When Mark describes Jesus’ death on the cross he notes that “Mary the mother of James and Joses” was present.13 Luke changes this to read “the women [unnamed] who had followed him from Galilee” (Luke 23:49). When Jesus is buried, Mark again notes that “Mary Magdalene and Mary the mother of Joses” were present at the tomb (Mark 15:47). Luke changes his account to read “the women [again unnamed] who had come with him from Galilee followed and saw the tomb” (Luke 23:55). In most cases Luke followed Mark rather closely as a source, much more so than did Matthew, who constantly adds his own editorial revisions. But this is not the case when it comes to the mother and brothers of Jesus. Such bold editing could not be accidental; there is something very important going on here. Since this editing runs through both volumes of this work, Luke and Acts, it is clearly part of the author’s central agenda to recast the history of the early movement so that James and the family of Jesus are muted and Paul emerges as the ultimate hero who proclaims the true gospel to the world.
The author of Luke-Acts was also pro-Roman. Paul, according to Acts, was a Roman citizen. Luke wants his Gentile Roman readers to know and value that about Paul, and thus look with favor on the growing Gentile Christian movement. At the time he writes, in the first half of the second century A.D., after the bloody Jewish revolts against Rome, it was less and less popular to be Jewish or to be associated with Jewish causes—particularly anything that might be seen as messianic.14 For example, in his account of the trial of Jesus, Luke goes far beyond Mark, his primary source, to emphasize that Pontius Pilate was a reasonable and just ruler who went to extraordinary lengths to get Jesus released. He removes the reference to Pilate having Jesus scourged and even omits the horrible mocking and abuse that Jesus suffered at the hands of Pilate’s Roman Praetorium guard (Luke 23:25 compared with Mark 15:15–20). In Luke Jesus might not have been a friend of Rome, but he was surely treated fairly by his Roman captors, as is Paul throughout the book of Acts when he encounters Roman authorities.
For Luke there was no possibility that the followers of Jesus retreated to Galilee in sorrow and despair after Jesus’ death. He puts all the “sightings” of Jesus in Jerusalem. He does not even mention Galilee and what might have happened there, and in Luke Jesus forbids the apostles to leave the city of Jerusalem. To him Galilee represents the native, indigenous, Jewish origins of Jesus and his family, where the leadership of James apparently took root following Jesus’ death, and the influence of Mary his mother, Mary Magdalene, and Jesus’ other brothers was strong. Galilee was also known, from the time of the Maccabees (c. 165 B.C.) as the center of political and religious unrest and ripe for messianic candidates such as Judas the Galilean, John the Baptizer, and Jesus of Nazareth.
These Jerusalem-based “sightings,” according to Luke, happened on Sunday, the very day the empty tomb was discovered, so that any doubts the apostles must have had in response to the brutal and horrible death of their leader were immediately dispelled. Paul alone, who took the “Gospel” message all the way to Rome, would fulfill Jesus’ last words, according to Luke:
Thus it is written, that the Christ should suffer and on the third day rise from the dead, and that repentance and forgiveness of sins should be preached in his name to all nations, beginning from Jerusalem. (Luke 24:46–47)
According to this standard story, about forty days after Jesus’ death the eleven apostles gathered together in Jerusalem in the upper room where they had had their last meal with Jesus. Their purpose was to choose a successor to Judas Iscariot, who had killed himself. Luke carefully lists the eleven by name: “Peter, and John, and James [the fisherman], and Andrew Philip and Thomas, Bartholomew and Matthew James son of Alphaeus, and Simon the Zealot, and Judas brother of James.” Luke then adds this qualifying sentence, which has served to marginalize the Jesus family for the past nineteen hundred years: “All these [the Eleven] were constantly devoting themselves to prayer, together with certain women, including Mary the mother of Jesus as well as his brothers [unnamed]” (Acts 1:13–14). Luke effectively separates Jesus’ family from the eleven apostles, associating his mother, Mary, with the group of unnamed women from Galilee, while making Jesus’ brothers anonymous. Also, in listing the eleven apostles he places Peter and John first, giving them primacy, changing the order of his earlier list of the Twelve (Luke 6:14). He is quite aware the three pillars of the Jesus movement are James, Peter, and John, in that order—but who would ever imagine that James was actually installed as leader over the newly constituted council of the Twelve?15 What Luke dared not do was to write the Jesus family out of his account entirely, knowing that later in his narrative he will have to reluctantly acknowledge that James was in charge of the entire movement.
This makes it all the more strange that the first time James is ever mentioned by name in Luke-Acts is when he mysteriously is presented as the undisputed leader at the Jerusalem council of A.D. 50—twenty years after the death of Jesus! At this meeting Paul and his assistant Barnabas appeared before the apostles and elders at Jerusalem to officially give account of the Christian message they were preaching to Greek-speaking non-Jews in Asia Minor. The main agenda was to deliberate the status of these non-Jews who had joined the Nazarene movement in response to Paul’s preaching. At issue was whether Gentiles should be required to become Jewish through formal conversion, including male circumcision, and take on the obligations to follow Jewish laws and customs. Paul strongly opposed any such requirement and according to Acts, Peter supported him. Then suddenly, with no introduction, after everyone had spoken, James declared his “judgment” on the matter! (Acts 15:13–21) Luke does not even identify James as Jesus’ brother. James just appears, suddenly, never mentioned by name before, and he is in charge of the entire movement, rendering a formal decision like a judge presiding over a Jewish court of law. James declares that converting to Judaism was not necessary for non-Jews in order to have a right relationship to God. James here echoed the position of the Pharisees toward the non-Jewish world. So long as one had shunned the worship of “idols,” giving allegiance to the God of Israel alone, and was following the minimal ethical standards expected of all humankind, one could have the status of a “righteous Gentile” or “God-fearer.” As the rabbis later put things, “The righteous of all nations have a place in the world to come.”16
The book of Acts mentions James one other time, when Paul has returned to Jerusalem toward the end of the 50s A.D. The day after his arrival Paul went to “visit James and all the elders were present” (Acts 21:18). Once again it is clear that James is leader of the group and Paul knows he must account to him. There had been a serious charge raised against Paul, based on rumors that had circulated as to what he was preaching in Asia Minor and Greece. The claim was that Paul himself, as a Jew, had given up an observant Jewish life and that he was privately teaching other fellow Jews that they could do the same (Acts 21:17–26). Presumably this action might involve such things as dietary laws, observance of the Sabbath day and other Jewish holy days, and even the requirement of male circumcision (Galatians 4:10; Colossians 2:16–17). It is noteworthy that Luke, who wants to present a perfect picture of harmony and agreement between Paul and James, does not actually say that Paul denied this charge, but only that Paul allowed James and the other leaders in Jerusalem to think that it was not true.