Zealot: The Life and Times of Jesus of Nazareth (31 page)

Hegesippus, who belonged to the second generation of Jesus’s followers, affirms James’s
role as head of the Christian community in his five-volume history of the early Church.
“Control of the church,” Hegesippus writes, “passed, together with the apostles, to
the brother of the Lord, James, whom everyone from the Lord’s time till our own has
named ‘the Just,’ for there were many Jameses.” In the noncanonical
Epistle of Peter
, the chief apostle and leader of the Twelve refers to James as “Lord and Bishop of
the Holy Church.” Clement of Rome (30–97
C.E
.), who would succeed Peter in the imperial city, addresses a letter to James as “the
Bishop of Bishops, who rules Jerusalem, the Holy Assembly of the Hebrews, and all
the Assemblies everywhere.” In the
Gospel of Thomas
, usually dated somewhere between the end of the first and the beginning of the second
century
C.E
., Jesus himself names James his successor: “The disciples said to Jesus, ‘We know
that you will depart from us. Who will be our leader?’ Jesus said to them, ‘Where
you are, you are to go to James the Just, for whose sake heaven and earth came into
being.’ ”

The early Church father Clement of Alexandria (150–215
C.E
.) claims that Jesus imparted a secret knowledge to “James the Just, to John, and
to Peter,” who in turn “imparted it to the other Apostles,” though Clement notes that
among the triumvirate it was James who became “the first, as the record tells us,
to be elected to the episcopal throne of the Jerusalem church.” In his
Lives of Illustrious Men
, Saint Jerome (c. 347–420
C.E
.), who translated the Bible into Latin (the Vulgate), writes that after Jesus ascended
into heaven, James was “immediately appointed Bishop of Jerusalem by the apostles.”
In fact, Jerome argues that James’s holiness and reputation among the people was so
great that “the destruction of Jerusalem was believed to have occurred on account
of his death.” Jerome is
referencing a tradition from Josephus, which is also remarked upon by the third-century
Christian theologian Origen (c. 185–254
C.E
.) and recorded in the
Ecclesiastical History
of Eusebius of Caesarea (c. 260–c. 339
C.E
.), in which Josephus claims that “these things [the Jewish Revolt and the destruction
of Jerusalem] happened to the Jews in requital for James the Just, who was a brother
of Jesus, known as Christ, for though he was the most Righteous of men, the Jews put
him to death.” Commenting on this no longer extant passage of Josephus, Eusebius writes:
“So remarkable a person must James have been, so universally esteemed for Righteousness,
that even the most intelligent of Jews felt this was why his martyrdom was immediately
followed by the siege of Jerusalem” (
Ecclesiastical History
2.23).

Even the New Testament confirms James’s role as head of the Christian community: It
is James who is usually mentioned first among the “pillars” James, Peter, and John;
James who personally sends his emissaries to the different communities scattered in
the Diaspora (Galatians 2:1–14); James, to whom Peter reports his activities before
leaving Jerusalem (Acts 12:17); James who sits in charge of the “elders” when Paul
comes to make supplication (Acts 21:18); James who is the presiding authority over
the Apostolic Council, who speaks last during its deliberations, and whose judgment
is final (Acts 15:13). In fact, after the Apostolic Council, the apostles disappear
from the rest of the book of Acts. But James does not. On the contrary, it is the
fateful dispute between James and Paul, in which James publicly shames Paul for his
deviant teachings by demanding he make supplication at the Temple, that leads to the
climax of the book: Paul’s arrest and extradition to Rome.

Three centuries of early Christian and Jewish documentation, not to mention the nearly
unanimous opinion of contemporary scholars, recognize James the brother of Jesus as
head of the first Christian community—above Peter and the rest of the Twelve; above
John, “the disciple whom Jesus loved” (John 20:2); far above Paul, with whom James
repeatedly clashed. Why then has James
been almost wholly excised from the New Testament and his role in the early church
displaced by Peter and Paul in the imaginations of most modern Christians?

Partly it has to do with James’s very identity as the brother of Jesus. Dynasty was
the norm for the Jews of Jesus’s time. The Jewish Herodian and Hasmonaean families,
the high priests and the priestly aristocracies, the Pharisees, even the bandit gangs
all practiced hereditary succession. Kinship was perhaps even more crucial for a messianic
movement like Jesus’s, which based its legitimacy on Davidic descent. After all, if
Jesus was a descendant of King David, then so was James; why should he not lead David’s
community after the death of the messiah? Nor was James the sole member of Jesus’s
family to be given authority in the early church. Jesus’s cousin Simeon, son of Clopas,
succeeded James as head of the Jerusalem assembly, while other members of his family,
including two grandsons of Jesus’s other brother, Judas, maintained an active leadership
role throughout the first and second centuries of Christianity.

By the third and fourth centuries, however, as Christianity gradually transformed
from a heterogeneous Jewish movement with an array of sects and schisms into an institutionalized
and rigidly orthodox imperial religion of Rome, James’s identity as Jesus’s brother
became an obstacle to those who advocated the perpetual virginity of his mother Mary.
A few overly clever solutions were developed to reconcile the immutable facts of Jesus’s
family with the inflexible dogma of the church. There was, for example, the well-worn
and thoroughly ahistorical argument that Jesus’s brothers and sisters were Joseph’s
children from a previous marriage, or that “brother” actually meant “cousin.” But
the end result was that James’s role in early Christianity was gradually diminished.

At the same time that James’s influence was in decline, Peter’s was ascendant. Imperial
Christianity, like the empire itself, demanded an easily determinable power structure,
one preferably
headquartered in Rome, not Jerusalem, and linked directly to Jesus. Peter’s role as
the first bishop of Rome and his status as the chief apostle made him the ideal figure
upon which to base the authority of the Roman Church. The bishops who succeeded Peter
in Rome (and who eventually became infallible popes) justified the chain of authority
they relied upon to maintain power in an ever-expanding church by citing a passage
in the gospel of Matthew in which Jesus tells the apostle, “I say to you that you
shall be called Peter, and upon this rock I shall build my church” (Matthew 16:18).
The problem with this heavily disputed verse, which most scholars reject as unhistorical,
is that it is the only passage in the entire New Testament that designates Peter as
head of the church. In fact, it is the only passage in any early historical document—biblical
or otherwise—that names Peter the successor to Jesus and leader of the community he
left behind. By contrast there are at least a dozen passages citing James as such.
What historical records do exist about Peter’s role in early Christianity are exclusively
about his leadership of the assembly in Rome, which, while certainly a significant
community, was just one of many assemblies that fell under the overarching authority
of the Jerusalem assembly: the “mother assembly.” In other words, Peter may have been
bishop of Rome, but James was “Bishop of Bishops.”

There is, however, a more compelling reason for James’s steady abatement in early
Christianity, one that has less to do with his identity as Jesus’s brother or his
relation to Peter than it does with James’s beliefs and his opposition to Paul. Some
measure of what James stood for in the early Christian community has already been
revealed through his actions in the book of Acts and in his theological disagreements
with Paul. But an even more thorough understanding of James’s views can be found in
his own often overlooked and much maligned epistle, written sometime between 80 and
90
C.E
.

Obviously James did not himself write the epistle; he was, like his brother Jesus
and most of the apostles, an illiterate peasant with
no formal education. James’s epistle was probably written by someone from within his
inner circle. Again, that is true of almost every book in the New Testament, including
the gospels of Mark, Matthew, and John, as well as a good number of Paul’s letters
(Colossians, Ephesians, 2 Thessalonians, 1 and 2 Timothy, and Titus). As noted, naming
a book after someone significant was a common way of honoring that person and reflecting
his views. James may not have written his own letter, but it no doubt represents what
he believed (the epistle is thought to be an edited and expanded version of a sermon
James gave in Jerusalem just before his death in 62
C.E
.). The overwhelming consensus is that the traditions contained within the epistle
can confidently be traced to James the Just. That would make James’s epistle arguably
one of the most important books in the New Testament. Because one sure way of uncovering
what Jesus may have believed is to determine what his brother James believed.

The first thing to note about James’s epistle is its passionate concern with the plight
of the poor. This, in itself, is not surprising. The traditions all paint James as
the champion of the destitute and dispossessed; it is how he earned his nickname,
“the Just.” The Jerusalem assembly was founded by James upon the principle of service
to the poor. There is even evidence to suggest that the first followers of Jesus who
gathered under James’s leadership referred to themselves collectively as “the poor.”

What is perhaps more surprising about James’s epistle is its bitter condemnation of
the rich. “Come now, you wealthy ones, weep and howl for the miseries that are about
to come upon you. Your riches have rotted and your garments are moth-eaten. Your gold
and silver have corroded, and the venom within them shall be a witness against you;
it shall eat your flesh as though it were fire” (James 5:1–3). For James there is
no path to salvation for the wealthy who “hoard treasures for the last days,” and
who “live on the land in luxury and pleasure” (James 5:3, 5). Their fate is set in
stone. “The rich man will pass away like a flower in the field. For
no sooner does the sun rise with its scorching heat, which withers the field, than
the flower dies and its beauty perishes. So it shall be with the rich man” (James
1:11). James goes so far as to suggest that one cannot truly be a follower of Jesus
if one does not actively favor the poor. “Do you with your acts of favoritism [toward
the rich] really believe in our glorious Lord Jesus Christ?” he asks. “For if you
show favoritism, you commit sin and are exposed as a transgressor of the law” (James
2:1, 9).

James’s fierce judgment of the rich may explain why he drew the ire of the greedy
high priest Ananus, whose father had schemed to impoverish the village priests by
stealing their tithes. But in truth, James is merely echoing the words of his brother’s
Beatitudes: “Woe to you who are rich, for you have received your consolation. Woe
to you who are full, for you shall hunger. Woe to you laughing now, for soon you will
mourn” (Luke 6:24–25). Actually, much of James’s epistle reflects the words of Jesus,
whether the topic is the poor (“Has not God chosen the poor in the world to be rich
in faith and heirs to the kingdom that he has promised to those who love him?” James
2:5; “Blessed are you who are poor, for the Kingdom of God is yours.” Luke 6:20);
the swearing of oaths (“Do not swear, either by heaven or earth, or by any other oath;
let your yes be yes and your no be no.” James 5:12; “Do not swear at all, either by
heaven, which is the throne of God, or by the earth, which is God’s footstool.… Let
your yes be yes and your no be no.” Matthew 5:34, 37); or the importance of putting
one’s faith into practice (“Be doers of the word, not just hearers who deceive themselves.”
James 1:22; “He who hears these words of mine and does them will be like the wise
man who built his house on a rock … he who hears these words of mine and does not
do them is like the foolish man who built his house on sand.” Matthew 7:24, 26).

Yet the issue over which James and Jesus are most clearly in agreement is the role
and application of the Law of Moses. “Whoever breaks one of the least of these commandments
and teaches
others to do so, will be called least in the kingdom of heaven,” Jesus says in the
gospel of Matthew (Matthew 5:19). “Whoever keeps the whole law but trips up on a single
point of it is guilty of [violating] it all,” James echoes in his epistle (James 2:10).

The primary concern of James’s epistle is over how to maintain the proper balance
between devotion to the Torah and faith in Jesus as messiah. Throughout the text,
James repeatedly exhorts Jesus’s followers to remain faithful to the law. “But he
who looks to the perfect law—the law of liberty—and perseveres [in following it],
being not just hearers who forget, but doers who act [upon it], he shall be blessed
in his doing” (James 1:25). James compares Jews who abandon the law after converting
to the Jesus movement to those who “look at themselves in the mirror … and upon walking
away, immediately forget what they looked like” (James 1:23).

There should be little doubt as to whom James is referring in these verses. In fact,
James’s epistle was very likely conceived as a corrective to Paul’s preaching, which
is why it is addressed to “the Twelve Tribes of Israel scattered in the Diaspora.”
The epistle’s hostility toward Pauline theology is unmistakable. Whereas Paul dismisses
the Law of Moses as a “ministry of death, chiseled in letters on a stone tablet” (2
Corinthians 3:7), James celebrates it as “the law of liberty.” Paul claims that “one
is not justified by the works of the law but only through belief in Jesus Christ”
(Galatians 2:16). James emphatically rejects Paul’s notion that faith alone engenders
salvation. “Can belief save you?” he retorts. “Even the demons believe—and shudder!”
(James 2:14,19). Paul writes in his letter to the Romans that “a man is justified
by faith apart from works of the law” (Romans 3:28). James calls this the opinion
of a “senseless person,” countering that “faith apart from works [of the law] is dead”
(James 2:26).