The Life
James was a member of the household of Joseph the Betrothed. The Orthodox tradition holds that he was Joseph’s son from an earlier marriage, before Joseph was called to take care of the Virgin Mary; this makes him a stepbrother of Christ rather than a half-brother. He grew up in the same house with the Lord, accompanied the Holy Family in their flight to Egypt as a young man, and became one of the closest companions of Christ during the public ministry. After the Resurrection, the Lord appeared to him personally. The apostles chose him as the first bishop of Jerusalem, where he ruled the church for about thirty years. He composed the first Christian Liturgy. He wrote the New Testament epistle that bears his name. He was so righteous that even his enemies called him James the Just. In the year 62, the Pharisees pushed him from the pinnacle of the Temple, and when he survived the fall, they stoned him and beat him with a club until he died. He prayed for them as he died.
The Bible mentions four men called brothers of Jesus and at least two unnamed sisters: James, Joses, Simon, Jude. Some Western Protestants take this to mean Mary had other children after Jesus. The Orthodox Church has always understood the matter differently. The Protoevangelium of James, an early Christian text, preserves the tradition that Joseph was an older man, a widower, with children from his first marriage when he was betrothed to the young Virgin Mary. James was the eldest of those children and was a young man already when Jesus was born. He grew up in the same household as Jesus, watching Him closely, and became His follower. The word brother in Greek and Hebrew is broader than its English equivalent: it can mean stepbrother, cousin, or close kinsman. The Church has always held that the Theotokos remained ever-virgin: virgin before, during, and after the birth of Christ.
During the public ministry of Christ, the brothers of the Lord did not yet believe in Him. The Gospel of John records that they did not believe in him; they thought He had become unstable, and they once tried to take Him home. But after the Crucifixion and the Resurrection, James was changed. The Apostle Paul, listing the witnesses of the Resurrection in his first letter to the Corinthians, says: He was seen of Cephas, then of the twelve; after that he was seen of above five hundred brethren at once; after that he was seen of James; then of all the apostles. The Lord appeared personally to James after rising from the dead. Whatever doubts James had carried during the years of public ministry were dissolved in that meeting. From that moment on, James was a zealot for Christ and one of the great pillars of the Jerusalem Church. The Apostle Paul, when describing the leaders of the apostolic Church in Galatians, names three pillars: James, Peter, and John — with James first.
Hegesippus, who lived in the second century, knew people who remembered James personally and wrote down what they told him. According to Hegesippus, James was holy from his mother’s womb. He drank no wine and no strong drink. He ate no meat. He never anointed himself with oil. He never took a bath in the public Roman style. He never cut his hair, never shaved, never owned more than the simplest clothing. He alone of the new bishops was permitted to enter the Holy Place of the Jerusalem Temple. He spent so many hours kneeling in prayer for the people of God that his knees grew calloused and hard like the knees of a camel. He prayed constantly for the forgiveness of the people. The Jews and the Christians both respected him for this manner of life. They called him the Just, the Bulwark of the People, the Camel-Knees.
Around the year 49, a serious dispute erupted in the Christian Church. Paul and Barnabas had been preaching to the Gentiles, who were entering the Church without being circumcised or keeping the law of Moses. Some Jewish Christians from Jerusalem said this was wrong: the Gentiles must be circumcised and keep the law before they could be saved. The disagreement was so sharp that the apostles called a council in Jerusalem to settle the question. Peter spoke. Paul and Barnabas spoke. The whole assembly listened. When everyone was finished, James, the bishop of Jerusalem, gave the final judgment. He cited the prophet Amos. He said the Gentiles should not be troubled with circumcision; they should only abstain from the four practices that were universally repugnant: things polluted by idols, sexual immorality, things strangled, and blood. The whole council accepted his judgment. They sent a letter to the Gentile churches: it seemed good to the Holy Spirit, and to us. This was the first ecumenical council of the Christian Church, and the man who pronounced its decision was James.
The Divine Liturgy of Saint James is the most ancient Christian Liturgy still celebrated. According to the tradition of the Church of Jerusalem, James composed it himself, having been instructed by the Lord. It is very long: a celebration of the original liturgy could take four hours or more, with elaborate prayers, multiple processions, and detailed commemorations. By the fourth century, congregations were finding it difficult to stand through. Saint Basil the Great shortened it; this is the Liturgy of Saint Basil, still served on the feast days of Great Lent and on Saint Basil’s own feast. Saint John Chrysostom shortened it further; this is the Liturgy of Saint John Chrysostom, served almost every Sunday in the Orthodox Church. The Liturgy of Saint James is still served today in some Orthodox churches — especially in Jerusalem — once a year on his feast day, October 23. To attend it is to attend the worship that the apostolic Church itself offered.
James wrote one of the New Testament epistles. It is short, only five chapters, but it has been prized by the Church since its composition for its directness and its plainness. James writes about the dangers of worldly wisdom, about the need to control the tongue, about the equality of rich and poor in the Church, about prayer for the sick, about patience in suffering. His most famous teaching is on faith and works. James writes: what doth it profit, my brethren, though a man say he hath faith, and have not works? Can faith save him? If a brother or sister be naked, and destitute of daily food, and one of you say unto them, Depart in peace, be ye warmed and filled; notwithstanding ye give them not those things which are needful to the body; what doth it profit? Even so faith, if it hath not works, is dead, being alone… faith without works is dead. This teaching is the foundation of Orthodox spirituality.
In the year 62, James had been bishop of Jerusalem for almost thirty years. He was old, his knees were calloused from prayer, and the Christians of Jerusalem revered him deeply. Even the Pharisees and Sadducees respected his personal righteousness, but they hated what he taught about Jesus. Around Passover that year they decided to use his great prestige against him. They led him up to the pinnacle of the Temple, where everyone could see him, and asked him publicly: tell us, what is the door of Jesus that was crucified? They expected him to deny that Jesus was the Messiah. Instead James cried out so that all could hear: why do you ask me about the Son of Man? He sits in heaven at the right hand of the Power, and will come on the clouds of heaven. The Pharisees were enraged. They threw him from the pinnacle. He survived the fall and tried to get up, praying for his attackers as Stephen had prayed for his. They began to stone him. Then a fuller, a man who washed clothes, struck him on the head with the heavy wooden club he used for beating laundry. James died praying for the people who killed him. The Christian historian Eusebius records that even the moderate Jews were horrified, and that many believed the destruction of Jerusalem eight years later was a chastisement for the murder of the Just.
The Greek-speaking Orthodox Church gives James an unique title: Adelphotheos, the Brother of God. No other saint receives this title. The Theotokos is the Mother of God; James is the Brother of God. The title acknowledges what no other apostle could claim: he had grown up in the same household as the Incarnate Word. He had eaten meals with Him, watched Him learn the carpenter’s trade, prayed with Him in the synagogue at Nazareth, walked with Him on the roads of Galilee. The intimacy of his daily life with the Incarnate Word was unmatched among the apostles. Peter, John, and the others knew Christ from the public ministry forward; James knew Him from infancy. This intimate, lifelong knowledge of Christ in the flesh is what the Church honors in calling him Adelphotheos. He was the apostolic witness who could say: I knew Him before He was famous. I knew Him as a child. I knew the Word in His silence as well as in His preaching.
James was buried in Jerusalem near the Temple where he had been martyred. The Christians built a small monument over his grave. After the destruction of Jerusalem in 70 AD, the location of the grave was preserved by the Christian community that returned. Today there is a Church of Saint James in Jerusalem, adjacent to the Church of the Holy Sepulchre, where the Greek Patriarch celebrates the Liturgy of Saint James each year on October 23. James continues to be present in the Church in three permanent ways. His Liturgy continues to be celebrated, especially on his feast day. His Epistle continues to be read in churches throughout the world, in some of the lectionary cycles of every Sunday. And his intercession continues to be sought by the Christian people, who recognize in the Brother of the Lord one of the great pillars of the apostolic Church and one of the most intimate friends of the Incarnate Word.