Persona Non Grata: James the Brother of Jesus - Part 4

[Guest guest]

Dear All,

 

To recap, the author is examining the nature of Jesus' family and giving an

overview of the evidence for James's relationship to Jesus and James's role in

the early Christian community.

 

We concluded Part 3 with:

 

(p.14) " The stance taken in this book is the position traditionally known as the

Helvidian view, after the Roman theologian Helvidius, which understands the

brothers and sisters of Jesus cited in the New Testament to be full siblings of

Jesus, born to Mary and Joseph after the firstborn Jesus. (p.15) This

understanding is able to retain the doctrine of the virgin birth, but does not

claim an ever-virgin Mary. This has been the traditional Protestant position. It

is the most natural reading of all the New Testament citations that we shall

examine, and requires no bending or stretching of the plain reading of the

original Greek text. Also in support of this view we have Luke's famous words in

the Nativity story: " And she gave birth to her 'first-born' son and wrapped him

in bands of cloth, and laid him in a manger, because there was no place for them

in the inn " (Luke 2:7). If Jesus was an only child, why would Luke use the term

" first-born " ? Another piece of evidence for Mary and Joseph, but 'before they

came together', she was found to be with child through the Holy Spirit "

(Matt.1:18, NIV). " Before they came together " is a classic biblical euphemism

along the lines of " Adam knew Eve. "

 

The Brother of Jesus (And the Lost Teachings of Christianity), p.14.

 

Here now, is Part 4

 

Enjoy,

 

violet

 

 

 

Persona Non Grata: James the Brother of Jesus - Part 4

 

(p.15) The number of references in the New Testament to Jesus having natural

siblings is not insignificant. Mention is made of Jesus' brothers in all four

gospels. There are seven references altogether: Mark 3:31-35 and 6:3; Matthew

12:46-50 and 13:55-56; Luke 8:19-21; and John 2:12 and 7:3-5. James is cited

several times in the book of Acts, where he plays a huge role in the leadership

of the disciples in the decades following Jesus' crucifixion (Acts 12:17;

15:13-21; 21:17-26). Paul speaks of meeting with James in his letter to the

Galatians (1:19 and 2:1-12), giving us the most solid and undisputed evidence we

have that James was a prominent leader of the Jerusalem church. In all these

instances, James clearly seems to be understood as the natural brother of Jesus.

Further evidence for the role of Jesus' brothers is found in 1 Corinthians,

where we learn not only that James was a witness to the Resurrection, but also

that Jesus' other brothers were traveling evangelists. Paul states in passing:

 

This is my defense to those who would examine me. Do we not have the right to

our food and drink? Do we not have the right to be accompanied by a believing

wife, as do the other apostles and the brothers of the Lord and Cephas? [Peter]

(1 Cor. 9:5)

 

Paul's words are startling. Not only does this passage provide further evidence

that Jesus' brothers are not to be identified with the apostles, but it also

claims that Jesus' brothers and the apostles (including Peter) were 'married'; a

two-fold strike against the traditional Catholic teaching that bases the

requirement of priestly celibacy on the understanding that Jesus and his

apostles were not married. [*] In fact, according to Mark's gospel, one of

Jesus' first miracles is curing Peter's mother-in-law of a fever.[+]

 

Finally, in addition to all of the other evidence to be found in the New

Testament, there are two letters attributed to brothers of Jesus--the letters of

James and Jude--although their actual authorship is a much debated question.

 

[*] As we shall see in chapter 9, the tradition of priestly celibacy in the

Catholic church goes back primarily to Jerome and the emergence of the doctrine

of the perpetual virginity of Mary.

 

[+] See Mark 1:30-31; see also Mathew 8:14-15 and Luke 4:38-39.

 

 

 

Early Hero

 

(p.16) References to James also abound outside of the Bible. First and foremost,

independent attestation to the remarkable role James played in apostolic times

is found in the writings of the revered Jewish historian Josephus, whose works

'The Wars of the Jews' and 'The Antiquities of the Jews' are contemporaneous

with the New Testament. In these highly regarded histories, Josephus actually

discusses James at greater length than Jesus.

 

Many early church Fathers also discuss James, including Clement, Eusebius,

Hegesippus, Jerome, and Origen. James is also highly regarded--indeed,

revered--in many of the apocryhpal books that were excluded from the New

Testament, such as the 'Gospel of the Hebrews' and the 'Protevangelium of

James'--a book wholly about James. The famous cache of Gnostic writings

discovered at Nag Hammadi in 1945 includes several works that bear James's name

in their titles, such as the 'Apocryphon of James', the 'First Apocalypse of

James', and the 'Second Apocalypse of James'. There are also references to James

in the now highly regarded 'Gospel of Thomas', championed by many scholars as a

legitimate " fifth gospel. " These writings all bear witness to the high esteem in

which James was held among early Christians.

 

James is looked to as the apostle 'par excellence' by early Jewish-Christian

sects such as the Ebionites and Elkesaites, who revered James while disdaining

Paul and his desire to jettison the requirement that Gentile converts adhere to

Jewish law. (p.17) As we shall see, James is at the storm-center of the early

debate over how the Jewish law applied to Gentile converts to Christianity. It

was James's exceeding righteousness under the Law that led to these

Jewish-Christian groups giving him the epithet " the Just. " It was their desire

to adhere to James's upholding of faith 'and' works (see James 1:17[-22]) rather

than Paul's teaching of faith in Christ as a replacement for the Law, that

caused these early Jewish-Christian sects to be labeled as heretics by the

emerging Catholic orthodoxy. Many scholars today are beginning to recognize that

an understanding of the phenomenon generally referred to as " Jewish

Christianity " is vital to our understanding of how and why Christianity parted

ways with Judaism to become a distinct religion.

 

The importance of Jewish Christianity for an understanding of the early church

was first recognized by the notorious liberal German scholar Ferdinand Christian

Baur of Tubingen University, who in the early 1800s proposed that the accepted

idea of unity and harmonious cooperation among the earliest Christians was a

fiction. Baur and his followers (the so-called Tubingen school) posited a sharp

division, even an outright battle, between Paul and Jesus' apostles over the

issue of Jewish law. While conservative scholars forcefully opposed Baur's

theories and his ideas fell out of favor by the early 1900s, a number of major

scholars today are beginning to reevaluate Baur in light of the most recent

understandings of the thorough Jewishness of Jesus exemplified in the writings

of such respected scholars as E.P. Sanders, Geza, Vermes, and James Dunn.

 

The rediscovery of the Jewishness of Jesus is causing a renaissance of sorts in

the study of the historical Jesus, a subject that is as fraught with lack of

consensus in its current manifestation as it was back in the days of Albert

Schweitzer and his groundbreaking work 'The Quest of the Historical Jesus'.

James actually provides one of the most solid pieces of evidence we have in the

often illusory quest for the historical Jesus. Indeed, James is a vital key to

an understanding of the beliefs and teachings of Jesus. As maverick scholar

Robert Eisenman starkly puts it: " Once James has been rescued from the oblivion

into which he was cast...[it] will no longer be possible to avoid...the obvious

solution to the problem of the Historical Jesus...the answer to which is simple.

Who and whatever James was, so was Jesus. " [3]

 

The Brother of Jesus (And the Lost Teachings of Christianity)

Chapter 1, Pg. 15-17

Jeffrey J. Butz

Inner Traditions - Rochester, Vermont

ISBN 1-59477-043-3

 

Notes:

 

[3] C.F.D. Moule, 'The Gospel According to Mark', The Cambridge Bible Commentary

(Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 1965), 31.