James the Great, James the Less… and the Brother of Jesus? The Three Jameses

Cold open

Walk into almost any old church in Europe, and look up at the apostles. Somewhere among them, you'll find a man named James. Probably two. One with a pilgrim's staff and a scallop shell. The other holding... a wooden club.

Ask the guidebook, and you may be told: "James the Great, patron of Spain. And James the Less, the brother of Jesus, first bishop of Jerusalem."

Very tidy. The trouble is, the New Testament doesn't say that. It has at least three important men called James. A Galilean from a fishing boat, with a thunderous nickname. A quiet apostle we know almost nothing about. And a man the apostle Paul calls "the Lord's brother." Over the centuries, they've been merged, split, swapped... and shipped off to Spain.

Today, we untangle them. As always, I'll tell you what's Scripture, what's tradition, what scholars think... and what's legend.

Let's begin.

The sons of thunder

Scripture

Our first James is the son of Zebedee. Mark finds him on the Sea of Galilee, in a boat with his brother John and their father, mending nets. Jesus calls, and they leave Zebedee in the boat with the hired men, and follow.

And Jesus gives the brothers a nickname. Mark keeps it in Aramaic, sort of: Boanerges. And he translates it: "sons of thunder."

Mark never says why. But Luke tells a story that might be a clue. A Samaritan village refuses to welcome Jesus, and James and John ask: "Lord, do you want us to tell fire to come down from heaven and consume them?" Those are the actual words.

Jesus turns, and rebukes them. No fire today, lads.

Speculation

Is that where the nickname came from? A popular guess. But the Gospels never connect the two.

Scripture

What the Gospels do show is James among the few Jesus sometimes took along when the rest stayed behind. With Peter and John, he's taken into the room where Jairus's daughter is raised, up the mountain of the Transfiguration, and further into Gethsemane.

And the brothers once made a very bold request. In Mark, they ask for the best seats in Jesus's glory, at his right and his left. In Matthew's version, it's their mother who asks. Either way, the other ten were not amused.

Jesus asks them, "Are you able to drink the cup that I drink?" "We are able," they say. And he answers: "The cup that I drink, you will drink."

The sword

Scripture

Which brings us to one of the starkest sentences in the Bible. In Acts chapter twelve, "Herod the king" lays violent hands on members of the church. And then, in a single line: "He killed James the brother of John with the sword."

No trial scene. No last words.

Scholarship

This is Herod Agrippa the First, king of Judea from AD 41. Acts and Josephus both describe his sudden death at Caesarea, which historians date to AD 44. Acts places James's death before it, so: the early 40s.

Scripture

James son of Zebedee is the only one of the Twelve whose execution the New Testament records. Judas's death is there too... but that's a different story. For every other apostle, the stories of their deaths come from outside the Bible. Even Peter's death is only hinted at, in John's Gospel.

Acts doesn't connect them, but it's hard not to remember Jesus's words: "The cup that I drink, you will drink."

Tradition

Around the year 200, Clement of Alexandria, quoted by the historian Eusebius, passed on a story he said came from earlier Christians. James's accuser was so moved by his testimony that he declared himself a Christian too. On the way to execution, he asked James's forgiveness. James said, "Peace be with you," kissed him... and both were beheaded.

Moving. But it comes a century and a half later, and it's not in Acts.

All the way to Spain?

Now, the most famous James story of all. It's not in the Bible.

Later Tradition

The story goes that, before his death, James preached in Spain. After his execution, his disciples put his body in a boat which, guided by angels, sailed all the way to Galicia, in Spain's far north-west. There he was buried... and forgotten.

Until, in the early 800s, a hermit named Pelagius saw strange lights, like stars, over a field. The local bishop, Theodemir, declared a tomb there to be the apostle's. King Alfonso the Second of Asturias built a church over it.

That place became Santiago de Compostela, one of the great pilgrimage sites of the medieval world. And the scallop shell became the pilgrim's badge.

Scholarship

The earliest text usually cited for James preaching in Spain is a short Latin list of the apostles, the Breviarium Apostolorum. It's often dated to around 600, though our oldest copies are from the 700s. Five centuries after James died. And it doesn't send his body to Spain. It says he was buried somewhere else entirely.

The tomb's discovery is placed before 842, when Alfonso the Second died. Bishop Theodemir was real: his tombstone survives, giving his death as 847. But the earliest full account of the stars and the hermit that we have dates from 1077, two and a half centuries later.

And the Bible? It sends James nowhere at all. The last time Acts places him anywhere, he's in Jerusalem. It doesn't even name the place where he was killed. But it certainly doesn't say Spain.

The honest verdict: Santiago is a real, very old shrine, and the pilgrimage is genuine history. But the claim that the apostle lies there rests on medieval tradition, not early evidence.

The quiet one

Right. James number two.

Scripture

All four lists of the Twelve include a second James: "James the son of Alphaeus." And that's it. In the text, he never speaks or acts. He's a name in a list.

Except... at the cross, Mark mentions women watching from a distance, including "Mary the mother of James the younger and of Joses."

The Greek word is mikros: "younger", or "small", or "short". The Latin Vulgate made it minor, and that's where we get "James the Less."

Scholarship

Here's the catch. Mark never says this James is the son of Alphaeus. That's an identification made by later readers. Possible. Not stated. And scholars still debate whether mikros means younger, shorter, or simply... the other James.

So the honest answer is beautifully short: we know his father's name. That's all.

The brother of the Lord

James number three. Arguably the most important of all.

Scripture

In Mark, the people of Nazareth ask: "Is not this the carpenter, the son of Mary and brother of James and Joses and Judas and Simon?"

Yet during the ministry, John says bluntly: "Not even his brothers believed in him."

But later, things look different. Listing those the risen Jesus appeared to, Paul writes: "then he appeared to James." He doesn't say which James; most scholars take it to be the brother. And in Acts chapter one, Jesus's brothers are in the upper room, praying with the apostles.

Then, in Acts twelve, just after James son of Zebedee is killed, Peter escapes from prison and says: "Tell these things to James." A different James. And Acts never tells us who he is. But Paul names a "James the Lord's brother" in Jerusalem, so almost everyone, ancient and modern, takes this to be him.

By Acts fifteen, this James speaks last at the council in Jerusalem, and his judgement carries the day. Paul names him first among the three "pillars" of the church: "James and Cephas and John."

Legend

Outside the New Testament, some texts give James an astonishing status. In the Gospel of Thomas, which we met in episode one, the disciples ask who will lead them when Jesus has gone. The answer: "Wherever you are, you are to go to James the righteous, for whose sake heaven and earth came into being."

Tradition

Thomas doesn't say which James. But "the Righteous", or "the Just", is what early church writers called the Lord's brother, so most readers take it to be him.

Brothers? Cousins? Stepbrothers?

Tradition

Now, the question that has divided Christians for sixteen hundred years: what does "brother" mean here? There are three classic answers. Here they are, each with its earliest witness.

One: they were children of Mary and Joseph, born after Jesus. The Helvidian view, after Helvidius, who argued it in Rome in the 380s. But it's older than him: around the year 200, Tertullian already speaks of them as Mary's sons. Supporters point out that Greek had a separate word for cousin, anepsios, and the New Testament uses it once, for Mark, "the cousin of Barnabas."

Two: they were Joseph's children by an earlier marriage. The Epiphanian view, after Epiphanius, a bishop of the 300s. But its earliest witness is older: the Protoevangelium of James, an apocryphal text from the second century, where Joseph says, "I have children, and I am an old man." In the 200s, Origen reports this view, saying it came from that very book, or from a "Gospel of Peter".

Three: they were cousins. The Hieronymian view, after Jerome, who answered Helvidius around 383, and is its earliest clear witness. He pointed out that in the Bible "brother" can mean a wider relative: Abraham's nephew Lot is called his "brother" in the Hebrew, where many modern Bibles say "kinsman."

Views two and three go with the belief that Mary remained a virgin; view one does not. The New Testament never settles it in so many words.

Scholarship

And today? Many modern historians, including some Catholic scholars, see view one as the most natural reading of the New Testament on its own; others find the earlier-marriage view historically plausible too. Catholic and Orthodox Christians answer that the texts must be read alongside the church's early tradition. The Orthodox churches traditionally hold view two. Catholic teaching allows view two or three, though view three has long been dominant in the West. And view one is common among Protestants. I'll leave the verdict to you.

Tradition

And here's where the Jameses blur. Jerome noticed that Mark's "Mary the mother of James and Joses" at the cross shares two names with Jesus's brothers back in Nazareth. So he argued that James the Less, James son of Alphaeus and James the Lord's brother were all one man: a relative of Jesus, and one of the Twelve.

Scholarship

Most modern scholars think not, partly because John says the brothers didn't believe during the ministry, which sits awkwardly with one being an apostle. Though one ambiguous line of Paul's, which may or may not count "James the Lord's brother" as an apostle, keeps the debate alive.

Tradition

In the West, Jerome's single "St James the Less" won out, often painted holding a club. The Orthodox churches keep them apart, with separate feast days.

The death of James the Just

So how did the Lord's brother die? For once, we have a source from outside the church.

Scholarship

Historians lean on the Jewish historian Josephus, writing in the 90s. When the Roman governor Festus died, in what historians date to AD 62, his replacement, Albinus, was still on the road. In that gap, the high priest Ananus called the Sanhedrin and brought before it "the brother of Jesus, who was called Christ, whose name was James," with some others, and handed them over to be stoned.

Most scholars accept this passage as authentic; a minority disagree.

Tradition

The Christian version is more dramatic. Hegesippus, a church writer of the later second century, quoted by Eusebius, describes James as "the Just": a man who drank no wine, never cut his hair, and prayed so much that his knees grew hard like a camel's. Which, as compliments go, is quite something.

In Hegesippus's account, James is set on the pinnacle of the Temple and asked to talk the Passover crowd out of following Jesus. Instead, he proclaims him. So they throw him down. He survives the fall, kneels, and prays, "Forgive them, for they know not what they do." They stone him... and a fuller, a cloth-worker, finishes him with the club he used for beating cloth.

That's the club in the paintings: a detail from the death of the Lord's brother, now in the hands of "James the Less."

Both accounts agree James was stoned at the instigation of Jerusalem's religious leaders. The details and timing differ: Hegesippus puts it just before the Roman siege, while Josephus's setting points to AD 62. Historians generally prefer Josephus.

Scholarship

One last twist. In 2002, a limestone bone box, an ossuary, was unveiled, inscribed in Aramaic: "James, son of Joseph, brother of Jesus."

A sensation. But it came from the antiquities market, not an excavation. In 2003, the Israel Antiquities Authority declared the inscription a modern forgery, and its owner, Oded Golan, was charged. In 2012 he was acquitted of forgery, though convicted on lesser trading charges, and the judge was explicit: that did not make the inscription authentic.

The box itself is ancient; the inscription is still disputed. And these were common names: the statistician Camil Fuchs estimated that Jerusalem might have had one or two men called James with a father Joseph and a brother Jesus. Supporters reply that naming a brother on an ossuary is rare. The honest answer: unproven either way.

Close

So. Three men called James.

James son of Zebedee: a son of thunder, the only one of the Twelve whose martyrdom the New Testament records, and, by medieval tradition, the pilgrim saint of Spain.

James son of Alphaeus: a name in a list, and nothing more.

And James the brother of the Lord: one of the brothers who, John tells us, didn't believe during the ministry... and who became a pillar of the church in Jerusalem, and was stoned to death.

Centuries of painters, preachers and pilgrims folded them together. Read the texts carefully, and they come apart again.

Three Jameses. Not one confused legend.

Next time: a man in the list of the Twelve with a very dangerous-sounding nickname. Simon the Zealot. A revolutionary among the Twelve?