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Acts presents both of Paul’s meetings with James and the Jerusalem apostles and elders as harmonious and positive. Fortunately we have Paul’s side of the story in his letters and we know there was a diametrically opposite outcome. The irony of the Luke-Acts portrayal of James is quite amazing. James is mentioned only twice, both times in the book of Acts in an account that stretches over a thirty-year period. James is not even identified as Jesus’ brother, yet those two scenes, separated by ten years, offer us the strongest kind of historical evidence that James presided over the Twelve as leader of the Christian movement.

To get the details of how James assumed this role of leadership, beyond what the letters of Paul indicate, we have to go to sources outside the New Testament. The Gospel of Thomas was discovered in upper Egypt in 1945 outside the little village of Nag Hammadi. Although the text itself dates to the third century, scholars have shown that it preserves, despite later theological embellishments, an original Aramaic document that comes to us from the early days of the Jerusalem church.17 It provides us a rare glimpse into what scholars have called “Jewish Christianity,” that is, the earliest followers of Jesus led by James. The Gospel of Thomas is not a narrative of the life of Jesus but rather a listing of 114 of his “sayings” or teachings. Saying 12 reads as follows:

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

Here we have an outright statement, placed in the mouth of Jesus, that he is handing over the leadership and spiritual direction of his movement to James. One should keep in mind that the Gospel of Thomas in its present form comes to us from a later period, when the matter of “who is going to be our leader” had become a critical one for the followers of Jesus, with many competing claims of authority and power. The phrase “no matter where you go” implies that the authority and leadership of James is not restricted to the Jerusalem church. According to this text, James had been put in charge over all of Jesus’ followers. The phrase “for whose sake heaven and earth came into being” reflects a Jewish notion that the world, though wicked and unworthy of God’s grace, is sustained because of the extraordinary virtues of a handful of righteous or “just” individuals.18 James the brother of Jesus acquired the designation “James the Just” both to distinguish him from others named James and to honor him for his preeminent position.

Clement of Alexandria, who wrote in the late second century A.D., is another early source that confirms this succession of James. Clement writes: “Peter and James [the fisherman] and John after the Ascension of the Savior did not struggle for glory, because they had previously been given honor by the Savior, but chose James the Just as Overseer of Jerusalem.”19 In a subsequent passage Clement elaborated: “After the resurrection the Lord [Jesus] gave the tradition of knowledge to James the Just and John and Peter, these gave it to the other Apostles, and the other Apostles to the Seventy.”20 This passage preserves for us the tiered structure of the leadership that Jesus left behind: James the Just as successor; John and Peter as his left- and right-hand advisors; the rest of the Twelve; then the Seventy, who are referred to in the book of Acts as the “elders.” This council of Seventy is one that Jesus himself had established and appears to function as a kind of proto-Christian “Sanhedrin,” the official governing body of the Jews at that time.

Eusebius, the early-fourth-century Christian historian, in commenting on this passage wrote, “James whom men of old had surnamed ‘Just’ for his excellence of virtue, is recorded to have been the first elected to the throne of the oversight of the church in Jerusalem.”21 The Greek term thronos refers to a “seat” or “chair” of authority and is the same term used for a king or ruler. In Eusebius’s time the bishop of Rome had not yet achieved supremacy over bishops in other areas, so Eusebius seems to have no problem with presenting James as a kind of proto-pope in Jerusalem.

Eusebius also preserves the testimony of Hegesippus, a Jewish-Christian of the early second century, who he says is from the “generation after the Apostles”:

The succession of the church passed to James the brother of the Lord, together with the Apostles. He was called the “Just” by all men from the Lord’s time until ours, since many are called James, but he was holy from his mother’s womb.22

The Greek word that Hegesippus used here, “to succeed” (diadexomai), is regularly used for a royal blood line, for example, when Philip king of Macedon passes on his rule to his son Alexander the Great.23

We also have a recently recovered Syriac source, The Ascents of James, embedded in a later corpus known as the Pseudo-Clementine Recognitions, that reflects some of the earliest traditions related to the Jerusalem church under the leadership of James the Just.24 It records events in Jerusalem seven years following the death of Jesus, when James is clearly at the helm: “The church in Jerusalem that was established by our Lord was increasing in numbers being ruled uprightly and firmly by James who was made Overseer over it by our Lord.”25 The Latin version of the Recognitions passes on the following admonition: “Wherefore observe the greatest caution, that you believe no teacher, unless he bring from Jerusalem the testimonial of James the Lord’s brother, or of whosoever may come after him” (4:35). The Second Apocalypse of James, one of the texts found with the Gospel of Thomas at Nag Hammadi, stressed the intimate bond between Jesus and James, in keeping with the idea that James was the “beloved disciple.” In this text Jesus and James were “nursed with the same milk” and Jesus kisses his brother James and says to him, “Behold I shall reveal to you everything my beloved” (50.15–22).

What is impressive about these sources is the way in which they speak with a single voice, yet come from various authors and time periods, confirming what the book of Acts never relates openly, but Paul states explicitly. The basic elements of the picture they preserve for us are amazingly consistent: Jesus passes to James his successor rule of the Church; James is widely known by the surname “the Just One” because of his reputation for righteousness both in his community and among the people; and Peter, John, and the rest of the Twelve, as well as Paul, look to James as their undisputed leader.

It is quite remarkable that the contemporary Jewish historian Josephus, who had no affiliation with the Christian movement, relates the death of James, not recorded in the New Testament, in some detail. Josephus reports that the Jewish people viewed James’s death at the hand of the Jewish Sanhedrin, led by the high priest Ananus, with such disfavor that their protest caused Herod Agrippa, grandson of Herod the Great, to have Ananus removed from his priestly office after only three months.26 Based on his account we can reliably date James’s death to A.D. 62. The early Jewish-Christian writer Hegesippus preserves the bloody details, relating how James was thrown from the corner of the Temple enclosure into the Kidron valley, where he was stoned and beaten to death with a club.27