Who was James(Half-brother of Jesus)

James (Half-brother of Jesus) There are actually three people spoken of in the Bible as being named James: ·      James, the son of AlphaEus (known as, ‘James the Less‘) ·      James, the half-brother of Jesus (known as, ‘James the Just‘) ·      James, the son of Zebedee. However, those are just the English pronunciations. Their actual names were Iakobos (Ya-koh-bose), or Jacob, for the name James is just the Greek pronunciation of Jacob. We know little about James the son of AlphaEus other than that he was listed (at Mark 3:18) among the Apostles. James the son of Zebedee was one of the earliest followers of Jesus and the brother of John (Jesus called the brothers, ‘the sons of thunder’). He was martyred about 44-CE. James (‘the Just’) was a prominent elder in the JeruSalem congregation and the writer of the Bible book of James. According to Jude (at Jude 1:1), James was his brother and the two are likely the half-brothers of Jesus through Mary and JoSeph. Notice that their names (James and Jude) are mentioned among Jesus’ other family members at Matthew 13:55, where we read that the people in the synagogue at Nazareth were saying this about Jesus: ‘Isn’t he the carpenter’s son? Isn’t his mother called Mary, and aren’t his brothers James, JoSeph, Simon, and Judas?’ We know that this James (who likely became a disciple after Jesus’ death) came to hold a prominent position in the JeruSalem congregation, because he is mentioned as taking the lead in the declaration that the gentiles would not be required to be circumcised (see Acts 15:13-21). James was also the person who took the lead in the meeting with Paul during his last visit to JeruSalem, and who suggested to Paul that he should go to the Temple and undergo ritual purification in order to pacify local Christians who were irritated by the fact that he was teaching gentile Christians that they didn’t have to be circumcised (see Acts 21:21-24). Of course, when Paul did this, it led to his being beaten by a mob, then arrested, and later being taken to Rome to stand before Caesar. So, it is clear that at least some in the JeruSalem congregation still didn’t fully understand that the terms of the Old Law had been fulfilled with the death of Jesus, and that circumcision of the flesh was no longer a requirement for Christians under the New Sacred Agreement. However, this isn’t the only occasion where this James is mentioned in reference to arguments about circumcision and the Law. For at Galatians 2:11-13, he was referred to as the person who sent men from JeruSalem to AntiOch in order to encourage the Christian Jews there to separate themselves from the Christian gentiles and to return to following Jewish religious customs. Also, according to history, there appears to have been a sect that emerged among many of the Jewish Christians around that time, which rejected Paul and his teachings, and which claimed to follow the teachings of James. This group, known as the Ebionites, are said to have held strictly to the Law of Moses. So, regardless of the earlier stance of James that seemed to support Paul’s work with the gentiles, it appears as though he was a staunch Jewish traditionalist who didn’t always agree with Paul. Therefore, though we consider the Bible book of James to be inspired, we really know very little about this man’s faith in his later years. According to the Jewish historian JoSephus (in his work, ‘The Antiquities of the Jews’), James was martyred by the Procurator Porcius Festus about 62-CE. However, later (around 248-CE), the Church ‘Father’ Origen related an account of the death of James, which implies that he actually died during the Roman siege of Jerusalem. And if this is true, then James was not numbered among those Christians who followed Jesus’ instructions to flee JeruSalem when they found it surrounded by armies