James, brother of Jesus facts for kids

Quick facts for kids Saint James the Just
Neo-Byzantine icon of James
Apostle and Martyr, Adelphotheos
Born	Early 1st century
Died	62 AD or 69 AD Jerusalem
Venerated in	All Christian denominations that venerate saints
Canonized	Pre-Congregation
Feast	May 3 (Catholic), May 1 (Anglican), October 23 (Lutheran), (Episcopal Church (USA)), (Eastern Orthodox), December 26 (Eastern Orthodox)
Attributes	Red martyr, fuller's club; man holding a book
Controversy	There is disagreement about the exact relationship to Jesus.

James the Just, or a variation of James, brother of the Lord (Latin: Iacobus from Hebrew: יעקב, Ya'akov and Greek: Ἰάκωβος, Iákōbos, can also be Anglicized as "Jacob"), was "a brother of Jesus", according to the New Testament. He was an early leader of the Jerusalem Church of the Apostolic Age. Traditionally, it is believed he was martyred in AD 62 or 69 by being killed by the Pharisees on order of High Priest Ananus ben Ananus.

Catholics and Eastern Orthodox Christians teach that James, along with others named in the New Testament as "brothers" of Jesus, were not the biological children of Mary, mother of Jesus, but were possibly cousins of Jesus, or step-brothers from a previous marriage of Joseph (as related in the non-canonical Gospel of James).

The Catholic tradition holds that this James is to be identified with James, son of Alphaeus, and James the Less. It is agreed by most that he should not be confused with James, son of Zebedee also known as James the Great.

Epithet

Eusebius records that Clement of Alexandria related, "This James, whom the people of old called the Just because of his outstanding virtue, was the first, as the record tells us, to be elected to the episcopal throne of the Jerusalem church." Other epithets are "James the brother of the Lord, surnamed the Just," and "James the Righteous".

He is sometimes referred to in Eastern Christianity as "James Adelphotheos" (Ancient Greek: Ἰάκωβος ὁ Ἀδελφόθεος), meaning "James the Brother of God". The oldest surviving Christian liturgy, the Liturgy of St James, uses this epithet.

Leader of the Jerusalem Church

The Jerusalem Church

The Jerusalem Church was an early Christian community located in Jerusalem, of which James and Peter were leaders. According to a universal tradition the first bishop was the Apostle James the Less, the "brother of the Lord". His predominant place and residence in the city are implied by Galatians 1:19. Eusebius says he was appointed bishop by Peter, James (the Greater), and John (II, i).

According to Eusebius, the Jerusalem church escaped to Pella during the siege of Jerusalem by the future Emperor Titus in 70 AD and afterwards returned, having a further series of Jewish bishops until the Bar Kokhba revolt in 130 AD. Following the second destruction of Jerusalem and the rebuilding of the city as Aelia Capitolina, subsequent bishops were Greeks.

Leader

James the Just, 16th-century Russian icon.

James the Just was "from an early date, with Peter, a leader of the Church at Jerusalem and from the time when Peter left Jerusalem after Herod Agrippa's attempt to kill him, James appears as the principal authority who presided at the Council of Jerusalem."

The Pauline epistles and the later chapters of the Acts of the Apostles portray James as an important figure in the Jewish Christian community of Jerusalem. When Paul arrives in Jerusalem to deliver the money he raised for the faithful there, it is to James that he speaks, and it is James who insists that Paul ritually cleanse himself at Herod's Temple to prove his faith and deny rumors of teaching rebellion against the Torah (Acts 21:18). This was a charge of antinomianism. In Paul's account of his visit to Jerusalem in Galatians 1:18-19, he states that he stayed with Cephas (better known as Peter) and James, the brother of the Lord, was the only other apostle he met.

Paul describes James as being one of the persons to whom the risen Christ showed himself, (1 Corinthians 15:3–8). In Galatians 2:9, Paul mentions James with Cephas and John the Apostle as the three "pillars" of the Church.

Relationship to Jesus, Mary and Joseph

Jesus's brothers – James as well as Jude, Simon and Joses – are named in Matthew 13:55 and Mark 6:3 and mentioned elsewhere. James's name always appears first in lists, which suggests he was the eldest among them. In Jewish Antiquities (20.9.1), Josephus describes James as "the brother of Jesus who is called Christ".

Interpretation of the phrase "brother of the Lord" and similar phrases is divided between those who believe that Mary had additional children after Jesus (e.g., historian Charles Freeman) and those who hold the perpetual virginity of Mary (Catholics, Eastern Orthodox, and some Protestants, such as many Anglicans and some Lutherans). The only Catholic doctrine which has been defined regarding the "brothers of the Lord" is that they are not biological children of Mary; thus, Catholics do not consider them as siblings of Jesus.

Near-contemporary sources insist that James was a "perpetual virgin" from the womb, a term which according to Robert Eisenman was later converted to his mother, Mary.

Younger half-brother, son of Mary and Joseph

Some writers, such as R.V. Tasker and D. Hill, interpret the Matthew 1:25 statement that Joseph "knew her not until she had brought forth her firstborn son" as meaning that Joseph and Mary did have normal marital relations after Jesus's birth, and that James, Joses, Jude, and Simon, were the natural sons of Mary and Joseph and, thus, half brothers of Jesus. Others, such as K. Beyer, point out that the Greek ἕως οὗ ('until') after a negative "often has no implication at all about what happened after the limit of the 'until' was reached". Raymond E. Brown also argues that "the immediate context favors a lack of future implication here, for Matthew is concerned only with stressing Mary's virginity before the child's birth".

In addition, Mary, Joseph, and Jesus's brothers or siblings are often described together, without reference to any other relatives (Matthew 12:46–49, Mark 3:31–34, Mark 6:3, Luke 8:19–21, John 2:12, Acts 1:14), and Jesus's brothers are described without allusion to others (John 7:2–5, 1 Corinthians 9:5. For example, Matthew 13:55–56 says, "Isn't this the carpenter's son? Isn't his mother's name Mary, and aren't his brothers James, Joseph, Simon, and Jude? Aren't all his sisters with us?" and John 7:5 says, "Even his own brothers did not believe in him."

Clement of Alexandria (c. 150 – c. 215), Tertullian (c. 160 – c. 220), and Helvidius (c. 380) were among the theologians who thought that Mary had children other than Jesus. Jerome asserts in his tract The Perpetual Virginity of Blessed Mary, as an answer to Helvidius, that the term "first-born" was used to refer to any offspring that opened the womb, rather than definitely implying other children. Luke's reporting of the visit of Mary, Joseph, and Jesus to the Temple of Jerusalem when Jesus was 12 years old makes no reference to any of Jesus's half-brothers.

The modern scholar Robert Eisenman is of the belief that Luke, as a close follower of Pauline Gentile Christianity, sought to minimise the importance of Jesus's family by whatever means possible, editing James and Jesus's brothers out of the Gospel record. Karl Keating argues that Mary and Joseph rushed without hesitation straight back to Jerusalem, when they realized Jesus was lost, which they would surely have thought twice about doing if there were other children (Jesus's siblings) to look after.

Older stepbrother, son of Joseph by an earlier marriage

The Gospel of James (a 2nd-century apocryphal gospel also called the Protoevangelium of James or the Infancy Gospel of James) says that Mary was betrothed to Joseph and that he already had children. In this case, James was one of Joseph's children from his previous marriage and, therefore, Jesus's stepbrother.

The bishop of Salamis, Epiphanius, wrote too in his work The Panarion (AD 374–375) that "...James (brother of Jesus) was Joseph's son by Joseph's first wife, not by Mary..." He adds that Joseph became the father of James and his three brothers (Joses, Simeon, Judah) and two sisters (a Salome and a Mary or a Salome and an Anna) with James being the elder sibling. James and his siblings were not children of Mary but were Joseph's children from a previous marriage. After Joseph's first wife died, many years later when he was eighty, "he took Mary (mother of Jesus)". According to Epiphanius the Scriptures call them "brothers of the Lord" to confound their opponents.

One argument supporting this view is that it would have been against Jewish custom for Jesus to give his mother to the care of John (who is not at all suspected to be a blood relative of Jesus) if Mary had other living sons. This is because the eldest son would take responsibility for his mother after the death of her husband; any other sons of Mary should have taken on this responsibility if they existed, therefore arguing against a direct natural brother relationship.

Also, Aramaic and Hebrew tended to use circumlocutions to point out blood relationships; it is asserted that just calling some people "brothers of Jesus" would not have necessarily implied the same mother. Rather, something like "sons of the mother of Jesus" would have been used to indicate a common mother. Scholars and theologians who assert this point out that Jesus was called "the son of Mary" rather than "a son of Mary" in his hometown (Mark 6:3).

Cousin, son of a sister of Mary

James, along with the others named "brothers" of Jesus, are said by others to have been Jesus's cousins. This is justified by the fact that cousins were also called "brothers" and "sisters" in Jesus's native language, Aramaic, which, like Biblical Hebrew, does not contain a word for 'cousin'. Furthermore, the Greek words adelphos and adelphe were not restricted to the meaning of a literal brother or sister in the Bible, nor were their plurals. Unlike some other New Testament authors, apostle Paul had a perfect command of Greek, a language which has a specific word for 'cousin' and another for 'brother' calling James "the brother of our Lord" (Galatians 1:19).

Eusebius of Caesarea (c. 275 – c. 339) reports the tradition that James the Just was the son of Joseph's brother Clopas and therefore was of the "brothers" (which he interprets as "cousin") of Jesus described in the New Testament. This is echoed by Jerome (c. 342 – c. 419) in De Viris Illustribus ("On Illustrious Men") – James is said to be the son of another Mary, wife of Clopas and the "sister" of Mary, the mother of Jesus – in the following manner:

Jerome refers to the scene of the crucifixion in John 19:25, where three women named Mary – Mary, the mother of Jesus, Mary of Clopas, and Mary Magdalene – are said to be witnesses. John also mentions the "sister" of the mother of Jesus, often identified with Mary of Clopas due to grammar. Mary "of Clopas" is often interpreted as Mary, "wife of Clopas". Mary of Nazareth and Mary of Clopas also need not be literally sisters, in light of the usage of the said words in Greek, Hebrew and Aramaic.

Mary of Clopas is suggested to be the same as "Mary, the mother of James the younger and Joses", "Mary the mother of James and Joseph" and the "other Mary" in Jesus's crucifixion and post-resurrection accounts in the Synoptic Gospels. Proponents of this identification argue that the writers of the Synoptics would have called this Mary, simply, "the mother of Jesus" if she was indeed meant to be the mother of Jesus, given the importance of her son's crucifixion and resurrection: they also note that the mother of James and Joses is called "Maria", whereas the mother of Jesus is "Mariam" or "Marias" in Greek. These proponents find it unlikely that Mary would be referred to by her natural children other than Jesus at such a significant time (James happens to be the brother of one Joses, as spelled in Mark, or Joseph, as in Matthew).

Jerome's opinion suggests an identification of James the Just with the Apostle James, son of Alphaeus; Clopas and Alphaeus are thought to be different Greek renderings of the same Aramaic name Khalphai. Despite this, some biblical scholars tend to distinguish them; this is also not Catholic dogma, though a traditional teaching.

Since this Clopas is, according to Eusebius, Joseph of Nazareth's brother (see above) and Mary of Clopas is said to be Mary of Nazareth's sister, James could be related to Jesus by blood and law.

Younger half-brother, son of Mary and a second husband

A variant on this is presented by James Tabor, who argues that after the early and childless death of Joseph, Mary married Clopas, whom he accepts as a younger brother of Joseph, according to the Levirate law. According to this view, Clopas fathered James and the later siblings, but not Jesus.

John Dominic Crossan suggested that James was probably Jesus's older brother.

Identification with James, son of Alpheus, and with James the Less

Catholic interpretation generally holds that James, the younger is the same James mentioned in Mark 16:1 and Matthew 27:56 and it is to be identified with James, the son of Alphaeus and James, the brother of Jesus. According to the Catholic Encyclopedia, he is not identified with James the Great, although this is disputed by some.

Possible identity with James, son of Alphaeus

Jerome believed that the "brothers" of the Lord were Jesus's cousins, thus amplifying the doctrine of perpetual virginity. Jerome concluded that James "the brother of the Lord", (Galatians 1:19) is therefore James, son of Alphaeus, one of the Twelve Apostles of Jesus, and the son of Mary Cleophas.

James, the brother of Jesus, was also killed by the Jews.

These two works of Hippolytus are often neglected because the manuscripts were lost during most of the church age and then found in Greece in the 19th century. As most scholars consider them spurious, they are often ascribed to Pseudo-Hippolytus. The two are included in an appendix to the works of Hippolytus in the voluminous collection of Early Church Fathers.

According to the surviving fragments of the work Exposition of the Sayings of the Lord of the Apostolic Father Papias of Hierapolis, who lived c. 70–163 AD, Cleophas and Alphaeus are the same person, and Mary the wife of Cleophas or Alphaeus would be the mother of James the brother of Jesus, and of Simon and Judas (Thaddeus), and of one Joseph.

Thus James, the brother of the Lord would be the son of Alphaeus, who is the husband of Mary the wife of Cleophas or Mary the wife of Alphaeus. The identification of James as the son of Alpheus was perpetuated into the 13th century in the hagiography The Golden Legend by Jacobus de Voragine.

Possible identity with James the Less

Jerome also concluded that James "the brother of the Lord" is the same as James the Less.

After saying that James the Less is the same as James, the son of Mary of Cleophas, wife of Alphaeus and sister of Mary the Lord's mother, Jerome describes in his work De Viris Illustribus that James "the brother of the Lord" is the same as James, the son of Alpaheus and Mary of Cleophas:

Thus, Jerome concludes that James, the son of Alphaeus, James the Less, and James, brother of the Lord, are one and the same person.

Other relationships

Also, Jesus and James could be related in some other way, not strictly "cousins", following the non-literal application of the term adelphos and the Aramaic term for 'brother'. According to the apocryphal First Apocalypse of James, James is not the earthly brother of Jesus, but a spiritual brother who according to the Gnostics "received secret knowledge from Jesus prior to the Passion".

Death

Clement of Alexandria relates that "James was thrown from the pinnacle of the temple, and was killed".

Martyrdom of James the Just in Menologion of Basil II, a manuscript dating from late 10th or early 11th century.

According to a passage found in existing manuscripts of Josephus' Antiquities of the Jews (20.9.1), "the brother of Jesus, who was called Christ, whose name was James" met his death after the death of the procurator Porcius Festus but before Lucceius Albinus had assumed office  – which has been dated to 62. The High Priest Hanan ben Hanan (Ananus ben Ananus) took advantage of this lack of imperial oversight to assemble a Sanhedrin (literally a synhedrion kriton in Greek, a "Sanhedrin of judges"), which condemned James "on the charge of breaking the law," then had him executed by stoning (Antiquities 20.9.1). Josephus reports that Hanan's act was widely viewed as little more than judicial murder and offended a number of "those who were considered the most fair-minded people in the city, and strict in their observance of the Law", who went so far as to arrange a meeting with Albinus as he entered the province in order to petition him successfully about the matter. In response, King Agrippa II replaced Ananus with Jesus son of Damneus.

Origen related an account of the death of James which gave it as a cause of the Roman siege of Jerusalem, something not found in the existing manuscripts of Josephus.

Eusebius wrote that "the more sensible even of the Jews were of the opinion that this (James' death) was the cause of the siege of Jerusalem, which happened to them immediately after his martyrdom for no other reason than their daring act against him. Josephus, at least, has not hesitated to testify this in his writings, where he says, "These things happened to the Jews to avenge James the Just, who was a brother of Jesus, that is called the Christ. For the Jews slew him, although he was a most just man.""

Eusebius, while quoting Josephus' account, also records otherwise lost passages from Hegesippus (see links below) and Clement of Alexandria (Historia Ecclesiae, 2.23). Hegesippus' account varies somewhat from what Josephus reports and may be an attempt to reconcile the various accounts by combining them. According to Hegesippus, the scribes and Pharisees came to James for help in putting down Christian beliefs.

Vespasian's siege and capture of Jerusalem delayed the selection of Simeon of Jerusalem to succeed James.

According to Philip Schaff in 1904, this account by "Hegesippus has been cited over and over again by historians as assigning the date of the martyrdom to 69," though he challenged the assumption that Hegesippus gives anything to denote such a date. Josephus does not mention in his writings how James was buried.

Feast day

In the Catholic Church, the feast day of Philip the Apostle, along with that of James the Lesser (Catholics identify him with James the Just as the same person), was traditionally observed on 1 May, the anniversary of the church dedicated to them in Rome (now called the Church of the Twelve Apostles). Then this combined feast transferred to May 3 in the current ordinary calendar.

In the Eastern Orthodox Church, James is commemorated as "Apostle James the Just, brother of Our Lord", and as such, multiple days are assigned to his feasts. His feast days are on October 23, December 26 and the next Sunday of the Nativity along with King David and Saint Joseph and January 4 among the Seventy Apostles.

In the Episcopal Church of the United States of America and Lutheran Church, James, brother of Jesus and martyr is commemorated on October 23.

James is remembered (with Philip) in the Church of England with a Festival on 1 May.

See also

In Spanish: Santiago el Justo para niños

• Divine Liturgy of Saint James
• List of biblical figures identified in extra-biblical sources
• Related Bible parts: Matthew 13, Matthew 27, Mark 6, Mark 15, Mark 16, Acts 12, Acts 15, Acts 21, 1 Corinthians 15, Galatians 1, Galatians 2; James 1; Epistle of Jude