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VIII.

TO JAMES.

AUTHORITIES: 1 Cor. xv. 7; Gospel according to the Hebrews.

AFTER1 the appearance to above five hundred brethren the Lord appeared to James.? So we learn from S. Paul, who is the only witness to the fact. The James intended is, doubtless, not the son of Zebedee who was put to death by Herod Agrippa, but the brother of the Lord, with whom S. Paul came into contact on more than one occasion, and from whom he probably received an account of this manifestation. James seems to have been the eldest of the

brethren. When

3

Lord's

Jesus preached at Nazareth another, Is not this the...

people asked one

and Joses and Judas and

brother of James Simon ?

putting James first of the four; and

his subsequent position in the

1 ETTEITα, 'next in order.'

Church at Jerusalem

21 Cor. xv. 7.

3 Acts xv. 12 f., xxi. 18; Gal. i. 19, ii. 9.

Mc. vi. 3; cf. Mt. xiii. 55.

Thus he was the

points to the same conclusion. natural representative of the family of Jesus, and it may have been in this capacity that he received a separate revelation of the risen Lord. The Lord's brethren, as we know from the fourth Gospel, and might have gathered from the Synoptists,' did not believe in Him during the ministry, and it is unlikely that His death by crucifixion would have brought them nearer to faith.2 faith. Yet after the Ascension we find them consorting with the Eleven,3 as members of the Christian brotherhood; while at a later time James became the recognized leader of the Church at Jerusalem-a 'pillar' of the Church, worthy to be named with S. Peter and S. John. It is evident that a remarkable change of attitude on the part of the relatives of Jesus took place in the interval between the Passover and the Pentecost of the year of the Crucifixion. Such a change can only have been due to the belief that He had risen from the dead, and had thus proved Himself to be the Messiah. It may well have been with a view to bring about this conviction that the Lord showed Himself separately to His eldest brother. If so, it is easy to under

1 Jo. vii. 5; cf. Mc. iii. 32.

2 See Lightfoot, Galatians, p. 265; Mayor, S. James, p. xlv, argues against this view, but not, as it seems to me, successfully.

3 Acts. i. 14.

4 Acts. xii. 17, xv. 13, xxi. 18; Gal. ii. 9, 12.

stand the special interest which this appearance to James had for S. Paul. It had changed the course of James's life, just as S. Paul's had been changed by the vision on the way to Damascus. In each case the reality of the manifestation had been proved, in the experience of the eye-witness, by its abiding results.

S. Paul says nothing as to the nature of the interview that passed between James and his Divine Brother. It does not fall in with the purpose of his summary in 1 Cor. xv. to enter into details. But it may be doubted whether in this instance he knew more than he has told us. As in the case of the Easter Day appearance to S. Peter, the words that fell from the Lord may have seemed to James too personal to be communicated even to a brother disciple. When Saul, three years after his conversion, went up to Jerusalem to visit Cephas, and met James also, he doubtless told them how he had seen the Lord on the way to Damascus. It is easy to imagine how the others would add their own experiences, Peter saying, 'He appeared to me also, on the day that He rose,' and James, 'And to me also afterwards.' Each would be full of his own thoughts, but neither would care to lift the veil any further, and Saul on his part would have shrunk from asking for confidences which were not offered.

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The Gospel according to the Hebrews, however, has an anecdote of the appearance to James which must be given for what it is worth. The Lord went to James and appeared to him; for James had sworn that he would not eat bread from the hour in which he had drunk the cup of the Lord until he saw Him rising from the dead. Bring, the Lord said, a table and bread. He brought bread, and [Jesus] blessed and brake it and gave it to James the Just, and said to him, My brother, eat thy bread, for the Son of Man has risen from the dead. To this story the objection at once presents itself that the Lord's brother was not, so far far as we know, present at the first Eucharist, so that if the incident has any foundation in fact it must relate to James the son of Zebedee, and not to James the Just. Bishop Lightfoot, indeed, meets this difficulty by reading in which the Lord had drunk His cup,' i.e. the cup of suffering referred to in Mark x. 38 f. But the story in either form presupposes that James was already a believer in Jesus before His death, of which there is no other evidence. On the whole, though it is both early and not in

1 This is from Jerome's Latin rendering of the Hebrew Gospel (de Viris illustr. 2).

2 The Greek version of the story has Kúpios. See Lightfoot, Galatians, p. 274.

itself improbable,' this account of the

Lord's

interview with James cannot with any confidence be connected with the appearance to James the Lord's brother of which S. Paul speaks.

1 See Mayor, S. James, p. xxxvii.

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