James the Lord's Brother

He is named among the brothers of Jesus: James, Joseph, Simon, and Judas (Matthew 13:55). During the ministry the brothers do not believe (John 7:5). After the resurrection Jesus appears to James (1 Corinthians 15:7). Paul, three years after Damascus, goes up to Jerusalem and sees Peter, and also James the Lord's brother (Galatians 1:18-19). Paul can call him an apostle in that sentence. He does not call him one of the twelve. Those are different uses of the word. This site's lesson on the twelve keeps them different.

He is a pillar, with Cephas and John (Galatians 2:9). Peter, freed from prison, says to tell James and the brothers (Acts 12:17). At the Jerusalem meeting James is the one who states the decision (Acts 15:13-21). When Paul returns at the end, he goes in to James, and all the elders are present (Acts 21:18). Jerusalem is the place. A mission road is not told.

The letter of James begins "James, a servant of God and of the Lord Jesus Christ." It does not say which James. The son of Zebedee dies in Acts 12, early, unless the letter is very early indeed. The son of Alphaeus is a name in a list. The church has usually read the letter as this man, the brother, who had the weight in Jerusalem to write to the twelve tribes in the dispersion. That is a strong reading. It is not a signature that says "brother of the Lord." Jude calls himself a brother of James, which fits this household (Jude 1:1).

His death is not in the New Testament. Josephus, in Antiquities, says that the high priest Ananus, in a gap between Roman governors, delivered "the brother of Jesus, who was called Christ, whose name was James" to be stoned. That is about AD 62. It is a Jewish historian, not a Gospel. It is the best early account of the death, and it is not Scripture. Hegesippus, later, tells a longer story of a fall from the temple. Josephus is the plainer report. Do not move that stoning onto James the son of Alphaeus, and do not move it onto the son of Zebedee, who died by Herod's sword years earlier.