Most people who read or heard the news story, even those claiming a fair knowledge of the New Testament, found themselves asking—James who? The fisherman James, one of the twelve apostles, might have been familiar, but who was this mysterious second James? And how could he have been a brother of Jesus, if Mary, Jesus’ mother, remained a virgin throughout her life?
At least since the fourth century, Roman Catholics, represented by the church father Jerome, had claimed that the brothers of Jesus, mentioned and named in the New Testament, were cousins of Jesus, not literal brothers, since both Mary and Joseph remained virgins throughout their lives.8 Eastern Catholics, represented by Epiphanius, held the view that they were stepbrothers, older than Jesus, and children of Joseph from a previous marriage.9 According to Epiphanius, Joseph was a widower, over eighty years old, when he took Mary as his wife. Protestants tend to be divided, but many, particularly in modern times, accept that Joseph and Mary, following the virgin birth of Jesus, had other children together, so these would be half brothers of Jesus from his mother, Mary, since Jesus had no human father.10
Paul knows James as “the brother of the Lord,” and he mentions the “brothers of the Lord” as a group as well (Galatians 1:19; 1 Corinthians 9:5). He distinguishes these brothers from Peter, from the Twelve, and from those called “apostles” in a more general sense (1 Corinthians 9:5; 15:5–7). When he mentions the name James without a descriptive tag, there is no doubt he refers to Jesus’ brother James, as Paul is our earliest witness to James being the head of the Jerusalem church. According to Paul, James stands first, along with Peter and John, as the “pillars” of the movement (Galatians 2:9, 12).
Terminology can be quite tricky when it comes to James himself, as well as the movement he led for over thirty years. Before I take up the full story let me attempt some important clarifications and express some caveats.
First, the person we know as James the brother of Jesus, as well as the author of the letter of James that bears his name, tucked in the back of the New Testament, twentieth of twenty-seven documents making up the whole, needs a bit of explaining. James in English is the name Iakobov in Greek, consistent throughout the New Testament, which is in fact the name Jacob (Yaaqov in Hebrew). Thus it is the same name as that of the grandson of Abraham and the son of Isaac, used a total of 358 times throughout the Bible, including in the New Testament. So when Jesus says that “Abraham, Isaac, and Jacob” will be raised from the dead when the kingdom of God arrives, the Greek texts of our gospels use the word Iakobov, clearly and properly translated as Jacob (Mark 12:26). Yet the same word, when used of the fisherman apostle or the brother of Jesus, becomes James, not Jacob, in English. Imagine the reverse, if translators had put “Abraham, Isaac, and James.” The effect would be quite jolting and most readers would have not the slightest idea of what might be going on.
The English name James is so rooted in our language it is not going to change. I can’t imagine a time when we would speak of the King Jacob Version of the Bible, or Jacob Dean, the late great movie star. But when we are translating the Greek New Testament this is a very different matter, since the English name James did not exist anciently, and the Greek name is plainly and clearly Jacob and so translated, so long as it does not refer to the apostle James or the James the brother of Jesus. It simply makes no linguistic sense.
Unfortunately, the effect is more than a matter of style. The name Jacob is clearly Jewish, not Greek or Latin, with deep roots in the Hebrew Bible and Jewish culture. To call Jesus’ brother James, in English, dissociates and isolates him from his Jewish environment. But if one begins to use “Jacob” for “James,” what tiny measure of familiarity anyone might have with James the brother of Jesus, given his obscurity and marginalization, will completely dissolve. So my first caveat is that I will continue to call Jesus’ brother “James,” even though it obscures his Jewish heritage.
It is also problematic in this period to use terms such as “Judaism,” “Christianity,” or even “Judaeo-Christian” to describe the emerging movement we come to know much later as Christianity. Neither Jesus nor his first followers understood themselves as part of a new religion called Christianity, and that goes for Paul as well. The word “Christianity” never appears in the entire New Testament and the word “Christian” never in any of Paul’s writings. The early followers of Jesus were predominantly Jews, living within a Jewish culture that had as its main reference points Abraham, Moses, the Hebrew Prophets, and Israel as God’s chosen people, with the world divided into “Jew” and “Gentile” rather than Judaism and Christianity. If the movement had any name it was most likely “Nazarene,” taking its place among a diverse cluster of groups, sects, and movements that make up the variations of “Judaism” in this period.11 Indeed, even talking about the “religion of Judaism” at this time is quite problematic, since those who identified themselves as part of Jewish culture were hardly monolithic or “orthodox” in their practices or their beliefs.12 I have nonetheless, and quite purposely, chosen to use the anachronistic term “Christianity,” or in some cases “Jewish Christianity,” for these early stages of the Jesus movement, whether associated with James or Paul. I want to highlight the point that there were rival and competing versions of emerging “Christianity” during this period, each taking Jesus as their reference point, but with distinct and irreconcilable differences, even though in the end this dispute between Paul and the apostles is clearly a Jewish family feud.
REMEMBERING JAMES
As we have noted, it is Paul who gives us our earliest reference to James and his leadership over the Jerusalem-based movement following the death of Jesus (Galatians 1:18–19; 2:9). Paul’s evidence here is invaluable since the author of the book of Acts only begrudgingly and obliquely acknowledges the leadership of James over the entire Jesus movement. Acts is our only early account of the history of early Christianity, and its prominent place in the New Testament, following the four gospels, ensured its dominance. It is the book of Acts that is largely responsible for the standard portrait of early Christianity in which Peter and Paul assume such a dominant role and James is largely marginalized or left out entirely. The presentation of Acts has become the story, even though its version of events is woefully one-sided and historically questionable. The author of Acts surely knew, but was not willing to state, that James took over the leadership of the movement after Jesus’ death. In his early chapters he never even mentions James by name and casts Peter and John, the other two “pillars,” as the undisputed leaders of Jesus’ followers, effectively blurring out James entirely. His major agenda in the book as a whole is to promote the centrality of the mission and message of the apostle Paul. Although Acts has twenty-four chapters, once Paul is introduced in chapter 9 the rest of the book is wholly about Paul. Even Peter begins to drop out of the picture after chapter 12. Rather than “Acts of the Apostles” the book might better be named “The Acts of Paul.” This suppression of James is systematic and deliberate, as we shall see.
According to Mark, our earliest gospel, the townspeople at Nazareth, where Jesus grew up, are amazed at his teachings and his miracles. They say to one another: “Is this not the carpenter, the son of Mary and brother of James and Joses and Judas and Simon, and are not his sisters here with us?” (Mark 6:3). Most scholars are convinced that the author of the gospel of Luke, who also wrote the book of Acts, used Mark as his main source. He has some independent material, as well as the Q source (which I will explain below), but his core story of Jesus is taken from Mark. Accordingly, he edits Mark freely, based on his own emphases and agenda. Here, for example, when he relates this scene in Nazareth, based on Mark, he omits the names of the brothers and has the people ask, “Is not this Joseph’s son?” (Luke 4:22). His silence has nothing to do with the idea that Mary had no other children. His clear intention is to make the brothers, and James in particular, virtually anonymous. He continues this practice throughout his two-volume work of Luke-Acts.