James the Just (or James the Righteous) was NOT one of the twelve chosen apostles of Christ, but he was a direct kinsmen (probably a half brother) of Jesus the Christ.
The scriptural descriptions of James as the brother of Jesus are numerous and compelling. In the Gospel According to Matthew we read: “Is this not the carpenter’s son? Is not his mother called Mary? An His brother James, Jose, Simon, Judas?(Matthew 13:55)” and in the Gospel According to Mark we read: “Is this not the carpenter, the Son of Mary, and brother of James, Joses, Judas, and Simon? And are not His sisters here with us?(Mark 6:3)”.
However by the third century of the Christian church there was a mild controversy regarding the Greek word brother (the Greek word adelphos is derived from the root word delphus which literally means womb, hence adelphos literally means from the same womb). The Greek word used to describe James as the brother of Jesus in both Matthew 13:55 and Mark 6:3 is adelphos. However in the Koine Greek, as in modern language, bother is occasionally used to address other kinsmen (e.g. cousins) and even non-kinsmen friends of a like minds.
The ancient but innovative Doctrine of the Perpetual Virginity of Mary, first appears in the historical record in the mid-third century. The earliest extant ancient document vaguely stating this doctrine is found in Origen’s Commentary on the Gospel of John (written in AD 248) in book I, section 6, Origen states: “Mary, as those declare who with sound mind extol her, had no other son but Jesus.”
A hundred years later, in AD 354, Hilary of Poitiers’ (who was exiled to Anatolia during the Arian controversies, where he learned to read and write Greek) states in his Commentary on Matthew 1:4: “If they [the brethren of the Lord] had been Mary’s sons and not those taken from Joseph’s former marriage, she would never have been given over in the moment of the passion [the crucifixion of Jesus the Christ] to the apostle John as his mother, the Lord saying to each, ‘Woman, behold your son,’ and to John, ‘Behold your mother(John 19:26-27),’ as he bequeathed filial love to a disciple as a consolation to the one desolate.” because if Mary had living sons she would not have needed someone to take care of her after Jesus’ death on the cross and subsequent ascension.
In AD 360 Athanasius of Alexandria identifies Mary as “Mary Ever-Virgin” in his Discourse 2 Against the Arians, Section 70.
In AD 383, from Jerome in his Against Helvidius where he asserts that Joseph was only Mary’s nominal husband and that Joseph never “knew” her, and that the brethren of Jesus were “in fact” actual His cousins. Jerome asserted that Polycarp, Justin Martyr and Irenaeus “all held these same views” (though no such doctrine is found in their extant writings, including the extensive systematic theology of Irenaeus’s Against the Heretics).
Most likely, James was the son of Joseph so he was then, of course, genetically a half brother, of Jesus.
Be all that as it may, and odd or awkward as it may seam to modern protestant ears, Mary’s perpetual virginity soon became the official doctrine of the entire Greek and Latin speaking Christian church and it was avidly asserted by Ambrose of Milan, Basil the Great, and Augustine of Hippo, and the doctrine was freely held by the many of the later “reformers” of the church including Martin Luther, and John Calvin and the influential post-reformation, enlightenment era John Wesley.
James did NOT accept Jesus as the Christ, God’s promised Messiah to Israel during His lifetime “For even His brothers did not believe in Him(John 7:5)”.
In AD 33, Jesus made a special appearance to His younger brother James the Righteous after His resurrection “After that He was seen by James, then by all the apostles(1 Corinthians 15:7)”. Note that the James in this verse is NOT an apostle (!), i.e., this James is not James Zebedee or James Alphaeus. Because of this post-resurrection meeting with his formerly dead brother, Jesus walking and talking again, James realized that his brother actually was the Messiah of God, sent by God’s power with the divine authority to save and redeem sinful mankind and all of creation. James the Just thus believed and became a devout and influential Christian who described himself in first verse the Book of James as “James the Bondservant of God and of the Lord Jesus Christ.” James the Just was one of the 120ish nascent Christians who were filled with Holy Spirit 10 days after the ascension of Christ into Heaven, on the birth of the church, at the festival of Pentecost in Jerusalem.
James the Righteous was also known as James the Brother of Jesus, James Adelphos, James the Just, and old camel knees, and he soon was chosen as the first bishop of Jerusalem (who effectively became the first archbishop of the Jewish sect of the Nazarene, that is of the nascent Christian church).
Ancient oral Christian tradition states that sometime in the late AD 30s, James went on a missionary journey to the Roman province of Hispania. In Spanish culture Saint James is revered as Santiago. He is the focus of the most traveled pilgrimage of the middle ages and of modern times, that to the cathedral of Santiago de Compostela by way of the Camino of Santiago (the way(s) of Saint James).
Around AD 37, Saul the very well educated, Christian prosecuting, Jewish Pharisee was divinely converted by Jesus Christ himself to the Paul the nascent apostle of Jesus the Christ. Paul left Damascus and went into contemplative seclusion “in Arabia(Galatians 1:17)”, the Roman designation for the Sinai peninsula, that is Paul sojourned to the mountain of God, Mount Sinai, the cosmic “thin place” where heaven and earth come together where Moses met God in the burning bush, and where Moses and the people of Israel had received God’s Law 1300 years earlier. No doubt this was an important time in Paul’s life presumably spent in the presence of God. Paul surely must have rethought his detailed Pharisaical understanding of the TaNaKh (the narrative of the Hebrew Old Testament) and he must have developed the full breadth of his understanding of Jesus the Christ as the promised Messiah of God to the people of God, both the Jews and the gentiles, and the implications of that fact on the life and polity of the nascent church.
According to Eusebius of Caesarea, in his Ecclesiastical Church History, around AD 38 James was seated as the first Bishop of Jerusalem. He was appointed bishop by the Apostles Peter, James (the son of Zebedee), and John.
Around AD 40, after three years of contemplation at Mount Sinai, presumably in the presence of God, the apostle Paul left his seclusion and travel to Jerusalem to visit Peter the apostle and James the Rigtheous, the bishop of Jerusalem; “Then after three years I went up to Jerusalem to see Peter, and remained with him fifteen days. But I saw none of the other apostles except James, the Lord’s brother(Galatians 1:18-19)”.
In AD 44, James Zebedee was martyred by Herod(Acts 12:1-2), see above, and “the angel of the Lord released Peter from prison, he interrupted the prayer meeting being held for him and told them, ‘Go shew these things unto James, and to the brethren(Acts 12:17).’ ” By this time, James had been the bishop of the Christians of the church at Jerusalem for a decade.
In AD 49, sixteen years after the arrest, crucifixion, death, burial, resurrection, and ascension of Jesus the Christ, the nascent Christian church had a divisive controversy to settle. At issue is whether gentile converts to the Jewish sect of the Nazarenes (the nascent Christian church) need to be circumcised and Judaized to become full and respectable members of the church.
The leaders of the church called the Council of Jerusalem(Acts 15), (the de facto “zeroth ecumenical council of the church,” if you will), and James the Just, the bishop of Jerusalem gave the conclusive summary finding of the council(Acts 15:13-21) known as the Apostolic Decree or the Jerusalem Quadrilateral. We see his authority in the statement, “Wherefore my sentence is(Acts 15:19).” James the brother of Jesus and the bishop of Jerusalem, casts the deciding vote, and all agree and obey his finding. Peter accepts James’ correction, and Paul leaves Jerusalem on his second missionary journey.
In AD 57, the last reference to James the Righteous comes late in the book of Acts when Paul last came to Jerusalem. Paul was received by James the Just who encouraged him to take a vow with the Jews to demonstrate his continuation in Jewish ceremonial cleaning practices of the Pharisees(Acts 21:18-26). This ended in arrest for Paul, but is also shows the deep wisdom and character James the Righteous’ Christianity. James never left his Jewish practices. Traditionally, he is known for his personal extreme strictness to the Jewish Law of Moses and that fact is why James is called James the Just or the Righteous. God truly used him in the church at Jerusalem.
God truly used James in the church at Jerusalem. The earliest liturgy of the Christian church is the Liturgy of Saint James (see below). By sometime around AD 60 James, and the Christians in Jerusalem, had developed and were using that liturgy routinely in their regular worship of God in Jerusalem.
Paul recognized James the Just, along with Cephas (Peter) and John, to be “pillars in the church(Galatians 2:9).”
In AD 62, James was alive and active in the Church until his martyrdom just prior to the ill fated Jewish Revolt (AD 66 to AD 70) against the Roman rule in Palestine which crescendoed in the complete Destruction of the Second Temple in Jerusalem, as prophesied by Jesus the Christ in AD 33(Matthew 24:2, Mark 13:2, & Luke 21:6) which was directed by the Roman General (later emperor) Titus. James’ martyrdom was confirmed by the Jewish 1st century historian Flavius Josephus in his book, The Antiquities of the Jews 20.9.1, when he places James’ death after the death of the Roman governor Porcius Festus (in AD 62), but before the arrival of the new Roman governor Lucceisus Albinus (later in AD 62): “Festus was now dead, and Albinus was but upon the road; so he [the High Priest Ananus] assembled the Sanhedrin of judges, and brought before them the brother of Jesus, who was called Christ, whose name was James, and some others, [or, some of his companions]; and when he had formed an accusation against them as breakers of the law, he delivered them to be stoned. . .”
There is a group of biblical scholars who believe and advocate the idea that James the son of Alpheaus and James the brother of Christ are one person, not two different persons, however there is NO real evidence to support that idea, it is pure conjecture on the part of those “scholars” who assert it.
The Authorship of the Epistle of James:
James the author of the Book of James – It is unclear which James wrote the book. Most Scholarship believe James the Brother of Jesus Christ was the author of the Epistle of James.
James, the son of Zebedee, is an interesting possibility. He was in the “inner circle” of Jesus. The others in the inner circle, Peter and John, both wrote books in the New Testament. Though he died very early, the book of James was obviously written quite early. He is usually opposed as a choice because of his early death.
The Developer of the Liturgy of Saint James:
The Liturgy of Saint James (the Righteous, the brother of Jesus, the 1st Bishop of Jerusalem) is the oldest surviving Christian Divine Liturgy.
The Christian liturgy is the ritual process by which a Christian priest regularly guides the church into mystical union with God the Father, the Son and the Holy Ghost, which crescendos in the believer obediently consuming the body and blood of Christ in that Holy presence (as exemplified in the last supper of Christ on the even of His arrest, the day before He was crucified). “The liturgy is the transcendent place where mystery meets reality!”, Bishop Bower (ACA).
It is a recent, post “reformation” protestant idea that the most important part of the Sunday service is the sermon. The ancient church always saw the mystery of regularly meeting and entering into the presence of God at the alter as the essence of the faith.
The Liturgy of Saint James the Just, the Brother of Jesus is generally thought to be the oldest surviving Christian Divine Liturgy. It is traditionally believed to have been developed by Saint James the Brother of Christ, and used in the Christian Church in Jerusalem, and then the church at Antioch, and elsewhere through out the Roman Empire and beyond (e.g. the Syriac speaking regions of the Fertile Crescent and the Parthian Empire). This liturgy followed the general structure of the extant standard Jewish worship service, modified to adjust for the fact that promised Messiah of God had come to the earth and died for the sins of mankind, bring salvation to the people of God, and could now be worshiped and that Christians could thereby regularly encounter and experience mystical union with God the Father, the Son and the Holy Spirit.
The Liturgy of St. James has the following order of service:
- 1. Readings from Scriptures, including the Old Testament, Epistles, Acts, and Gospels.
- 2. A sermon from the bishop directed to the catechumens of the church.
- 3. A dismissal of the catechumens (the not yet baptized new converts).
- 4. A prayer for the faithful.
- 5. The kiss of peace and words of greeting from the bishop.
- 6. The washing of hands.
- 7. The offering of gifts of God from the people of God.
- 8. The Holy Eucharist, including prayer, preface, Sanctus, words of institution, anamnesis (remembrance of the dead), epiclesis (invocation of the Holy Spirit), intercessory prayers for the church, for the living, and for the dead, preparatory prayers for communion, celebration of communion, and prayer of thanksgiving.
- 9. The final blessings from the bishop.
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