Читать книгу The Letter of James - Addison Hodges Hart - Страница 8

The earliest record in the New Testament that we have regarding James is found in the letters of Paul. He is not, of course, the only James in the New Testament. “James” or “Jacob” was a common name for Jews to bear, being the name of the Old Testament patriarch whose other, divinely bestowed name was “Israel.” Named in the New Testament are also James, the son of Zebedee (Mark 1:19–20; 3:17), James, the son of Alphaeus (Mark 3:18; Acts 1:13), and James, the father of Judas (Luke 6:18). But it is doubtful that the name of the author of the epistle was meant to signify someone other than James of Jerusalem, “the brother of the Lord.” It is Paul, whose authentic letters are considered to be the earliest writings in the New Testament, who provides us with some important details concerning James.

Paul informs us that James had been visited with an appearance of the risen Christ (1 Cor 15:7), and that he was one of the “pillars” of the church in Jerusalem (Gal 2:9), the one with whom Paul had consulted personally in that city (Gal 1:19), and whose influence, through his representatives, was felt as far as Antioch in Syria (Gal 2:12). We are given to understand that there was, at least at one point in their interactions, some tension between Paul and James (and, of course, with Peter, as well) over relations at table fellowship in Antioch between Jewish and gentile believers (cf. Gal 2:6, 11). Paul also leads us to believe that James probably was a married man (1 Cor 9:5).

Turning from Paul to the Gospels, all of which were written after Paul’s death, we find that they tell how Jesus’ family members not only were not initially followers of his message, but that they even worried for his sanity soon after he began his ministry. Mark 3:21 describes them as anxiously seeking for him in order to take him home, believing that “he was beside himself.” In Mark 6, when Jesus passes through Nazareth, we are informed, through the mouths of those hearing him speak in the synagogue, that he had four brothers and more than one sister: “Is not this man the craftsman, the son of Mary and brother of James and Joses and Judas and Simon? And are not his sisters here with us?” (Mark 6:3).1 The Gospel of John clearly concurs that Jesus’ brothers were not among his early followers: “his brothers,” the Evangelist writes flatly, “did not have faith in him.” They are depicted as taunting him, in rough brotherly fashion perhaps, to go and show himself off “to the cosmos” (by doing so before the multitudes in Jerusalem) if he really was doing all the astounding things he was touted as having performed (John 7:3–5). At this early stage, James, along with Jesus’ other brothers, shows no understanding of what Jesus is doing and proclaiming. We can suppose there is in this a true historical memory, given how greatly James and the family of Christ were later esteemed.

Lest we come too hastily to the conclusion that, perhaps, James was not regarded as a righteous man during the time that he and his brothers were dubious about Jesus’ ministry, there is an intriguing fragment from a lost Gospel that provides us with an early tradition that he and the family had, in fact, been receptive of the message of John the Baptist before Jesus began his own ministry. The so-called Gospel of the Nazarenes, originally composed in Aramaic sometime before 200, tells how “the mother of the Lord and his brethren” urged Jesus to go with them to be baptized by John the Baptist for “the remission of sins.”2 If not a total fabrication, it may be seen as agreeing somewhat with the witness of Hegesippus (a second-century Jewish Christian, it should be noted, about whom more below), who wrote of James that he “was holy from his birth” and that he was someone “whom everyone from the Lord’s time till our own has called the Righteous.”3 To say that James “was holy from his birth” is to say, in effect, that he was someone who had openly practiced his faith in God throughout his life without affectation. And if he had followed, even at a distance, John the Baptist, we can imagine James as a character whose seriousness in religious matters had lastingly impressed those who encountered it. In fact, he may have been scandalized at first by his brother’s ministry and growing reputation precisely because he took his faith so very seriously. One brother’s reactions to another can sometimes be censorious—and wrong, but for the “right” reasons.

Be that as it may, between the Gospels and the book of Acts something had evidently occurred to transform James and his family’s opinion of Jesus, as well as their role among the disciples. We have already noted that Paul apparently attributed this change to an encounter between James and the risen Christ. There is a legend preserved in the second-century Gospel of the Hebrews that purports to tell the story of this post-resurrection encounter. This was a Gospel that originated in Egypt among Greek-speaking Jewish Christians and comes to us now, like The Gospel of the Nazarenes, only in fragments through the writings of various early Fathers. Although it is legendary in nature, it is interesting enough to quote in full:

And when the Lord had given the linen cloth to the servant of the priest, he went to James and appeared to him. For James had sworn that he would not eat bread from that hour in which he had drunk the cup of the Lord until he should see him risen from among them that sleep. And shortly thereafter the Lord said: Bring a table and bread! And immediately it is added: he took the bread, blessed it and brake it and gave it to James the Just and said to him: My brother, eat thy bread, for the Son of man is risen from among them that sleep.4

The story assumes that James had been present at the Last Supper, where he had made a vow of abstinence. The mention of a “linen cloth” seems to refer to Jesus’ burial clothes, apparently given “to the servant of the priest” as testimony of the resurrection. The “eucharist” in the story is reminiscent of Jesus’ breaking of the bread with the two unnamed disciples of Emmaus (Luke 24:12–35). Whether or not there is any historical kernel in this version of the appearance to James, the canonical account of the book of Acts simply tells us that James and the family of Jesus were gathered in the upper room in Jerusalem with the eleven disciples before the events of the Day of Pentecost: “These [the disciples] devoted themselves constantly to prayer, with a shared intensity of feeling, together with the women and with Mary the mother of Jesus and with his brothers” (Acts 1:14). It is evident, then, that the brothers of Jesus were, by this time, fully integrated into the nascent community of Christ’s followers. We can assume that the resurrection appearance to James, to which Paul alludes, had already occurred.

When next we hear of James in the book of Acts, he has taken a principal role in the life of the mother church in Jerusalem. After Peter’s arrest and escape in chapter 12, Peter has little choice but to flee the city. Before he goes on the run, however, he gives final instructions that those gathered in the house of the mother of John Mark should inform James: “And, gesturing with his hand for them to be silent, he related to them how the Lord had led him out of the prison, and said, ‘Report these things to James and the brethren.’ And going out he went off elsewhere.” (Acts 12:17) Following Peter’s departure, James is depicted in Acts as the principal authority in the mother church, “the first among equals,” and even Peter later in the book appears to submit to his authority and judgment (just as, in Gal 2:12, Paul implies that Peter did not want to risk any disagreement with the emissaries sent to Antioch by James). Quite suggestively, it is James who, at the council of Jerusalem, delivered the verdict concerning the grounds for table fellowship between Jewish and gentile believers in Christ:

And, after remaining silent, James spoke up, saying, “Men, brothers, listen to me. Simon has declared how God first saw to it that he would take a people for his name from the gentiles. And the words of the prophets agree with this, just as has been written: ‘“After these things, I will return and rebuild the fallen tabernacle of David, and will rebuild its ruins and erect it again, so that the rest of humankind might seek out the Lord, even all the nations, those upon whom the name of the Lord has been invoked,” says the Lord who does these things, known from an age ago.’ Hence my verdict is not to cause difficulties for those among the gentiles turning to God, but rather to write them, telling them to abstain from the pollutions of idols, and from whoring, and from anything strangled, and from blood. For Moses has men who preach him in every city, being read aloud in the synagogue every Sabbath since the times of generations long past.” (Acts 15:13–21; cf. Amos 9:11–12; emphasis mine)

We see James once more in the book of Acts, right before the arrest of Paul in Jerusalem. Paul had sought him out and followed his and the other elders’ instructions, which were intended to mollify those who regarded Paul as an apostate from Judaism (Acts 21:18–26). It was to no avail, and Paul was taken into custody, nearly losing his life in the violent altercation that ensued. But on both occasions in Acts—the council of chapter 15 and the advising of Paul in chapter 21—we see James as both the preeminent figure in the mother church, one whose wisdom and pragmatism are manifest and respected, and as the mediating influence between Paul’s mission and the original Jewish Christian fellowship based in Jerusalem.

The Jewish historian Josephus tells of James’s execution (Antiquities XX, 9, 1), which occurred between the time of the Roman procurator Felix’s death and the coming of his successor, Albinus, to fill his empty post (i.e., sometime in the middle of the year 62). James’s martyrdom was a blow to the Jerusalem community from which it never fully recovered. He and others (apparently Jewish Christians), Josephus tells us, were arraigned before the High Priest Hanan ben Hanan and the Sanhedrin, who, taking advantage of the Roman procurator’s empty office, found them guilty, possibly of “transgression of the Law,” and ordered them stoned to death. Hegesippus, writing sometime circa 180, elaborates on the story (Eusebius, History, II, 23). In the latter account, the religious leaders during Passover implore James—who is acknowledged by them to be a “righteous one”—to declare to the crowd from the parapet of the Temple “that they must not go astray as regards Jesus.” James boldly declares the opposite and is thrown from the parapet in retribution, whereupon he is stoned and finally dispatched by a fuller with a club. Of the two versions, Josephus’s less sensational telling is obviously the more plausible.

Hegesippus, inaccurate though he may be, nevertheless shows us how highly regarded James became in the following generations of Jewish Christianity. His description of an ascetical, devout, even priestly James is almost certainly an exaggeration, but it may also contain some dim memories of the actual man:

[E]veryone from the Lord’s time till our own has called [him] the Righteous . . . . [H]e drank no wine or intoxicating liquor and ate no animal food; no razor came near his head; he did not smear himself with oil, and took no baths [cf. Num 6:1–21]. He alone was permitted to enter the Holy Place, for his garments were not of wool but of linen. He used to enter the Sanctuary alone, and was often found on his knees beseeching forgiveness for the people, so that his knees grew hard like a camel’s from his continually bending them in worship of God and beseeching forgiveness for the people . . .

We may well believe that James, called “the Just” or “the Righteous (One),” was a man of continual prayer, concerned for his people, abstemious, and possibly “priestly” in his demeanor and even attire. That these were aspects of the serious and devout character of the historical person seems likely, even if Hegesippus can be accused of embroidering some of the facts.

As the gulf between the imperial church and the later Jewish Christian “sects” widened, the memory of the authority of James became an anchor for the latter. No such high estimation of him seems to have lingered among the former. The third- or fourth-century Jewish-Christian Homilies of Clement contain two spurious letters addressed to James, one purporting to be from Peter and the other from Clement, bishop of Rome. In them we can see how exalted a figure he had become for the non- (anti-)Pauline churches of Jewish lineage. Respectively, they address James as “the lord and bishop of the holy Church, under the Father of all, through Jesus Christ,” and “the lord, and the bishop of bishops, who rules Jerusalem, the holy church of the Hebrews, and the churches everywhere . . .”5 James has assumed in the imagination of the writer of this pseudepigraphical work, in other words, the position of a “pope,” a final authority and governor of all churches.

Perhaps even more remarkably we find in as early a work as The Gospel of Thomas this striking logion:

The followers said to Jesus, “We know that you are going to leave us. Who will be our leader?” Jesus said to them, “No matter where you are, you are to go to James the Just, for whose sake heaven and earth came into being.”6

In Jewish literature, the phrase “for whom heaven and earth came into being” is hyperbole, an expression of high praise. On the lips of Jesus, however, it is in this instance highest praise, because here Jesus is personally deputing James as his vicar. Given that this Gospel, and thus this logion, may well be a first- or second-century text, what we have here is an early testimony to the central position James was understood to occupy in the church.

To summarize, then, what we have before us is a sketchy portrait of James, but a suggestive one. He was a devout man throughout his life, so much so that he was known as “the Righteous” or “the Just.” He may have been a follower of—or at least inspired by—John the Baptist. Like the Baptist, he gained a reputation for self-discipline, adopting, it seems, traits of the Nazarite vow on a protracted basis (see Num 6:1–21). During at least much of his brother’s ministry, he and the other brothers were not followers of Jesus. But, at some point, either not long before Jesus’ death or—more likely—after his experience of the risen Lord, James was numbered among the most important witnesses of the resurrection. After the departure of Peter from Jerusalem, James assumed the primacy of the mother church, and became renowned for his wisdom, holiness, and common sense. Even Peter and Paul deferred to him, and it was to James that Paul came for guidance just before his arrest. Finally, in 62, James was put to death, probably by stoning.

Two questions remain: First, in what sense was James “the brother” of Jesus? And, second, was James of Jerusalem truly the author of the epistle that bears his name?

1. Later traditions name the two sisters. The apocryphal fourth/fifth-century History of Joseph the Carpenter calls them Assia and Lydia, while the fourth-century church father and (cantankerous) apologist Epiphanius names them Mary and Salome (Panarion 78, 8; Ancoratus 60).

2. Fragments of this Jewish-Christian Gospel are all that are extant. This particular fragment is quoted by Jerome in his work, Against Pelagius, 3, 2. (See Edgar Hennecke, New Testament Apocrypha, Vol. One: Gospels and Related Writings, edited by Wilhelm Schneemelcher [English translation edited by R. McL. Wilson] [Philadelphia: Westminster, 1963], 146–47.)

3. The five historical books of Hegesippus are lost to us, and what we have of them are what has been preserved by Eusebius of Caesarea in his History of the Church. I am quoting from Williamson’s smooth, readable translation of Eusebius. (Eusebius, The History of the Church, translated by G. A. Williamson; rev. ed. with a New Introduction by Andrew Louth (London: Penguin, 1989), 59.)

4. This fragment comes from Jerome’s De Viris Illustribus (a collection of short biographies, of which this is the second), in which Jerome cites Origen. (See Hennecke, New Testament Apocrypha, 165.)

5. The Clementine Homilies, “The Epistle of Peter to James” and “The Epistle of Clement to James”; from Alexander Roberts and James Donaldson, eds., Ante-Nicene Fathers, Vol. 8 (Peabody, MA: Hendrickson, 1999), 215 and 218.

6. The Gospel of Thomas, logion 12.