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James the Just
Scripture Readings: Mark 6:1-6, Acts
15:12-21, Galatians 2:1-14
Many Christians do not know that Jesus had a brother named
James. In fact, the New Testament reports that Jesus had four brothers. In Mark
6:3 and Matthew 13:55 they are identified as James, Joses (Joseph in the gospel
of Matthew), Judas and Simon. In the same passages there is also a reference to
the "sisters" of Jesus, so it seems he had at least two sisters and maybe more,
but these are not named. In these passages there is no indication that the
brothers and sisters of Jesus are stepbrothers and stepsisters. The most
straightforward reading of these passages is that they are all the children of
Mary and Joseph.
The brothers of Jesus play only a minor role in the New Testament gospels. The
gospel of Mark relates that the family of Jesus tried to restrain him, as people
were saying, "He has gone out of his mind." (Mk. 3:21) However, this report is
not confirmed in the other New Testament gospels. The gospels of Matthew, Mark
and Luke do record that once, when the brothers of Jesus and his mother tried to
call him out of a crowd, Jesus said: "Whoever does the will of God is my brother
and sister and mother." (Mk. 3:35, see also Mt. 12:50 and Lk. 8:21) Some read
this as inferring that the family of Jesus opposed his ministry, but the passage
may be understood as simply giving those who are faithful the same favored
position as family members.
None of these passages are in the gospel of John, but in this gospel the
narrator says in a parenthetical comment in John 7:5 that: "not even his
brothers believed in him." In the fourth gospel, however, the brothers of Jesus
are traveling with him, as though part of his ministry. Moreover, Acts 1:14
states that the brothers of Jesus and his mother were with the disciples in
Jerusalem after the resurrection, "constantly devoting themselves to prayer."
We do not know if the brothers of Jesus supported his ministry, but they were
leaders in the early church. Paul writing in the first generation of the church
acknowledges the preeminence of James. In Galatians 1:18 Paul says that three
years after his conversion: "I went to Jerusalem to visit Cephas [Peter] and
stayed with him fifteen days; but I did not see any other apostle except James
the Lord’s brother." In Galatians 2:9 Paul refers to James, Cephas and John as
the "acknowledged pillars" of the church. Second century Christian writings
refer to James as the first bishop of the Jerusalem Church and his successor as
a brother of Jesus and James.
Clearly, James the Just (as he was known in early Christian writings) speaks for
the apostles in Acts 15, which describes a council held in Jerusalem to resolve
the dispute between the mission to the Gentiles and "the circumcision party." At
issue is whether Gentile converts must keep the Law of Moses. In Acts 11:1-18
Peter explains to members of "the circumcision party" that in a vision to him
God set aside the dietary restrictions of Jewish law, and in Acts 15 Peter again
defends the mission to the Gentiles. After Barnabas and Paul describe the
"wonders God had done through them among the Gentiles," James gives his
decision: Gentile converts are to keep two dietary restrictions and to abstain
from fornication (temple prostitution).
It is striking that Paul does not mention this council in his writings, which
may mean that he did not attend or know of it. Instead, in Galatians 2-3 we find
Paul in conflict with both Peter and James over rules in a church with Jews and
Gentiles. Paul says in Gal. 2:7-9 that the Jerusalem Church approved his mission
to the Gentiles and sent Peter to "the circumcised." In Gal. 2:10 Paul argues
that the "acknowledged pillars" of the church only required of the Gentile
mission that money be collected for poor Christians in Jerusalem, which Paul
says he was happy to do.
So, when James orders Jews in the Antioch church not to eat with Gentiles, Paul
is outraged. In Gal. 2:11-14 he writes: "But when Cephas [the Aramaic name for
Peter] came to Antioch, I opposed him to his face, because he stood
self-condemned; for until certain people came from James, he used to eat with
the Gentiles. But after they came, he drew back and kept himself separate for
fear of the circumcision faction. And the other Jews joined him in this
hypocrisy, so that even Barnabas was led astray by their hypocrisy. But when I
saw that they were not acting consistently with the truth of the gospel, I said
to Cephas before them all, ‘If you, though a Jew, live like a Gentile, and not
like a Jew, how can you compel the Gentiles to live like Jews?’"
Clearly, the Jerusalem Church under the leadership of James was keeping the Law
of Moses, and this means that during his ministry Jesus did not explicitly set
Jewish law aside. Acts 15, which was written more than twenty years after the
letters of Paul, presents a harmonizing view of this early conflict in the
church. After the Jewish revolt in 66 and the destruction of the temple in
Jerusalem in 70, leadership of the church shifted from Jewish Christians in
Jerusalem to Gentile Christians in Roman cities. Acts plays down the conflict in
the early church between the mission to the Gentiles and the apostles in
Jerusalem and portrays as the work of the Holy Spirit the growth of the Gentile
church. This view was incorporated into the account of the ministry of Jesus in
the gospel of Luke, which is written by the same author.
Acts 21:17-20 reports that when Paul last went to Jerusalem he visited James and
"all the elders," who told Paul "how many thousands of believers there are among
the Jews, and they are all zealous for the law [of Moses]." Acts 21:25 reaffirms
the decision of James in Acts 15. Seven days later, Acts 21:27-28 reports, Jews
from Asia challenged Paul in the temple, accusing him of "teaching everyone
everywhere against our people, our law, and this place." (Whether this was so we
cannot know, but in Romans 10:4 Paul does argue: "Christ is the end of the law
[of Moses] so that there may be righteousness for everyone who believes.") Paul
was arrested to protect him from the wrath of the crowd, but was not tried by
Jewish authorities in Jerusalem because he exercised his right, as a Roman
citizen, to have his case heard by the Emperor in Rome.
In the fourth century, when the canon of the Bible was closed, the church was
firmly in the hands of Gentile Christians and the letters of Paul were given
prominence in the New Testament. The leadership of James the Just in the first
generation of the church is only reflected in the New Testament in a single
letter attributed to him. The inclusion of this letter, however, was fiercely
disputed.
The letter attributed to James was not part of the New Testament authorized by
the Council of Nicea in 325. But church leaders from Alexandria and
Constantinople persuaded Jerome to include the letter in his Vulgate translation
of the Greek New Testament into Latin, and this helped persuade Augustine to
argue for its apostolic authenticity. The letter of James was finally included
in the New Testament canon at the Synod of Hippo in 393 and at the Councils in
Carthage in 397 and 419, and also at the Council of Rome in 382.
These same Councils excluded early Christian writings claiming apostolic
authorship, and in some of these James the Just is prominent. In the gospel of
Thomas, when disciples ask Jesus who will lead them after he is gone, Jesus
answers: "You are to go to James the Just, for whose sake heaven and earth came
into being." In the New Testament, however, Matthew 16:18-19 identifies Peter as
"the rock" on which the church will be built, and Acts confirms that Peter
supported the mission to the Gentiles. So Peter, not James the Just, is the
leading apostle in the New Testament.
3 November 2002
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