Zealot: The Life and Times of Jesus of Nazareth

by Reza Aslan

  The story of James’s death can be found in Josephus’s Antiquities. The year was 62 C.E. All of Palestine was sinking into anarchy. Famine and drought had devastated the countryside, leaving fields fallow and farmers starving. Panic reigned in Jerusalem, as the Sicarii murdered and pillaged at will. The revolutionary fervor of the Jews was growing out of control, even as the priestly class upon which Rome relied to maintain order was tearing itself apart, with the wealthy priests in Jerusalem having concocted a scheme to seize for themselves the tithes that were meant to sustain the lower-class village priests. Meanwhile, a succession of inept Roman governors—from the hotheaded Cumanus to the scoundrel Felix and the hapless Festus—had only made matters worse.

  When Festus died suddenly and without an immediate successor, Jerusalem descended into chaos. Recognizing the urgency of the situation, the emperor Nero hurriedly dispatched Festus’s replacement, Albinus, to restore order in the city. But it would take weeks for Albinus to arrive. The delay gave the newly appointed high priest, a rash and irascible young man named Ananus, the time and opportunity to try to fill the vacuum of power in Jerusalem himself.

  Ananus was the son of the extremely influential former high priest, also named Ananus, whose four other sons (and one son-in-law, Joseph Caiaphas) had all taken turns serving in the post. It was, in fact, the elder Ananus, whom Josephus calls “the great hoarder of money,” who instigated the shameless effort to strip the lower priests of their tithes, their sole source of income. With no Roman governor to check his ambitions, the young Ananus began a reckless campaign to rid himself of his perceived enemies. Among his first actions, Josephus writes, was to assemble the Sanhedrin and bring before it “James, the brother of Jesus, the one they call messiah.” Ananus charged James with blasphemy and transgressing the law, sentencing him to be stoned to death.

  The reaction to James’s execution was immediate. A group of the city’s Jews, whom Josephus describes as “the most fair-minded and … strict in the observance of the law,” were outraged by Ananus’s actions. They sent word to Albinus, who was en route to Jerusalem from Alexandria, informing him of what had transpired in his absence. In response, Albinus wrote a seething letter to Ananus, threatening to take murderous vengeance upon him the moment he arrived. By the time Albinus entered Jerusalem, however, Ananus had already been removed from his post as high priest and replaced with a man named Jesus son of Damneus, who was himself deposed a year later, just before the start of the Jewish Revolt.

  The passage concerning the death of James in Josephus is famous for being the earliest nonbiblical reference to Jesus. As previously noted, Josephus’s use of the appellation “James, the brother of Jesus, the one they call messiah,” proves that by the year 94 C.E., when the Antiquities was written, Jesus of Nazareth was already recognized as the founder of an important and enduring movement. Yet a closer look at the passage reveals that the true focus of Josephus is not Jesus, whom he dismisses as “the one they call messiah,” but rather James, whose unjust death at the hands of the high priest forms the core of the story. That Josephus mentions Jesus is no doubt significant. But the fact that a Jewish historian writing to a Roman audience would recount in detail the circumstances of James’s death, and the overwhelmingly negative reaction to his execution—not from the Christians in Jerusalem, but from the city’s most devout and observant Jews—is a clear indication of just how prominent a figure James was in first-century Palestine. Indeed, James was more than just Jesus’s brother. He was, as the historical evidence attests, the undisputed leader of the movement Jesus had left behind.

  Hegesippus, who belonged to the second generation of Jesus’s followers, affirms James’s role as head of the Christian community in his five-volume history of the early Church. “Control of the church,” Hegesippus writes, “passed, together with the apostles, to the brother of the Lord, James, whom everyone from the Lord’s time till our own has named ‘the Just,’ for there were many Jameses.” In the noncanonical Epistle of Peter, the chief apostle and leader of the Twelve refers to James as “Lord and Bishop of the Holy Church.” Clement of Rome (30–97 C.E.), who would succeed Peter in the imperial city, addresses a letter to James as “the Bishop of Bishops, who rules Jerusalem, the Holy Assembly of the Hebrews, and all the Assemblies everywhere.” In the Gospel of Thomas, usually dated somewhere between the end of the first and the beginning of the second century C.E., Jesus himself names James his successor: “The disciples said to Jesus, ‘We know that you will depart from us. Who will be our leader?’ Jesus said to them, ‘Where you are, you are to go to James the Just, for whose sake heaven and earth came into being.’ ”

  The early Church father Clement of Alexandria (150–215 C.E.) claims that Jesus imparted a secret knowledge to “James the Just, to John, and to Peter,” who in turn “imparted it to the other Apostles,” though Clement notes that among the triumvirate it was James who became “the first, as the record tells us, to be elected to the episcopal throne of the Jerusalem church.” In his Lives of Illustrious Men, Saint Jerome (c. 347–420 C.E.), who translated the Bible into Latin (the Vulgate), writes that after Jesus ascended into heaven, James was “immediately appointed Bishop of Jerusalem by the apostles.” In fact, Jerome argues that James’s holiness and reputation among the people was so great that “the destruction of Jerusalem was believed to have occurred on account of his death.” Jerome is referencing a tradition from Josephus, which is also remarked upon by the third-century Christian theologian Origen (c. 185–254 C.E.) and recorded in the Ecclesiastical History of Eusebius of Caesarea (c. 260–c. 339 C.E.), in which Josephus claims that “these things [the Jewish Revolt and the destruction of Jerusalem] happened to the Jews in requital for James the Just, who was a brother of Jesus, known as Christ, for though he was the most Righteous of men, the Jews put him to death.” Commenting on this no longer extant passage of Josephus, Eusebius writes: “So remarkable a person must James have been, so universally esteemed for Righteousness, that even the most intelligent of Jews felt this was why his martyrdom was immediately followed by the siege of Jerusalem” (Ecclesiastical History 2.23).

  Even the New Testament confirms James’s role as head of the Christian community: It is James who is usually mentioned first among the “pillars” James, Peter, and John; James who personally sends his emissaries to the different communities scattered in the Diaspora (Galatians 2:1–14); James, to whom Peter reports his activities before leaving Jerusalem (Acts 12:17); James who sits in charge of the “elders” when Paul comes to make supplication (Acts 21:18); James who is the presiding authority over the Apostolic Council, who speaks last during its deliberations, and whose judgment is final (Acts 15:13). In fact, after the Apostolic Council, the apostles disappear from the rest of the book of Acts. But James does not. On the contrary, it is the fateful dispute between James and Paul, in which James publicly shames Paul for his deviant teachings by demanding he make supplication at the Temple, that leads to the climax of the book: Paul’s arrest and extradition to Rome.

  Three centuries of early Christian and Jewish documentation, not to mention the nearly unanimous opinion of contemporary scholars, recognize James the brother of Jesus as head of the first Christian community—above Peter and the rest of the Twelve; above John, “the disciple whom Jesus loved” (John 20:2); far above Paul, with whom James repeatedly clashed. Why then has James been almost wholly excised from the New Testament and his role in the early church displaced by Peter and Paul in the imaginations of most modern Christians?

  Partly it has to do with James’s very identity as the brother of Jesus. Dynasty was the norm for the Jews of Jesus’s time. The Jewish Herodian and Hasmonaean families, the high priests and the priestly aristocracies, the Pharisees, even the bandit gangs all practiced hereditary succession. Kinship was perhaps even more crucial for a messianic movement like Jesus’s, which based its legitimacy on Davidic descent. After all, if Jesus was a descendant of King David, then so was James; why should he not lead D
avid’s community after the death of the messiah? Nor was James the sole member of Jesus’s family to be given authority in the early church. Jesus’s cousin Simeon, son of Clopas, succeeded James as head of the Jerusalem assembly, while other members of his family, including two grandsons of Jesus’s other brother, Judas, maintained an active leadership role throughout the first and second centuries of Christianity.

  By the third and fourth centuries, however, as Christianity gradually transformed from a heterogeneous Jewish movement with an array of sects and schisms into an institutionalized and rigidly orthodox imperial religion of Rome, James’s identity as Jesus’s brother became an obstacle to those who advocated the perpetual virginity of his mother Mary. A few overly clever solutions were developed to reconcile the immutable facts of Jesus’s family with the inflexible dogma of the church. There was, for example, the well-worn and thoroughly ahistorical argument that Jesus’s brothers and sisters were Joseph’s children from a previous marriage, or that “brother” actually meant “cousin.” But the end result was that James’s role in early Christianity was gradually diminished.

  At the same time that James’s influence was in decline, Peter’s was ascendant. Imperial Christianity, like the empire itself, demanded an easily determinable power structure, one preferably headquartered in Rome, not Jerusalem, and linked directly to Jesus. Peter’s role as the first bishop of Rome and his status as the chief apostle made him the ideal figure upon which to base the authority of the Roman Church. The bishops who succeeded Peter in Rome (and who eventually became infallible popes) justified the chain of authority they relied upon to maintain power in an ever-expanding church by citing a passage in the gospel of Matthew in which Jesus tells the apostle, “I say to you that you shall be called Peter, and upon this rock I shall build my church” (Matthew 16:18). The problem with this heavily disputed verse, which most scholars reject as unhistorical, is that it is the only passage in the entire New Testament that designates Peter as head of the church. In fact, it is the only passage in any early historical document—biblical or otherwise—that names Peter the successor to Jesus and leader of the community he left behind. By contrast there are at least a dozen passages citing James as such. What historical records do exist about Peter’s role in early Christianity are exclusively about his leadership of the assembly in Rome, which, while certainly a significant community, was just one of many assemblies that fell under the overarching authority of the Jerusalem assembly: the “mother assembly.” In other words, Peter may have been bishop of Rome, but James was “Bishop of Bishops.”

  There is, however, a more compelling reason for James’s steady abatement in early Christianity, one that has less to do with his identity as Jesus’s brother or his relation to Peter than it does with James’s beliefs and his opposition to Paul. Some measure of what James stood for in the early Christian community has already been revealed through his actions in the book of Acts and in his theological disagreements with Paul. But an even more thorough understanding of James’s views can be found in his own often overlooked and much maligned epistle, written sometime between 80 and 90 C.E.

  Obviously James did not himself write the epistle; he was, like his brother Jesus and most of the apostles, an illiterate peasant with no formal education. James’s epistle was probably written by someone from within his inner circle. Again, that is true of almost every book in the New Testament, including the gospels of Mark, Matthew, and John, as well as a good number of Paul’s letters (Colossians, Ephesians, 2 Thessalonians, 1 and 2 Timothy, and Titus). As noted, naming a book after someone significant was a common way of honoring that person and reflecting his views. James may not have written his own letter, but it no doubt represents what he believed (the epistle is thought to be an edited and expanded version of a sermon James gave in Jerusalem just before his death in 62 C.E.). The overwhelming consensus is that the traditions contained within the epistle can confidently be traced to James the Just. That would make James’s epistle arguably one of the most important books in the New Testament. Because one sure way of uncovering what Jesus may have believed is to determine what his brother James believed.

  The first thing to note about James’s epistle is its passionate concern with the plight of the poor. This, in itself, is not surprising. The traditions all paint James as the champion of the destitute and dispossessed; it is how he earned his nickname, “the Just.” The Jerusalem assembly was founded by James upon the principle of service to the poor. There is even evidence to suggest that the first followers of Jesus who gathered under James’s leadership referred to themselves collectively as “the poor.”

  What is perhaps more surprising about James’s epistle is its bitter condemnation of the rich. “Come now, you wealthy ones, weep and howl for the miseries that are about to come upon you. Your riches have rotted and your garments are moth-eaten. Your gold and silver have corroded, and the venom within them shall be a witness against you; it shall eat your flesh as though it were fire” (James 5:1–3). For James there is no path to salvation for the wealthy who “hoard treasures for the last days,” and who “live on the land in luxury and pleasure” (James 5:3, 5). Their fate is set in stone. “The rich man will pass away like a flower in the field. For no sooner does the sun rise with its scorching heat, which withers the field, than the flower dies and its beauty perishes. So it shall be with the rich man” (James 1:11). James goes so far as to suggest that one cannot truly be a follower of Jesus if one does not actively favor the poor. “Do you with your acts of favoritism [toward the rich] really believe in our glorious Lord Jesus Christ?” he asks. “For if you show favoritism, you commit sin and are exposed as a transgressor of the law” (James 2:1, 9).

  James’s fierce judgment of the rich may explain why he drew the ire of the greedy high priest Ananus, whose father had schemed to impoverish the village priests by stealing their tithes. But in truth, James is merely echoing the words of his brother’s Beatitudes: “Woe to you who are rich, for you have received your consolation. Woe to you who are full, for you shall hunger. Woe to you laughing now, for soon you will mourn” (Luke 6:24–25). Actually, much of James’s epistle reflects the words of Jesus, whether the topic is the poor (“Has not God chosen the poor in the world to be rich in faith and heirs to the kingdom that he has promised to those who love him?” James 2:5; “Blessed are you who are poor, for the Kingdom of God is yours.” Luke 6:20); the swearing of oaths (“Do not swear, either by heaven or earth, or by any other oath; let your yes be yes and your no be no.” James 5:12; “Do not swear at all, either by heaven, which is the throne of God, or by the earth, which is God’s footstool.… Let your yes be yes and your no be no.” Matthew 5:34, 37); or the importance of putting one’s faith into practice (“Be doers of the word, not just hearers who deceive themselves.” James 1:22; “He who hears these words of mine and does them will be like the wise man who built his house on a rock … he who hears these words of mine and does not do them is like the foolish man who built his house on sand.” Matthew 7:24, 26).

  Yet the issue over which James and Jesus are most clearly in agreement is the role and application of the Law of Moses. “Whoever breaks one of the least of these commandments and teaches others to do so, will be called least in the kingdom of heaven,” Jesus says in the gospel of Matthew (Matthew 5:19). “Whoever keeps the whole law but trips up on a single point of it is guilty of [violating] it all,” James echoes in his epistle (James 2:10).

  The primary concern of James’s epistle is over how to maintain the proper balance between devotion to the Torah and faith in Jesus as messiah. Throughout the text, James repeatedly exhorts Jesus’s followers to remain faithful to the law. “But he who looks to the perfect law—the law of liberty—and perseveres [in following it], being not just hearers who forget, but doers who act [upon it], he shall be blessed in his doing” (James 1:25). James compares Jews who abandon the law after converting to the Jesus movement to those who “look at themselves in the mirror … and upon
walking away, immediately forget what they looked like” (James 1:23).

  There should be little doubt as to whom James is referring in these verses. In fact, James’s epistle was very likely conceived as a corrective to Paul’s preaching, which is why it is addressed to “the Twelve Tribes of Israel scattered in the Diaspora.” The epistle’s hostility toward Pauline theology is unmistakable. Whereas Paul dismisses the Law of Moses as a “ministry of death, chiseled in letters on a stone tablet” (2 Corinthians 3:7), James celebrates it as “the law of liberty.” Paul claims that “one is not justified by the works of the law but only through belief in Jesus Christ” (Galatians 2:16). James emphatically rejects Paul’s notion that faith alone engenders salvation. “Can belief save you?” he retorts. “Even the demons believe—and shudder!” (James 2:14,19). Paul writes in his letter to the Romans that “a man is justified by faith apart from works of the law” (Romans 3:28). James calls this the opinion of a “senseless person,” countering that “faith apart from works [of the law] is dead” (James 2:26).

  What both men mean by “works of the law” is the application of Jewish law in the daily life of the believer. Put simply, Paul views such “works” as irrelevant to salvation, while James views them as a requirement for belief in Jesus as Christ. To prove his point, James offers a telling example, one that demonstrates he was specifically refuting Paul in his epistle. “Was not Abraham our father justified by works when he offered up his son Isaac upon the altar?” James says, alluding to the story of Abraham’s near sacrifice of Isaac at the behest of the Lord (Genesis 22:9–14). “You see how faith went hand-in-hand with [Abraham’s] works, how it was through his works that his faith was made complete? Thus what the scripture says was fulfilled: ‘Abraham believed God, and it was reckoned to him as righteousness,’ and he was called the friend of God” (James 2:23).