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Currents in Biblical Research

DOI: 10.1177/1476993X06068700 2006; 5; 73 Currents in Biblical Research

Matti Myllykoski Scholarship (Part I)

James the Just in History and Tradition: Perspectives of Past and Present

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Currents in Biblical Research Copyright © 2006 SAGE Publications (London, Thousand Oaks CA and New Delhi) Vol. 5.1: 73-122

http://CBI.sagepub.com ISSN 1476-993X DOI: 10.1177/1476993X06068700

James the Just in History and Tradition: Perspectives of Past and Present Scholarship

(Part I)

M A T T I M Y L L Y K O S K I Helsinki Collegium for Advanced Studies, Finland

[email protected]

ABSTRACT

James the Just, the brother of Jesus, is known from the New Testament as the chief apostle of the Torah-obedient Christians. Up to the last quarter of the twentieth century, Jewish Christianity was regarded as an unimportant branch of the early Christian movement. Correspondingly, there was remarkably little interest in James. However, in the past two decades, while early Christianity has been studied as a form of Judaism,the literature on James has grown considerably. Now some scholars tend to assume that James was a loyal follower of his brother right from the beginning, and that his leadership in the church was stronger than traditionally has been assumed. Fresh studies on Acts 15 and Galatians 2 have opened new questions about the Christian Judaism of James and social formation of the community which he led. Part II of this article, to be published in a later issue of Currents, will treat the rest of the James tradition—James’s ritual purity, martyrdom and suc-cession, and his role in the Gnostic writings and later Christian evi-dence. It will conclude with reflections concerning James and earliest Jewish-Christian theology.

Keywords: Acts of the Apostles, Church fathers, Gnosticism, Gospels, history of research, James the just, Jewish Christianity.

Introduction

Until recently, James the Just, the brother of Jesus, remained an unjustly forgotten figure in the history of early Christianity. His role in the history



74 Currents in Biblical Research 5.1 (2006)

of scholarship is related to the rise and fall of the so-called ‘Jewish Chris-tianity’. Roughly speaking, this common but disputed term designates the earliest form of the post-Easter Jesus movement that narrowed into a side track in the history of Christianity. However, up to the fourth century, the followers of Jesus who observed ritual practices of the Mosaic Law and preserved theological traditions of Judaic origin had notable communities in Syria—insofar as the source material behind the Pseudo-Clementines can be regarded as evidence. The term ‘Jewish Christianity’ is a modern scholarly invention. The first appearance of the term dates back to seventeenth-century England; the first use of the term that I know of is in Henry Hammond’s tractate OfScandall (1644), in which the term designates the form of Christianity represented by Peter and James vis-à-vis the Gentile Christianity of Paul. In his masterpiece Nazarenus (1718), John Toland portrays James and Peter as Jewish-Christian teachers who accepted the Gentile converts of Paul by means of the ‘Noachic precept’ (Gen. 9.3-4) of the so-called apostolic decree (Acts 15.29), but who distinguished them clearly from the Jewish believers, who were bound to obey the Mosaic Law (Toland 1999 [1718]: 165). Thus, there were two distinctly separate missions, and the separate identity of Jewish and Gentile Christians clearly comes to the fore in the conflict in Antioch (Gal. 2.11-14; Toland 1999: 155, 158-59). Toland emphasizes that Paul ‘taught onely [sic] the Jewish Christians (and never the Jewish, as is universally supposed) to abstain from Cir-cumcision, and the observation of the rest of the Law’ (p. 159). A laterdeist, Thomas Morgan, had no understanding of the practical difference between Jewish and Gentile Christians as reconstructed by Toland. In his Moral Philosopher (1738), Morgan portrays the Jewish-Christian apostles as renegades who betrayed the moral message of Jesus by introducing Jewish rituals. Morgan’s hero was Paul, who revitalized Jesus’ proclama-tion. According to Morgan, later persecutions drew Jewish and Gentile Christians together; their union gave birth to Catholic Christianity, which was a combination of the pure moral message and Jewish ritualism. It is tempting to see the subsequent history of scholarship in terms of these two positions. Understandably enough, the interpretation of Morgan,which combined Protestant anti-Catholicism with traditional Christian anti-Judaism, became successful in Germany. Johann Salomo Semler divides the earliest Christians into two parties: the Jewish Christians in ‘the diocese of Palestine’ who read the letters of Peter and James, and the Pauline Christians who belonged to ‘the diocese of Paul’ and read his



MYLLYKOSKI James the Just in History and Tradition 75

letters (1775: Vorrede; quoted by Alkier 1993: 35 n. 165). According to Semler, there was a basic conflict between these two parties. The Jewish Christians were bound to miracles and material things, while the Pauline party was free and spiritual in its outlook. Semler (1775: 7-8; quoted by Alkier 1993: 37 n. 172) assumed that ‘both parties were little by little indeed united by their bishops, and they gave up their old traditions and their received doctrinal systems for the Canon; so a common canon was imposed that was indeed exceedingly valid in councils’. When the Tübingen school, led by F.C. Baur, sought to explain the dialectical development of early Christianity in terms of Jewish Christi-anity, Gentile Christianity and Catholic Christianity, it basically repeated the theories of Morgan and Semler in a much more sophisticated form. When it identified James and Peter as theological opponents of Paul, it made the unity of early Christianity one of the key questions of subse-quent German scholarship. In the Christian quest for the historical Jesus, there was a strong need to define Jesus’ message with the help of cate-gories that separated him from contemporary Judaism. The kingdom of God proclaimed by Jesus was ethical and spiritual, being something completely different from the Jewish ritualism and legalism of his time. Correspondingly, in both liberal and conservative Protestant scholar-ship in the late nineteenth century and in the first half of the twentieth century, it became important to demonstrate that the differences between Paul and the Jewish-Christian apostles were not as significant as Baur and his disciples had suggested. The account of Acts, which was so badly discredited by the Tübingen school, was appreciated again, not only in Britain, but also in Germany. It was customary to emphasize that the first Christians clung to the Mosaic Law, but that they did so in terms of the ‘greater righteousness’ taught to them by Jesus himself (Mt. 5.17-20). Goppelt (1954: 74-75) was not alone when he claimed that the commu-nity life of the first Christians was based on love, righteousness and hope of salvation, which separated them from other forms of Judaism. However, the traditions that portrayed James as a loyal and righteous fol-lower of Jewish rituals (Acts 21.20-26; Eusebius [reporting Hegesippus] 1989: 2.23.4-18) presented a problem. If these traditions were not regardedas later legends, it was necessary to point out that James originally was not a disciple of Jesus (Mk 3.20-21, 31-34) who would have embraced Jesus’ criticism of the Law; also, as the leading figure of the community of Jerusalem, James belonged to those who remained alien from Jesus and his teachings (thus, e.g., Lietzmann 1953: 58). It is understandable that




there was no particular interest in assessing the significance of this unde-niably important but theologically difficult person. The only monograph that appeared on James the Just prior to the 1980s, the extensive work of Patrick (1906), is based on a harmonistic view: the Christianity of James was the same as that of Paul, and the conflict portrayed by Paul in Gal. 2.11-14 had nothing to do with him (1906: 172, 190-91). As far as I can see, Stauffer’s article on the caliphate of James, which has now been re-published in English (1997 [1952]), is the only more or less program-matic article that sought to revalue the role of James in the history of early Christianity. Modern scholarship on James works with a different background. Particularly after the third wave of historical Jesus research, the brother of James is considered a Jewish prophet, sage, exorcist and peasant, whose relationship to the practice of the Mosaic Law was one of a complete insider. Correspondingly, the theology of Paul is discussed within the framework of Palestinian Judaism. These developments are parallel to the modern defense of the Baurian idea of opposition between Jewish and Gentile Christianity (Lüdemann 1989; Goulder 1994; for ‘signs of a Tübingen revival’ in the study of Acts, see Tyson 2001: 131-38). In some sense, one could say that the scholarship on James the Just and Jewish Christianity has distanced itself from the basic views of Morgan, and has come closer to the vision of Toland. In the past two decades, there has been a growing interest in James the Just. The new quest was opened by Eisenman, who drew upon an earlier work of Robert Eisler (1928; 1929/1930). Eisenman’s provoking theory, developed in publications that have appeared over two decades, runs contrary to all other reconstructions. It is based on two seminal mono-graphs (1983; 1986), which take their start from the contradictions and ideological biases in the Christian and Jewish sources on the Essene and Zealot movements. Eisenman reasons that since Jesus was characterized as a suffering Zaddik, his followers claimed that the high priesthood belongs to his heirs (1983: 5). His brother James was also called Zaddik, and therefore his status as a priest is elevated in some early Christian texts (Eusebius 1989: 2.23.6). As a Zadokite, James was a nationalist Zealot and the head of the ‘Jerusalem community’, a sort of ‘opposition’ high priest (1986: 3), whom Eisenman, on the basis of parallels that he finds to be close enough, ends up identifying with the Teacher of Righteousness of the Qumran community. This thesis is also embraced by Nodet (2001: 80-82). This identification has been opposed, mainly because the Qumran



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texts that mention the Teacher of Righteousness must have been written considerably earlier than the active years of James the Just—before 30 CE. According to scholarly consensus, the Qumran community ceased to exist when its buildings were destroyed in 68 CE. Eisenman (1986: 75-86) suggests that, by means of symbolic language and word-play, the Habakkuk Pesher describes: the end-time battle of the zealot Essene (viz.,Jewish-Christian) community in Jerusalem; the conflict between James and Paul (‘the Man of Lying’, who was a Herodian friend of the Gentiles and an enemy of the Law, and involved in the stoning of James [cf. T.D. Smith 1868: 1.70-71]); and the fall of the Temple. Eisenman further argues (1986: 75-86) that inhabitation in Qumran continued beyond 68 CE, and that 136 CE is the real terminus ante quem for the deposit of the scrolls in the caves. Finding this scenario in the Gospels and Acts also requires seeing only some of the evidence as helpful in reconstructing the historical James. Particularly, the various Marys, Jameses, Judases and Simons must be traced back to a simpler cast of characters. Most notably, Eisenman assumes that James the Zebedee is a fictitious person who is an ‘overwrite’ for James the Just (1997: 96-98). In early Christian tradi-tion, the group of the twelve apostles is used to deprive James and other brothers of Jesus of their original authority (see particularly 1997: 139-42, 770-75, 807-16). Eisenman’s radical views have often been rejected because they assume a historical reality that is far from the explicit evi-dence that we have on both Qumran and early Christianity. Eisenman’s antipathy against Paul and Acts, and his sympathy for later sources (Hegesippus, the Pseudo-Clementines) extends the animosity between Paul and James to the extreme. In light of recent research, to assume that Paul turned a Jewish messianic movement into a Hellenistic mystery cult is problematic. Furthermore, the identification of James with the Right-eous Teacher in Qumran is weakened by the fact that traditions about both conform to the genre of the righteous sufferer (Painter 1997: 285). In spite of these difficulties, Eisenman’s insights surely challenge the traditional scholarship on Acts, even if one does not easily accept the idea that Luke used Josephus as a source for fictitious stories (cf. Price 1997: 105, 107, 110-14). In his extensive and pioneering work (1987), the Austrian scholar Pratscher surveys all relevant evidence on James in the early Christian tradition, including the Nag Hammadi library. He concludes (1987: 261-63) that James was not a disciple of Jesus, but joined the community after Jesus’ appearance to him. Backed by a group of adherents, he played a



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more and more important role in the leadership of the church in Jerusa-lem. Pratscher dates the apostolic council to the end of year 43 CE (1987: 59) and emphasizes that the three ‘pillar apostles’ shared the power at that time (Gal. 2.9). Soon after that, when Agrippa I persecuted the church, Peter moved from the scene and James became the only leader of the community. In spite of theological differences among the apostles, James was neither a Judaizer nor an anti-Pauline agitator. He was responsible for the Jewish Christians in Palestine (the conflict in Antioch, the collection for the poor in Judaea). Pratscher argues that James was a tragic figure in two ways: [1] he embraced two conflicting ways of salvation—the Torah, and the gospel of Jesus’ death and resurrection—a position without future; and [2] he died as a martyr at the hands of his fellow Jews in spite of his obedience to the Torah (1987: 261-63). Pratscher notes that the image of James is developed in three different ways. In the Jewish-Christian tradi-tion, he becomes a more and more dominant figure of the earliest church; in the Gnostic tradition, he becomes an anti-Jewish and anti-Petrine recipi-ent of revelation; in the mainstream church, James is neutralized by locat-ing him in the harmonistic chain of apostolic succession. Adamson’s conservative study on James appeared in 1989. Adamson mainly seeks to prove the authenticity of the letter of James, explore its theology, and demonstrate its significance for authenticating the words of Jesus. However, he also discusses the historical figure of James in other texts. He defends the history of early Christianity portrayed in Acts, and defends the harmony between the testimonies of Luke and Paul. As for differences between James and Paul, Adamson traces them back to their missionary work in different contexts. In 1996, the French writer Pierre-Antoine Bernheim published a book on James (ET 1997). Unlike many popular contributions on Christian origins written by non-specialists, his book is well-researched and bal-anced in judgment. Against the majority of scholars, he discards the testimony of the negatively colored gospel traditions on the family of Jesus, and assumes that James was a disciple of his famous brother. The early Christian sources do not treat the later leader James as a convert, because he never had to convert. Drawing upon the latest scholarship, Bernheim argues that Jesus did not attack the Mosaic Law, and that James was a prominent leader of the Torah-obedient community in Jerusalem right from the beginning. Unlike Pratscher and many others, Bernheim does not claim that James became the leader only after Peter had left the scene (Acts 12.17).



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In his magisterial monograph on James the Just, Painter (1997) arrives at similar results. Independently of Bernheim, he also concludes that James was a disciple of Jesus, and that James’s position was strengthened by his personal encounter with his risen brother. Painter divides the ‘cir-cumcision mission’ and ‘uncircumcision mission’ each into three factions, locating James in the mediating faction of the ‘circumcision mission’, and Paul in the mediating faction of the ‘uncircumcision mission’ (1997: 73-78). Painter stresses that both James and Peter were Judaizers and oppo-nents of Paul, and James was the leader of this opposition (1997: 83-85, 95-98). Painter’s critical treatment of Eusebius and Josephus demonstratesthat their traditions were not spun out of thin air. Rather, they strengthen the conclusion that James was the leader of the Jerusalem church. Two notable collections of articles on James have been produced by scholars who have actively contributed on Christian origins, Jewish Chris-tianity, and the letter of James (Chilton and Evans 1999; Chilton and Neusner 2001). These contributions have particularly enriched the discus-sions on the earliest Jesus movement as a species of Judaism. In the volume edited by Chilton and Evans (1999), there are important contribu-tions by: Neusner (1999: 59-82) and McKnight (1999: 83-129) on James and the ritual Law; Farmer (1999: 133-53) on James and Paul; and Bauckham (1999: 199-232) and Evans (1999: 233-49) on the death of James. The volume edited by Chilton and Neusner (2001), although it has a somewhat misleading title, is mostly devoted to the letter of James. The general introduction to the historical figure of James by Painter (2001: 10-65); the contribution of Chilton (2001: 138-60) on the relation between James, Peter and Paul; and the article by Evans on the specific character of James’s Judaism (2001: 161-83) have bearing on the present subject. In general, these contributions explore the James traditions in theological terms, and locate the brother of Jesus in the broad, pluralistic framework of the Judaism of his day. The following survey of scholarship on James the Just is by no means exhaustive. It rather seeks to point out the main questions discussed and the variety of answers given to them. Here and there I give priority to fresh and provoking insights coming from various angles of scholarship, and add some considerations of my own. My aim is to document devel-opments that have brought James the Just into the limelight in recent decades. He has indeed become a central figure in the history of early Christianity.



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James and the Family of Jesus in the Gospels

The vast majority of scholars think that Helvidius was right in his claim that the brothers and sisters of Jesus were children of Joseph and Mary, born after Jesus (Painter 1997: 208-20; 2001: 12-24). The Epiphanian position (they were children of Joseph by a first marriage) and the Hiero-nymian view (they were Jesus’ cousins) have mostly been rejected, in spite of Lightfoot’s sympathy for the Epiphanian view (1865), and the argu-ments of some Catholic scholars for keeping the case open (Oberlinner 1975: 10-148). More recently, Bauckham argues that the historical evi-dence does not favor the Helvidian position over the Epiphanian view (1990: 19-36), but that the unexplained reference to Jesus as ‘son of Mary’ in Mk 6.3 would even speak for the Epiphanian view, since the children of Joseph’s two wives might well have been distinguished by their matrinym-ics (Bauckham 1994: 698-700). According to an often-repeated judgment in scholarship, Jesus and his siblings were raised in Nazareth, in a pious Galilean family. The piece of information transmitted by Mark (3.20-21), but omitted by Matthew and Luke, says that ‘those around’ (hoi par’ a toû) Jesus ‘went out to restrain him’ and said that he ‘has gone out of his mind’. Mark’s Jesus character-izes the Beelzebul accusation of the Jerusalem scribes as unforgivable blasphemy against the Holy Spirit (3.22-30), and rejects his mother and brothers by portraying the listening crowd around him as his true relatives and doers of the will of God (3.31-35). Most commentators regard 3.20-35 as a unit created by Mark, not least because the Beelzebul controversy is malplacé: the scribes do not leave the scene, but Jesus is portrayed as sitting inside, surrounded by a crowd (v. 32). At least on some level, the Markan framing lumps two groups of opponents, Jesus’ family and the scribes from Jerusalem, together. Lohmeyer (1953: 77) even says that both claims presented in the text, viz., that Jesus is insane (v. 21), and that he has Beelzebul (v. 22), mean the very same thing. According to Holtzmann (1901: 193-94), who reconstructed the life of Jesus on the basis of the Gospel of Mark, Jesus’ success among the crowdsperhaps pleased his family, but his dealings with sinners and open con-tempt for the Mosaic Law made them suffer. Bultmann (1931: 28-29) considered Mk 3.20-21, 31-35 as an ideal scene, but traced the statements in vv. 21 and 35 back to a sound old tradition. In traditional redaction criti-cism, some scholars (Trocmé 1963: 104-109; Crossan 1973: 110-13) inter-pret this passage as Mark’s attack against James and the Jewish-Christian




community in Jerusalem, in line with his critical treatment of the Twelve throughout the Gospel. Brandon (1951: 195-96) assumes that the hostile imagery of Jesus’ family in 3.20-35 was created by the evangelist him-self. This view has been adopted by some later scholars (Bernheim 1997: 77-82, 86-94; Eisenman 1997: 619-20). Many scholars conclude that Mark has preserved a historically reliable tradition that demonstrates the rejection of Jesus by his family. Gnilka (1978: 153) connects Jesus’ break with his family to his programmatic idea of a new community that turned against family ties. However, as Bernheim (1997: 86-94) points out, the Gospel traditions also include passages which defend family ties (Mk 7.8-13; 10.1-12; 10.17-22). Furthermore, there is no evidence for a conflict between Jesus’ disciples and their families, and Jesus’ radical message did not disturb family life among the leaders of the Jerusalem community (1 Cor. 9.5). Other inter-pretations indicate a moderate distance between Jesus and his family. Some scholars emphasize that Mk 3.31-35 elevates the eschatological family of Jesus over all natural families, rather than denigrates the kin of Jesus (Oberlinner 1975: 193-98; Ward 1992: 787-89). Pratscher finds it better to read the tradition preserved by Mark as an expression of their distance and reserve, rather than as a polemical relationship (1987: 13-21; see also Grass 1962: 101). Going even further, Painter assumes that the expression ‘hoi par’ a toû’ in Mk 3.21 does not refer to the family of Jesus, but to the Twelve (1997: 28-31). According to this interpretation, the oldest Gospel offers no evidence against the assumption that James was a disciple of his brother.

In a later passage (6.1-6a), Mark tells how Jesus is rejected by his townspeople, who admire his wisdom, but dispute his miraculous powers because they know his family. The disciples are mentioned (v. 1), but they do not play any role in the episode. In response to his critics, Jesus says (v. 4), ‘a prophet is not without honour, except in his own country, and among his relatives (syggeneîs), and in his own house’. Matthew omits the reference to the relatives, and Luke omits the whole Markan passage. This might indicate that Mark has preserved the original saying, although in Lk. 4.24, Jn 4.44, Gos. Thom. 31, and P.Oxy. 1.5 (see Grenfell and Hunt 1897), the utterance is transmitted in the most simple form: ‘The prophet is not acceptable (Jn 4:44: “has no honor”) in his hometown’.Beginning with early literary and form criticism, a number of scholars have assumed that the Markan form is secondary (Wendling 1908: 54; Bultmann 1931: 30-31; Lohmeyer 1953: 110; cf. also Marcus 2000: 376),




or even that it was invented by the Evangelist himself (Bernheim 1997: 82). However, some modern critics, starting with Schrage (1964: 264), assume that the apocryphal, brief form of the saying must be traced back to the synoptic Gospels, particularly Luke (Oberlinner 1975: 305-309). Painter (1997: 33), in turn, suggests that the Markan saying does not exclude the possibility that the mother, brothers and sisters of Jesus believed in him; they merely ‘gave him no honor’. Painter emphasizes that the reference to the family was made by the townspeople who did not believe in Jesus. The statements about Jesus’ family in the Gospel of John have also called forth divided response. Changing a huge quantity of water into wine at the wedding at Cana (Jn 2.1-12) is ‘the first of the signs’ that Jesus did in this Gospel, and has traditionally been traced back to the so-called Semeia source (Bultmann 1971: 113), or to an independent tradi-tion (Brown 1966: 101-103). The presence and function of Jesus’ mother and brothers in this highly symbolic miracle story are not without prob-lems. The Evangelist says that the mother of Jesus took part in the feast, and ‘Jesus and his disciples had also been invited’. But was there any reference to Jesus’ brothers, who appear ‘after this’ to accompany Jesus, his mother and the disciples in v. 12 when they go down to Capernaum? In some manuscripts, the disciples are not mentioned in v. 12 (Codex Sinaiticus 1010 pc it; see von Tischendorf 1869–74; 1894), and, concern-ing the brothers, some other manuscripts (p66* p75 B Y 0162 pc c) read

delphoí instead of delphoí a toû. In Ep. Ap. 5 (see Duensing 1925), the brothers of Jesus are mentioned with him and their mother as wedding guests, without reference to the disciples. Starting with Wellhausen (1908:13), some scholars have assumed that this was the case in the original story as well (Bultmann 1971: 114 n. 6; Bernheim 1997: 83). Surpris-ingly, this alternative has often been passed over in silence. The request of Jesus’ mother in Jn 2.3, ‘They have no wine’, is fol-lowed by Jesus’ distancing answer, ‘Woman, what concern is that to you and me? My hour has not yet come’. However, her reaction, ‘Do what-ever he tells you’, reflects, more or less, exemplary faith. Scholars have often emphasized that the request of the mother is merely a starting point to the revelation of Jesus’ glory (Bultmann 1971: 116-17; Brown 1966: 103-105). Pratscher (1987: 25) concludes that there is no distance betweenJesus and his mother. The statement in v. 12 has been traced back to the Semeia source (Bultmann 1971: 121; Pratscher 1987: 26), or regarded as an independent note added by the Evangelist (Brown 1966: 113; Painter




1997: 15-16). Painter (1997: 15) takes this to mean that, both for John and his tradition, ‘the brothers were an essential part of the following of Jesus’,while Pratscher (1987: 26) takes v. 12 (and 7.1-10) as the earliest evi-dence of the admiration of Jesus’ relatives in the Jewish-Christian circles. Wellhausen (1908: 14) assumed that the reference to the faith of the disciples has replaced the original reaction of the guests; thus, there is no indication why Jesus, his mother and his brothers moved on to Capernaum. The brothers of Jesus appear without their mother in Jn 7.3-8. When the festival of the Booths is near, they tell Jesus to go to Judaea, to do his works in public and to show himself to the world. Due to this misun-derstanding of Jesus’ mission, John comments that ‘even his brothers did not believe in him’ (v. 5). Jesus’ time had not come and the world hated him (vv. 6-8). The ‘Jews were looking for an opportunity to kill him’ (v. 1), but they would not kill his brothers. The parallelism between the wedding at Cana and this passage has been often pointed out: on both occasions Jesus responds to a human request that his time has not come, but contradicts his own words by acting and revealing his glory. What did John want to express through the unbelief of Jesus’ brothers? Bultmann (1971: 291-93) emphasizes that, for the Evangelist, the brothers of Jesus think according to human standards and belong to the world. Their time is always there, because they are ‘completely ignorant of the moment (the “now”) of the genuine decision’ (1971: 292). Brown (1978: 9, 12-13; followed by Bernheim 1997: 85-86) suggests that these verses ought to be read in light of 2.23-25 and 6.60-66, which he regards as a Johannine critique against the Jewish Christians, whose faith is inade-quate (low Christology, fondness for miracles). The brothers of Jesus represent these unbelievers; they are impressed by Jesus’ miraculous signs, but do not understand his divinity. If the opening verses of ch. 7 reflect a tendency of the Evangelist to be tied to quarrels of legitimation in his own times, they are ‘scarcely sufficient’ to speak against the possi-bility that James was ‘an adherent of Jesus’ cause prior to the resurrection appearance’ (Ward 1992: 790; similarly Bernheim 1997: 86). Against the majority of scholars, Painter (1997: 17-18) does not find it necessary to think that John had Jesus oppose his natural family and characterize them as outright unbelievers. The Evangelist focuses on the hiddenness of Jesus, and does not attack his brothers who are rather ‘fallible followers’ who stay in the presence of Jesus. Painter emphasizes that, in a later con-text (11.8, 16), Thomas Didymus and other disciples object to Jesus’




announcement that he would go to Jerusalem, into the hands of his ene-mies; they must be deemed as fallible as Jesus’ brothers. Most commentators regard Jn 7.1-13 as a composition of the Evangel-ist that gives only minor hints of a source. It is customary to assume traces of a source behind the words of the brothers of Jesus (v. 2: ‘Leave here and go to Judaea so that your disciples also may see the works that you are doing’). But how did the underlying source, as obscure as it might be, treat the brothers of Jesus? Wellhausen (1908: 34-36) suggests that mathetaí is a later addition to vv. 3-4: in the original story, Jesus’ brothers want the inhabitants of Judaea to see his works. He assumes that these verses were a fragment of the Grundschrift that reported how Jesus sent his brothers to Jerusalem, not to the festival, but to stay and live there (cf. metábethi in v. 3). Thus, Jesus himself can move to Jerusalem and stay there for a longer time. According to the Grundschrift, Jesus had disciples everywhere, but they did not form a specific group; instead, his brothers were with him. Even without assuming this sort of background, it is difficult to pos-tulate a pre-Johannine tradition that portrayed the brothers of Jesus as unbelievers. In the brief tradition that might be reconstructed on the basis of 7.3-4, Jesus seems to have simply rejected his brothers’ suggestion of doing mighty works in Judaea—perhaps by stating that his time has not yet come (see, e.g., Bernheim 1997: 84). Pratscher (1987: 24-26) assumes that the tradition, possibly tracing back to the Semeia source, portrayed the brothers of Jesus, particularly James, as loyal adherents of Jesus. Among the Johannine traditions that describe Jesus’ mighty acts in Galilee, those parts that include the family of Jesus do not appear in the synoptic Gospels, while the other Galilean miracles preserved by John (4.43-54; 6.1-21) do have their parallels there. If there was a Semeia source, it related traditions that included both the disciples and the broth-ers of Jesus, but treated them as separate groups. It is also possible that there was no Semeia source at all, and that the traditions preserved in Jn 2.1-12 and 7.3-4 stem from a different source than the rest of the stories.

Jesus’ Resurrection and the Leadership of James

According to Paul, James was among the main witnesses of Jesus’ resur-rection (1 Cor. 15.3b-7): ‘that Christ died for our sins in accordance with the scriptures, and that he was buried, and that he was raised on the third day in accordance with the scriptures, and that he appeared to Cephas, then to the twelve. Then he appeared to more than five hundred brothers




at one time, most of whom are still alive, though some have died. Then he appeared to James, then to all the apostles’. Following Harnack (1922: 63-64), most scholars have treated vv. 3b-5 as a separate, old tradition (see, e.g., Pratscher 1987: 29-31 [with a survey of alternative theories]; Lüdemann 1989: 46-47). Reasons for this reconstruction are obvious: Cephas and the Twelve mentioned in v. 5 quite naturally complete the formula, while the separate and mutually similar constructions in vv. 6 and 7 (and 8) just lengthen the list of resurrection witnesses. Paul himself has added an explanatory note (v. 6b) to the tradition about the five hundred men (v. 6a). Even though Paul presents the witnesses in a simple chronological order, the tradition about Jesus’ appearance to James and ‘all the apostles’ in v. 7 has commonly been taken as an independent rival formula, even though some scholars have argued that it is later, and does not indicate any kind of rivalry with the vision or subsequent position of Peter (for a survey of this basic view, see Pratscher 1987: 37-43). Harnack (1922: 66-68), the pioneer of the rivalry theory, relied basically on four arguments: [1] the parallel linguistic structure of the formulas in vv. 5 and 7 (óphthe…eîta); [2] the widespread tendency to weaken the significance of Peter’s vision (Mt. 28; Lk. 24; Jn 20–21; etc.); and [3] the relevance of the Jakobusvision in the Gospel of Hebrews, which, despite the legendary character of the story, goes back to an early tradition. Harnack also claims that [4] ‘all the apostles’ cannot mean anything else but the Twelve—an argument that has not convinced many. Nowadays, most proponents of the rivalry theory regard ‘all the apostles’ as a more comprehensive group that includes the twelve (Pratscher 1987: 42; Lüdemann 1989: 50; Painter 1997: 81). Since Paul takes pains to argue for his own apostleship in vv. 1-11, his use of these traditions does not suggest rivalry between Peter and James (Lüdemann 1989: 51; Painter 1997: 81). However, in connection with their special encounters with the risen Jesus, both Peter and James were early on regarded as powerful men among the members of the new com-munity in Jerusalem. Most scholars acknowledge that the groups named after them in vv. 5 and 7 hint at corresponding parties, one formed around Peter, the spokesman of the Twelve, and the other around James. Harnack (1922: 67-70) concludes that the traditions of vv. 5 and 7 reflect a shift of power in Jerusalem from Peter to James, and his basic view has been embraced by some recent scholars (Pratscher 1987: 45-46; Lüdemann 1989: 49-51). Since the group of the Twelve is firmly rooted in the Gospel




tradition, but soon vanishes in the sources about leadership in Jerusalem, it is at least tempting to suggest that the Peter tradition was very early, and that the James tradition became more influential only as time passed. Some, however, find it reasonable to argue for a more independent and polemical intention behind the James tradition. Winter (1958: 148-49; followed by Price 1995: 90-91) suggests that, according to this piece of tradition, Jesus appeared first to James, and only subsequently to the other apostles, including Peter. Eisenman (1997: 697-702) argues for the pri-macy of the appearance to James, and claims that the appearance to Peter is a later interpolation, because, immediately after Jesus’ resurrection, there were supposedly not twelve but eleven apostles. Furthermore, he emphasizes that ‘there is no individual appearance to Peter on record in any of the Gospels’, and thus ‘there never could have been a firstappearance to “Peter” or “Cephas”, no matter what the listing…’ (1997: 701; emphasis in original). Eisenman points to the same phenomenon as Harnack, but reads the evidence in the opposite direction. However, if it is assumed that James was such a powerful figure even in the earliest times of the community in Jerusalem, how did he become so eminent? Unlike Mark, Luke keeps quiet about Jesus’ problems with his family, and portrays the family of Jesus as a natural part of the earliest community in Jerusalem (Acts 1.14). If the gospel traditions treated above are considered as evidence for any kind of tensions between Jesus and his family, James’s vision of his risen brother must be interpreted as a sort of conversion. Particularly in past scholarship, this view was quite common (see, e.g., von Campenhausen 1963b: 137; Haenchen 1971: 155; Jervell 1998: 118-19; Witherington 2003: 107-108). Grass (1962: 101-102) and Pratscher (1987: 32-34), who assume that the family of Jesus kept a dis-tance, or lacked sympathy for Jesus before his resurrection, suggest that James did not see the risen Jesus immediately after Easter, but at some point between the appearances to Peter and Paul. Price (1995: 85-88), in turn, uses the incredibility of James’s assumed conversion as an argu-ment for his theory that 1 Cor. 15.3-11 as a whole is a post-Pauline interpolation. Over fifty years ago, Brandon (1951: 49-51) took a different, ‘non-conversionist’ path, assuming that the Twelve are added to the witnesses in 1 Cor. 15.5, in order to harmonize the Pauline list with the synoptic tradition. He suggests that the community in Jerusalem originally had four leaders: Peter, the two Zebedees, and James the Just. In some recent studies, James has also been regarded as a disciple of Jesus who saw his




risen brother and became a leader. Since Painter argues that neither Mark nor John portrays James and the rest of Jesus’ family as unbelievers, he can suggest that Jesus’ appearance to James, and James’s subsequent leadership among part of Jesus’ followers, was a very natural stage in the career of this loyal brother of Jesus (1997: 79-82, 271-72). The same conclusion can be reached by assuming that Mark and John did indeed regard Jesus’ brothers as unbelievers, but this view was not based on their traditions (Bernheim 1997: 94-95). Neither Luke (Acts 1.14) nor Paul indicates that James—and the rest of Jesus’ family—was converted to faith in Jesus (Ward 1992: 782; Painter 1997: 13, 42). It is Paul who calls himself ‘one untimely born’ (1 Cor. 15.8). Contrary to conventional Christian scholarship on James, Eisenman (1997: 173) argues that the election for the replacement of Judas Iscariot in Acts 1.15-26 is an ‘overwrite’ for a tradition that reported the election of James to the leadership of the community in succession of Jesus—something that ‘we would have expected at this point in a narrative like Acts’. He claims that the present story in Acts has left some traces of this hidden reality (1997: 167): ‘Barsabas surnamed Justus’ is ‘an overwrite for James’ and ‘Judas surnamed Barsabas’ is ‘an overwrite for Jesus’ third brother, “Jude”, or “Judas of James” ’. Eisenman finds the testimony of Gos. Thom. 12, Gos. Heb. 7, and Clement of Alexandria (in Eusebius 1989: 2.1.3-4) reliable: as the oldest brother of Jesus, James was the sov-ereign leader of the Jerusalem community right from the start. Whatever should be thought about this theory, it is indeed peculiar that Luke keeps quiet about James, even though—or precisely because—he bypasses the negative traditions of Mark, and counts the mother and brothers of Jesus in the earliest kernel group of the Jerusalem community (Acts 1.14). Since Luke reports that James the Zebedee was executed (12.2), the James in 12.17 is no other than James the brother of Jesus. Luke takes James’s eminent position for granted and offers no explana-tion about the leadership structure in the community, and most scholars simply assume that James is not introduced because his authority is well known (e.g. Jervell 1998: 335). Eisenman (1997: 97), in turn, suggests that Luke introduces the fictitious figure of James the brother of John (12.2) to obscure the role of James the brother of Jesus, and brings him silently to the fore only in Acts 15. The brief reference in Acts 12.17 is related to the persecution of the community during the reign of Agrippa I in 44 CE. After being miracu-lously released from prison, Peter appears to the gathering of the believers,




describes his release, and says: ‘Tell this to James and the brothers’. Then he goes ‘to another place’ and leaves the scene, and the focus of attention shifts to Paul. According to some scholars, Peter actually escaped perse-cution by fleeing Jerusalem; and, at the same time, the leadership of the community passed on to James (Pratscher 1987: 74-75; Lüdemann 1989: 45). In that case, however, one can ask with Painter (1997: 44): ‘Why did Peter not resume leadership on his return to Jerusalem?’ Painter draws the conclusion that Acts presents Peter’s prominence in terms of his mission-ary activity, rather than in terms of the leadership of a settled community. He suggests: ‘James was one of a group of leaders among whom he stood out, from the beginning, as the leading figure and dominant influence’.According to Painter, this is the basis of the tradition that presents him as the first bishop of Jerusalem (cf. also Bernheim 1997: 146-47). The powerful role of Luke’s theology in the plot of Acts 1–12 has led some scholars to question the Christian origins presented in these chap-ters. In a brief but concise article that comprises 23 theses, D.E. Smith (2000: 59-62) suggests that there were no appearances of the risen Jesus in Jerusalem, no Urgemeinde (original congregations) founded on them, and, consequently, no mission that spread out from Jerusalem. He seri-ously questions the traditional assumption that peasants who came from Galilee had lodging and sufficient economic resources available to host a new community in the city of Jerusalem. In turn, D.E. Smith (2000: 62-67) assumes that the ‘Jesus people’ in Judaea were not settled specially in Jerusalem, and the pillars were not local, but missionary leaders whom Paul met in Jerusalem during festivals. He emphasizes that Paul met Cephas in Jerusalem and stayed with him 15 days, but ‘was still unknown by sight to the churches in Judaea’ (Gal. 1.18, 22). Judaea might include even Galilee, in contrast to Syria and Cilicia (v. 21). Furthermore, Paul’s statement about the meeting of the apostles (2.1-10), does not indicate that there was a community in Jerusalem. If there was a community, it did not play the eminent role that Luke has attributed to it. D.E. Smith con-cludes that Paul knew very little about the ‘Jesus people’ in Judaea, while his ‘Christ cult’ was not shared or understood by the pillars and the false brothers—missionaries who threatened his work in Galatia. Most impor-tant for the present subject, D.E. Smith claims (2000: 68) that the group which came ‘from James’ to Antioch (Gal. 2.12), consisted of his con-verts, ‘related in the patron/client sense’, rather than ‘official emissaries’. The mainstream of scholarship will probably not yield to D.E. Smith’s view, but will still assume that, at the time of the meeting in Jerusalem




(Gal. 2.1-10; Acts 15), James was the leader of the local community, while Peter was the leading missionary among the Jews, and Paul was the apostle to the Gentiles. According to Gal. 1.17-19, Paul, three years after his conversion, went ‘up to Jerusalem to visit Cephas and stayed with him fifteen days’, and ‘did not see any other apostles except James the Lord’s brother’. Paul certainly does not want to tell the Galatian community that he went to Jerusalem to learn something from Peter, even though that may have been one of his motives at the time. The verb historêsai rather indicates that he simply visited Peter to learn to know him and exchange some ideas with him. But did he prefer Peter to all the rest because Peter was the acknowledged leader of the community (Pratscher 1987: 56), or because Paul assumed that Peter was more sympathetic to his cause than James (Painter 1997: 60)? Or, should we assume that Paul turned to Peter because, among the apostles, he was the one most interested in mission (von Campenhausen 1963a: 20 n. 7); or, because he was ‘the chief apostle in the mission that brought into being the church that Paul (Saul) had persecuted’ (Farmer 1999: 143)? There seems to be something right in all of these assumptions; at least Paul thought that communication with Peter would be most useful for his future activities. Paul’s wording does not indicate precisely whether he regarded James as an apostle, and scholars disagree about whether the words ei mé are inclusive (‘I did not see any other apostle except James’; thus, e.g., Howard 1977; Pratscher 1987: 56; Bernheim 1997: 197; Painter 1997: 60; Martyn 1997: 173 [hesitantly]), or exclusive (‘I did not see any other apostle, but I saw James’; thus, e.g., Zahn 1905: 70; Schlier 1962: 61; Trudinger 1975; Mussner 1981: 96). It is also possible that Paul was delib-erately being ambiguous, dropping a hint that he is not really so con-vinced of James’s apostleship as many others seem to be (Dunn 1993: 77). The inclusive reading can lean on Paul’s witness in 1 Cor. 15.7, which seems to count James with ‘all the apostles’. According to the exclusive reading, Paul talks in Gal. 1.19 about the twelve apostles and excludes James from their number. In 1 Cor. 9.5-6, Paul refers to Peter and the brothers of the Lord as full-time missionaries who were supported by the Christian communities and accompanied by a believing wife. We might say with Farmer (1999: 140) that ‘James enjoyed a twofold basis for being privileged, i.e. as an apostle and as one of the Lord’s brothers’. There is no evidence that James proclaimed in the diaspora, and it has been assumed that James ‘controlled’ the entire church from Jerusalem while his younger brothers—to whom Paul refers—traveled as missionar-ies throughout the world (Stauffer 1997 [1952]: 132).




James, Peter, and Paul: The Apostolic Council and the Conflict in Antioch (Galatians 2 and Acts 15)

When scholars have reconstructed the mutual relationships of the three most important apostles of earliest Christianity, they have been depend-ent on three much-disputed texts: Gal. 2.1-10, Acts 15 and Gal. 2.11-14. In Gal. 2.1-10, Paul describes how he went to Jerusalem 14 or 17 years after his conversion and laid before ‘James, Cephas and John’ the gospel he proclaimed among the Gentiles. He emphasizes that they did not compel the circumcision of Titus who was with him, but instead ‘contributed nothing’ and recognized ‘the grace that had been given’ to him. They merely asked that his Gentile converts would ‘remember the poor’ in Judaea. Acts 15 describes how ‘certain individuals came down from Judaea’, demanding that all Gentile converts be circumcised. In a subsequent meeting in Jerusalem, Paul and Barnabas tell about the success of their mission among the Gentiles (vv. 1-5, 12). Peter, the inaugurator of the mission to the Gentiles, does not want the Gentiles to carry a yoke that the ancestors of Israel were ‘not able to bear’ (v. 10), but says instead that all believers ‘will be saved through the grace of the Lord Jesus’ (v. 11). In the speech that follows (vv. 13-21), James agrees with Peter and quotes Amos 9.11-12 in affirmation of the basically Law-free Gentile mission. He recommends that a letter should be written in which the Gentile converts are told ‘to abstain only from things polluted by idols and from fornication and from whatever has been strangled and from blood’ (v. 20; cf. vv. 28-29). This suggestion is unanimously accepted by the apostles and the elders with the consent of the whole church, and a letter was sent ‘to the believers of Gentile origin in Antioch and Syria and Cilicia’ (vv. 22-23). In Gal. 2.11-14, Paul tells the Galatian believers about his conflict with Peter in Antioch. Peter ate with the Gentile converts, ‘until certain peo-ple came from James’. Then he—and the other Jews with him, including Barnabas—withdrew from the Gentiles, ‘for fear of the circumcision faction’ (v. 12). Paul quotes his open and angry reproach to Peter (v. 14): ‘If you, though a Jew, live like a Gentile and not like a Jew, how can you compel the Gentiles to live like Jews?’



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Source Criticism of Galatians 2 and Acts 15: Tracing the Core of TraditionThe interpretation of these texts among biblical critics has brought about numerous difficulties and open questions. It is helpful to summarize the main developments of scholarly discussion, beginning with the Tübingen school, led by F.C. Baur, in order to see how the theological position attributed to James has changed over the decades. A full discussion of German scholarship concerning Galatians 2 and Acts 15, from Semler to Lietzmann, is offered by Wechsler (1991). The scholars of the Tübingen school, Baur (1866: I, 132-56), Schwe-gler (1846: I, 116-31) and Zeller (1849: 423-54), claimed that the accounts of Paul and Luke in Galatians 2 and Acts 15 (and Acts 10–11) are irreconcilable: in Gal. 2.1-10, Paul has his mission confirmed by Peter and James, while in Acts 15, a formal meeting is dominated by James and Peter who—curiously enough—follow the basic ideas of the Pauline uni-versalism. Peter declares that the Law of Moses is a yoke that the fathers were not able to bear (Acts 15.10), and James does not just make a concession to Paul as in Gal. 2.7, but fully agrees that the Gentiles should not be troubled with the commandments of the Law, excepting the four rules (vv. 19-21). How could the James portrayed in Acts 15 be the head of the Jewish-Christian conservatives; conversely, if he is so liberal, why does Paul not refer to his opinion expressed in the apostolic council? The scholars of the Tübingen school conclude that the Lukan narratives, both in Acts 10–11 and Acts 15, are fictitious. Furthermore, their critical analysis of Gal. 2.11-14 brings James out of the shadows. If the ‘certain people from James’ were mere boasters, it is incomprehensible that Peter did not discard them and simply lean on his apostolic authority and the good decision made in Jerusalem according to Acts 15. Thus, these indi-viduals must be precisely what Paul seems to indicate—a delegation sent by James (Schwegler 1846: I, 118-19; Zeller 1849: 440; Baur 1866: I, 137-38). It was the leading apostle in Jerusalem himself who demanded that the Jewish Christians should absolutely refrain from table-fellowship with the Gentile Christians. The conflict in Antioch was not a minor strife,but a matter of principle that separated Paul from the apostles in Jerusa-lem for good. The Apostolic decree does not stem from James, but from post-apostolic times (Schwegler 1846: I, 127; Zeller 1849: 453-54).

In the two editions of his influential work on the birth of the early church, the famous renegade of the Tübingen school, Ritschl, offers two different theories to solve the riddle of Galatians 2 and Acts 15. In the




first edition (1850: 121-34), he rejects the testimony of the speeches in Acts 15, but suggests that the decree was composed after the meeting described in Gal. 2.1-10, and brought to Antioch, where it caused the conflict between Peter and Paul. All the way through, Ritschl claims that the opposition between Paul and the apostles in Jerusalem was practical and not theological, and that there was no lasting controversy between them. Ritschl indicates that Jesus proclaimed a new covenant to all his followers, and that this kept them together; therefore, the actual Jewish Christians, viz. the false brothers who demanded circumcision of the Gen-tiles, were a small minority. In the second edition of his book, Ritschl assumes that Gal. 2.7-8 and Acts 15 describe the same meeting, in which both Peter and James accepted the preaching of Paul. They composed the decree as a sort of compendium of proselyte laws (based on Leviticus 17–18). These laws did not contradict the new covenant, but merely expressedthe social privilege of the Jewish Christians over the Gentile Christians (Ritschl 1857: 127-34). Paul, in turn, did not have to, and did not want to, quote the decree, but rather emphasized his independent authority. His treatment of fornication and idol food (1 Cor. 5 and 8) speak for the authenticity of the decree, which was composed to guarantee the neutral-ity of the mutual intercourse between the Jewish and Gentile Christians. Ritschl emphasizes that the decree worked to the advantage of the Gentile Christians, who were accepted as brothers by the Jewish Christians. With the outstanding success of the mission among the Gentiles, the impact of the decree became something that James could not possibly have fore-seen. According to Ritschl, the difference between James and Paul concerned the mixed communities in Gentile areas. Galatians 2.7 shows that Paul understood the opposition between the circumcised and the Gentiles in geographical terms, while James regarded this separation as ethnographical. For Paul, it was unavoidable to strive for the unity of these communities, at the cost of the purity laws obeyed by the Jewish Christians, who were in the minority. This contradicted James’s indica-tion, that all converted Jews should keep obeying the Mosaic Law. Ritschlemphasizes that this was the only actual disagreement between Paul and the apostles in Jerusalem (1857: 138-44, 147-52). Correspondingly, the conflict at Antioch was related to this particular contradiction. James understood the decree in terms of separation of tablesbetween the Jewish and Gentile Christians, and this was demanded by his emissaries who came to Antioch. Peter’s behavior was not hypocritical; he first transgressed against the decree for the sake of the unity of the



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community. After his withdrawal, Paul reproached Peter for insinuating that the Gentile Christians should accept additional obligations of the Mosaic Law beyond the proselyte laws of the decree (1857: 145-47). Ritschl traces the later anti-Pauline Ebionites back to the Pharisaic Chris-tians (‘false brothers’), and the Nazareans back to the apostles in Jerusa-lem (1857: 248 n. 1). Liberal scholars after Ritschl were inclined to accept the historical reliability of Luke’s account, and sought to relativize the cultic signifi-cance of the decree. Harnack (1908: 188-98) even suggests that the origi-nal wording of the decree is transmitted by codex D* (see Tischendorf 1869–72), and that its contents were ethical: the words kaì toû pniktoûare a later addition, and the reference to blood was originally directed against murder. Consequently, there was no problem in assuming that Paul was in agreement with the decree. However, among the German Protestant scholars, the pendulum swung halfway back toward the posi-tion of the Tübingen school. Particularly influential was the reconstruc-tion of Weizsäcker (1873; 1902: 146-82; on Weizsäcker, see especially Wechsler 1991: 188-99). Weizsäcker stresses that Paul preached his gospel independently among the Gentiles for 17 years. After all these years, Paul visited Jerusalem to give an account of his message to the pillars, and for the first time he was attacked by some previously unknown‘false brothers’, whom Weizsäcker characterizes as new converts (Gal. 2.4). In spite of these individuals, the pillar apostles accepted Paul’s freedom to preach his gospel in the Gentile territories (Weizsäcker 1902: 157). Weizsäcker suggests that the agreement in Jerusalem led to the con-flict in Antioch because, in the meantime, Paul had gone further in his independence: the apostle to the Gentiles demanded that the Jewish Christians should—for the sake of faith in Christ—give up the validity of the Law. Peter, in contrast, stood by the formal decision made in Jeru-salem, and was not ready to accept the full consequences of his faith in Christ (1902: 161-64). According to Weizsäcker, James completely accepted the agreement recorded by Paul in Gal. 2.1-10, but regarded the combination of the Law and the gospel as the true Christianity. He stood for a separate mission to the Jews who observed the Law, and sent his men to Antioch, to remind the local Jewish Christians of the necessary separation between Jews and Gentiles. They were not allowed to eat with the Gentiles, because they had to keep their obligation (Pflicht) to the Law (1902: 165). Weizsäcker assumes that only the conflict at Antioch led to the split between Paul and the apostles in Jerusalem, and the sepa-ration between Jews and Gentiles in the Christian church. This split was




basically caused by the agreement in Jerusalem, which did not solve dis-agreements, but led the apostles on a collision course. Weizsäcker explains the harmonistic tendency of Luke’s account in Acts 15 and its contradictions with Galatians 2 by assuming that Luke used Galatians 1–2 as his source, and consciously kept silent about the conflict at Antioch (1902: 177-79). Correspondingly, Paul was not present at the meeting described in Acts 15, and did not accept the decree. According to Weizsäcker, the decree was composed after and because of the Antiochian conflict. The Gentiles were to obey the decree because of their external coexistence with Jewish believers (1902: 173). The order of events reconstructed by Weizsäcker was accepted by numerous scholars (see, e.g., Goguel 1955: 323-31). At the beginning of the twentieth century, various theories of sources behind Acts 15 were suggested to explain the independence of Paul from the decree. The pioneering theory was proposed by Weiss (1917: 194-97), who found in vv. 1-4 and 12 traces of the meeting in Jerusalem. He reconstructed in vv. 5-11 and 13-33 a Jewish-Christian source that re-ported the decision on the decree, which was made in a meeting at which Paul and Barnabas were not present. As far as I can see, the idea that the conflict in Antioch was caused by the decree originates in the works of Bacon (1929: 215-16) and Lietzmann (1953: 107-108), who assume that Paul considered the decree an addition, made behind his back. Therefore, it was the decree that decisively cooled down his relationship with the community in Jerusalem. More importantly, the overall theory of Weizsäcker strengthens the idea that the parting of the ways in Antioch led to the rise of the exclusive and legalistic tendency in the community of Jerusalem (see, e.g., Pfleiderer 1887: 57; Holtzmann 1911: I, 420, 422). On the other hand, many schol-ars assume that Paul’s doctrine of righteousness by faith and the futility of the works of the Law developed at the time of the conflict in Antioch (see, e.g., Weiss 1917: 151). Weizsäcker assumes that Jesus criticized the Pharisaic interpretation of the Mosaic Law, while Jesus’ own, ethical view was expressed in the commandment of love and the antitheses of the Sermon on the Mount (1902: 29-30, 594-95). This, and corresponding views that attributed to Jesus a superior interpretation of the Mosaic Law, affected the way in which the views of the apostles in Jerusalem, espe-cially James, were seen. Since Jesus declined all ritualism, legalism and national particularism, they surely must have followed him. In one of his last publications, Dibelius treated the apostolic decree (1956). He paid particular attention to the speeches of Peter and James,



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which characterize the Law as a burden: James ends up indicating that God had long ago wanted to accept the Gentiles into the Christian com-munity. Dibelius concludes that ‘Luke knows of a conflict about the cir-cumcision of the Gentile Christians at Antioch, which was arbitrated in Jerusalem’. However, he did not reproduce a tradition about these events, but rather followed a literary and theological plan by portraying the decreeas a concession to Gentile Christians, whose salvation was guaranteed on the basis of the Cornelius story (1956: 98-99). Following the insights of his teacher, Haenchen (1971: 468-69) partly questions the widely accepted approach of Weizsäcker, because it seeks to reconstruct the council de-scribed in Acts 15 merely on the basis of Galatians 2, without exploring the meaning of the Lukan narrative itself. According to Haenchen, in Gal. 2.1-10, Paul reports that his law-free mission to the Gentiles was accepted by the pillar apostles. In turn, Acts 15 as a whole is a unity, which goes back to Luke’s presentation of salvation history. Relying on the analysis of Waitz (1936), Haenchen traces the four commands of the decree back to Leviticus 17–18, since these were the only Mosaic ritual requirements addressed to the Gentiles who lived among the Jews. The decree stems from a situation in which it was necessary to guarantee the table-fellowship between the Jewish and Gentile Christians. According to Haenchen, the decree cannot stem from James, since the conflict at Antioch demonstrates that he acted strictly against intercourse between these two groups. Thus, the redaction-critical approach of Haenchen and his followers distances the historical figure of James from the salvation-historical development of Luke’s story, and from the restoration theology apparent in the speech of James (Acts 15.13-21). In British scholarship of the twentieth century, the discrepancies noted by the Tübingen school between Galatians 2 and Acts 15 are taken seri-ously, even though its radical conclusions were, for the most part, dis-carded. This has often gone hand in hand with an inclination to tone down the theological disagreement between James and Paul, assumed by Germanscholars. At the beginning of the twentieth century, the pioneering and influential work of Ramsay on Paul’s travels was applauded as a solid historical work that refutes the case of the Tübingen school and its fol-lowers. Ramsay (1903: 54-64) suggests that the discrepancies between Gal. 2.1-10 and Acts 15 do not speak against the historical reliability of Luke’s work, since the true parallel to Paul’s passage is in Acts 11.27-30. According to Ramsay, Paul’s note in Gal. 2.10 (ho kaì spoúdasa a tòtoûto poiêsai) should be read as referring to the collection that Paul took



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up. Nowadays this basic theory has been mostly rejected (see, e.g., Jewett 1979: 69-75), but it was rather popular among British scholars some decades ago. Knox (1948: 40-53) and Bruce (1982: 43-56) combine the parallelism of Acts 11.27-30 and Gal. 2.1-10 with another theory that would solve further contradictions between the testimonies of Paul and Luke: Paul’s letter to the Galatians should be dated early, because doing so makes it possible to regard the Antioch incident (Gal. 2.11-14) as part of the events that led to the Jerusalem council described by Luke in Acts 15. In that case, Paul wrote to the Galatians in the middle of the debate, and did not yet know how the crisis would be resolved. After Bruce, the dating of the conflict before the council has been favored by notable conservative scholars such as Bauckham (1995: 469-72) and Withering-ton (2003: 118-19). Bauckham assumes that Paul was not particularly happy with the four prohibitions of the decree, but initially accepted them as the price for securing the main point at issue. On this issue, Catchpole is much closer to the German tradition. He argues (1976–77: 429-32) that the decree cannot be traced back to the apostolic conference as portrayed by Paul in Gal. 2.1-10. Instead (1976–77: 432-38), there is a tradition parallel to Gal. 2.1-10 in both Acts 11.27-30 and Acts 15 (excepting the decree). Catchpole further assumes (1976–77: 438-43) that Paul’s journey in Acts 13–14 followed that meet-ing, and that the apostolic decree belonged to a separate pre-Lukan tradi-tion which coincided with the Antiochian incident. James composed the decree in Jerusalem, indicating the minimal requirements to the Gentile Christians in Syria and Cilicia. Following the lead of Bacon and Lietz-mann, Catchpole suggests that a delegation from James brought the decreeto Antioch in order to solve the question of unity among mixed commu-nities, and that they got a hostile reaction from Paul. Paul considered the decree a deviation from the truth of the gospel (Gal. 2.14), which was previously acknowledged by the pillar apostles (2.5). In the latter half of the twentieth century, the German discussion on Galatians 2 and Acts 15 continued as a response to the skeptical results of Dibelius and Haenchen. In past decades, many German scholars have suggested that Acts 15.1-5, 12 and Gal. 2.1-10 are parallel accounts, while the rest of the Lukan narrative is based on a tradition which origi-nally described the apostolic decree as the settlement of the conflict in Antioch. This basic view has led to a variety of concrete reconstructions of sources or traditions in Acts 15, seeking to point out that the redaction-critical view of Dibelius and Haenchen is much too skeptical. Pesch



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(1981: 106-107, 116-19) suggests that Acts 15.1-4 and 12 stem from an Antiochene tradition, while the tradition explaining the origins of the decree covers practically the rest of Luke’s account (15.5-12a, 13-33). Since the Cornelius story describes how Peter became a missionary to the Gentiles, Pesch (1981: 112-16) assumes that the events of Acts 10–11 took place between the apostolic council and the conflict at Antioch. Weiser (1984: 149-57), in turn, finds traces of a tradition about the agree-ment in Jerusalem (15.1-2, 4-6, 12, 7, 13, 10-11, 19), and of a tradition that related the conflict in Antioch, and its solution for mixed communi-ties in Syria and Cilicia (15.5, 1, 23, 30, 20, 29, 23, 22, 27, 30, 31-32). He assumes (1984: 152) that Paul neither knew nor accepted the decree; it was a compromise that was produced on the basis of Leviticus 17–18 after Paul left for his second missionary journey. According to Wehnert (1997: 58-71), Luke’s sources were much less extensive: a tradition behind vv. 1-5 described the conflict about the circumcision of the Gen-tile Christians, while vv. 20-23 include the key elements of a tradition about the letter that James and other leaders in Jerusalem sent to Syria and Cilicia, imposing the contents of the decree on the Gentile Christians. Thus, Wehnert (1997: 129-30) agrees with Lietzmann and Catchpole that the decree sent by James after the council triggered the conflict in Antioch. Jervell, a Norwegian specialist on Acts, attributes the speeches of Peter and James to pre-Lukan tradition, and assumes that Paul knew and rejectedthe apostolic decree as an additional order that was circulated at the time of the conflict in Syrian Antioch and in Cilicia (1998: 405-407). In a pre-vious article (1972), Jervell examines Luke’s image of James as the defender of Paul. In his need to present Christianity as authentic Judaism, and Paul as more legalistic than necessary, Luke allows James to say the final word when the Law-free gospel of Paul is officially affirmed against those who demand the circumcision of the Gentiles (1972: 188-93). Luke’s tendency to reconcile the opposites and make Paul look like Peter and James, and these two look like Paul, has been widely recognized from the times of the Tübingen school. However, the tradition that places the apostolic decree behind Acts 15, and Paul’s testimony about his relations with James and Peter in Galatians 2, remain disputed. What do they say about James?

What does the Apostolic Decree Reveal about James’s Relationship to Gentile Christians? The contradiction between the Cornelius story in Acts 10–11 and the apostolic council in Acts 15 is notorious. In Acts 10–11, the Gentiles are



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ritually clean and are accepted into the people of God on the basis of their faith and piety, as Peter’s vision (10.9-16) and its interpretation (vv. 34-35) indicate. In Acts 15, the pressure of zealots for the Law makes the apostles impose the rules of the decree on the Gentiles. Luke presents the decree in three slightly different forms (15.20, 29; 21.25). Furthermore, he develops a contradiction by indicating that Paul was present in the apostolic council and belonged to the delegation that brought the decree to Antioch (15.20); however, in Acts 21.25, Luke allows James to present the decree to Paul as a regulation that has been sent to the Gentiles while he was absent. There surely is a difference between the original meaning of the decree and Luke’s interpretation of it, and Luke’s interpretation makes it difficult to trace the original meaning of the decree. An extreme view is taken by Pervo (1987: 77; 166 n. 144), who assumes that Luke, on the basis of some tradition, composed the decree as ‘a fabricated official document’. However, as Wedderburn (1993: 374-75) notes, the addresseesof the decree—the Christians of Antioch, Syria and Cilicia—cannot be explained in terms of Luke’s redactional motifs. Most scholars believe that the decree was issued in Jerusalem in the time of the apostles, and that it was authorized by James. But is there a way to reconstruct the meaning of the decree and throw light on the theology of the brother of Jesus? Particularly the secondary, ethicizing trend in the textual tradition, and the word pniktós (strangled/suffocated) as a classical crux interpretum,make it virtually impossible to follow Harnack and interpret the decree in purely ethical terms. Furthermore, the cultic items of the apostolic decree do not speak for an ethical interpretation of porneía. According to the dominant view, particularly among German critics, the regulations of the decree are based on laws of Leviticus 17–18, concerning the Israelites and resident aliens living in their land. In his book Luke and the Law (1983), Wilson challenges the traditional interpretation of the apostolic decree as being based on a summary of the rules for ‘strangers in the land’ (Lev. 17–18). In his argument (1983: 85-87), Wilson emphasizes that, at least for Luke, the decree was not of Mosaic, but of apostolic origin. Wilson further demonstrates that the laws mentioned in Leviticus 17–18 are not the only ones that apply to both Israelites and the resident aliens among them, since, for example, both are also obliged to keep the Sabbath (Exod. 20.10; 23.12; Deut. 5.14). Correspondingly, the connection between pniktós (strangled/suffocated) and Leviticus 17–18 remains obscure, since eating naturally expired



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animals is forbidden in Lev. 17.15, but not in the decree (Acts 15.21, 29; 21.25). Furthermore, the LXX regularly translates ‘rg’ (‘stranger’) of the Mosaic laws with prosélutos (‘proselyte’, ‘convert’); this complicates the assumption that the decree applied the regulations of Leviticus 17–18 to Gentiles, since they did not actually have to become proselytes. Further-more, ‘there is no evidence that first-century Judaism made Leviticus 17–18 part of its demand for proselytes or God-fearers’ (1983: 86). Klinghardt (1988: 186-206) agrees with Wilson on the main point. However, he points out that those laws that are addressed to both Israelites and resident aliens, and that correspond with the decree, include the warn-ing that the violator will be cut off from the people (Ausrottungsformel).This warning indicates that all those to whom these laws are addressed have been incorporated into Israel. Callan (1993: 287-89) specifies this definition by including the use of the idiom #$y) #$y) (‘any man’) with the principles of selection that underlie the apostolic decree. Against the strict conclusion of Wilson, Klinghardt (1988: 183-85, 200-205) argues that there were also uncircumcised, God-fearing proselytes (cf. Acts 13.43), and that the decree, which was based on carefully selected regulations of Leviticus 17–18, guaranteed their freedom from circumcision. Callan (1993: 290-95) suggests that, in post-biblical times ‘rg’ (‘stranger’) could mean either ‘convert’ or ‘resident alien’ in the sense of ‘Gentile adherent of the synagogue’. Therefore, he finds it possible to imagine that Luke regarded the apostolic decree as ‘specifying minimal requirements for Gentiles who wish to associate themselves with Judaism without fully converting to Judaism’ (1993: 296-97). For Gentile Christians, the conditions of the decree meant that they are ‘incorporated into Israel in some way, either as converts or as a group associated with Israel without full conversion’. An alternative to the interpretation based on Leviticus 17–18 has been offered by Kümmel (1965: 285-87; see also Hengel 1985: 94 and Holtz 1986: 355), who suggests that all items of the decree touch the ritual impurity caused by demons, viz., Gentile deities. This basic view has been embraced by Wilson (1983: 94-99) and Wedderburn (1993: 384-89). Wilson, who emphasizes the apostolic origins of the decree against the Mosaic connection, is inclined to regard pniktón as a later addition to the decree. Wedderburn likewise stresses difficulties in tracing this term back to Lev. 17.13-15, but suggests that it hints at strangled offerings whose souls are offered to demons intact. According to the interpretations of Wilson and Wedderburn, the Mosaic Law has no particular bearing on the



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regulations of the decree; it is rather the purity of the Gentile Christians from the demons and idolatry that enables the Jewish Christians to associ-ate with them. The theory of Wilson and Wedderburn is rejected and sharply criti-cized by Wehnert (1997: 209-13), who defends the traditional hypothesis with the help of Targums on Leviticus 17–18. He refers particularly to the Targum manuscripts of Qumran, and assumes that the parallel material relevant to the apostolic decree can be traced back to the first century (1997: 216-19). He puts particular emphasis on the prohibition of strangledanimals; in the evidence of the Targums, this category includes animals which are slaughtered in a wrong way (1997: 221-32). He concludes that the decree is a collection of purity commandments for Gentile converts, selected according to the central Jewish categories for purity and impurity of resident aliens. No commands addressed to the resident aliens, other than those mentioned in the decree, include a reference to impurity as having a consequence for the transgressor (cf., e.g., Exod. 12.43-49; 20.10;Lev. 16.29; 22.10, 18-20). Wehnert connects this principle of selection with concern in the Jerusalem community for the purity of the people of God, which consists of both Jews and Gentiles (1997: 239-52). Bauckham (1995: 452-62), who focuses on the speech of James in Acts 15.13-21, relates the original form of the decree to the inclusion of Gentiles in the eschatological people of God. He does not go as far as Adamson (1989: 22-23), who assumes that this speech is the one that James gave and that it was recorded with the decree in the letter sent to Gentile Christians. Instead, Bauckham argues (1995: 452) that the view presented by James reflects ‘both the considered view of the Jerusalem church leadership, in which James was pre-eminent, as to the relation of Gentile Christians to the Torah, and also the exegetical arguments on which this view was based and with which it was recommended’. Bauck-ham argues that the skillful exegetical variations in the quotation of Amos 9.11-12 (LXX) reveal that James not only considered the eschatological people of God to be the new temple that was promised, but also states that, following Isa. 45.21, ‘God’s purpose of incorporating Gentiles into his eschatological people is one which predates even these prophecies’ (1995: 455; see also Witherington 2003: 131-32). Bauckham claims that probably no other prophetic text would have expressed more clearly the point that in the new temple of the messianic age, the Christian com-munity, the Gentiles can enter God’s presence without becoming Jews (1995: 458). According to Bauckham, this further explains how the apos-



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tolic decree is based on the four commandments addressed to the resident aliens in Leviticus 17–18. Besides Leviticus 17–18, the other laws in the Torah that treat the question of resident aliens ‘in the midst’ of Israel refer to the Temple cult (Lev. 16.29; Num. 15.14-16, 29; 19.10). For Jewish-Christian exegetes, the four commandments of the decree are related to the eschatological temple, to which the Gentile Christians are admitted. Bauckham argues that Luke drew upon ‘a document which explained the exegetical basis of the apostolic decree for the Gentile Christians’ (1995: 461). He argues, against Haenchen and others, that the decree was not a later document designed to solve the problem of table-fellowship between Jewish and Gentile Christians, because it does not address this question. Instead, it successfully formulates the extent of the authority of the Mosaic Law over Gentile Christians. Its wide and independent circula-tion in second- and third-century texts demonstrates that its authority was not dependent on the book of Acts (1995: 462-67). Bockmuehl (1995: 93-95) agrees with Bauckham that the four items of the apostolic decree were not designed to regulate the table-fellowship in mixed communities, but Bockmuehl interprets them in ethical rather than soteriological terms. He suggests that, in its original form, the decree was a halakhic rule for the Gentile Christians—a rule based on Noachide com-mandments (cf. Schoeps 1949: 259). Bockmuehl stresses that James’s speech in Acts 15.13-21 is not a compromise; it rather ‘accepts Peter’s argument and simply spells out its halakhic consequences’ (Bockmuehl 1995: 96). He emphasizes that in the apostolic decree we have three care-fully defined forbidden foods. In addition to the clear cases of idolatry and fornication, the blood taboo naturally implies violence as well, since moral and dietary arguments belong inseparably together. The halakhic concerns of Paul, particularly in 1 Corinthians 5–10, are parallel to the commandments in Acts 15 (1995: 96-100; cf. Witherington 2003: 134-35). Taylor (2001: 374-79) suggests that the Jerusalem decree of Acts can be understood both as proto-Noachide commandments, which allow the Gentile Christians a separate status within Israel and keep them at a dis-tance from the Mosaic Law, and as precepts binding on Israelites and resident aliens. However, he points out that the reaction of James to the commensality of the Jewish and Gentile believers in Antioch was based on the idea that the Gentiles are bound to proto-Noachide command-ments, which prevent their association with the Jews (2001: 379-80). The relation of the decree to the Noachide commandments is rejected by Wehnert (1997: 236-37), particularly because there is no first-century



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evidence for their reception, and because they have no halakhic Sitz im Leben. How the interpretation of the Jerusalem decree can help us to recon-struct the theology of James remains an important issue. Was he mostly concerned about the inclusion of the Gentiles in the one Christian com-munity and their subsequent way of life? Or did he want to safeguard a reasonable distance between the uncircumcised and circumcised believers?Did he advocate the ritual purity of the Gentile Christians on the basis of Leviticus 17–18, or did he simply want to separate them as clearly as possible from idol worship and the work of demons? Was the object of the decree really to allow the Gentile Christians to eat together with the Jewish Christians? Or did it present the minimal demands of the Jewish Christians towards the Gentile converts, without seeking unity with them? The manifold theories presented here are, of course, related to the roles that scholars attribute to James on the basis of Paul’s testimony in Gala-tians 2. The interpretation of Paul’s account, which was meant to be clear enough for the Galatian audience, has been painfully difficult. Something in Paul’s train of thought, however, seems to be clear. He wanted to demonstrate to the Galatian Christians that his gospel is: of divine origin; independent of all other apostles; accepted without reservation by the pillar apostles in Jerusalem; and boldly defended by him alone against all other circumcised believers in Antioch.

Galatians 2.1-10 and the Agreement in Jerusalem: Where Did James Stand? According to the conventional dating of Paul’s life and letters, Paul wrote his letter to the Galatians in 54–55 CE, and recalled in Gal. 2.1-10 his decisive meeting with the ‘reputed’ leaders in Jerusalem some eight years earlier. An early date for the apostolic council, before the death of AgrippaI in 44 CE, is proposed by Suhl (1975: 57-70; cf. Pratscher 1987: 52-54), who argues that the chronological evidence for the famine indicated in Gal. 2.9 demands this date. Suhl (1975: 73-74, 322-23) dates the conflictin Antioch to 47 CE, before the collection was taken up by Paul to relieve the famine in Jerusalem. According to the chronology proposed by Jewett (1979: 89-93, 95-104), the apostolic council took place in Octo-ber, 51 CE; the conflict with Peter at Antioch in early 52 CE; and the letter to the Galatians should be dated in 53 CE. As mentioned above, some scholars assume that the decree was composed after the meeting in Jerusalem, in the absence of Paul, and brought by a delegation sent by



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James to Antioch, where it triggered the conflict. When the decree is datedafter the conflict in Antioch, it is possible to imagine diverging time-spans between the council and the conflict. Many critics locate Paul’s mission-ary journey to Cyprus and southern Cilicia between them (see, e.g.,Schmithals 1965: 63; Catchpole 1976–77: 442). The key argument for this reconstruction is that Gal. 2.11-14 most likely meant a break between Paul and Barnabas, who work together in Acts 13–15, but not after that. Reicke (1953: 175, 181) goes further and connects the conflict with Paul’s later visit to Antioch (Acts 18.22; 53–54 CE). Against such assumptions, Holtz (1986: 347) claims that the incident took place some weeks, or at most some months, after the apostolic council. Lüdemann (1984: 75-77) suggests that the incident in Antioch took place before the conference (cf. also Augustine, Epistle 82.11 [see Fürst 2002]; Zahn 1905: 110-11; Munck 1954: 94; Ward 1992: 783-84) because:[1] the demands of the opponents in both episodes are similar; [2] theuncomplicated communal life in mixed communities presupposed in the incident episode was no longer possible after the conference; and, there-fore, [3] questioning the table-fellowship between Jewish and Gentile Christians was no longer possible after the conference. This suggestion has mostly been rejected. Paul’s use of the clause all’ hóte (‘but when’) elsewhere in Galatians (1.15; 2.12b; 4.4; cf. also hóte dé, 2.14) is thor-oughly chronological (Wehnert 1997: 120-23). A reversed order of the events would make the question of the table-fellowship urgent for the council, but nothing in Paul’s account speaks for such an assumption (Martyn 1997: 231 n. 87). Furthermore, if the Antioch conflict really preceded the decision made in Jerusalem, Paul could have reflected them in chronological order and demonstrated that his point prevailed over the unstable behavior of Peter and ‘the other Jews’ present in Antioch (Jewett 1979: 83-84).

What does Paul mean when he says that he went to Jerusalem with Barnabas and the (uncircumcised) Titus ‘in response to a revelation’ (Gal. 2.2), and laid before the ‘acknowledged men’ (2.2, 6) the gospel that he proclaims ‘among the nations’ (2.2, 8)? He surely wants to emphasize that he was not commanded by anybody to do so. However, the details of Paul’s argument, and the parallel text in Acts 15.1-5, hint at a situation in which the law-free gospel proclaimed in Antioch was at stake. Barnabas, whom Paul took with him, was most likely (Gal. 2.13) one of the leaders at Antioch, and Titus was a living witness for uncircumcised believers. It is striking that Paul does not mention Antioch in this section. However, a



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great majority of scholars assume that the discussion in Jerusalem became necessary because the Gentile Christians in Antioch were required to accept circumcision (see, e.g., Haenchen 1971: 464-65; Pratscher 1987:60-61; Dunn 1993: 91; Martyn 1997: 208-11; Painter 1997: 62-63). But where did James and Peter really stand? How close were they to those who insisted on the circumcision of the Gentiles? In other words, who were the ‘false brothers’ whom Paul mentions in his anacoluthon in Gal. 2.4-5? Baur (1866: I, 138) assumes that the false brothers were agita-tors of James who came to Antioch, and that Peter also shared their basic ideas. Some modern scholars have supported this view. Among modern critics, Schoeps (1949: 68) and Stauffer (1997 [1952]: 132) identify tínasapò akóbou in Gal. 2.12 with the pseudadélphoi in 2.4, while Simon (1978: 28, 30) suggests that the false brothers in Acts 15.1-5 are ‘without doubt’ identical with those in Gal. 2.12, and that they at least thought they represented the opinion of James. Lüdemann (1984: 75), who suggests the reverse order of Gal. 2.1-10 and 2.11-14, also claims that the opponents hinted at in these episodes all belong to one and the same group. Most scholars separate James from the extreme wing of the commu-nity, which was zealous for the Law. However, an extreme view is rep-resented by Munck (1954: 89-90, 237-41) who claims that those who demanded circumcision of the Gentiles were but a tiny and independent minority in the church of Jerusalem, and that by the ‘false brothers’ in Gal. 2.4-5 Paul means Galatian Judaizers and not Jewish Christians in Jerusalem or Antioch. A similar interpretation is offered by Schmithals, who stresses, against all assumptions of doctrinal problems between the apostles, that Paul did not have problems with the believers and their leaders in Jerusalem, and the idea that he wanted to have ‘the independ-ence of his gospel confirmed’ by Peter and James simply makes no sense (1965: 43; italics in original). According to Schmithals, the reason for Paul’s visit was the success of the Law-free Gentile mission at Antioch, which made the situation of the Jewish Christians in Jerusalem very difficult for their national and religious identity. As much as these Torah-obedient Christians in Jerusalem wanted to hold on to the unity of the Church, they feared even more that the mission to the Gentiles, which rejected the Law, was becoming an attack against Judaism (1965: 43-44). The ‘false brothers’ who crept into the deliberations may have been no Christians at all, but ‘Jews officially commissioned to investigate the attitude of the Christian church’ (1965: 107). Schmithals thus indicates that the Jewish Christians in Jerusalem clung to the Law ‘for entirely




practical reasons’ and had no theological disagreement with Paul (1965: 47). However, such an interpretation runs the risk of not giving credit to the traditions that present James as wholeheartedly obedient to the Torah, and of making it difficult to understand his motives as a whole (cf. Pratscher 1987: 72). By taking Titus with him, Paul obviously wanted to encounter a theological challenge. He wanted his message to be loud and clear—first, to the Antiochians, and then, in his letter, to the Galatians—that not even the pillar apostles resist his Law-free gospel. It is customary to assume that the false brothers ‘came down from Judaea’ (Acts 15.1) to Antioch and caused Paul to go to Jerusalem (e.g., Schlier 1962: 71; Bruce 1982: 115-17; Mussner 1981: 109; Lüdemann 1989: 35). In this case, some members of the Antiochian community may have helped their spying activity (Martyn 1997: 195-96, 236-40). Accord-ing to an alternative hypothesis, they intruded into the private discussions between James, Peter and Paul in Jerusalem (Dunn 1993: 97). Painter (1997: 62-63) suggests that the problem emerged in Antioch, but in vv. 4-5 Paul refers to the disturbing presence of the false brothers at the confer-ence in Jerusalem. According to Wehnert (1997: 116), there was a con-flict both in Antioch and in Jerusalem, and the Antiochian ‘false brothers’ came to Jerusalem and were supported by a local faction of those who were zealous for the Law. It is possible that there was a ‘circumcision party’ in Antioch as well, but Paul’s description of the conflict at Antioch indicates that both Peter and the ‘other Jews’ ate with Gentiles before the men ‘from James’ arrived (Gal. 2.11). Obviously, these Jewish members of the community were not zealous for the Law. Paul’s characterization of the false brothers as ‘spies’ refers more likely to intruders who came from Jerusalem to Antiochia and who were also present in Jerusalem when Paul and his comrades had their private meeting with the pillar apostles. In spite of the secondary reading in codex D* and some texts of the church fathers (‘we did give in momentarily’) there is no doubt that Paul resisted the false brothers by all means, and fought for the full liberty of the Gentile Christians from the Law. Even though he clearly contrasts ‘those reputed’ with the ‘false brothers’, his account of the meeting with them reveals his ambivalent feelings about these men. Paul clearly does not want to put ‘those reputed’ (v. 6) on a pedestal. They are likely to be identical with ‘those reputed to be pillars’ (v. 9; Betz 1979: 86; Mussner 1981: 120; Pratscher 1987: 67 n. 72; Painter 1997: 63), even though some scholars have taken the ‘acknowledged leaders’ as a wider group (Zahn 1905: 103), or as representative leaders (Schlier 1962: 67). For the com-




munity in Jerusalem, their leaders, James, Peter and John, were the pillars of the eschatological temple of God (Barrett 1953: 12-16). They may have been viewed as the new patriarchs, the pillars of Israel and of the world (Aus 1979). Scholars are hardly unanimous as to whether Paul’s reference to ‘those reputed to be pillars’ is ironic (Schoeps 1949: 427; Betz 1979: 86-87; Aus 1979: 261), or not (Mussner 1981: 120-21; Bruce 1982: 109; Pratscher 1987: 67). According to Munck (1954: 91-92), Paul seems to make a veiled reference to the lack of learning and less glorious past of James (Mk 3.20-21) and Peter (Mk 14.66-71) when he refers to what these men ‘actually were’. For Schlier (1962: 76), Paul indicates that the apostleship of the pillars rests on false ground, while Dunn (1993: 110) suggests that Paul leaves his own opinion about them open. Paul’s note is indeed ambiguous: his relation to the authority of the pillars must have been, to say the least, somewhat sour, but in v. 9 he backs up his case with that authority. There is no agreement about the division of power among the pillar apostles mentioned in Galatians 2. Who was in charge of the Jerusalem community at the time of the meeting? Was it James whom Paul men-tions before Peter in v. 9 (opinio communis [common opinion]; see, e.g., Stauffer 1997: 131; Schmithals 1965: 51; Ward 1992: 782-83; Dunn 1993:108; Martyn 1997: 204; Painter 1997: 64; Farmer 1999: 143); or was it Peter to whom Paul refers as the missionary to the circumcised in v. 7 (Haenchen 1971: 466; Mussner 1981: 119)? Klein (1960: 287-91) and Lüdemann (1984: 69-71; see also Ward 1992: 783; Martyn 1997: 211-12) suggest that vv. 7-8 and v. 9 reflect the state of authority in the commu-nity of Jerusalem in different times: vv. 7-8 refer to the leadership of Peterat the time of the council, while v. 9 speaks for the leadership of James at the time Paul wrote his letter to the Galatians. Since the names appearing in vv. 7-8 (Peter – Paul) are strikingly different from the names listed in v. 9 (James, Cephas, John – Paul, Barnabas), Klein (1960: 283-84) assumes that, in vv. 7-8, Paul quotes an official document; while Lüde-mann (1984: 69-71) takes these verses as part of a personal tradition aboutPaul before the conference. This assumption has been found questionable because Paul’s line of thought does not break between vv. 6 and 7, and because the use of Cephas in v. 9 probably reflects the traditional use in the Jerusalem church (Painter 1997: 64). The leadership of Peter at the time of the council is also assumed by Pratscher (1987: 68-70), whose view is based on dating the council before the persecution of Christians in Jerusalem by Agrippa I. The incident in Antioch speaks for the authority




of James: Peter would rather lose face than provoke those who come from James.

How did Paul reach mutual understanding with James, Peter and John? Those who assume that the apostolic decree was accepted in the meeting are inclined to think that Paul took it for granted, and therefore does not refer to it in Galatians. Bockmuehl (1995: 96-97), for instance, suggests that the Noachide Commandments of the decree were necessary for Paul’sethics, and that he applied them to his Gentile mission in any case. Some other scholars consider Paul’s wording in v. 6, and translate the expres-sion prosanéthento as ‘added nothing additional’, viz., nothing in addition to the apostolic decree or to a similar minor regulation (Georgi 1965: 19-20; Lüdemann 1984: 72). However, there is no reference to anything that was added to Paul (Wehnert 1997: 109-10). Taking the text as it stands, the pillar apostles did not impose circumcision or any other ritual com-mandments of the Law on the Gentiles that Paul had converted and would convert in the future. Since the decision indicated by Paul seems to be clear-cut and total, it is more common to trace the decree in toto back to later developments (see, e.g., Dibelius 1956: 98-99; Haenchen 1971: 470-71; Schmithals 1965: 98-99; Mussner 1981: 135; Jervell 1998: 405-407). The pillar apostles acknowledged the mission of Paul and his co-workers to the uncircumcised (v. 7), or Gentiles (v. 9), while Peter and other Jewish-Christian apostles were entrusted with the gospel to those who are circumcised (vv. 7-9). This division of labor can be understood ineither geographical or ethnographical terms. The geographical option is embraced by a minority of scholars (e.g., Schlier 1962: 79-80; Mussner 1981: 122-23). Munck (1954: 232) assumes that Peter’s missionary activities were limited to Palestine and the eastern Diaspora, while Paul went to preach to the Jews and Gentiles among the Greeks. This sugges-tion is related to Munck’s idea that the Jewish-Christian mission among the Gentiles started only after the deaths of the apostles. The majority of scholars assume that Paul had an ethnographical division of labor in mind (e.g., Schmithals 1965: 45-50; Betz 1979: 100; Lüdemann 1984: 72; Wehnert 1997: 118; Martyn 1997: 213-16; Painter 1997: 66). Dunn (1993: 111-12) finds both options unconvincing, and suggests that the agreement was more general, making Paul and Barnabas, as representa-tives of Antioch, responsible for the Gentile converts, and the pillars in Jerusalem responsible for the Jewish disciples. Whatever the division of the mission to the uncircumcised (Gentiles) and circumcised (Jews) meant,it is evident that Paul and James understood both these missions and their




consequences differently. Their respective behavior in the conflict in An-tioch, as described by Paul himself in Gal. 2.11-14, is practically the only text that can shed some light on this complicated question. As the classic study of Overbeck (1877, reprinted in 1968) demonstrates, the church fathers mostly harmonized the strife between Peter and Paul by making it look merely apparent, or by pointing to 1 Cor. 9.20-23, which leaves no doubt about the common gospel that abrogates the Mosaic Law. There-fore, Paul could have criticized Peter only because of his outward behav-ior in a particular situation.

Galatians 2.11-14: The Quarrel between the Apostles as Evidence for Jewish Christianity It has been difficult to decide whether Paul’s argument in Gal. 2.15-21 should be seen as a part of the quotation of his outburst against Peter. This difficulty indeed demonstrates that Paul narrates the episode for the sake of his cause in Galatia (Martyn 1997: 229-30). However, the sequence of events in vv. 11-14 is easy to grasp. Peter (Cephas) is in Antioch and enjoys open commensality with Gentile Christians. Then, certain individuals come from James; and Peter, who is afraid of these men of the circumcision party, draws back and separates himself from the uncircumcised Gentile Christians. All other Jewish believers follow Peter, except Paul, and Paul reproaches Peter in front of everybody. Antioch was a major city that was socially and economically important for the Jews of Palestine. Its cultural climate was relatively tolerant, and it was natural for the local Jews to have relations with Gentiles. The Jews of Palestine, who located Antioch at the border of the ideal land of Israel, attributed a considerable symbolic significance to this city (Bockmuehl 1999). The conflict at Antioch can be seen as a socio-religious clash between the Jewish-Christian leaders of the Torah-obedient Jerusalem community, and the community in Antioch, who practiced commen-sality with Gentiles in its mixed community. Even though it is possible to assume that Paul only vaguely identified ‘certain individuals who came from James’ as followers of the pillar apostle, it is most natural to assume that they were sent by James himself, after alarming rumors or news about the situation in Antioch reached Jerusalem (among modern com-mentators, see, e.g., Mussner 1981: 139; Pratscher 1987: 78-80; Dunn 1993: 119; Wehnert 1997: 124-25; Martyn 1997: 233; Painter 1997: 69). Most scholars take the two references in (v. 12)—‘certain individuals who came from James’ and ‘those from the circumcision’ feared by




Peter—to mean more or less the same group, even though it is possible to discern some difference between them. Wechsler (1991: 334), for instance, assumes that Peter was afraid of losing his theological position in front of the majority of the Jewish Christians. Some critics dissociate these references completely: Munck (1954: 116-17) sees ‘those from the circumcision’ to be Judaizing Gentile Christians, while Schmithals (1965: 54-55; see also Ward 1992: 784) claims that they were non-Christian Jews, because Peter himself was a circumcised Jewish Christian. If Paul describes the events in the right order in Gal. 2.1-14, we must read between the lines that the agreement reached at Jerusalem was far from tenable. It is widely assumed that the agreement reached by Paul and the apostles in Jerusalem acknowledged the basic freedom of the Gentile Christians from the Law, but did not address the question of the table-fellowship of the Jewish Christians with the Gentile Christians in mixed communities—a practice which James and his followers in Jerusa-lem could not possibly accept. The table-fellowship of the hosting pillar apostles with the uncircumcised Titus in Jerusalem was not a problem, quite unlike Peter’s presence at the table of the uncircumcised believers in Antioch. Besides these considerations, reasons for the conflict may be looked for in both the political and religious realm. The development of the politi-cal situation in Judaea most likely influenced the course of events, and cre-ated increasing tension between Jews and Jewish Christians in Jerusalem and in Palestine (Dunn 1983: 7-11; Wechsler 1991: 330-32). Reicke (1953: 180-84; cf. also Schmithals 1965: 66-68) suggests that the apos-tolic council took place under relatively peaceful circumstances in the late 40s CE, in spite of the famine in 47–48. However, in the early 50s CE, the terror of the zealots created fear and persecution (1 Thess. 2.14-16), whichalso caused Peter to be truly afraid of ‘those of the circumcision’. The ex-tremely difficult situation of the Jewish Christians in Jerusalem compelled James to temporarily cut all their relations with the Gentiles and the uncircumcised, and to sharpen their obedience to the Torah. According to Reicke (1953: 184-87), these developments led to increasing Judaisierung(Judaizing) of the Christian community in Jerusalem. The leadership was entrusted to James, who was the one most capable of steering the church in the midst of Jewish national enthusiasm. The reconstruction of Reicke raises the question of James’s religious identity: was he basically a ‘Chris-tian’ who had to take into consideration the pressing political realities among the ‘Jews’ in Jerusalem? Or was he a Christian Jew, or Jewish




Christian, whose political and religious identity separated him from his non-Christian fellow citizens and the most uncompromising Christian Jews in Jerusalem, as well as from Paul and Peter, whose respective socio-religious contexts were so completely different? Before the appearance of the article by Dunn (1983), the incident at Antioch itself was not much explored beyond this general scenario. Dunn asks: ‘What was the nature of the table-fellowship that Peter enjoyed with the Gentile believers? What was involved with it? What precisely did he withdraw from when the men from James arrived?’ (1983: 4). Even though the Jews generally avoided contact with the Gentiles, Dunn pre-sents evidence for a broad range of social intercourse that was possible between faithful Jews and God-fearing Gentiles. However, laws on purity and tithing hindered the most devout Jews from accepting table-fellowship with Gentiles, while those who were less scrupulous in these matters could accept invitations from their Gentile friends (1983: 12-25). Dunn seeks to clarify the terminology used by Paul in Gal. 2.11-14: ‘to live like a Gen-tile’ may include some observance of the Law, while ‘judaizing’ denotes various degrees of assimilation to Jewish customs, and ‘sinners’ refers to Gentile believers who are unclean because they do not observe the Law (1983: 25-28). Dunn suggests that the Gentile believers in Antioch ob-served the basic food laws, but this was not enough for James and the delegation he sent to find out what was going on. Peter withdrew from the Gentile believers because their purity status was called into question, but he also felt responsible for the Palestinian Jewish believers in difficult times. Dunn assumes that Titus (Gal. 2.3) probably observed the purity regulations rather strictly when he visited the Jerusalem community with Paul and Barnabas (1983: 31-37; 1993: 120-22). Dunn’s theory has been criticized for the simple reason that there is no evidence for the idea that the table-fellowship in Antioch before the arrival of the delegation from James included some degree of observa-tion of food laws (Cohn-Sherbock 1983: 70-72). Esler (1987: 77), who emphasizes that the Jews ‘as a general rule’ refrained from eating with the Gentiles, assumes (against Dunn) that for the Jewish Christians from Jerusalem ‘there is no question of degrees of table-fellowship, there is only the stark choice between no fellowship and fellowship following circumcision and the acceptance of the Jewish law’. This view has led Esler (1995) to claim that James broke the agreement that he had made by shaking hands (Gal. 2.9); he could do so without losing his honor, because he had not sworn an oath. Sanders (1990), in turn, argues against




Dunn and Esler that the impurity of the Gentiles was not the key prob-lem, since the Jews themselves, including the Pharisees, were in a state of impurity most of the time. He concludes that the problem was not in eating together with the Gentiles as such, but in the consumption of their meat and wine. Peter’s close interaction with the Gentiles on Gentile terms jeopardized his own mission, which was directed toward the Jews. Holmberg (1998), a Swedish scholar, emphasizes that the principle of not mixing with the Gentiles and the specific identity markers (Sabbath, dietary rules, endogamy, circumcision) made the commensality of the Jews with the Gentiles a very restricted matter. He argues that James simply demanded a separation of the Antiochian community into two com-mensality groups, one for the Jews, and the other for the Gentiles. In Galatians, Paul’s argument for a Christian identity addresses precisely this question. His characterization of Peter’s behavior as tà éthne nagkázeis oudaïzein does not hint at a demand for a higher degree of assimilation to

Jewish customs (Dunn 1983: 32), but simply means that Peter compels the Gentile believers to become Jews. In his monograph on the formation of Christianity in Antioch, Zetterholm (2003: 136-49), a student of Holm-berg, suggests that the agreement of the apostles in Jerusalem included the apostolic decree, which safeguarded their agreement on the salvation of the Gentiles and defined their eschatological status. The decree, which focused on exclusive worship of one God, and rejection of idols, was accepted also by Paul as halakhah for ‘righteous Gentiles’ (Zetterholm is in agreement with Nanos 1996: 194-97 here). According to Zetterholm (2003: 156-64), the heart of the conflict at Antioch consisted of different concepts of covenantal theology. Paul taught that the Gentiles had a place in the renewed covenant as Gentiles, without conversion to Judaism. James, in turn, interpreted the agreement of Jerusalem differently: the Gentiles are not included in the covenant as they are, but they would be saved as God-fearers who have their own halakhah in the regulations of the decree. For him, this clearly meant that the Gentiles should form a separate commensality group. The fragmentary evidence, which we try to collect from the brief report offered by Paul, indeed leaves many things open. Paul does not indicate whether the Lord’s Supper was a vital part of the table-fellowship which Peter enjoyed with the uncircumcised Christians before the delegation of James arrived. Furthermore, there is no indication that the Gentiles were seen as hosting these common meals, no discussion on the degree of ritual purity of the Gentile believers, and also no reference to the apostolic




decree. Neither is there any indication of a message that the men sent by James would have brought to Peter, nor any reference to an exchange of words between them. Paul simply relates that Peter broke his table-fellowship with the Gentiles when these men arrived. All this seems to make clear that James unconditionally rejected the table-fellowship of Jewish believers with Gentiles in mixed communities, even though he accepted Paul’s mission to Gentiles. Although hosting the uncircumcised Titus in Jerusalem was a different matter, we may suspect that the collec-tion for the poor in Jerusalem was the only thing that united Paul with James.

Conclusion to Part I

With only a few exceptions, the scholarship of the past was not particu-larly interested in the figure of James the Just. The brother of Jesus and leader of the Christian community in Jerusalem has only become an important topic since the 1980s. This is hardly a coincidence. The neglect of Jewish Christianity has deep roots in Protestant scholarship, which treated it as a socially marginal and theologically inferior phenomenon in the history of early Christianity. Recent studies, such as the monographs of Pratscher (1987), Bernheim (1997), Eisenman (1997) and Painter (1997), and the collection of articles edited by Chilton and Evans (1999), have considerably changed the situation. These studies belong, more or less, to the trend of studying early Christianity as a form of Judaism. This article traces main trends in the study on James in the Gospels, in the traditions on Jesus’ resurrection, and in the widely disputed passages in Acts 15 and Galatians 2. The sparse material about James in the Gospels, particularly in Mk 3.20-21, 31-35; 6.1-6a and John 2.1-12; 7.3-4, has usually been read as evidence for the theory that James was not a disciple of Jesus. In their recent studies, Bernheim (1997) and Painter (1997) argue for the opposite view: James was a loyal follower of Jesus right from the beginning. Painter reads the Markan and Johannine pas-sages as not indicating a negative attitude towards James and his brothers, while Bernheim assumes—as some others before him—that the hostile image of James and his brothers was created only by the evangelists. The witnesses of Jesus’ resurrection listed by Paul in 1 Cor. 15.3-7 include Peter and James; these separate pieces of tradition picked up by Paul indicate that they were acknowledged leaders of the earliest Chris-tian community. However, there is no agreement on whether or not these




pieces hint at a rivalry between them, even though most scholars trace the references in vv. 5 and 7 back to corresponding parties of Peter and James. Many scholars follow the hint that Luke seems to have dropped in Acts 12.17, and assume that James became the leader of the community of Jerusalem only after Peter went ‘to another place’. However, some others, particularly Painter (1997), assume that the status of James did not change over the years: he was the leader of the local community, while Peter mainly was a missionary leader. The diverging accounts of Luke and Paul about the apostolic council described in Acts 15 and Gal. 2.1-10 have remained a disputed issue. Baur and his students conclude that these stories are irreconcilable, and thus the apostolic decree is a document from later times. The traditional British view is still held by some: Gal. 2.1-10 is not a parallel to Acts 15, but to Acts 11.27-30. Later scholars have been more optimistic, and have looked for more or less reliable sources behind Acts 15. According to a minimalist solution, Gal. 2.1-10 and Acts 15.1-5 describe the same meet-ing. Furthermore, the so-called apostolic decree, mentioned by Luke in Acts 15.22-29 but not mentioned by Paul, was produced either in the meeting which both Paul and Luke describe, or was a later ordinance sent to the communities in Antioch, Syria and Cilicia by James and his men. Scholars disagree on other source material. Some, particularly Bauckham (1995), maintain that the speeches of Peter and James in Acts 15.6-21 include material that can be traced back to the theology of the first Jewish Christians in Jerusalem. Others, following the footsteps of Dibelius (1956)and Haenchen (1971), claim that these speeches are Lukan creations and reflect his salvation-historical theology. The theological provenance of the apostolic decree is a problem of its own. According to the traditional view still embraced by many, the four commandments are a summary of the rules for ‘strangers in the land’ in Leviticus 17–18. Some complexitiesin this theory have led other scholars, starting with Kümmel (1965), to assume that the decree was originally directed against the impurity caused by demons, viz., Gentile deities. Paul’s description of the apostolic meeting in Gal. 2.1-10 certainly is not only a report of what happened in Jerusalem, but also a statement about the mutual relationships between Paul, Peter and James, and their respective theological views. Scholars agree neither on the division of power in Jerusalem between James and Peter, nor on what sort of people Paul means with his reference to the ‘false brethren’ in vv. 4-5. Accord-ing to one alternative, there was no theological disagreement at all between Paul, Peter and James. Munck (1954) assumes that the trouble-




makers hinted at in vv. 4-5 were agents of an insignificant minority within the community, while Schmithals (1965) suggests that they were non-Christian Jews who made the life of the Jewish Christian in Jerusalem very difficult, making them to cling to the Law, about which they thought quite similarly to Paul. Following this view, it can be claimed that the persecution of the Jewish Christians by the Jews in the early 50s CE led to their increasing Judaisierung. According to Reicke (1953), it is precisely this that explains why the men sent by James insisted, against Peter and Paul, on strict separation between Jewish and uncircumcised Gentile Christians in the Antiochian community (Gal. 2.11-14). Most scholars assume that Paul’s relation to James was at least ambigu-ous, and some—like Eisenman (1997)—are even inclined to regard it as hostile. However, there must be some explanation for the Antiochian incident, which seems to have followed the agreement on division of labor between Paul and other apostles. Since James seems to have abandoned the agreement by his uncompromising interference in the life of the mixedcommunity at Antioch, Lüdemann (1984) has suggested that the incident preceded the agreement. Most scholars tend to assume that the question of table-fellowship was simply not discussed in Jerusalem. Dunn (1983) has suggested that the problem of table-fellowship at Antioch was related to the degree of observation of the Law by the Gentile Christians. This theory has been mostly rejected, since Paul does not hint at such distinc-tion. Sanders (1990) assumes that the table-fellowship was problematic, since the Jewish Christians could not be hosted by their Gentile brothers and sisters and consume their impure wine and meat. The strict separation made by James between Jewish and Gentile believers has led Holmberg (1998) to read Paul’s report on the incident of Antioch as evidence of separate Christian identities among Jewish and Gentile Christians. Zetterholm (2003) suggests that the covenantal theology of James was very different from that of Paul: James accepted the apostolic decree as halakhah for righteous Gentiles, while their inclusion in the covenant would demand full conversion to Judaism. Much scholarship has been done since the 1980s on the intriguing char-acter of James the Just; however, more questions regarding his life and his place in the early Christian community have yet to be addressed, or even, for that matter, to be formulated. Part II of this article, to appear in a later issue of Currents, will treat the rest of the James tradition (James’s ritual purity, martyrdom and succession, and his role in the Gnostic writ-ings and later Christian evidence), and will conclude with reflections con-cerning James and earliest Jewish-Christian theology.




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