James the Great or James the Just are the two epithets by which "James, the brother of Jesus," is commonly known. We hear little of him in the New Testament1 though he is believed to be the author of the letter of that name. He seemed to have been sceptical of Jesus's claims and teachings in the latter's lifetime but later became the leader of the church in Jerusalem; he was her key spokesmen at the Jerusalem Council (Acts 15:13) and his counsel were well taken to heart and it changed the course of early Christianity.
It may be safely assumed that James was party to Jesus's siblings who, doubting his teachings and claims, told to "leave here and go to Judea, so that your disciples may see the miracles you do. No one who wants to become a public figure acts in secret. Since you are doing these things, show yourself to the world" (Jn 7:3-4). How James became a follower of Jesus remains a mystery. The traditional understanding is that Jesus's post-resurrection appearance to him—reported only by Paul (1 Cor 15:7)—changed his mind. Luke reports that after Jesus had ascended into heaven (Acts 1:4-9) all the disciples had gathered together in an upper room for prayers "along with the women and Mary the mother of Jesus, and with his brothers" (Acts 1:14). Whether James was among "his brothers" on this occasion is uncertain. If he was he did not seem to be counted a serious enough candidate for the replacement of Judas that the apostles then went on to select. By the time Paul became a Christian, however, James seemed to have shown himself a "pillar" in the Jerusalem church to be given his due; Paul met with him—possibly to clarify matters about what the former had been taught (Gal 1:16). In the same letter Paul also asserts that James and Peter "saw that I had been entrusted with the task of preaching the gospel to the Gentiles, just as Peter had been to the Jews. . . James, Peter and John, those reputed to be pillars, gave me and Barnabas the right hand of fellowship when they recognised the grace given to me. They agreed that we should go to the Gentiles, and they to the Jews" (2:7-9). Piecing the crumbs between the lines of Paul's complaint about Peter's hypocrisy, reported in Gal 2:11-12, even Peter, "the rock," felt bound to bow to James's counsel. Beyond these facts we know nothing of him. He seemed to have accrued to himself a reputation for being wise and just (hence the epithets) and considered a serious threat to the non-believing Jewish community. Josephus, the Jewish historian, reports that in the interim between the death of Festus and the arrival of the next procurator, Ananus the high priest "assembled the sanhedrim of judges, and brought before them the brother of Jesus, who was called Christ, whose name was James, and some others, and when he had formed an accusation against them as breakers of the law, he delivered them to be stoned."2
Reflecting the scarcity of information about him in the NT, James has also never enjoyed much scholarly attention. "In a bibliography of nearly 200 authors in his comprehensive study of James," says Alan Saxby, "John Painter lists only one book in English (by a journalist) devoted exclusively to James in the 20th century prior to 1980."3 Things, however, seem to be changing and we can look forward to a more rigourous appreciation of this 'forgotten brother'.
1. Martin Hengel counts only 11 references to him in the NT, compared, e.g., to 177 for Paul and 181 to Peter. (Saint Peter: The Underestimated Apostle (Cambridge: Eerdmans, 2010), 10-11.)
2. Antiquities, 20.9.
3. Alan Saxby, James, Brother of Jesus, and the Origin of the Jerusalem Church, p20. PhD dissertation presented to the University of Sheffield, April 2013.
Resources and Further Reading:
Chilton, Bruce. D., and Jacob Neusner, eds, The Brother of Jesus: James the Just and His Mission. Louisville, KY: Westminster John Knox Press, 2001.
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