JAMES, JESUS' BROTHER?
Reza Aslan notes that in the earliest Christian writings, James, Peter and John are the pillars of the Church. The order indicates that James mattered most and James even sent people to correct Peter when Peter refused to accept Gentiles properly. See Galatians 2. Aslan writes, "It should be noted that the famous statement of Jesus calling Peter the rock upon which he will found his church is rejected as unhistorical by most scholars." No wonder. But who was this James who was the first "pope"?
He is called the brother of Jesus.
There was a tradition in existence in the early Church
that James was not the literal brother of Jesus Christ. The tradition is
reflected at the beginning of the unorthodox First Apocalypse of James found at
Nag Hammadi in Egypt in 1945. “It is the Lord who spoke to me. He said, “Behold
now the completion of the redemption I accomplished. I have give you a sign of
these things brother James. And it is not without cause that I have called you
my brother although physically you are not my brother.” We are not told the
reason why he is called a brother at all. There is no motive for the writer to
go to the trouble of making out that James was not a literal brother. Read The
Nag Hammadi Library in English page 262 (James M Robinson General Editor,
HarperCollins, San Francisco 1990).
In Galatians 1:19, Paul says that he met James the Lord's brother. This seems to
say that Jesus lived in the first century when his brother was still alive. But
the most important thing to realise is that Paul told Philemon that Onesimus the
slave was to be his blood-brother and not just a brother in the Lord so
blood-brother among the early Christians didn’t always mean that you shared a
parent. Josephus who also called James Jesus’ brother could have made a mistake
due to this confusing practice. The practice probably had a lot to do with the
universal accusations of incest that supposedly was rife among the early
Christians.
According to the letter of Paul to Philemon Christians believed you could make
somebody you loved your brother or sister by blood even if they were not a blood
relation. Paul told Philemon that Onesimus was not just a brother in the Lord
but a blood brother from now on. A brother in the Lord means a non-literal
brother but Paul’s saying Onesimus who was not related to Philemon was more than
that and a blood brother indicates plainly that you can become a literal blood
brother by adoption. This practice could have confused people about James and
made them think he really was born a brother of Jesus’. It is important to note
that James is only called the Brother of the Lord never the brother of Jesus.
Brother of the Lord sounds like a religious title. The Jews were more likely to
call him the Brother of Jesus if that was what he was.
The Historical Evidence for Jesus, G A Wells, Prometheus Books, New York, 1988
(page 168) mentions the research of Brandon which showed that calling James the
brother of the Lord could mean the Principle Servant of the Lord. Strabo who
discussed how the vizier of the Nabatean Kings was called the Brother of the
King is mentioned too. Also, Cerfaux wrote of inscriptions that showed brother
was a honorific title. Jesus in Matthew 28 speaks of relations and non-relations
as brothers of his.
The Roman Church insists that brother here in Galatians and Josephus means
relation and not literal brother. This could be right because in the gospels a
Mary, the mother of James is mentioned as if we know James (Mark 16:1). If James
were Christ's brother the gospel would call her the mother of Jesus. Mary has a
sister called Mary implying that they were not sisters but relations (John
19:25) for you don’t have two literal sisters with the one name. James could
have been the man who was thought to be a relation of a Jesus who was believed
to have died centuries before.
This James may have written the Epistle of James. But he uses his own authority
in that Epistle (NAB, Introduction to the Epistle of James) and not that of the
brother he supposedly knew as the infallible revelation of God and only mentions
him twice. And this in an Epistle to a group of Jewish Christians who could
depart from Christ anytime and needed to be inoculated against heresy with the
details about Jesus and who he was! James was not the literal brother of Jesus.
Notice how he tends in his epistle to use his brothers to refer to Church
members? This habit could have confused Josephus who called him the brother of
Christ. Some claim that Josephus proves there was no tradition for the Virgin
Birth for they hold that James was older than Jesus. Jude in his epistle claims
to be the brother of James but is careful not to call himself the brother of
Christ and indicates that he was not so probably James was not a brother of
Jesus either.
James introduces the letter by calling himself a servant of God and of the Lord
Jesus the Messiah. Would it not be better to call himself a servant of God and
of the Lord Jesus Christ his brother? Some think the reference to Jesus is
fake for who would write to the whole Jewish community "the twelve family groups
of the Jewish nation living in many parts of the world" when only a few accepted
Jesus and most hated him? James has only a few references to
Jesus. They are too few. They are doubted by many. If this was a real text
from James then he showed little interest in Jesus and was all about
moral behaviour. He gives the teaching on his authority and on
the Old Testament's authority. No Christian or person inclined
towards putting Jesus first as son of God would do that. The attempt
to make the Jewish text look Christian is pathetic. It does not ring true.
James 2:1-2 uses Jesus as an argument for not considering one person better than
another. Does that really fit how Jesus said nothing and seem to lap up
those who knelt before him? He clearly did consider himself better than
the Jewish preachers for he tried to incite violence against them in Matthew 23.
In James 5:10, James offers the prophets as role models and singles out Job for
mention. The real brother of Jesus would have stressed Jesus as role model. Why
would Jesus' brother mention the suffering of prophets inferior to Jesus and not
Jesus'? He never calls Jesus the Son of God or hints that Jesus lived a perfect
life before his glorification. It seems that James did not even think that Jesus
was the best exemplar. He had very little interest in Jesus in his epistle. This
suggests that James was not his brother at all and knew very little about him.
Also, James denied Jesus' power struggle with the Devil when he wrote that we
are tempted by our own desires. James may have believed in devils but he did not
believe they tempted us. He wrote that our desires are to blame in the context
of refuting the view that God was the tempter. So he was saying that God was not
tempting us and proving it by telling us to see that we tempt ourselves.
Obviously, this rules out the possibility of blaming demons for tempting us for
a God who lets demons tempt is no better than a God who tempts himself
especially when he has no reason to give demons who are condemned to eternal
punishing the power to tempt for even respect for free will is no excuse then
for the power is only given so that we might love and is not important if we
will not love again like the spirits in Hell cannot love. This is a very
significant departure from the gospels which are filled with demons and Jesus
even has a struggle with the Devil in the wilderness. This James did not claim
to be the literal brother of the gospel Jesus and as good as denied that he was.
When this James wrote that the man who doubts cannot expect to receive an answer
for prayer from the Lord (James 1:5-7) there is no mistake about it. This James
though a leading Christian did not know of the faith healing Jesus we have in
the gospels. All faith healers have people who they seem to have cured and many
of these would be clearly doubters having little interest in the ways of God. If
there had been a Jesus he would have known him and got the story about him for
he was a leading Christian. He would have known that Jesus' healings did not
tally with his opposition to doubt and his assertion that doubt blocks a
response from God.
Acts says that the apostle James brother of John the apostle was executed in
12:2. But the problem is that that James is mentioned as living a few verses
later as if the author forgot he had killed James off. And both Jameses were
pillars in the Church. But the second James may be another person, the Lord's
so-called brother for John the apostle was not a brother of Jesus'. There is no
proof that Acts made a mistake or did not make one but if this James was John's
brother and Jesus' then he was not literally Jesus'. It is hard to believe that
Acts would mention this man whose killing was important enough to make Herod go
after Peter when he saw the pleased reaction of the Jews meaning that the man
was as important as Peter so briefly. It is like the author did make a mistake.
Further evidence of this is the fact that Acts was written after 62-4 AD when
Paul was first imprisoned in Rome for it stops just after it records it and it
does not mention the death of James the Less the brother of the Lord in 62 AD.
The author was embarrassed at the mistake he made and it was too late to fix it
so he thought it was best to forget about what happened in 62 AD.
We must face the possibility that somebody altered Josephus's text to make it
deceitfully call James the brother of the so-called Christ, Jesus. That would
explain an awful lot. Somebody thought Josephus had not been very clear and made
a so-called clarification. The Epistle of James can stand as evidence that this
interference took place for it tells against the literal brother view. James is
certainly an early epistle and precedes the gospels. It is too primitive and
normal to have come from a later stage in the Church's theological development.
How does the denial that James was a brother fit in with my assertion that the
New Testament states that the virgin Mary did have sons and daughters including
a James besides Jesus? Only the gospels say that and we are noticing that the
epistles never say that Jesus had real brothers and sisters and we know the
gospels give Jesus false historicity. If Jesus had brothers or even cousins they
would have been killed for Pilate, who the gospels lie about, said Jesus really
was a king meaning his relations would be in line for the throne. So the gospels
are incoherent regarding the matter. No relations of Jesus would have been
allowed to survive or at least be free. There was no way Josephus could mention
that James had a brother called Christ who was allowed to live for it makes Rome
look incompetent.
Also modern scholars think there were three Jameses. One was the apostle James
the son of Zebedee who was beheaded by Herod Agrippa, the other was the apostle
James the Less the son of Alphaeus who was an apostle too and the other James
who was called the brother of the Lord. The Gospels say that Jesus had a
blood-brother called James but nowhere is it said that he was an apostle or a
believer. The brothers of Jesus are presented as hostile to him in the gospels
and nowhere in the New Testament is there any hint of a change of heart.
Galatians 1:19 seems to say James the brother of the Lord is an apostle but it
can be interpreted to mean he was not (NAB, Biblical Dictionary and Concordance,
page 95). So he was not for it would be clearer if he was. Never did the New
Testament call this James an apostle and Paul in Galatians denies it. This James
according to every source was adulated by the Jews meaning that he refused to
put forward the reforms Jesus tried to make for the Jews despised what Jesus was
trying to do. He was not the apostle James then who was the blood brother of the
Lord according to the gospels for a heretic could not be made an apostle.
Brother of the Lord was James’ honorary title because he could not become an
apostle. Those who wonder then why Peter was not called the brother need to
realise that Peter was not as important as James, Peter had his own honour as an
apostle and if Peter could have been called brother and we don't know for our
sources are sparse.