Zealot: The Life and Times of Jesus of Nazareth (44 page)

Whether the Jews were outraged by the unlawful procedure of the trial or by the unjust
verdict is difficult to decipher from Josephus’s account. The fact that they complain
to Albinus about the illegality of Ananus’s calling the Sanhedrin without a procurator
in Jerusalem seems to suggest that it was the procedure of the trial they objected
to, not the verdict. However, I agree with John Painter who notes that “the suggestion
that what the group objected to was
Ananus taking the law into his own hands when Roman authority was required for the
imposition of the death penalty (see John 18:31) does not fit an objection raised
by ‘the most fair-minded … and strict in the observance of the law’.… Rather it suggests
that those who were fair-minded and strict in their observance of the law regarded
as unjust the verdict that James and the others had transgressed the law.” See John
Painter, “Who Was James?” in
The Brother of Jesus: James the Just and His Mission
, Bruce Chilton and Jacob Neusner, eds. (Louisville, Ky.: Westminster John Knox Press,
2001), 10–65; 49.

Pierre-Antoine Bernheim agrees: “Josephus, by indicating the disagreement of the ‘most
precise observers of the law,’ probably wanted to emphasize not the irregularity of
the convening of the Sanhedrin in terms of the rules imposed by the Romans but the
injustice of the verdict in relation to the law of Moses as this was interpreted by
the most widely recognized experts …”
James, the Brother of Jesus
(London: SCM Press, 1997), 249.

While some scholars—for instance, Craig C. Hill,
Hellenists and Hebrews
(Minneapolis: Fortress Press, 1992)—disagree with Painter and Bernheim, arguing that
the complaint of the Jews had nothing to do with James himself, most (myself included)
are convinced that the Jews’ complaint was about the injustice of the verdict, not
the process of the trial; see also F. F. Bruce,
New Testament History
(New York: Doubleday, 1980), especially pages 372–73.

Hegesippus’s quote regarding the authority of James can be found in Eusebius,
Ecclesiastical History
2.23.4–18. It is unclear whether Hegesippus means that control of the church passed
to the apostles and to James, or that control over the apostles also passed to James.
Either way, James’s leadership is affirmed. Gerd Ludemann actually thinks the phrase
“with the apostles” is not original but was added by Eusebius to conform with the
mainstream view of apostolic authority. See
Opposition to Paul in Jewish Christianity
(Philadelphia: Fortress Press, 1989).

The material from Clement of Rome is taken from the so-called
Pseudo-Clementines
, which, while compiled sometime around 300
C.E
., reflects far earlier Jewish-Christian traditions that can be traced through the
text’s two primary documents: the
Homilies
and the
Recognitions
. The
Homilies
contain two epistles:
The Epistle of Peter
, from which the reference to James as “Lord and Bishop of the Holy Church” is cited,
and the
Epistle of Clement
, which is addressed to James “the Bishop of Bishops, who rules Jerusalem, the Holy
Assembly of the Hebrews, and all the Assemblies everywhere.” The
Recognitions
is itself probably founded upon an older document titled
Ascent of James
, which most scholars trace to the mid-100s. Georg Strecker thinks the
Ascent
was written in Pella, where the Jerusalem-based Christians allegedly congregated
after the destruction of Jerusalem. See his entry “The Pseudo-Clementines,” in
New Testament Apocrypha
, vol. 2, Wilhelm Schneemelker, ed. (London: Cambridge University Press, 1991), 483–541.

The passage from the
Gospel of Thomas
can be found in Chapter 12. Incidentally the surname “James the Just” also appears
in the
Gospel of the Hebrews;
see
The Nag Hammadi Library
for the complete text of both. Clement of Alexandria is quoted in Eusebius,
Ecclesiastical History
2.1.2–5. Obviously the title of bishop in describing James is anachronistic, but
the implication of the term is clear. Jerome’s
Lives of Illustrious Men
can be found in an English translation by Ernest Cushing Richardson in
A Select Library of the Nicene and Post-Nicene Fathers of the Christian Church
, vol. 3 (Edinburgh: T&T Clark, 1892). The no longer extant passage in Josephus blaming
the destruction of Jerusalem on James’s unjust death is cited by Origen in
Contra Celsus
1.47, by Jerome in
Lives
and in his
Commentary on Galatians
, and by Eusebius in
Ecclesiastical History
2.23.

That James is in the position of presiding authority in the Apostolic Council is proven
by the fact that he is the last to speak and begins his judgment with the word
krino
, or “I decree.” See Bernheim,
James, Brother of Jesus
, 193. As Bernheim correctly notes, the fact that Paul, when referencing the three
pillars of the church, always mentions James first is due to his preeminence. This
is affirmed by later redactions of the text in which copyists have reversed the order
to put Peter before James in order to place him as head of the church. Any question
of James’s preeminence over Peter is put to rest in the passage of Galatians 2:11–14
in which emissaries sent by James to Antioch compel Peter to stop eating with Gentiles,
while the ensuing fight between Peter and Paul leads Barnabas to leave Paul and return
to James.

Bernheim outlines the role of dynastic succession and its use among the early Christian
church in
James, Brother of Jesus
, 216–17. It is Eusebius who mentions that Simeon, son of Clopas, succeeded James:
“After the martyrdom of James and the taking of Jerusalem which immediately ensued,
it is recorded that those apostles and disciples of the Lord who were still surviving
met together from all quarters and,
together with our Lord’s relatives after the flesh
(for the most part of them were still alive), took counsel, all in common, as to
whom they should judge worthy to be the successor of James; and, what is more, that
they all with one consent approved Simeon the son of Clopas, of whom also the book
of the Gospels makes mention, as worthy of the throne of the community in that place.
He was a cousin—at any rate so it is said—of the Savior; for indeed Hegesippus relates
that Clopas was Joseph’s brother” (
Ecclesiastical History
3.11; italics mine). Regarding the grandsons of Jesus’s other brother, Judas, Hegesippus
writes that they “ruled the churches, inasmuch as they were both martyrs and of the
Lord’s family” (
Ecclesiastical History
3.20).

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. See for
example Pheme Perkins,
Peter, Apostle for the Whole Church
(Philadelphia: Fortress Press, 2000); B. P. Robinson, “Peter and His Successors:
Tradition and
Redaction in Matthew 16:17–19,”
Journal for the Study of the New Testament
21 (1984), 85–104; and Arlo J. Nau,
Peter in Matthew
(Collegeville, Minn.: Liturgical Press, 1992). John Painter demonstrates that no
tradition exists concerning Peter’s leadership of the Jerusalem church. Such traditions
that exist are only concerning Rome. See Painter, “Who Was James?” 31.

Some scholars think that Peter was the head of the church until he was forced to flee
Jerusalem. See, for instance, Oscar Cullman,
Peter: Disciple. Apostle. Martyr
(London: SCM Press, 1953). But that view is based mostly on an erroneous reading
of Acts 12:17, in which Peter, before being forced to flee from Jerusalem, tells John
Mark to inform James of his departure to Rome. Cullman and others argue that this
is the moment in which leadership of the Jerusalem church transfers from Peter to
James. However, as John Painter demonstrates, the proper reading of Acts 12:17 is
that Peter is merely informing James (his “boss,” if you will) of his activities before
fleeing Jerusalem. There is nothing in this passage, or for that matter, in any passage
in Acts, which suggests Peter ever led the Jerusalem church. See Painter, “Who was
James?” 31–36.

Cullman also claims that the church under Peter was far more lax in its observance
of the law before James took over and made the observance more rigid. The only evidence
for this view comes from Peter’s conversion of the Roman Cornelius. While this is
a story whose historicity is doubtful, it still does not prove a laxity of the law
on the part of Peter, and it most definitely does not indicate Peter’s leadership
of the Jerusalem assembly. The book of Acts makes it abundantly clear that there was
a wide divergence of views among Jesus’s first followers over the rigidity of the
law. Peter may have been less rigid than James when it came to observance of the law,
but so what? As Bernheim notes: “There is no reason to suppose that the Jerusalem
church was less liberal in 48/49 [than it was] at the beginning of the 30s,”
James, Brother of Jesus
, 209.

Wiard Popkes details the evidence for a first-century dating of James’s epistle in
“The Mission of James in His Time,”
The Brother of Jesus
, 88–99. Martin Dibelius disagrees with the first-century dating. He believes that
the epistle is actually a hodgepodge of Jewish-Christian teachings that should be
dated to the second century. See Martin Dibelius,
James
(Philadelphia: Fortress Press, 1976). It is interesting to note that James’s epistle
is addressed to “the Twelve Tribes of Israel scattered in the Diaspora.” James seems
to continue to presuppose the fulfillment that the tribes of Israel will be restored
to their full number and Israel liberated. Scholars believe that the reason so much
of James’s epistle has echoes in the gospel of Matthew is that embedded within the
gospel is a tradition, often referred to as M, that can traced to James.

Bruce Chilton writes about the Nazirite vow that Paul is forced to undergo in “James
in Relation to Peter, Paul, and Jesus,”
The Brother of Jesus
, 138–59. Chilton believes that not only was James a Nazirite, but Jesus was one,
too. Indeed,
he believes the reference to Jesus as the Nazarean is a corruption of the term Nazirite.
Note that Acts 18:18 portrays Paul as taking part in something similar to a Nazirite
vow. After setting off by ship for Syria, Paul lands at Cenchreae, in the eastern
port of Corinth. There, Luke writes that, “he had his hair cut, for he was under a
vow.” Although Luke is clearly referring to a Nazirite vow here, he seems to be confused
about the nature and practice of it. The entire point of the ritual was to cut the
hair at the end of the vow. Luke gives no hint as to what Paul’s vow may have been,
but if it was for a safe journey to Syria he had not reached his destination and thus
had not fulfilled his vow. Moreover, Paul’s Nazirite vow is not taken at the Temple
and does not involve a priest.

John Painter outlines all of the anti-Pauline material in the
Pseudo-Clementines
, including the altercation at the Temple between Paul and James, in “Who Was James?”
38–39. Painter also addresses Jesus’s expansion of the Law of Moses in 55–57.

The community that continued to follow the teachings of James in the centuries after
the destruction of Jerusalem referred to itself as the Ebionites, or “the Poor,” in
honor of James’s focus on the poor. The community may have been called the Ebionites
even during James’s lifetime, as the term is found in the second chapter of James’s
epistle. The Ebionites insisted on circumcision and strict adherence to the law. Well
into the fourth century they viewed Jesus as just a man. They were one of the many
heterodox communities who were marginalized and persecuted after the Council of Nicaea
in 325
C.E
. essentially made Pauline Christianity the orthodox religion of the Roman Empire.