Paul and Jesus

First, the person we know as James the brother of Jesus, as well as the author of the letter of James that bears his name, tucked in the back of the New Testament, twentieth of twenty-seven documents making up the whole, needs a bit of explaining. James in English is the name Iakobov in Greek, consistent throughout the New Testament, which is in fact the name Jacob (Yaaqov in Hebrew). Thus it is the same name as that of the grandson of Abraham and the son of Isaac, used a total of 358 times throughout the Bible, including in the New Testament. So when Jesus says that “Abraham, Isaac, and Jacob” will be raised from the dead when the kingdom of God arrives, the Greek texts of our gospels use the word Iakobov, clearly and properly translated as Jacob (Mark 12:26). Yet the same word, when used of the fisherman apostle or the brother of Jesus, becomes James, not Jacob, in English. Imagine the reverse, if translators had put “Abraham, Isaac, and James.” The effect would be quite jolting and most readers would have not the slightest idea of what might be going on.

The English name James is so rooted in our language it is not going to change. I can’t imagine a time when we would speak of the King Jacob Version of the Bible, or Jacob Dean, the late great movie star. But when we are translating the Greek New Testament this is a very different matter, since the English name James did not exist anciently, and the Greek name is plainly and clearly Jacob and so translated, so long as it does not refer to the apostle James or the James the brother of Jesus. It simply makes no linguistic sense.

Unfortunately, the effect is more than a matter of style. The name Jacob is clearly Jewish, not Greek or Latin, with deep roots in the Hebrew Bible and Jewish culture. To call Jesus’ brother James, in English, dissociates and isolates him from his Jewish environment. But if one begins to use “Jacob” for “James,” what tiny measure of familiarity anyone might have with James the brother of Jesus, given his obscurity and marginalization, will completely dissolve. So my first caveat is that I will continue to call Jesus’ brother “James,” even though it obscures his Jewish heritage.

It is also problematic in this period to use terms such as “Judaism,” “Christianity,” or even “Judaeo-Christian” to describe the emerging movement we come to know much later as Christianity. Neither Jesus nor his first followers understood themselves as part of a new religion called Christianity, and that goes for Paul as well. The word “Christianity” never appears in the entire New Testament and the word “Christian” never in any of Paul’s writings. The early followers of Jesus were predominantly Jews, living within a Jewish culture that had as its main reference points Abraham, Moses, the Hebrew Prophets, and Israel as God’s chosen people, with the world divided into “Jew” and “Gentile” rather than Judaism and Christianity. If the movement had any name it was most likely “Nazarene,” taking its place among a diverse cluster of groups, sects, and movements that make up the variations of “Judaism” in this period.¹¹ Indeed, even talking about the “religion of Judaism” at this time is quite problematic, since those who identified themselves as part of Jewish culture were hardly monolithic or “orthodox” in their practices or their beliefs.¹² I have nonetheless, and quite purposely, chosen to use the anachronistic term “Christianity,” or in some cases “Jewish Christianity,” for these early stages of the Jesus movement, whether associated with James or Paul. I want to highlight the point that there were rival and competing versions of emerging “Christianity” during this period, each taking Jesus as their reference point, but with distinct and irreconcilable differences, even though in the end this dispute between Paul and the apostles is clearly a Jewish family feud.

REMEMBERING JAMES