The Gospel of James

How did he manage to get all 10 commandments on one tablet?

who is known as Saint James the Just, is reckoned to have been Jesus' brother, and is the author of one of the many letters collected in the Christian Bible, though scholars argue whether it was indeed this James, rather than James the son of Zebedee, or James the son of Alphaeus who is also known as James the Less, or James the Younger, but that is irrelevant to our purpose here.

The book, which is also known as "The Protevangelion of James", and as "The Infancy Gospel of James", was written somewhere between 140 and 170 CE, so it definitely cannot have been written by him. Attributing it to him, however, will have given it an additional weight of authority, and several tractates found among the codices at Nag Hammadi likewise bear his name, but are also understood not actually to have been written by him.

James, in Yehudit, is usually Chaim (whence Jaime in the Spanish), which means "Life", though Christian scholars generally treat him as Jacob, as though he were Ya'akov, and give his name in Greek as Iάκωβος. Traditional scholarship tells us that Jacobus in Greek becomes Jacobu in Latin, which then somehow gets transformed into Jacomus. I am more inclined to think that his name was Chaim, and that Chaim went straight into Latin as Jacomus; and then, at some later date, the two names Jacobu and Jacomus became wrongly assumed to be variations of the same original, whence Giacomo in the Italian and Jack in the English for Jacob, and of course Iago and Diego and Tiago... but this has absolutely nothing to do with our text.

Both his date of birth and his family background are subjects of some controversy, less because of his status than that of his mother, and this because he appears to have been older than Jesus, which creates some difficulty with respect of the "virgin birth". I shall return to this later (see "The Brother Debate" below).

He became the first Bishop of Yeru-Shala'im, and was the author of "The Epistle of James" in the "New Testament", sent to those Jews who had converted to Christianity in the Diaspora. He was the first of the Seventy (or possibly Seventy-Two) apostles mentioned in Luke 10:1–20, and Galatians 2:9 refers to "James, Cephas, and John, who seemed to be pillars…".

He was given the sobriquet "the Just" because of his asceticism, and the likelihood is that, as an observant Jew, he took Nazirite vows, an opinion with which Epiphanius concurred ("Panarion" 29.4). He should not be confused with James, the son of Zebedee. If he was indeed the brother of Jesus, and an important enough apostle that he became the first Bishop of Yeru-Shala'im, it is odd that none of the Canonical Gospels give any information about his life or the role he played in the early church. Matthew, Mark and Luke give his name, but nothing else; John doesn't even mention him; nor do the early chapters of the Acts of the Apostles. It is from the later chapters of Acts that we know how significant he was to the community in Yeru-Shala'im; when Peter miraculously escapes from prison and has to flee Yeru-Shala'im and Herod Agrippa's persecution, he specifically asks that James be informed (Acts 12:17).

Later, when the Christians of Antioch became concerned over whether Gentile Christians (those of "pagan" rather than Jewish origin) needed to be circumcised in order to be saved, they sent Paul and Barnabas to confer with the Yeru-Shala'im church, and James played a prominent role in the formulation of the council's decision (Acts 15:13 ff). James is the last named figure to speak, after Peter, Paul and Barnabas. He delivers what he calls his "judgment" (Acts 15:19), stating that he is against the requirement, and augments this with entirely unsolicited suggestions of prohibitions against eating blood and meat sacrificed to idols - strange judgements for a man to make in Yeru-Shala'im, where the Temple was still standing, and both of these practices were already abominations to the Jews. Nevertheless both were adopted by the Council, ratified by all the apostles and elders, and sent as an instruction to the other churches by letter - an extension of proto-Judaism into Christianity.

Later still, when Paul arrived in Yeru-Shala'im to deliver the money he had raised for the faithful there, it was to James that he spoke, and it was James who insisted that Paul ritually cleanse himself at the Temple, both to prove his faith and to counteract rumours that he had been teaching rebellion against the Torah (Acts 21:18 ff), a charge known technically as Antinomianism. Paul goes on to describe James as being one of the people to whom the risen Christ revealed himself (1 Corinthians 15:3–8); and later in the same epistle he mentions James in a way that suggests James had been married (9:5). In Galatians, Paul lists James with Cephas (better known as Peter, which means "rock", as does Caiaphas, so really Cephas is a slightly naughty and probably deliberate misrepresentation by the Christian scribes and clergy) and John as the three "pillars" of the Church, who will minister to the "circumcised", which is to say both Jews by birth and Jewish converts, in Yeru-Shala'im, while Paul and his fellows will minister to the "uncircumcised" (2:9, 2:12).

James' position as Bishop of Yeru-Shala'im opens a controversy not often confronted by Christian scholars, for logically the headquarters of Christianity should be Yeru-Shala'im, and not Rome, and this even if Rome had not been responsible for the Crucifixion, which surely makes their hosting the religion even more unpalatable. Nevertheless, even in James' time, the Bishopric in Rome was exalted above that of Yeru-Shala'im, presumably because one must render unto Caesar the things that are Caesar's, and Rome was where the serious rendering got done. The head of the church was anyway Peter, designated as such by Jesus when he called him "the Rock", and his "Chief Shepherd", though the sobriquet "the Rock" was also a double irony (half-noted above, but worth repeating, for the other half): a) because his name was really Simon, and Petra, which means Rock in Latin, was also the name of the redlands beyond the Dead Sea where most of the Christian ascetics and mystics were living; b) because the name of the High Priest, Caiaphas, also means "rock" in Greek, and Cephas should correctly be pronounced Caiaphas - now aren't those two of the most interesting coincidences!

Among those few theologians who have tackled the problem, John Chrysostom summed up the Christian position best. "If anyone should say," he wrote, "'Why then was it James who received the See of Jerusalem?' I should reply that Christ made Peter the teacher not of that See, but of the world."

Among those other of the few theologians who have tackled the problem, Saint Jerome left behind the most contentious and controversial, though this too has never been fully explored. Jerome wrote, in chapter 2 of "De Viris Illustribus" ("On Illustrious Men"), quoting Hegesippus' account of James from the fifth book of Hegesippus' lost "Commentaries", that

"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 woollen vestments but linen, and went alone into the Temple and prayed on behalf of the people, insomuch that his knees were reputed to have acquired the hardness of camels' knees." 

But wait a moment! No one but the Kohen Gadol, the High Priest of the Temple, could ever enter the Holy of Holies, and then only once a year on Yom Kippur, so Jerome's quotation from Hegesippus suggests that James must himself have been the High Priest. Yet we know from contemporary records who the High Priest was at any given moment from before Jesus' birth to the destruction of the Temple in 70 CE, and it does not include a Christian who was the brother of Jesus of Genaseret!

What happened to James? According to Flavius Josephus, writing his "Jewish Antiquities" in Rome after he had sold out the Jewish army that he commanded at Yodfat (Jotapata), changed sides, and agreed to write an account of the Jewish wars that would be acceptable to the Emperor... according to Josephus, whose word cannot be trusted on anything, "the brother of Jesus, who was called Christ", met his death after the death of the procurator Porcius Festus, but before Lucceius Albinus took office ("Antiquities 20,9") - which allows it to be dated to 62 CE. The High Priest Ananus ben Ananus took advantage of this lack of imperial oversight to assemble a Sanhedrin which 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, unfortunately the James in question was not James the Just, and the words, "who was called Christ," are now known to have been added during the Middle Ages. There is actually no reference to Jesus, or anyone connected with Jesus, anywhere in Josephus.

Eusebius of Caesarea (c275–339 CE), while quoting Josephus' account, also records otherwise lost passages from Hegesippus, and Clement of Alexandria ("Historia Ecclesiae", 2.23). Hegesippus' account varies somewhat from Josephus', 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."

Vespasian's siege and capture of Jerusalem delayed the selection of Simeon of Jerusalem to succeed James. Josephus' account of James' death (albeit the wrong James) is more credible because the Acts of Apostles say nothing about James after the year 60. Josephus, however, 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.

The pseudepigraphical "First Apocalypse of James" claims that James left Jerusalem and fled to Pella in Macedonia before the Roman siege of that city in 70 CE. (Ben Witherington suggests that what is meant by this was that James' bones were taken by the early Christians who had fled Jerusalem).

♰

So much for the man, or men.

"The Epistle of James" has traditionally been attributed to James the Just. A number of modern Biblical scholars, however, first insist that the Greek of this epistle is too fluent for someone whose mother tongue was Aramaic (go tell that to Joseph Conrad, or Vladimir Nabokov, neither of whom had English even as their second language!), but then partially redeem themselves by arguing that it expresses a number of his ideas, and then stick their foot right back in the same place by saying that it must have been dictated in the best Greek he could manage, and then rewritten or at least corrected by a scribe or some other follower. More sensible scholars argue that the historical James could perfectly well have had such fluency in Greek, and could perfectly conceivably have authored the Epistle himself [ναι, αλλά τι γίνεται με τις ημερομηνίες - βλ παραπάνω? see above, and look up the Greek on googletranslate].

Modern historians of the early Christian churches tend to place James in the tradition of Jewish Christianity. Where Paul emphasised 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 Judaising. One corpus commonly cited as proof of this is 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 who some modern critics think may actually be Paul. Some apocryphal gospels testify to the reverence that Jewish followers of Jesus such as the Ebionites had for James.

"The Gospel of the Hebrews" (fragment 21) relates the risen Jesus' appearance to James. "The Gospel according to Thomas" relates that the disciples asked Jesus, "We are aware that you will depart from us. Who will be our leader?", and that 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."

♰

Which bring us to the so-called "brother" debate.

In the Canonical Gospels James is recorded as a "brother of the Lord", which may be intended as siblinghood, or simply the comradeship of fellow travellers. In the "Liturgy of St James" he is called "Adelphotheos - Αδελφόθεος - the brother of God", which is the source of the general Christian tradition that he was Jesus' actual brother, the second child (note "second" and refer back to the top of this essay) of Mary and Joseph. However, elsewhere in the Christian Bible (e.g. Mark 3:16-19) he is referred to as the son of a man named Alphaeus, who at least "It is thought... was stoned by the Jewish authorities for preaching Christ and was buried in the Sanctuary in Jerusalem... Justinian is said to have exhumed the body of James and placed his bones in the Church of the Holy Apostles in Constantinople in 332." [click here for my source for this].

Jesus' "brothers" - James as well as Jude, Simon and Joses - are mentioned in Matthew 13:55 and Mark 6:3, and by Paul in Galatians 1:19. Since James' name always appears first in lists, this suggests he was the eldest. Paul refers to James, at that time the only prominent Christian James in Jerusalem, as an Apostle, hence his identification by some with James, son of Alphaeus. 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."

While 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. The most commonly 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; Joseph already had children; James was already a boy when Jesus was born.) "The Protevangelium of James" is one of the earliest documents - 150 CE - and although it was not included in scripture, and later joined our list of "Prohibited Gospels" under its alternate name, "The Gospel of James", its traditional testimony was accepted by the early church.

Jews living in Yeru-Shala'im in Christ's time were still keeping Mosaic Law, the first commandment of which states very clearly "Tehu u rabu - go forth and mutliply". Entirely reasonable then to imagine that Mary and Joseph, being normal Jews, would have had more children after Mary gave birth to Jesus, thus making James a full brother of Jesus, assuming that Jesus was the biological son of Joseph, and not miraculously incarnated. All of which allows Christians to avoid James' being the "elder" brother (and probably I should paraphrase all of this into an essay of my own, but I want to use as much as possible of the language used by Christians, and in the way that they use it, to give the authentic flavour of this utterly absurd piece of navel-gazing passed off as theological debate: the need, ultimately, to rewrite history because it is inconvenient to a piece of nonsense invented centuries later, and adopted as factual, and therefore requiring that rewrite. Why not simply say that Mary had James first, but God wanted her to be a virgin when Jesus was born, so he miraculously sewed up her hymen, gave her a brand-new womb and uterus and all other required parts, and then sent Gabri-El to explain how this was going to work - Gabri-El then leaving for a game of Quidditch with Harry Potter and tea down a rabit-hole with Alice and the Mad Hatter, before climbing back on his winged-and-talking horse Buraq and heading off to Bilbo Baggins' hobbithole for a late evening pipe.)

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; and of course, with men allowed up to four wives at that epoch, two men can be brothers in the Bible without sharing the same mother - hundreds of examples. Or simply kinsman. This is the view of most Protestants, who believe that 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 suggests that, after the early and childless death of Joseph, Mary married Clopas (or Cleopas in some renditions), a younger brother of Joseph, according to the Levirate law - but this needs some sort of documentary evidence, and I am unable to identify any. 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 a Roman soldier named Panthera.
According to the apocryphal "First Apocalypse of James", James is not the earthly brother of Jesus, but a spiritual brother. Eusebius reports the tradition that James the Just was the son of Joseph's brother Clopas, and therefore was one of the "brethren" (which he interprets as "cousin") of Jesus described in the Christian Bible. This is echoed by Jerome in "De Viris Illustribus" - James is said to be the son of another Mary - the wife of Clopas, and the "sister" of Mary, the mother of Jesus: he notes the description 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. 

And all this is absolutely fascnating, but what does it have to do with "The Gospel of James"? To which the answer is, alas, very little. Let us, then, get to the text itself...

which can be found here

and there is the "Spark's Notes" equivalent here

and another here.

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