G. Dunn has proposed that Peter was the bridge-man (i.e. the pontifex maximus) between the two other "prominent leading figures": Paul and James the Just.

Robert Eisenman and James Tabor have set forth a thesis that James and the Nazorean 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 Judaism 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 Nazorean Jews at Jerusalem, whom he portrays as a nationalistic, 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 70 CE. (Ben Witherington suggests what is meant by this was that James' bones were taken by the early Christians who had fled Jerusalem).

The Apocryphon of James, the sole copy of which was found in the Nag Hammadi library, and which may have been written in Egypt in the third century, recounts a post-resurrection appearance of the risen Christ to James and Peter which James is said to have recorded in Hebrew. In the dialogue, Peter speaks twice (3:12; 9:1) but misunderstands Jesus. Only James is addressed by name (6:20) and James is the more dominant of the two.

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.

Relationship to Jesus

Jesus' "brothers" — James as well as Jude, Simon and Joses — are mentioned in Matthew 13:55, Mark 6:3 and by Paul in Galatians 1:19. Since James' name always appears first in lists, this suggests he was the eldest among them. 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,".

Paul refers to James, at that time the only prominent Christian James in Jerusalem, as an Apostle. 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."

While all Christians believe that Jesus was, as the Son of God, born of a virgin, defining the relationship of James the Just to Jesus requires some further discussion in accordance with the Catholic and Eastern Orthodox belief in the Perpetual Virginity of Mary, the belief that Mary's virginity continued even after Jesus' birth, although the Bible refers to Jesus as the "first-born son" of Mary, and therefore implies later sons.

Stepbrother

The most held belief by Eastern Orthodox and Catholics alike is that James was the stepbrother of Jesus. The Protevangelium of James assumes the Greek nature of Jewish practices during this period in history and says that Mary was betrothed to an older relative in order to preserve her virginity (he could not have had sex with her, it would have been incest); that Joseph already had children - James was already a boy when Jesus was born. The Protevangelium of James is one of the earliest documents (AD 150) and although it was not included in scripture, its traditional testimony was accepted by the early church..

However, a strong argument against James being a son of Joseph from a prior marriage is that Jewish people didn't have more than one "firstborn." This is evidenced in Genesis 49:3 when Jacob calls his sons from different mothers and tells Reuben that he is the firstborn - obviously because he was chronologically born first. If Joseph had children from a previous marriage, someone else would have been the first born. Luke 2:22-23 states "When the time of their purification according to the Law of Moses had been completed, Joseph and Mary took him to Jerusalem to present him to the Lord. (as it is written in the Law of the Lord, "Every firstborn male is to be consecrated to the Lord")

Full brother

It is widely held (see article on antinomianism) that the Jews living in Jerusalem in Christ's time still adhered to the Mosaic Law, which advised married couples to be fruitful and have many children and that this would indicate, assuming Mary and Joseph were average Jews, that they would have had more children after Mary gave birth to Jesus, thus making James a full brother of Jesus. Notably, Josephus (Antiquities 20.200) calls James a brother of Jesus. He does not call him a half-brother (homomhtros adelphos or homopatros adelphos), which are the terms usually used by Josephus to describe half-brothers, nor does he call James a stepbrother or a cousin of Jesus.

There are various arguments against this, including that it would be against Jewish law and/or custom for Jesus to give his mother to the care of John (who is not at all suspected to be a blood relative of Jesus) if Mary had other living sons. This is because the eldest son would take responsibility for his mother after the death of her husband (Joseph was quite old at the time he married Mary and is not mentioned at all when Jesus was an adult). So any other sons of Mary should have taken on this responsibility if they existed, therefore arguing against a direct biological brother relationship.

Half-brother

For proponents of the doctrine of Jesus' virgin birth, the claim that James may have been a full brother of Jesus is unacceptable; at most James and the other brethren of Jesus would have been co-uterine half-brothers. This is the view of most Protestants, who believe Mary and Joseph lived as a sexually active married couple after the birth of Jesus, as they believe is stated in Matthew 1:25.

A variant on this is presented by James Tabor, who argues that after the early and childless death of Joseph, Mary married Clopas, whom he accepts as a younger brother of Joseph, according to the Levirate law. According to this view Clopas fathered James and the later siblings but not Jesus, who whilst legally adopted by Joseph, is presumed to be the product of an earlier pre-marital coupling, possibly with Panthera.

Crossan suggested that he was probably Jesus' older brother.

Other relationships

Those who assert that James and his brethren are not full or half-siblings of Jesus (the Roman Catholic, Eastern Orthodox and some Protestant churches) point out that Aramaic and Hebrew tended to use circumlocutions to point out blood relationships; it is asserted that just calling some people "brothers of Jesus" would not have necessarily implied the same mother. Rather, something like "sons of the mother of Jesus" would have been used to indicate a common mother. Scholars and theologians who assert this point out that Jesus was called "the son of Mary" rather than "a son of Mary" in his hometown (Mark 6:3).

Spiritual brother

According to the apocryphal First Apocalypse of James, James is not the earthly brother of Jesus, but a spiritual brother.

Cousin

James could also have been cousin to Jesus, along with the other named "brethren". This is justified by the claim that cousins were also called "brothers" and "sisters" in Jesus' postulated native language, Aramaic; it and Hebrew do not contain a word for "cousin". Furthermore, the Greek words adelphos and adelphe were not restricted to their literal meaning of a full brother or sister in the Bible; nor were their plurals. This use is still common in Greece and other Balkan cultures. This assumes, naturally that the Middle Eastern authors' usage of Greek reflects their way of speaking. The tradition of considering cousins as brothers or sisters is still evident in most Eastern cultures; in some languages the term "cousin" does not even exist.

Eusebius of Caesarea (c. 275 – 339) reports the tradition that James the Just was the son of Joseph's brother Clopas, and therefore was of the "brethren" (which he interprets as "cousin") of Jesus described in the New Testament.

This is echoed by Jerome (c. 342 – 419) in De Viris Illustribus ("On Illustrious Men") - James is said to be the son of another Mary, wife of Clopas and the "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 refers to the scene of the Crucifixion in John 19:25, where three Marys - the mother of Jesus, Mary of Clopas, and Mary Magdalene - are said to be witnesses. John also mentions the "sister" of the mother of Jesus, often identified with Mary of Clopas due to grammar. Mary "of Clopas" is often interpreted as Mary "wife of Clopas". Mary of Nazareth and Mary of Clopas also need not be literally sisters, in light of the usage of the said words in Greek, Hebrew and Aramaic.

Mary of Clopas is suggested to be the same as "Mary, the mother of James the younger and Joses", "Mary the mother of James and Joseph" and the "other Mary" in Jesus' crucifixion and post-resurrection accounts in the Synoptic Gospels. Proponents of this identification argue that the writers of the Synoptics would have called this Mary, simply, "the mother of Jesus" if she was indeed meant to be the mother of Jesus, given the importance of her son's crucifixion and resurrection: they also note that the mother of James and Joses is called "Maria" whereas the mother of Jesus is "Mariam" or "Marias" in Greek. These proponents find it unlikely that Mary would be referred to by her biological children other than Jesus at such a significant time (James happens to be the brother of one Joses, as spelled in Mark, or Joseph, as in Matthew).

Jerome's opinion suggests an identification of James the Just with the Apostle James, son of Alphaeus; Clopas and Alphaeus are thought to be different Greek renderings of the Aramaic name Halpai. Despite this, some biblical scholars tend to distinguish them; this is also not Roman Catholic dogma, though a traditional teaching.

Since this Clopas is, according to Eusebius, Joseph of Nazareth's brother (see above) and this Mary is said to be Mary of Nazareth's sister, James could be related to Jesus by blood and law.

This view of James-as-cousin gained prominence in the Roman Catholic Church, displacing the "stepbrother" view to an extent. Roman Catholics may choose for themselves whether James was a stepbrother or cousin of Jesus, since either could be true.

Vaguely related

Also, Jesus and James could be related in some other way, not strictly "cousins", following the non-literal application of the term adelphos and the Aramaic term for "brother". Being close blood relatives, James and his kin could have been treated as brothers to Jesus anyway.

The ossuary

Main article: James Ossuary

In the November 2002 issue of Biblical Archaeology 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. If authentic, the inscription (while not mentioning Jesus' and James' mother) would have been the first archaeological evidence that Jesus existed aside from the manuscript tradition. The ossuary was exhibited at the Royal Ontario Museum in Toronto, Canada, late that year. But on June 18, 2003, the Israeli Antiquities Authority published a report concluding, based on an analysis of the patina, that the inscription is a modern forgery. Specifically, it appeared that the inscription had been added recently and made to look old by addition of a chalk solution.

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 were accused of being part of a forgery ring that had been operating for more than 20 years. Golan denied the charges against him. According to the BBC, when the police took Oded Golan into custody and searched his apartment they discovered a workshop with a range of tools, materials, and half finished 'antiquities'. This was evidence for an fraud of a scale far greater than they had suspected.

Bibliography

• Richard Bauckham. James: Wisdom of James, disciple of Jesus the sage. London: Routledge, 1999. ISBN 0-415-10369-X- (-3); Jude and the Relatives of Jesus in the Early Church. London: T & T Clark, 1990, 2004. ISBN 0567082970 (paperback).
• Raymond E. Brown. An Introduction to the New Testament. New York: Doubleday, 1997. ISBN 0-385-24767-2
• 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 1-57003-174-6
• 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.

External links

• James the Just, Cleopas'companion
• "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 as James the Just
• Catholic Encyclopedia: The Brethren of the Lord
• Jewish Encyclopedia: James
• Schaff's History of the Christian Churchon James, section 27
• Robert M. Price's extended review of Eisenman, 1997
• James in the 1911 Encyclopædia Britannica
• Traditional site of the Martyrdom of St. James in the Armenian church of St. James in Jerusalem (photo)