and blood, the Lord's brother would be more likely to win his way than a teacher who would claim no such connexion. In a state of religious feeling where scrupulous attention to outward forms was held to be a condition of favour with God, one who was a strict observer of the law, if not a rigid ascetic, might hope to obtain a hearing which would be denied to men of less austere lives and wider experiences. These considerations would lead to his selection as the ruler of the mother Church. The persecution of Herod which obliged the Twelve to seek safety in flight would naturally be the signal for the appointment of a resident head. At all events it is at this crisis that James appears for the first time with his presbytery in a position though not identical with, yet so far resembling, the 'bishop' of later times, that we may without much violence to language give him this title (Acts xii. 17, xxi. 18). ance to the law. As the local representative then of the Church of the Circum- His allegicision we must consider him. To one holding this position the law must have worn a very different aspect from that which it wore to St Peter or St John or St Paul. While they were required to become 'all things to all men,' he was required only to be 'a Jew to the Jews.' No troublesome questions of conflicting duties, such as entangled St Peter at Antioch, need perplex him. Under the law he must live and die. His surname of the Just' is a witness to his rigid observance of the Mosaic ritual. A remarkable notice in the Acts shows how he identified himself in all external usages with those 'many thousands of Jews which believed and were all zealous of the law (xxi. 20).' And a later tradition, somewhat distorted indeed but perhaps in this one point substantially true, related how by his rigid life and strict integrity he had won the respect of the whole Jewish people'. count of A strict observer of the law he doubtless was; but whether to The acthis he added a rigorous asceticism, may fairly be questioned. The Hegesip1 In the account of Hegesippus, re- H. E. iv. 5), either in memory of their pus ferred to in the following note, & dikalos predecessor or in token of their own 'Justus' is used almost as a proper rigid lives: compare also Acts i. 23, name. Two later bishops of Jerusalem xviii. 7, Col. iv. 11 (with the note). in the early part of the second century also bear the name 'Justus' (Euseb. 23. 2 Hegesippus in Euseb. H. E. ii. not trust worthy. account to which I have just referred, the tradition preserved in 1 It is perhaps to be explained like the similar account of St John: see above, p. 362, note. Compare Stanley Apostolical Age p. 324. Epiphanius (Haer.lxxviii. 14) makes the same statement of St James which Polycrates does of St John, πέταλον ἐπὶ τῆς κεφα λῆς ἐφόρεσε. 2 Josephus (Antiq. xx. 9. 1) relates that in the interregnum between the death of Festus and the arrival of Albinus, the high-priest Ananus the younger, who belonged to the sect of the Sadducees (notorious for their severity in judicial matters), considering this a favourable opportunity καθίζει συνέδριον κριτῶν, καὶ παραγαγὼν εἰς αὐτὸ τὸν ἀδελφὸν Ἰησοῦ τοῦ λεγομένου Χριστοῦ, Ἰάκωβος ὄνομα αὐτῷ, καί τινας ἑτέρους, ὡς παρανομησάντων κατηγορίαν ποιησάμενος παρέδωκε λευσθησομένους. This notice is wholly irreconcilable with the account of Hegesippus. Yet it is probable in itself (which the account of Hegesippus is not), and is such as Jo sephus might be expected to write if he alluded to the matter at all. His stolid silence about Christianity elsewhere cannot be owing to ignorance, for a sect which had been singled out years before he wrote as a mark for imperial vengeance at Rome must have been only too well known in Judæa. On the other hand, if the passage had been a Christian interpolation, the notice of James would have been more laudatory, as is actually the case in the spurious passage of Josephus read by Origen and Eusebius (H. E. ii. 23, see above, p. 313, note 2), but not found in existing copies. On these grounds I do not hesitate to prefer the account in Josephus to that of Hegesippus. This is the opinion of Neander (Planting 1. p. 367, Eng. Trans.), of Ewald (Geschichte vi. p. 547), and of some few writers besides (so recently Gerlach Römische Statthalter etc. p. 81, 1865): but the majority take the opposite view. so melodramatic and so full of high improbabilities, that it must throw discredit on the whole context'. We are not therefore justified in laying much stress on this He was perhaps tradition. It is interesting as a phenomenon, but not trustworthy as an ascetic. a history. Still it is possible that James may have been a Nazarite, may have been a strict ascetic. Such a representation perhaps some will view with impatience, as unworthy an Apostle of Christ. But this is unreasonable. Christian devotion does not assume the same 1 The account is briefly this. Certain of the seven sects being brought by the preaching of James to confess Christ the whole Jewish people are alarmed. To counteract the spread of the new doctrine, the scribes and Pharisees request James, as a man of acknowledged probity, to 'persuade the multitude not to go astray concerning Jesus.' In order that he may do this to more effect, on the day of the Passover they place him on the pinnacle (πтерúуiov) of the temple. Instead of denouncing Jesus however, he preaches Him. Finding their mistake, the scribes and Pharisees throw him down from the height; and as he is not killed by the fall, they stone him. Finally he is despatched by a fuller's club, praying meanwhile for his murderers. The improbability of the narrative will appear in this outline, but it is much increased by the details. The points of resemblance with the portion of the Recognitions conjectured to be taken from the 'Ascents of James' (sce above, p. 330) are striking, and recent writers have called attention to these as showing that the narrative of Hegesippus was derived from a similar source (Uhlhorn Clement. p. 367, Ritschl p. 226 sq). May we not go a step farther and hazard the conjecture that the story of the martyrdom, to which Hegesippus is indebted, was the grand finale of these 'Ascents,' of which the earlier portions are preserved in the Recognitions? The Recognitions record how James with the Twelve refuted the Jewish sects: the account of Hegesippus makes the conversion of certain of these sects the starting-point of the persecution which led to his martyrdom. In the Recog nitions James is represented ascending the stairs which led up to the temple and addressing the people from these: in Hegesippus he is placed on the pinnacle of the temple whence he delivers his testimony. In the Recognitions he is thrown down the flight of steps and left as dead by his persecutors, but is taken up alive by the brethren; in Hegesippus he is hurled from the still loftier station, and this time his death is made sure. Thus the narrative of Hegesippus seems to preserve the consummation of his testimony and his sufferings, as treated in this romance, the last of a series of 'Ascents,' the first of these being embodied in the Recognitions. If Hegesippus, himself no Ebionite, has borrowed these incidents (whether directly or indirectly, we cannot say) from an Ebionite source, he has done no more than Clement of Alexandria did after him (see above, p. 324), than Epiphanius, the scourge of heretics, does repeatedly. The religious romance seems to have been a favourite style of composition with the Essene Ebionites: and in the lack of authentic information relating to the Apostles, Catholic writers eagerly and unsuspiciously gathered incidents from writings of which they repudiated the doctrines. It is worthy of notice that though the Essenes are named among the sects in Hegesippus, they are not mentioned in the Recognitions; and that, while the Recognitions lay much stress on baptisms and washings (a cardinal doctrine of Essene Ebionism), this feature entirely disappears in the account of James given by Hegesippus. St James stands a in the Acts, outward garb in all persons, and at all times; not the same in James as in Paul; not the same in medieval as in protestant Christianity. In James, the Lord's brother, if this account be true, we have the prototype of those later saints, whose rigid life and formal devotion elicits, it may be, only the contempt of the world, but of whom nevertheless the world was not and is not worthy. But to retrace our steps from this slippery path of tradition to part from firmer ground. The difference of position between St James and the Twelve the other Apostles appears plainly in the narrative of the so-called Apostolic council in the Acts. It is Peter who proposes the emancipation of the Gentile converts from the law; James who suggests the restrictive clauses of the decree. It is Peter who echoes St Paul's sentiment that Jew and Gentile alike can hope to be saved only 'by the grace of the Lord Jesus'; James who speaks of Moses having them that preach him and being read in the synagogue every sabbath day. I cannot but regard this appropriateness of sentiment as a subsidiary proof of the authenticity of these speeches recorded by St Luke. and in the Catholic Epistles. The Gospel a higher law. And the same distinction extends also to their own writings. St Peter and St John, with a larger sphere of action and wider obligations, necessarily took up a neutral position with regard to the law, now carefully observing it at Jerusalem, now relaxing their observance among the Gentile converts. To St James on the other hand, mixing only with those to whom the Mosaic ordinances were the rule of life, the word and the thing have a higher importance. The neutrality of the former is reflected in the silence which pervades their writings, where 'law' is not once mentioned'. The respect of the latter appears in his differential use of the term, which he employs almost as a synonyme for 'Gospel".' But while so using the term 'law,' he nowhere implies that the Mosaic ritual is identical with or even a necessary part of Chris 1 As regards St John this is true only of the Epistles and the Apocalypse: in the Gospel the law is necessarily mentioned by way of narrative. In 1 Joh. iii. 4 it is said significantly, ἁμαρτία ἐστὶν ἡ ἀνομία. In St Peter neither νόμος nor ἀνομία occurs. 2 The words εὐαγγέλιον, εὐαγγελίζε obal, do not occur in St James. tianity. On the contrary he distinguishes the new dispensation as and St Thus, though with St Paul the new dispensation is the negation St James of law, with St James the perfection of law, the ideas underlying Paul. these contradictory forms of expression need not be essentially dif ferent. And this leads to the consideration of the language held by both Apostles on the subject of faith and works. works. The real significance of St James's language, its true relation Faith and to the doctrine of St Paul, is determined by the view taken of the persons to whom the epistle is addressed. If it is intended to counteract any modification or perversion of St Paul's teaching, then there is, though not a plain contradiction, yet at all events a considerable divergency in the mode of dealing with the question by the two Apostles. I say the mode of dealing with the question, for antinomian inferences from his teaching are rebuked with even greater severity by St Paul himself than they are by St James'. If on the other hand the epistle is directed against an arrogant and barren orthodoxy, a Pharisaic self-satisfaction, to which the Churches of the Circumcision would be most exposed, then the case is considerably altered. The language of the Epistles to the Romans and Galatians |