Persona Non Grata: James the Brother of Jesus - Part 5

[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 4 with:

 

(p.17) " 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. 17.

 

Note:

 

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

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

 

Here now is Part 5.

 

Enjoy,

 

violet

 

 

 

Persona Non Grata: James the Brother of Jesus - Part 5

 

 

Forgotten Hero

 

(p.18) Regrettably, the memory of James, his relationship to his brother Jesus,

and his significant contributions to the early church became lost in the

official history and teaching of Christianity for reasons both benign and

malignant. James's story is thus a tragic one. Because the knowledge we have of

Jesus' siblings is threatening to those with vested theological or

ecclesiastical interests, James was forgotten, downplayed, and even

intentionally suppressed. In the Roman Catholic and Eastern Orthodox traditions,

adherence to the doctrine of the perpetual virginity of Mary makes the notion of

Jesus having natural siblings scandalous. [break Quote]

 

[Note]: i believe it is because of this doctrine of the " perpetual virginity of

Mary " in the Roman Catholic church and in the Eastern Orthodox traditions that

Shri Mataji had to 'set the record straight' and She did so, in the mid-1990s in

Sydney, Australia. i recall Her telling us somewhat shyly, that " The Virgin "

does not mean what we commonly accept it to mean today. She explained to the

effect that " The Virgin " is the Name or Title of Respect, given to the

Immaculate, Pure, Sinless, Divine Mother. That is all She said on the subject

that day, which just happened to be included in whatever else She was saying. We

know now, that Jesus had siblings. There is no question about it. That means

that Mary, the mother of Jesus and Joseph, her husband had children together.

[End Note]

 

[Resuming Quote which continues as part of the above paragraph]:

 

In the Protestant tradition, James's seeming support for " works righteousness, "

especially as it was understood from the New Testament letter of James ( " Faith

without works is dead, " James says in chapter 1), was viewed as antithetical to

the all-important Protestant doctrine of 'sola fide' (faith alone). It was for

this reason that Martin Luther referred to the epistle of James as an " epistle

of straw, " and would have much preferred its removal from the New Testament.

From about the fourth century, disdain for James and his teachings--and even for

acknowledging his existence--spread wide. As a result, his vital contributions

to the early church were lost. Nonetheless, when the role of James is recovered

and objectively assessed, it can justifiably be said that James is the great

" lost hero " of Christianity.

 

My research into James's understanding of the Jewish law has impelled me, as a

Lutheran pastor, to come to grips with the question of where Jesus would have

stood in the debate over the Law in the early church. Frankly, I have been

swayed by the evidence to believe that Jesus was much more Law-oriented than

most Protestants (and Lutherans especially) have ever realized. I have come to

harbor a strong suspicion that Protestantism may have carried the doctrine of

'sola fide' to an extreme that Jesus himself would not have advocated.

 

The so-called new perspective of Paul and Second Temple Judaism that has been

burgeoning in recent decades has attempted to correct this Protestant

misunderstanding by demonstrating that the Law-oriented Judaism of Jesus' day

valued salvation by grace much more than Christians have ever realized. While it

may come as quite a surprise to most Protestant Christians, the widely respected

New Testament scholar James Dunn has shown that the Father of the Reformation,

Martin Luther, who based his insights on " salvation by grace through faith " in

Paul's writings, largely misunderstood Paul's theology:

 

(p.19) Luther read his own experience back into Paul. He assumed that Paul too

must have been confronted by a dominant tradition which taught justification by

works...that the Judaism of Paul's day must have taught the equivalent of the

Catholicism of Luther's day... Unfortunately the grid remained firmly in place

for Protestant scholarship thereafter. [4]

 

The conservative Protestant scholar, Richard Bauckham, has also recognized this:

 

[A] theological tradition which originated with Martin Luther subordinates [the

epistle of] James to Paul...Luther famously deplored James's contradiction of

the Pauline...doctrine of justification by faith alone...and relegated James to

a virtually apocryphal status on the margin of the canon. [5]

 

Undoubtedly, this is the major reason for the marginalization of James in the

Protestant tradition.

 

Current research into Paul is making it quite obvious that the early Protestant

reformers, due to the pressing issues of the Reformation, grossly misunderstood

the Judaism of Jesus' day, the Judaism to which both Jesus and James adhered. A

recovery of James's understanding of the Law can provide a much-needed

correction to this misunderstanding, just one more example of why recovering

James is so important to Christianity today. Recovering James and his teaching

is not only an important step toward resolving the centuries-old

Catholic-Protestant debate over the relative merits of works and faith, but it

is also vital to expanding the interfaith dialogue between Christians, Jews, and

Muslims. James may well be the missing link that can bring peace and

reconciliation to " the people of the Book. "

 

As should be obvious by now, salvaging James from the distortion,

misrepresentation, abuse, and neglect to which he has been subjected will

necessitate exploring many different avenues of research. So let us turn now to

an investigation of how James and Jesus' other siblings are portrayed in the

only biographies we have of Jesus--the four gospels. Many more surprises await

us.

 

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

Chapter 1, Pg. 18-19

Jeffrey J. Butz

Inner Traditions - Rochester, Vermont

ISBN 1-59477-043-3

 

Notes:

 

[4] James D.G. Dunn, 'The Partings of the Ways', 16.

 

[5] Richard Bauckham, 'James: Wisdom of James, Disciple of Jesus the Sage'

(London: Rutledge, 1999), 116-17.