James and the Jerusalem Church
Michael Wright reviews a new book on James, brother of Jesus
If you enjoy ‘whodunnits?’ and jigsaw puzzles, the chances are you will enjoy this radical exploration of Christian origins. Alan Saxby, in James, Brother of Jesus, and the Jerusalem Church, has examined in detail the situation in Judaism during the lifetime of Jesus, and the following seventy years. He follows each clue, and puts each piece in its place, to build his picture.
In trying to identify details about Jesus’ brother James, the leader of a group of observant Jews in Jerusalem committed to reform, it seems at first as if there is very little information to go on. However, Saxby weaves together many tiny threads to make an impressive garment.
Among these are the social conditions shaped by the major construction project in Jerusalem for more than eighty years, building Herod’s temple, which employed between 10,000 – 18,000 men plus 1,000 priests. At the same time Herod’s even grander palace was being built. These projects were a great source of resentment by rural peasants, whose taxes paid for them. When the buildings were complete, in 64 CE, the workers became unemployed. Insurrection quickly followed.
There were various reform groups, among them the Pharisees, Essenes, Zealots and (Saxby argues) a group based in Jerusalem led by James, the brother of Jesus. From threads drawn from the Jewish historian Josephus, the letters of Paul, the gospels and Luke’s Act of the Apostles, and elsewhere, he shows the influence of John the Baptist in this movement.
James may well have been the eldest of Jesus’ four brothers – if Joseph brought to his (second?) marriage to Mary four boys and their sisters. The evidence, so carefully scrutinised, points to this Jerusalem community being established long before the events of Jesus’ crucifixion. James was clearly regarded by Paul (from his letters, particularly to the Galatians) and others, as the key decision-maker in the earliest Christian community in Jerusalem until his death.
So significant a figure was James that Ananus, the high priest who brought about his execution, was driven from office when influential Pharisees obtained from the incoming Roman governor, as his first act on taking office, the dismissal of the high priest, because he caused James’ death.
Among the many of Saxby’s vignettes that have prompted me to look afresh at biblical material, he wonders if the parable of the ‘prodigal’ son may be a representation of the relationship between Jesus and James.
Material such as Galatians, written within twenty years of Jesus, shows the prominence of James within the Jewish diaspora. Luke, author of the gospel and Acts of the Apostles, wrote for a largely gentile audience about fifty years later than Paul. This was after the destruction of Jerusalem and its temple. The Roman world largely lumped all Jews together as responsible for that insurrection, so Luke sidelines the role of the community in Jerusalem led by James, except where he cannot avoid giving him his due place.
This is a detailed scholarly work, by a retired Methodist minister from Sheffield, familiar with a social environment that gives him significant insights into first century Jerusalem. He also finds ‘Islamic society in its oriental heartlands offers a lens through which we might bring into clearer focus the world of late Second Temple Judaism.’
For those not used to the world of New Testament scholarship, Greek text and technical words abound in this work – but they are explained, and largely manageable to the nonspecialist. Saxby gives us new insights into the world of James, and of Jesus, and challenges a number of long-accepted scholarly approaches to the material, with arguments that I find fascinating.
James, Brother of Jesus, and the Jerusalem Church by Alan Saxby. Wipf and Stock. ISBN: 9781498203906. £26.
