Who was James “the Just” of Jerusalem? (gratis post)

An excerpt from my commentary on the Letter of James

I will be in Trondheim this week and part of next (incidentally, it will afford me the overdue opportunity of meeting Bishop Erik Varden face to face; my wife, Solrunn Nes, has been commissioned by him to do the iconography for the Catholic chapel dedicated to St. Olav at Stiklestad. He is one of the outstanding spiritual writers of the moment. I have previously posted an interview with him that can be viewed here.) During the time I’m away, I have scheduled three posts, all of them “free” for non-paying readers. So there won’t be a break in the postings.

This one is a slightly abridged/edited excerpt from the Introduction to my 2018 commentary on the Letter of St. James. If you enjoy it, consider purchasing a copy of the book (along with the entire Greek text, it also includes my brother David’s full rendering into English, taken from his translation of the New Testament). The commentary is obtainable from all booksellers.

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The earliest record in the New Testament that we have regarding James is found in the letters of Paul. He is not, of course, the only James in the New Testament. “James” or “Jacob” was a common name for Jews to bear, being the name of the Old Testament patriarch whose other, divinely bestowed name was “Israel.” Named in the New Testament are also James, the son of Zebedee (Mk. 1:19-20; 3:17), James, the son of Alphaeus (Mk. 3:18; Acts 1:13), and James, the father of Judas (Lk. 6:18). But it is doubtful that the name of the author of the epistle was meant to signify someone other than James of Jerusalem, “the brother of the Lord.” It is Paul, whose letters are considered to be the earliest writings in the New Testament, who provides us with some important details concerning James.

(Icon of Saint James, Brother of the Lord, 18th century)

It is Paul who informs us that James had been visited with an appearance of the risen Christ (1 Cor. 15:7), and that he was one of the “pillars” of the church in Jerusalem (Gal. 2:9), the one with whom Paul had consulted personally in that city (Gal. 1:19), and whose influence, through his representatives, was felt as far as Antioch in Syria (Gal. 2:12). We are given to understand that there was, at least at one point in their interactions, some tension between Paul and James (and, of course, with Peter, as well) over relations at table fellowship in Antioch between Jewish and gentile believers (cf. Gal. 2:6, 11). Paul also leads us to believe that James probably was a married man (1 Cor. 9:5).

Turning from Paul to the Gospels, all of which were written after Paul’s death, we find that they tell how Jesus’ family members not only were not initially followers of his message, but that they even worried for his sanity soon after he began his ministry. Mark 3:21 describes them as anxiously seeking for him in order to take him home, believing that “he was beside himself.” In Mark 6, when Jesus passes through Nazareth, we are informed, through the mouths of those hearing him speak in the synagogue, that he had four brothers and more than one sister: “Is not this man the craftsman, the son of Mary and brother of James and Joses and Judas and Simon? And are not his sisters here with us?” (Mk. 6:3) [1] The Gospel of John clearly concurs that Jesus’ brothers were not among his early followers: “his brothers,” the Evangelist writes flatly, “did not have faith in him.” They are depicted as taunting him, in rough brotherly fashion perhaps, to go and show himself off “to the cosmos” (by doing so before the multitudes in Jerusalem) if he really was doing all the astounding things he was touted as having performed (Jn. 7:3-5). At this early stage, James, along with Jesus’ other brothers, shows no understanding of what Jesus is doing and proclaiming. We can suppose there is in this a true historical memory, given how greatly James and the family of Christ were later esteemed.

Lest we come too hastily to the conclusion that, perhaps, James was not regarded as a righteous man during the time that he and his brothers were dubious about Jesus’ ministry, there is an intriguing fragment from a lost Gospel that provides us with an early tradition that he and the family had, in fact, been receptive of the message of John the Baptist before Jesus began his own ministry. The so-called Gospel of the Nazarenes, originally composed in Aramaic sometime before 200, tells how “the mother of the Lord and his brethren” urged Jesus to go with them to be baptized by John the Baptist for “the remission of sins.” [2] If not a total fabrication, it may be seen as agreeing somewhat with the witness of Hegesippus (a second-century Jewish Christian, it should be noted, about whom more below), who wrote of James that he “was holy from his birth” and that he was someone “whom everyone from the Lord’s time till our own has called the Righteous.” [3] To say that James “was holy from his birth” is to say, in effect, that he was someone who had openly practiced his faith in God throughout his life without affectation. And if he had followed, even at a distance, John the Baptist, we can imagine James as a character whose seriousness in religious matters had lastingly impressed those who encountered it. In fact, he may have been scandalized at first by his brother’s ministry and growing reputation precisely because he took his faith so very seriously. One brother’s reactions to another can sometimes be censorious – and wrong, but for the “right” reasons.

Be that as it may, between the Gospels and the book of Acts something had evidently occurred to transform James and his family’s opinion of Jesus, as well as their role among the disciples. We have already noted that Paul apparently attributed this change to an encounter between James and the risen Christ. There is a legend preserved in the second-century Gospel of the Hebrews that purports to tell the story of this post-resurrection encounter. This was a Gospel that originated in Egypt among Greek-speaking Jewish Christians and comes to us now, like The Gospel of the Nazarenes, only in fragments through the writings of various early Fathers. Although it is legendary in nature, it is interesting enough to quote in full:

And when the Lord had given the linen cloth to the servant of the priest, he went to James and appeared to him. For James had sworn that he would not eat bread from that hour in which he had drunk the cup of the Lord until he should see him risen from among them that sleep. And shortly thereafter the Lord said: Bring a table and bread! And immediately it is added: he took the bread, blessed it and brake it and gave it to James the Just and said to him: My brother, eat thy bread, for the Son of man is risen from among them that sleep. [4]

(St. James enthroned; 18th century)

The story assumes that James had been present at the Last Supper, where he had made a vow of abstinence. The mention of a “linen cloth” seems to refer to Jesus’ burial clothes, apparently given “to the servant of the priest” as testimony of the resurrection. The “eucharist” in the story is reminiscent of Jesus’ breaking of the bread with the two unnamed disciples of Emmaus (Lk. 24:12-35). Whether or not there is any historical kernel in this version of the appearance to James, the canonical account of the book of Acts simply tells us that James and the family of Jesus were gathered in the upper room in Jerusalem with the eleven disciples before the events of the Day of Pentecost: “These [the disciples] devoted themselves constantly to prayer, with a shared intensity of feeling, together with the women and with Mary the mother of Jesus and with his brothers.” (Acts 1:14) It is evident, then, that the brothers of Jesus were, by this time, fully integrated into the nascent community of Christ’s followers. We can assume that the resurrection appearance to James, to which Paul alludes, had already occurred.

When next we hear of James in the book of Acts, he has taken a principal role in the life of the mother church in Jerusalem. After Peter’s arrest and escape in chapter 12, Peter has little choice but to flee the city. Before he goes on the run, however, he gives final instructions that those gathered in the house of the mother of John Mark should inform James: “And, gesturing with his hand for them to be silent, he related to them how the Lord had led him out of the prison, and said, ‘Report these things to James and the brethren.’ And going out he went off elsewhere.” (Acts 12:17) Following Peter’s departure, James is depicted in Acts as the principal authority in the mother church, “the first among equals,” and even Peter later in the book appears to submit to his authority and judgment (just as, in Gal. 2:12, Paul implies that Peter did not want to risk any disagreement with the emissaries sent to Antioch by James). Quite suggestively, it is James who, at the council of Jerusalem, delivered the verdict concerning the grounds for table fellowship between Jewish and gentile believers in Christ:

And, after remaining silent, James spoke up, saying, “Men, brothers, listen to me. Simon has declared how God first saw to it that he would take a people for his name from the gentiles. And the words of the prophets agree with this, just as has been written: ‘“After these things, I will return and rebuild the fallen tabernacle of David, and will rebuild its ruins and erect it again, so that the rest of humankind might seek out the Lord, even all the nations, those upon whom the name of the Lord has been invoked,” says the Lord who does these things, known from an age ago.’ Hence my verdict is not to cause difficulties for those among the gentiles turning to God, but rather to write them, telling them to abstain from the pollutions of idols, and from whoring, and from anything strangled, and from blood. For Moses has men who preach him in every city, being read aloud in the synagogue every Sabbath since the times of generations long past.” (Acts 15:13-21; cf. Amos 9:11-12; emphasis mine)

We see James once more in the book of Acts, right before the arrest of Paul in Jerusalem. Paul had sought him out and followed his and the other elders’ instructions, which were intended to mollify those who regarded Paul as an apostate from Judaism (Acts 21:18-26). It was to no avail, and Paul was taken into custody, nearly losing his life in the violent altercation that ensued. But on both occasions in Acts – the council of chapter 15 and the advising of Paul in chapter 21 – we see James as both the preeminent figure in the mother church, one whose wisdom and pragmatism are manifest and respected, and as the mediating influence between Paul’s mission and the original Jewish Christian fellowship based in Jerusalem.

The Jewish historian, Josephus, tells of James’s execution (Antiquities XX, 9, 1), which occurred between the time of the Roman procurator Felix’s death and the coming of his successor, Albinus, to fill his empty post (i.e., sometime in the middle of the year 62). James’s martyrdom was a blow to the Jerusalem community from which it never fully recovered. He and others, Josephus tells us, were arraigned before the High Priest Hanan ben Hanan and the Sanhedrin, who, taking advantage of the Roman procurator’s empty office, found them guilty, possibly of “transgression of the Law,” and ordered them stoned to death. Hegesippus, writing sometime circa 180, elaborates on the story (Eusebius, History, II, 23). In the latter account, the religious leaders during Passover implore James – who is acknowledged by them to be a “righteous one” – to declare to the crowd from the parapet of the Temple “that they must not go astray as regards Jesus.” James boldly declares the opposite and is thrown from the parapet in retribution, whereupon he is stoned and finally dispatched by a fuller with a club. Of the two versions, Josephus’s less sensational telling is obviously the more plausible.

Hegesippus, inaccurate though he may be, nevertheless shows us how highly regarded James became in the following generations of Jewish Christianity. His description of an ascetical, devout, even priestly James is almost certainly an exaggeration, but it may also contain some dim memories of the actual man:

…[E]veryone from the Lord’s time till our own has called [him] the Righteous… [H]e drank no wine or intoxicating liquor and ate no animal food; no razor came near his head; he did not smear himself with oil, and took no baths [cf. Num. 6:1-21]. He alone was permitted to enter the Holy Place, for his garments were not of wool but of linen. He used to enter the Sanctuary alone, and was often found on his knees beseeching forgiveness for the people, so that his knees grew hard like a camel’s from his continually bending them in worship of God and beseeching forgiveness for the people…

We may well believe that James, called “the Just” or “the Righteous (One),” was a man of continual prayer, concerned for his people, abstemious, and possibly “priestly” in his demeanor and even attire. That these were aspects of the serious and devout character of the historical person seems likely, even if Hegesippus can be accused of embroidering some of the facts.

(El Greco, St. James the Less, Toledo Cathedral, 1609)

As the gulf between the imperial church and the later Jewish Christian sects widened, the memory of the authority of James became an anchor for the latter. No such high estimation of him seems to have lingered among the former. The third- or fourth-century Jewish-Christian Homilies of Clement contain two spurious letters addressed to James, one purporting to be from Peter and the other from Clement, bishop of Rome. In them we can see how exalted a figure he had become for the non(anti)-Pauline churches of Jewish lineage. Respectively, they address James as “the lord and bishop of the holy Church, under the Father of all, through Jesus Christ,” and “the lord, and the bishop of bishops, who rules Jerusalem, the holy church of the Hebrews, and the churches everywhere…” [5] James has assumed in the imagination of the writer of this pseudepigraphical work, in other words, the position of a “pope,” a final authority and governor of all churches.

Perhaps even more remarkably we find in as early a work (possibly mid-2nd century) as The Gospel of Thomas this striking logion:

The followers said to Jesus, “We know that you are going to leave us. Who will be our leader?” Jesus said to them, “No matter where you are, you are to go to James the Just, for whose sake heaven and earth came into being.” [6]

In Jewish literature, the phrase “for whom heaven and earth came into being” is hyperbole, an expression of high praise. On the lips of Jesus, however, it is in this instance highest praise, because here Jesus is personally deputing James as his vicar. Given that this Gospel, and thus this logion, may well be a second-century text, what we have here is an early testimony to the central position James was understood to occupy in the church.

To summarize, then, what we have is a sketchy portrait of James, but a suggestive one. He was a devout man throughout his life, so much so that he was known as “the Righteous” or “the Just.” He may have been a follower of — or at least inspired by — John the Baptist. Like the Baptist, he gained a reputation for self-discipline, adopting, it seems, traits of the Nazarite vow on a protracted basis (see Num. 6:1-21). During at least much of his brother’s ministry, he and the other brothers were not followers of Jesus. But, at some point, either not long before Jesus’ death or – more likely – after his experience of the risen Lord, James was numbered among the most important witnesses of the resurrection. After the departure of Peter from Jerusalem, James assumed the primacy of the mother church, and became renowned for his wisdom, holiness, and common sense. Even Peter and Paul deferred to him, and it was to James that Paul came for guidance just before his arrest. Finally, in 62, James was put to death, probably by stoning.

A question remains: in what sense was James “the brother” of Jesus? Mary’s “perpetual virginity” is a belief that is deeply rooted in the traditions of the oldest churches. Christian piety held virginity and celibacy in high esteem from early on. How could it be that she who was chosen to bear the incarnate God in her womb, the holiest of all women and indeed of all mankind, would have marital relations and bear other children after such a holy nativity? If Mary was the most exalted of saints, the assumption was that she must have been a paragon in every way, not least in chastity. Her role as “the virgin mother” made her a symbol or type of the church (the church was regarded as the “mother” of the baptized and “virginal” in the purity of her faith), and with the development of Mary’s iconic status there was more even than her personal honor at stake. [7]

That such a consideration had not been an issue for the writers of the New Testament is evident by their off-handed references to Jesus’ brothers and sisters, without once qualifying those terms. For the first generation of Jewish Christians, virginal chastity and celibacy were not regarded as signs of purity so much as signs of calling and consecration, often related to prophetic zeal (as, for example, in the case of John the Baptist). [8] For the New Testament writers, then, whether or not Mary had conceived children other than Jesus was not of great concern. Subsequent generations of Christians, however, were not so indifferent to the issue of Mary’s virginal status. It became increasingly important to recognize in her the supreme image of the church’s perpetual virginal motherhood. The doctrine of her perfect physical inviolability was understood as complementing her inner spiritual purity.

Not every thoughtful believer in the early centuries accepted the idea, however. One Christian writer by the name of Helvidius, writing towards the end of the fourth century, produced a treatise maintaining that the most obvious way to understand the terms “brothers and sisters” in the Gospels was to take them literally. These were simply the biological children of Joseph and Mary born after Jesus’ birth (and therefore, in Helvidius’s view, James would have been the oldest of Jesus’ younger siblings). The ever-combative St. Jerome didn’t take what he saw as Helvidius’s attack on Mary’s perfect chastity lying down. He took up his pen and wrote against the latter, suggesting that Jesus’ “brothers and sisters” were in reality Jesus’ cousins and therefore not biological children of Mary. Jerome’s “cousin hypothesis” has continued as an accepted view to this day in the Roman Catholic tradition. There is, however, very little evidence to suppose that the words “brother” and “sister” were used in Jesus’ time to mean “cousin.”

Another, more plausible, view is the one found in the otherwise fantastical second-century apocryphal book, the Protevangelion of James, in which the siblings of Jesus are said to have been Joseph’s children from a previous marriage. Mary is, in this account, the widower Joseph’s young second wife, and Jesus, born of her virginally, is her only child (and so James was, according to this narrative, the oldest of Jesus’ older half-brothers). This is the view that was supported by such church fathers as Clement of Alexandria, Origen, Ambrose of Milan, Hilary of Poitiers, and others, and it remains the accepted view of the Eastern churches. It is also the reason why, in Christian art both of the East and the West, Joseph has often been depicted as an elderly gray-haired man. The brown-haired, brown-bearded Joseph of popular Roman Catholic art is a much later representation.

Thus we have three early views, all of them claiming antiquity and authenticity, regarding the siblings of Jesus – those of Helvidius, Jerome, and the Eastern fathers. Of these, the first and the last possess more credibility than Jerome’s.

Lastly, I assume that James was, in fact, the author of the New Testament epistle that bears his name. Some scholars argue that it is a late writing, written under the name of James by some unknown author. One can meet with this view in more than a few commentaries and study Bibles. But, since the arguments for that opinion are well represented elsewhere and can readily be found, I will not repeat them here, but only briefly present my reasons for accepting James as the genuine author.

First, despite tolerable arguments to the contrary, there is no compelling evidence, either internal or external, that the letter must be regarded as a late writing (i.e., between 70 and 100 AD). It can, without any serious difficulty, be dated to the 50s or early 60s.

Second, because the Greek of the Letter of James is quite good by New Testament standards, it has been doubted by some scholars that a “rustic” Galilean, whose first language was Aramaic, could have composed it. But, in actual fact, we do not know at all just how “rustic” James might have been during his adult life, or, for that matter, just how polished or poor (or entirely lacking) his Greek may have been. His hometown of Nazareth, after all, was less than four miles from the cosmopolitan Greco-Roman city of Sepphoris – in other words, within easy walking distance. It is conceivable that James could have acquired a working knowledge of Greek there at some point during his life. If he had shared the trade of Joseph, his father, he may even have been personally involved in the building project that was taking place there while he was a young man. In later life, of course, he lived in Jerusalem, and among those who were members of the church in that city were Hellenistic Jews, whose first language was Greek. If he hadn’t already learned it elsewhere, he could have learned Greek through them. Alternatively, if he, in fact, really didn’t know a lick of Greek (which seems doubtful), he might have employed a bilingual amanuensis and translator to help him compose his letter. In short, the argument that his Greek is overly polished fails to convince.

Third, the Letter of James appears to be an encyclical epistle – that is to say, it is a letter addressed to all Christians, who are designated in it as “the twelve tribes in the Diaspora [i.e., Dispersion],” in other words, the “true Israel” scattered among the gentiles (compare the words of James, as recorded in Acts 15:15-21). Given what we have already cursorily seen as regards James’s influential position among the churches and how he was not hesitant to exercise that influence, it seems wholly in keeping that he could have issued such a general letter. As Martin Hengel noted in an incisive essay on James, “It is the first, indeed, the only early Christian letter that opens with the outrageous claim that it is intended to be heard by all.” [9] In other words, it is the sort of communication one would expect from a recognized authority of James’s stature.

Of course, a suspicious reader (or scholar) might, in turn, suggest that that is exactly what a pseudonymous author would have wished us to believe. That is possible, certainly (in the sense that many other hypothetical notions might be possible); but is it necessary to harbor an attitude of suspicion when there really is no warrant for it? In short, there is no firm evidence to lend substance to such doubt. We know that James could have written an encyclical letter, and we have supporting evidence in Acts 15 to suggest that he was influential enough to have pronouncements circulated to the churches he regarded as under the oversight of the mother church in Jerusalem. The Letter of James fits into that early model of ecclesiastical oversight quite naturally.

Fourth, the epistle appears to engage in a polemic, if not against Paul himself, then almost certainly against a misunderstood or corrupted version of Paul’s message. This is nowhere more evident than in the second chapter, in which James states flatly that one is not justified “by faith alone,” and that Abraham was “made righteous [i.e., justified] by works” (Jms 2:21, 24; compare Rom. 5:1 and Gal. 2:16). As Hengel proposed, other passages likewise could indicate a sustained polemic that may characterize the whole epistle.

To give but one example, it is conceivable that the passage about sins of the tongue in chapter three might be related – either directly or indirectly – to Paul’s well-known penchant for “speaking like a fool” (2 Cor. 12:11) and lashing out in angry outbursts against his opponents (e.g., Gal. 1:8-9 and 5:12). Christians over the centuries, rightly revering Paul for his greatness on many levels, have tended to explain away such intemperate rhetoric or justify it as “righteous zeal” for the sake of the gospel. We forget, however, that such behavior may not have been considered acceptable by someone as austere as James apparently was. After all, as we can note in his letter, his ethics is in the spirit we hear in the Sermon on the Mount, wherein all “judging” and “condemning” of others is rebuked out of hand.

There is at the very least in James’s epistle a direct confrontation with what appears to be a poorly digested Paulinism, one that has misinterpreted Paul’s teaching about faith and good works, thereby letting self-discipline slip, “faith” to be perverted into mere assent to doctrines, and inequality between rich and poor Christians to flourish (and one can see, from even a cursory reading of Paul’s letters, that he himself had to deal with such distortions of his gospel: “What shall we say then? Should we persist in sin so that grace might abound? Let it not be! We who have died to sin, how shall we still live in it?”; Rom. 6:1-2).

Fifth, James’s moral injunctions have numerous parallels with the teachings of Jesus as we find them in the Synoptic Gospels, and in Matthew in particular. At the same time, these are indeed parallels and not direct quotations – echoes, as it were, of a common body of teaching fully digested and integrated by James into the body of his letter. In other words, one has the impression that James is so close in time and spirit to his brother that he has no need to quote him word for word. What we find instead is a shared ethos, imbibed from the source and flowing through James, and practiced in every aspect of his daily existence. As such, he simply communicates it with an easy authority gathered from lived experience. He speaks in the same spirit as his risen brother, and one senses that that is all he believed was required.

Taken together, these reasons for my acceptance of the genuineness of James’s authorship may not be persuasive for some, but they are sufficient for me to come down on the side of its authenticity.

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[1] Later traditions name the two sisters. The apocryphal fourth/fifth-century History of Joseph the Carpenter calls them Assia and Lydia, while the fourth-century church father and (cantankerous) apologist Epiphanius names them Mary and Salome (Panarion 78, 8; Ancoratus 60).

[2] Fragments of this Jewish-Christian Gospel are all that are extant. This particular fragment is quoted by Jerome in his work, Against Pelagius, 3, 2. (See Edgar Hennecke, New Testament Apocrypha, Vol. One: Gospels and Related Writings, Edited by Wilhelm Schneemelcher (English translation edited by R. McL. Wilson) (Philadelphia: The Westminster Press, 1963), pp. 146 – 147.)

[3] The five historical books of Hegesippus are lost to us, and what we have of them are what has been preserved by Eusebius of Caesarea in his History of the Church. I am quoting from Williamson’s smooth, readable translation of Eusebius. (Eusebius, The History of the Church, Translated by G. A. Williamson. Revised Edition with a New Introduction by Andrew Louth (England: Penguin Books, 1989), p. 59.)

[4] This fragment comes from Jerome’s De Viris Illustribus (a collection of short biographies, of which this is the second), in which Jerome cites Origen. (See Edgar Hennecke, Op. cit., p. 165.)

[5] The Clementine Homilies, “The Epistle of Peter to James” and “The Epistle of Clement to James”; from: Alexander Roberts, D.D. and James Donaldson, LL.D. (Editors), Ante-Nicene Fathers, Vol. 8 (Peabody: Hendrickson Publishers, 1999), pp. 215 and 218.

[6] The Gospel of Thomas, logion 12.

[7] See my book, The Woman, the Hour, and the Garden: A Study of Imagery in the Gospel of John (Eerdmans: 2016), particularly pages 28 – 39.

[8] The finest and fullest study of this subject is: Peter Brown, The Body and Society: Men, Women, and Sexual Renunciation in Early Christianity (New York: Columbia University Press, 1988).

[9] Hengel’s essay has influenced my own view of the Letter of James, although I would hesitate to follow him in every particular. He goes into some detail, explaining that the epistle, written by James himself, is a sustained anti-Pauline polemic following the arrest of Paul (i.e., sometime between 58 and 62), and (at least, primarily) addressed to the Gentile Christians of Paul’s mission. He highlights seven passages that – to his mind – are direct attacks by James on Paul’s character and theology. I believe Hengel is too extreme in his conclusions, and that not all the “evidence” he accrues is convincing. To his credit, he states that he is only engaging in “a ‘science of conjecture.’” Still, caveats aside, many of his conjectures ring true enough that, in muted form, some of them reappear in my commentary. Martin Hengel’s 1987 essay, “The Letter of James as Anti-Pauline Polemic” can be found, in a somewhat abridged form, in: The Writings of St. Paul: A Norton Critical Edition (Second Edition), Edited by Wayne A. Meeks and John T. Fitzgerald (New York/London: W. W. Norton & Company, Inc., 2007), pp. 242 – 253.