Steven Carr

Luke carefully describes the family relationships of the various James that he writes about in Luke/Acts

There is one exception.

Can anybody guess which James allegedly had a famous brother , where this familial relation is not described by Luke?

aa5874

Is it the Lord's brother?

Doug Shaver

Never noticed that before. Fascinating.

Huon

Acts mentions only James the son of Alphaeus, and James the brother of John.
Luke-ily (luckily ?) we have Matt 13.55 :
"Is not this the carpenter's son? Is not His mother called Mary, and His brothers, James and Joseph and Simon and Judas ?
Mark 6:3
"Is not this the carpenter, the son of Mary, and brother of James and Joses and Judas and Simon? Are not His sisters here with us?" And they took offense at Him.

Galatians 1:19
But I did not see any other of the apostles except James, the Lord's brother.
Galatians 2:9
and recognizing the grace that had been given to me, James and Cephas and John, who were reputed to be pillars, gave to me and Barnabas the right hand of fellowship, so that we might go to the Gentiles and they to the circumcised.
Galatians 2:12
For prior to the coming of certain men from James, he used to eat with the Gentiles; but when they came, he began to withdraw and hold himself aloof, fearing the party of the circumcision.

Steven Carr

Would it not have been worth while Luke documenting such a close relationship. if it had really existed?

Doug Shaver

I would think so. I don't see how anyone purporting to document Christianity's origins could have considered it an irrelevancy.

Ben C Smith

What does Luke (Acts) say about this James? Here is our introduction to him; after noting the death of James the brother of John in Acts 12.2, Luke has Peter later in that same chapter say the following (12.17b):

Report these things to James and the brethren.

That is all we get. We have not yet seen this James in the text to this point.

It is not enough to merely say: Well, Luke-Acts does not tell us that James was the brother of the Lord. No, Luke-Acts does not tell us anything about James; he just pops up in the text out of the blue. Why no introduction, background, or even some sort of set-up for this figure that, even in Luke-Acts, comes to dominate the Jerusalem scene? That is the mystery to be solved.

Ben.

Ben C Smith

Here is another oddity to consider. If one were to read Matthew, Mark, and John only, one would come away knowing (A) that Jesus had a brother named James (Matthew 13.55 = Mark 6.3) and (B) that his brothers rejected him (John 7.5; compare Mark 3.21, 31-35).

One momentarily suspects that this brother James (presumably an unbeliever) has been conflated with a different James (the leader of the Jerusalem church) in patristic tradition; for what text tells us that the brothers of Jesus ever came to be believers? Turns out there is such a text, and that text, ironically, is Acts 1.14.

So Luke-Acts, while refusing to tell us that this James is the brother of Jesus, somehow supplies a missing link between an apparently unbelieving James and the James who ran the Jerusalem church.

Ben.

Toto

Acts 1:14 does not tell us how Mary and Jesus' brothers came to be believers. In the synoptics, they think he is crazy, and Jesus seems to reject them and tells his followers that the followers are his true family. Then suddenly they pop up as part of the prayer circle.

This is not a link, it is a disconnected thread.

Ben C Smith

I agree that within Luke-Acts it is disconnected; it comes out of nowhere and leads nowhere, just like the first introduction of James in Acts 12. I also agree that we are not told what happened to get the brothers into the prayer circle. (This is why I said a missing link, not the missing link.)

What I am saying is that it is (accidentally?) a potential connector between the other gospels and the later part of Acts. Do you see the difference?

Ben.