In many Eastern Orthodox circles today, the 26th of December, is the feast of James the Just.
Me, I usually mark it out as a particularly special day. Although first I should note how his celebration actually is a movable feast. Catholics usually mark his life and ministry on the 3rd of May. The world-wide Anglican communion likes the 1st of May. While American Episcopalians, Lutherans, and some Orthodox prefer the 29th of October.
Personally I like the proximity to Christmas that the 26th gives us. And allows me to connect these two remarkable men, one after the other.
It is my considered contention that James, sometimes called the Just, and at other times the brother of Jesus, was in fact Jesus’ biological brother. And that when Jesus was killed, inherited the church. Not Peter. Certainly not Paul. It was James.
In Paul’s various letters captured with varying degrees of authenticity in the Christian New Testament, where he references his raising money for the “poor” in Jerusalem, he is actually raising money for the central organization of Jesus’ followers. They appear to have called itself the Poor, as in Ebionites. They considered Jesus a messiah largely in the traditional Jewish understanding of someone bringing justice. Basically they were an apocalyptic, but also observant Jewish community following the teachings of the very Jewish prophet Jesus. They had no use for Paul and his penchant for Greek mystery religions.
Sadly everything we know about them has to be patched together from polemics against them. So, any opinions about them are ultimately conjecture. But there is more informed and less informed conjecture. And a lot of scholars have paid attention to this shift from a Jewish community to the ascendancy of Paul’s gentile church.
If one does not assume Paul’s religion, which he built up among converts away from Jerusalem and environs, was anything more than one of a number of contending views circling around the person of Jesus, then doors open.
My belief is pretty strong that James, the natural brother of Jesus, inherited the organization when Jesus was murdered. And that while he consulted with the apostles, he was the final arbiter until his own death. James was killed when Jerusalem was sacked and those not killed were dispersed, and in the chaos that followed. Leadership passed to another blood relative, maybe another brother, possibly a cousin. Personally I envision something led by Jesus family in a way similar to some Hasidic and Sufi lineages. It’s hard to be sure of the details at this distance and through the fragments left to us. Within about a hundred years the Jewish Christian community disapeared and the Gentile communities founded by Paul filled the void and quickly became normative Christianity.
I have to admit how I also like that James is the putative author of the Epistle given his name, much hated by Luther and others for stating that without actually doing something, one’s faith is worthless. To the degree the epistle reflects James’ actual teachings it must have been a royal annoyance to Paul who put all his eggs in the faith only basket. That the epistle survives in a document dominated by follower’s of Paul, suggests its importance as maybe representing the original teachings of the original organization. The organization now, sadly, gone. Replaced by, well, you know what is called Christianity today.
Currently two scholars have dug deeply into James’ place in Christian origins, James Tabor & Robert Eisenman. Both present controversial opinions that may go beyond the evidence. This video offers a bare outline of what we do know by Professor Tabor. The video spells out the major points of the thesis the James was the inheritor of Jesus’ mantle is very much worth eighteen minutes of your time.
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