Resurrection Appearance to James the Just

by Leolaia 77 Replies latest watchtower bible

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  Leolaia

  Apostle Paul provides an early list of Jesus' resurrection appearances in 1 Corinthians 15. It is important because this list was written before our canonical gospels were written and thus serves as an independent source of information. Paul writes:

  "Christ died for our since, in accordance with the scriptures; that he was buried and that he was raised to life on the third day, in accordance with the scriptures; that he appeared first to Cephas and secondly to the Twelve. Next he appeared to more than 500 of the brothers at the same time, most of whom are still alive, though some have died; then he appeared to James, and then to all the apostles; and last of all he appeared to me too; it was as though I was born when no one expected it." (1 Corinthians 15:4-8)

  Paul's list omits any mention of appearances to Mary of Magdala or to "women" as in Matthew, Luke, and John. Matthew relates an appearance to the Eleven on a mountain in Galilee, while Mark 16:14 refers to an appearance to the Eleven "as they were reclining at a meal." The appearance to Peter is mentioned in Luke 24:34, alluded to in Mark 14:27-30 and 16:7, John 21, and Gospel of Peter 14:3. The appearance to 500 disciples is not otherwise known, though it might be an allusion to the same sort of group visionary experience as the 120 who experienced Pentecost (Acts 2:1-13). What it interesting is the special mention of an apperance to James, which is not attested in the four canonical gospels of the Western churches. It is however mentioned in the Gospel of the Hebrews, a Jewish-Christian gospel from the Ebionite community which otherwise looked to James the Just as their founding apostle. The relevant passage is as follows:

  "And when the Lord had given the linen cloth to the servant of the priest, he went to James and appeared to him. For James had sworn that he would not eat bread from that hour in which he had drunk the cup of the Lord until he should see him risen from among those that sleep. And shortly thereafter the Lord said, 'Bring a table and bread!' And immediately it is added that he took the bread, blessed it, and broke it and gave it to James the Just and said to him, 'My brother, eat your bread, for the Son of Man has risen from among those that sleep." (Gospel of the Hebrews fr. 7:2)

  This story is dependent on the Empty Tomb story of Mark because Jesus is presented as buried with a linen shroud (Mark 15:45), which he then gives to the servant of the priest (cf. Mark 15:1). It is interesting that the apperance to James in the Jewish-Christian gospel occurs at a meal, which recalls the pseudo-Markan reference in Mark 16:14 of Jesus showing himself "to the Eleven themselvs while they were at a table." This latter scene recalls the Last Supper in Mark 14:22-25, and the Gospel of the Hebrews specifically links the meal James has with Jesus with the institution of the Eucharist ("the hour in which he had drunk the cup of the Lord"). The formula of "taking bread, blessing it, and breaking it" derives from the Eucharist narrative (cf. Mark 14:22). The statement about James not eating bread "until he should see [Jesus] risen from among those that sleep," is similarly modeled on Jesus' statement in Mark 14:25 that "I shall not drink again of the fruit of the vine until that day when I drink it new in the kingdom of God." This fasting is also consistent with the lifestyle of the Ebionites.

  A non-Eucharistic appearance to the Eleven in Luke 24:36-49 involves eating a meal, but not of bread but of "a piece of grilled fish". This story involves Jesus actually eating food (absent in the Gospel of Hebrews story), but not the bread of the Eucharist. Eucharistic motifs were already recruited in the construction of an earlier scene in Luke 24:13-35 (cf. Mark 16:12-13) in which Jesus has a meal in Emmaus with Cleopas and another "at a table, taking the bread and saying the blessing; then he broke it and handed it to them," and it was this action that identified Jesus as the Christ (v. 35), but like the Jacobian story Jesus is not said to have eaten the bread. I wonder if there is any significance to Jesus eating fish instead of bread -- could it have something to do with the notion of the Eucharistic bread as the body of Jesus? Interestingly though, Jesus refers to the bread as "your bread" though he is the one who hands it to his brother.
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  Narkissos

  For a "radical criticism" take on 1 Corinthians 15:3-8, see http://www.depts.drew.edu/jhc/

  Click on R.M. Price's article "Apocryphal Apparitions..."
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  bebu

  I am not familiar with the Gospel of the Hebrews. The style of this passage reminds me of the way Jesus showed up to Thomas. It also reminds me of appearances of Jesus that certain Muslims have had, as well: Jesus appears and addresses objections positively and directly. No long discourse, no breaking into a song and dance number.

  That is an interesting point about how Jesus ate fish, but not bread; and that even the Gospel of Hebrews reported this detail in their story about James the Just. I wonder about other apocryphal stories, if that is consistent there as well.

  I don't have a Catholic Bible with the Apocrypha anymore, but when I visited my parents' last year I thumbed through Sirach and Wisdom, and Tobit. I think Sirach and Wisdom have a better congruity in flow and thought with the Bible than Tobit. They are a bit like proverbs or Ecclesiastes in flavor.

  In contrast, I have attempted MANY TIMES to read the Book of Mormon (tooooo dullllllllll ) and I have read the Koran ("the Jehoover of the Middle East" ), but their styles struck me as so entirely manufactured. ...Kind of like WT doctrines... A difference I cannot explain well here. I am truly vocabulary-challenged! It's like explaining the flavor differences varieties of good coffee and kava-kava.

  Not that anything is wrong with kava-kava...

  bebu
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  Leolaia

  Narkissos.......Thanks for the reference; it's a very interesting article but long and it would take a while to digest. But here are a few reactions. The theory is not as radical as it might seem seem at first blush since the evidence is pretty strong that Galatians has been interpolated (with supporting textual evidence) and the idea that 1 Corinthians 5:15-11 is a later addition is not new (cf. J. Weiss, Volter, Straatman, von Soden, Heinricki, Drummond, Dibelius, and Moffatt), but I am a little more doubtful of interpolation claims that lack evidence from textual criticism than those that have it. The reference to the 500 may plausibly posited as an interpolation, but not for the reasons the author stated. The main reason why the author rejects it -- that it sounds more like a late legendary extravagence -- is wholly unconvincing since similar extravegences are found in early gospel tradition, such as the feeding of 4,000 (Mark 8:9; Matthew 15:38) and 5,000 (Mark 6:35-44; Matthew 16:9; Luke 9:14; John 6:10), which greatly expand the original number of 100 from the OT source (2 Kings 4:42-44) and which overshadow the more modest 500 of 1 Corinthians. The number of 500 is also not so outrageous when compared to 120 of Acts 2:1-13, and if it draws on this tradition, it attests the very early view of Jesus appearances as visionary experiences, of the sort Paul claims he had. These were later replaced in gospel tradition with stories emphasizing the physical corporeality of Jesus' body. The claim that no trace of the 500 exists in the gospel tradition is also not so convincing because the written narrative gospels preserve only a fraction of the 1st century lore circulating about Jesus, and whatever resurrection appearances were originally narrated in Mark have been lost. The main reason I find the interpolation idea somewhat plausible is that it interrupts a structural parallelism: the reference is first to an individual (Cephas), then to a group (the Twelve), then a reference to an individual (James), and then to a group (all the apostles), which the addition of the 500 obscures. Plus the mention that some of the 500 "have died" might also indicate a time later than that of Paul, though this is not conclusive.

  I am less convinced that the reference to James is sub-Pauline. The argument that the resurrection story was created to smooth over the competing claim that he rejected Jesus before the crucifixion and explain his authority over the Jerusalem church strikes me as particularly weak. For one thing, we have no reason to assume that Paul or the Paulinist author of the 1 Corinthians passage was aware of the tradition that James had rejected Jesus. One could argue that the latter tradition arose later among Gentile Christians as an anti-Jewish Christian polemic aimed to criticize their founding leader. Second, it strikes me as odd that James the brother of Jesus would not have advanced his own claim of having seen Jesus personally -- particularly in the face of competing claims by those who never even knew Jesus when he was alive (e.g. Paul). Since his followers accepted the resurrection of Jesus as a fact (cf. the reference to "Jesus Christ, our glorified Lord" in James 2:1), I see no reason to doubt the claim of 1 Corinthians 15:7 that James or his followers advanced their own story of Jesus' resurrection, or view this claim as a late accretion to the tradition.

  The passage in 1 Corinthians 15:5-11 does interreupt the flow of the text and v. 12 follows nicely from v. 4. So that's one point in favor of the whole passage as being an interpolation. But not all asides are interpolations. And the author's argument that v. 3-5 are also part of the interpolation makes no sense to me. The statement in v. 12 that "now if (ei de) Christ raised from the dead is what has been preached," is logically dependent on an antecedent proposition of Christ's resurrection as being the gospel but nothing in v. 1-2 mentions Christ's resurrection at all. Moreover, the structure of v. 1-4 follows very closely the structure of Romans 1:1-5 which strongly suggests that v. 3-5 were part of the original formula. Moffitt and others point to v. 5-11 as being the interpolation, not the preceding two verses. The strongest piece of evidence, in my opinion, that vs. 5-11 are not an interpolation is the very primitive view of resurrection appearances as visionary experiences, indicated especially by Paul's inclusion of himself as having seen Jesus like Cephas and the rest (cf. 2 Corinthians 12:1-6, Acts 9:3-19; 22:1-16; 26:9-18), which cleaves well with Paul's repeated claims of having received his teaching directly from the Lord (1 Corinthians 7:10, 9:14), as if he were in direct communication with the glorified Jesus, and the very similar statement in the same epistle: "Have I not seen Jesus our Lord" (1 Corinthians 9:1). The docetic character of some of the attested appearance stories (Luke 24:28-31) and the tradition of the appearance of Jesus to Stephen (Acts 7:56) also attest the visionary character character of early epiphany stories, displaced at a later date by an emphasis on corporeal appearances that undermine docetic claims (cf. Luke 24:36-43; John 20:24-28; Ignatius, Smyrnaeans 3:2). Still, it could be argued that the inclusion of Paul's appearance to the list was dependent on the pre-existing statement in 1 Corinthians 9:1.
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  Leolaia

  bebu....The Gospel of the Hebrews is not in the Apocrypha; it was a Jewish-Christian gospel and used by Ebionite and Nazorean Christians who were the spiritual heirs of James and other Jewish Christians from Judea and Syria. While the Gentile churches were heavily influenced by Paul's own idiosyncratic teachings (which relied very little on the teachings of Jesus of the synoptic gospels), the Jewish Christians derived their doctrines more directly from the sayings of Jesus. The epistle of James, published by the Jewish-Christian community of the late first century, is heavily dependent on the sayings later found in Luke and Matthew. The Ebionites aspired to live in poverty, in imitation of the many Jesus sayings that stress this theme. The Gospel of the Hebrews, while not directly a version of Matthew, presented itself as written by Matthew and was probably written in Aramaic and used by Aramaic-speaking Jewish Christians in Syria and Judea.
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  peacefulpete

  There are many things in your comment that is debated leolaia. I don't want to pick fight with the few friends I have so I'll just give food for thought. Who was James? Or should I ask who were the Jameses. It was not always believed that he was literally a fleshly brother. This interpretation of the expression in the epistle of James was understood as "brother of the Lord" in a communal sense not fleshly. There is no reason to believe the author was claiming relatedness. In fact the formulaic wording suggests otherwise. Also, there is nothing to suggest the author was the James the Just said to be leading a sect in jerusalem. The idea that James the Just (a historical person) was Mary and Joseph's son was a late tradition established to again oppose doceticism. Further to suppose this James ever saw a man named Jesus at all is improbable. That there ever was a man named Jesus is in serious debate. The book of James is second century, most of the tradition is likewise.
  
  I have to disagree your argument about ! cor 15 also, sorry. It smacks of interpolation. Your thought about it being visionary like the docetic Jesus of Paul is intersting but the whole sentense smells not just the 500 phrase IMO. The date of it's insertion is likely after the circulation of the Synoptics and James and after james the just had been caricatured to a useful icon of historicity (probably 3rd or 4th century).
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  peacefulpete

  Once again I wish i could edit, but soon I'll have the compuer up and running. I meant to say the formulaic expression "brother of the lord" in Galatins was possibly not intended as literal. The epistle says only "servant of the lord" and likewise gives no support to the assumption of later xtians that they were the same person. If the epistle was late (2nd century)as i feel it was then it's a mute point, as it may be simply psuedographical and could be by anyone pretending to be james the Just or any of the other highly regarded jameses.
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  bebu

  Leoleia,

  I know that the Gospel of Hebrews isn't in the apocrypha. I should have been more clear.

  The phrase, "Bring a table and some bread!" just had a stronger ring of authenticity (if that's the right word?) than other extra-canonical stories. But that is just my own sensitivity, and nothing more...

  bebu
• 

  Narkissos

  Fascinating subject, isn't it?

  Just a few personal remarks:

  1) I hold the Epistle of James to be pseudepigraphical, not necessarily connected with authentic Jamesian tradition (the name of James as a first-generation authoritative opposer of Paul is sufficient to the author). The Jewish identitarian themes that are characteristic of James and his judeo-christian followers are altogether absent from the epistle, the tone of which is hellenistic above all. It may, in fact, spring from the diaspora itself (this would, in turn, question the claim of the Q-tradition shared by EpJames being exclusively Palestinian). A datation in the 80's or 90's could be enough, although it may well be later (in many points the Epistle is quite antagonistic to the Pastorals, so its date may be somewhat related to the latter's).

  2) About James the Just, I think the formula "brother(s) of the Lord" cannot be ruled out as a "spiritual denomination" applied to a restricted group of people. Just, in that case, it has to be distinguished from other similar denominations like "the Twelve" or "the Apostles" (already in 1Co 9:5; Gal 1:19: different functions? concurrent groups?). However, the natural explanation of James as Jesus' full biological brother still seems historically plausible to me, as it became a problem very soon in the main Church (see Luke's uneasy treatment of Mark's references to Jesus' brothers and sisters).

  3) The fact is James' role is consistently downplayed in the NT. The canonical Gospel tradition separates the brothers of Jesus (whatever the original meaning of the expression) from the disciples. It even creates, IMO, an artificial "other James" (son of Zebedee) in order to reconstruct the trio "Peter-James-John" (compare to Galatians 2:9) which is the closest to Jesus in many stories. In John 7:5, the brothers are described as unbelievers. No post-resurrectional appointing of James is mentioned in Acts, although he later appears from nowhere as the main character in Jerusalem (chapter 15). My guess is, at first no "apparition" was needed to James because he was the natural heir of Jesus' movement (or, better, the main figure of the Nazorean movement to which Jesus was not yet central), which did not yet imply the idea of Jesus' resurrection as disconnected (even if proleptic) from general eschatology. This fits perfectly with the mention of James in GThomas 12: "Wherever you will have come to, you should go to James the Just, for whose sake heaven and earth came into being."

  To be continued...
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  Leolaia

  It's very, very late for me, so I can't write my usual long-winded response and so I will have to keep it short.

  Pete raises a good point of "brother of the Lord" not being a literal sanguine relationship. This is possible, though the idea that it is must have arisen early since there is a James mentioned in the synoptics (I can't check which ones at the moment) who was explicitly designated as one of the other sons of Joseph and Mary. Narkissos....an apparition story may have not been necessary for James' authority, but considering that Paul's epiphany story was pretty much what his whole claim to apostleship was based on -- and this is a guy who never even knew Jesus in the flesh, I still think it would have been natural for James to cover his bases and claim a story for himself. Not that I'm saying that this is the case, I'm just saying I don't think it to be implausible. About the provenance of the Epistle of James, I forgot what I said earlier, but I don't think it was among Jewish-Christians in Judea but rather in Syria -- specifically Antioch, where James had his influence among Hellenistic Jews as Galatians shows; moreover, Syria is where many of the Jamesian Jewish Christians moved to after the Roman destruction of Jerusalem and occupation of Judea in the 70's (I read this somewhere in a work on the history of Jewish Christianity). This fits nicely with assuming a publication date of about 80-90 for James. Finally, there is the internal evidence of James itself. I refer you to Patrick J. Hartin's JAMES AND THE Q SAYINGS OF JESUS (Sheffield: JSOT Press, 1991). The evidence indicates that James is dependent on sayings source that stands between that of Q and Matthew -- one could call it a pre-Matthean redaction of Q, and so this would suggest that James originated in the same community as the later redactions of Q. And since this version of Q reveals itself arising from an anti-Pharisaic law-abiding Jewish-Christian group, that would fit well with what we know of Jamesian Christianity. Koester (1990:171) has a similar opinion:

  It is evident in the discussion of the gospel tradition of the Epistle of James that the sayings and parenetic materials used in that writing were closely related specifically to Matthew 5, and in general to a Jewish-Christian perspective that advocated adherence to the law without demanding observance of circumcision and dietary legislation. The Epistle of James also shares with the Sermon on the Mount the rejection of the Pauline thesis which claims that Christ is the end of the law. The author of this epistle and the redactor of Q who produced the Sermon on the Mount belong to the same Jewish-Christian milieu; both share the decision that the followers of Jesus belong to law-abiding Israel and that fulfillment of the law, though without any emphasis upon circumcision and ritual law, is the appropriate interpretation of the teachings of Jesus.

  Hartin's book is quite interesting, though I haven't finished reading it. I look forward to comparing this with the Petrine Jewish-Christianity of the Kerygma Petrou in the other book I'm reading. Always a student,

  Leolaia