James, the brother of a non-historical person?

“If you read only Paul’s letters you would know—from Galatians 1:18-19 or 2:11-12, for example—that both Simon “the Rock” (Peter in Greek, Cephas in Aramaic) and James “the Lord’s brother” were important figures in early Christianity. If you read only the canonical gospels you would know that Peter was very important but you would know James as only one among the siblings of Jesus named in passing in Mark 6:3. If you read a non-Christian source such as Josephus, however, you would know only two individuals in earliest Christianity: one is Jesus himself and the other is his brother James.” John Dominic Crossan, The Birth of Christianity, p 463

There is a common theme found in Galatians, the Synoptic Gospels and Josephus: James (the historical figure) was the brother of Jesus (another historical figure). There is a convergence of three independent vectors here and one is from a non-Christian!

1) We start with Paul who relays info about a historical Jesus and his brother in Galatian’s 1:13-24:

¹³For you have heard of my previous way of life in Judaism, how intensely I persecuted the church of God and tried to destroy it. ¹⁴I was advancing in Judaism beyond many Jews of my own age and was extremely zealous for the traditions of my fathers. ¹⁵But when God, who set me apart from birth and called me by his grace, was pleased ¹⁶to reveal his Son in me so that I might preach him among the Gentiles, I did not consult any man, ¹⁷nor did I go up to Jerusalem to see those who were apostles before I was, but I went immediately into Arabia and later returned to Damascus.

¹⁸Then after three years, I went up to Jerusalem to get acquainted with Peter and stayed with him fifteen days. ¹⁹I saw none of the other apostles--only James, the Lord's brother. ²⁰I assure you before God that what I am writing you is no lie. ²¹Later I went to Syria and Cilicia. ²²I was personally unknown to the churches of Judea that are in Christ. ²³They only heard the report: "The man who formerly persecuted us is now preaching the faith he once tried to destroy." ²⁴And they praised God because of me.

Paul speaks about his previous way of life persecuting Christians in which he most likely was a Shammaite Pharisee (Wright, What Saint Paul Really Said). Paul speaks of his conversion experience and Paul tells us that he knew Peter and also that he had met James, the Lord’s brother. That seems like an impediment to those who advocate the non-historicity of Jesus. Did Paul “think” there was a historical Jesus? Certainly, if his own statements are any indication of his actual thoughts. He says he met Jesus’ brother. Talk of this being a “spiritual brother” does not wash. It should also be noted that Galatians was written some time during the fifties C.E..

2) We now move on to our second indicator that Jesus had a brother named James. Mark 6:3 records Jesus’ reception in his alleged hometown. “Isn't this the carpenter? Isn't this Mary's son and the brother of James, Joseph, Judas and Simon? Aren't his sisters here with us?" And they took offense at him.” GMark and the genuine Pauline epistles, as viewed by most mainline scholars, were written independent of one another. Its also seems hard to imagine this passage as a Christian creation. Likewise, Mark 3:21 tells us that ^“When his family heard about this, they went to take charge of him, for they said, "He is out of his mind."” Its hard to imagine such a thing being woven from whole cloth by a Christian. We can also look to later in Mark 3 where this incident is relayed: “³¹Then Jesus' mother and brothers arrived. Standing outside, they sent someone in to call him. ³²A crowd was sitting around him, and they told him, "Your mother and brothers are outside looking for you." ³³"Who are my mother and my brothers?" he asked. ³⁴Then he looked at those seated in a circle around him and said, "Here are my mother and my brothers! ³⁵Whoever does God's will is my brother and sister and mother." Even John 7:5 mentions the idea of Jesus having brothers. “For even his own brothers did not believe in him.” We see the same general sentiments echoed in Mark and John (“his brothers did not believe in him”, “family thought he was beside himself”).

That Jesus had a brother named James is well attested independently by both Mark and Paul. Paul even claims to have known James, one of the Lord’s brothers and that information comes from a primary and contemporary source during James’ lifetime. It should be noted that Mark was most likely written some time around 70 C.E.

Paul and Mark converge on this point with a third independent reference:

3) This reference comes from a non-Christian historian named Josephus towards the end of the first century. A brief cite from Josephus’ Antiquities 20: ”so he 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,.” Here we have another reference to James as the brother of Jesus. Reading the full passage reveals some interesting information about James’ stature but such a discussion is superfluous to my purposes here.

It should be noted that the authenticity of this passage has been disputed but it is not as highly disputed as the Testimonium Flavanium. Arguments that this is a Christian interpolation do not hold up under scrutiny and the shorter passage is GENERALLY regarded as authentic. See Peter Kirby’s discussion of the Testimonium Flavanium and the shorter reference for a good overview of most of the relevant arguments for and against the authenticity of both references. I share Kirby’s conclusion that the shorter reference is authentic and he states what we can conclude from this: It shows that Josephus accepted the historicity of Jesus. Simply by the standard practice of conducting history, a comment from Josephus about a fact of the first century constitutes prima facie evidence for that fact. It ought to be accepted as history unless there is good reason for disputing the fact. Moreover, it is reasonable to think that Josephus heard about the deposition of Ananus as soon as it happened. Ed Tyler points out in correspondence, "The passage is not really about James, but about Ananus. It's the tale of how Ananus lost his job as High Priest. So why would Christians in Rome be the source for the tale of how a High Priest lost his job? Josephus was close at hand when it happened, and was a man of some standing in the Jewish community. I can't imagine that he missed it when it was news, and didn't find out about it until he talked to some Christians about 30 years later." Thus, Josephus' information about the identity of James brings us back to the period prior to the First Jewish Revolt. If Josephus referred to James as the brother of Jesus in the Antiquities, in all likelihood the historical James identified himself as the brother of Jesus, and this identification would secure the place of Jesus as a figure in history.

Another possible fourth independent attestation lies in the book of Jude. Verse 1: “Jude, a servant of Jesus Christ and a brother of James,”. To quote Raymond Brown (Intro to the NT, p 749), “However, the most common and plausible suggestion of why the writer identified himself through a relationship to James is that the intended Jude was one of the four named brothers of Jesus (third in Mark 6:3: “James and Joses and Judas and Simon,” and fourth in Matt 13:55) and thus literally the brother of James. With such family status, this Jude would have had the kind of authority implied by the author’s stated intention to write a more general work “about our common salvation” (Jude 3)—a problem conceived before the problem arose that caused him to send this short missive correcting the presence of intruders.” It is important to note that Brown later states that we cannot be certain that Jude, the brother of Jesus wrote this letter.” That is why I called this a “possible” fourth reference. We should also reiterate the corroborative reference in John to Jesus’ brothers.

Regardless of whether Jude counts as a fourth or not, we have at least a triple independent attestation here from both Christian and non-Christian sources all within the first century. Josephus, as Kirby argued would have heard about the deposition of Ananus as soon as it happened and did not get his info from Christians 30 years later. Paul, by his own words, states that he met James, the brother of the Lord. Mark is also the earliest of the four canonical Gospels and contains elements about Jesus’ family that prove problematic when viewed as totally Christian creations.

All of this independent historical evidence seems to secure the historicity of the figure behind the Christian faith.

Vincent Sapone, Copyright, 2002

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