Malachi151

Reading through Acts, I see lots of talk of James and th brothers, but no indication that these brothers are brothers of Jesus. Is there something in Acts that makes this clear that I have missed?

Malachi151

According to my study Bible, "Luke" does not identify James as the brother of Jesus in Acts, thus the passages that I have quoted above seem to strongly confirm Doherty's view that James is not the brother of Jesus.

Doug Shaver

I would not call it a strong confirmation, but it certainly is a datum in Doherty's favor. If the Jerusalem church had in fact been led by a brother of the movement's founder, you'd think the author of Acts would have known that and would have mentioned it.

TedM

One would also think the author would have mentioned something about how James was elected or came to power in the first place. The version of Acts which we have says nothing about this. We simply have James appearing out of nowhere and being discussed as though the readers already knew who he was and how he came to power. I'd say that THAT silence is more unexpected than the mention of a biological relationship.



I'm curious what people think is the most reasonable interpretation of Acts 1:14:

It seems unlikely to me that the author would follow the mention of the biological mother of Jesus with non-biological brothers, without the expected explanation. The silence there implies that the relationship for each was the same--a biological relationship. As does also the implication that the aposltes were not brothers of Jesus.

Now, the very next verse does reference "the brethren" which is clearly not referring to biological brothers, so one can argue that this is the same group as in the prior verse. I don't think that argument is sufficient to outweigh the implications of the prior verse, however.

It may be that the author had mentioned James' rise to power, but in the course of time the discussion was dropped (since Peter and not James was considered the first Pope by the later Roman Catholic Church). Had such a section once existed it well could have once been in the first chapter since an election by the early Christians of the new disciple to replace Judas DOES take place there. Had the election of James to head the new group once existed in that first chapter THAT would have been the place to have also mentioned a biological relationship.

Note that this is the very same chapter that mentions Jesus' mother and BROTHERS. What better place to have segued into a discussion of how ONE of those brothers--who Jesus had specifically appeared to after his resurrection according to the creed of 1 Cor 15--was then elected to lead the new group in the place of the Jesus who had just departed? Such a passage doesn't exist now, so we can't know, but this is a reasonable possibility which explains the silence we now see in the book of Acts regarding a biological relationship between James and Jesus.

Eisenman has argued that the election of Mathias as the 12th disciple actually is a re-write of the election of James.

ted

Malachi151

The problem here is that both GLuke and Acts were addressed to Theophilus, who apparently, doesn't know much as these works are meant to inform him of what has supposedly taken place.

Right, but nowhere in this does it say that James is one of those brothers and it is clear that the term brother is also used in a non-biological way as well throughout Acts.

As you points out:

So here we have "the brothers", a group of about 120 people.

Exactly, Mary and the brothers here are generic people who disappear from the story. Mary is never mentioned again, and neither are the biological brothers, unless one ASSUMES that James is a biological brother, which the author never says, and indeed seems to indicate the opposite as we are discussing.

TedM

You are right. There is nothing IN Acts that describes James as a biological brother, and there are plenty of references to fellow believers as brothers. I think it is noteworthy though that the author DOES seem to strongly imply that Jesus did have biological brothers. It is also noteworthy that there is no introduction for who James was and why HE was considered a better choice than Peter or any of the other disciples for taking the place of Jesus as head of all of the believers. What is said and what isn't make such a biological relationship between James and Jesus a very reasonable possibility, but there is no support for it in Acts.

There is support for Jesus as having had unnamed biological brothers, but the lack of detail about them makes it easy for skeptics to dismiss as being credible, given the context of the book as a whole.

Here's a question: Assuming someone named James WAS the first Christian leader, why didn't GMark or GLuke (who would have been aware of this person) have addressed who James was and how he rose to power? Maybe..? James was an embarrassment because he didn't believe in the resurrection, or James was an embarrassment because he was anti-Gentile.

ted

Malachi151

The Gospel of Mark is so strange, I almost think now that the Gospel of Mark was an anti-Christian work

Its almost as if the Gospel of Mark was intended to discredit Jesus.

Niall Armstrong

I've been thinking that the James who was the leader of the Pillars was the one described in Mark 10:35-45, i.e. the son of Zebedee. This is then the reason for there being no other James there. Jesus' reprimand of James and John is then a reprimand against those who proclaimed their authority as deriving from these figures. Their authority is then in obvious disagreement with the will of Jesus, according to the author of GMark.
Does this make sense?

TedM

Sounds possible to explain GMark. The author of Acts would not have shared that viewpoint, I suppose, since the leader James is not the brother of John (unless material was changed over time), and John is portrayed well.

ted

Doug Shaver

I agree that the author of Acts is affirming that Jesus had some biological brothers and that they were among the church's initial membership. I think he is also affirming, indirectly, that he knew nothing else whatsoever about them. Or at least, he had no inkling that one of them was the same guy who in due course became one of the church's head honchos.