by Randy Ingermanson | Feb 28, 2019 | Jesus of Nazareth, New Testament History |
According to the gospels of Mark and Matthew, Jesus had four brothers, James, Joses, Simon, and Judas. James was apparently the oldest of these brothers. We don’t know a lot about James, or any of the brothers. The New Testament only mentions them a few times, mostly in passing.
It has been debated whether they were brothers, half-brothers, or cousins. (See my earlier post, The Mysterious Brothers of Jesus.)
But these brothers, whoever they were, must have been important. They grew up with Jesus. If they were older than him, they took care of him. If he was older than them, he took care of them. In a very small village like Nazareth, with few children the same age as Jesus, his brothers and sisters would have been among his closest friends.
The oldest of these brothers was apparently James. He was also the most important. James ultimately became a leader in the Jesus Movement in Jerusalem. For decades, he was the undisputed leader. Not Peter. Not John. Not Paul. James, the brother of Jesus.
What the New Testament Says About James
The earliest historical documents that mention James are almost all found in the New Testament. So it’s useful to gather together what we know from the New Testament. As it turns out, there’s a fair bit. Not as much as we’d like, but more than you might guess.
In this post, I’ll make a list of every place James is mentioned (or possibly mentioned) in the New Testament. In future blog posts, I’ll look at these in more detail, so consider this just an overview. Here they are, organized roughly in order:
During the Life of Jesus
- The Gospel of John tells the story of Jesus turning water into wine in a village called Cana. Immediately after this, Jesus and his mother and his brothers went with Jesus to Capernaum and stayed there a few days. We don’t know what they did there, or why they didn’t stay. We can guess that they stayed with their new friends, Peter and Andrew and James and John, who lived in Capernaum. If this happened in the late fall of the year, then winter was coming on and that may have played a role in their decision. But there’s a lot we don’t know about this short stay.
- The Gospels of Mark, Matthew, and Luke, and the book of Acts all list the twelve disciples. One of the Twelve is named “James the son of Alphaeus.” Some historians have speculated that this James the son of Alphaeus is the oldest “brother” of Jesus and is actually either a cousin or else a half-brother by a different father. But others think this is an entirely different man than James the brother of Jesus. There is no way to know for sure.
- At some point after he became famous, Jesus visited his hometown and was invited to teach in the synagogue on Shabbat. The Gospels of Mark and Matthew explicitly name the four brothers of Jesus at this point in the story—James, Joses, Judas, and Simon. These two gospels are the only New Testament sources that state clearly the names of all the brothers of Jesus. And there are at least two sisters mentioned here, but their names aren’t given.
- At some other point in his career, Jesus was teaching in a packed house. The Gospels of Mark, Matthew, and Luke tell how the mother and brothers of Jesus came, asking to see him, and he seems to have refused to go out to meet them! It appears that his family may have come because of rumors that Jesus had gone crazy. (The evidence is a little fuzzy here.) This story is our first hint that Jesus was not on good terms with his family.
- The Gospel of John tells an incident that happened about six months before Jesus was crucified. His brothers challenged Jesus to go up to Jerusalem and make a name for himself at the coming feast (Rosh HaShanah, Yom Kippur, and Sukkot). Jesus refused to go, but then afterward went secretly. This story makes a special point to say that none of his brothers believed in Jesus yet. So here is more evidence of a rift between him and his family.
Before and After the Crucifixion
- The Gospels of Mark, Matthew, and Luke tell about a small group of women who witnessed the crucifixion of Jesus. One of these women is named as “Mary the mother of James and Joses.” This would appear to be Mary, the mother of Jesus, although these gospels don’t actually say that. Note that “Joses” is a short form of “Joseph,” and we know that one of Jesus’s brothers went by this nickname. So it seems very plausible that this Mary is the mother of Jesus. Notice that none of the brothers are named as being at the crucifixion. It’s a strong bet that they weren’t there. But we don’t know the exact reason. Certainly, it would have been dangerous for them. Possibly, they were still not on good terms with him.
- The Gospels of Matthew and John report that on Easter Sunday, Jesus appeared to one or more women and gave them personal messages to “my brothers.” This might mean “brothers” in the sense of “spiritual brothers,” but it might also mean his actual blood brothers. We can’t be sure. My own suspicion is that he meant his blood brothers, James, Joses, Simon, and Judas.
- The apostle Paul reports in his letter to the Corinthians that one of the early appearances of Jesus after Easter Sunday was to his oldest brother, James. It’s a fair guess that this might be the reason James began to believe in Jesus. But we can’t know for sure. We do know that the crucifixion is generally dated by historians to the years 30 or 33, so now we can start mapping the career of James the brother of Jesus on a very rough chronology.
The Early Jesus Movement
- In his letter to the Galatians, Paul reports that about three years after he began following Jesus, he went to Jerusalem and spent fifteen days with the apostle Peter and with James. This is probably about five years after the Crucifixion, so we’re talking about the mid to late 30s. It’s clear that by now, James was one of the leaders of the Jesus Movement, but he was not yet the main leader. From the book of Acts, we know that Peter and John appear to have been major figures around this time, and they may well have shared leadership with James.
- At some point in the early 40s, Peter was arrested by King Herod Agrippa in Jerusalem. Agrippa intended to execute Peter, and his terrified friends held a late night prayer meeting. The book of Acts tells the tale of how Peter miraculously escaped from prison. He left town, but not before sending a messenger to James to let him know of his escape. With Peter gone, it looks like James now took on more responsibility as a leader of the Jesus Movement in Jerusalem.
The Gentile Controversy
- In his letter to the Galatians, Paul tells a story set sometime in the late 40s or very early 50s. Paul was then living in the great city of Antioch in Syria. A thriving community of Jesus followers lived there, with many Jews and many Gentiles. Then a controversy broke out. Paul had a major fight with Peter, along with certain “men from James”—apparently sent from Jerusalem to see what was going on. Things got rather nasty, and Paul told Peter he was a hypocrite for changing his behavior to the Gentiles after the men from James arrived. It’s not clear what James thought at this point, but he is now a man with enough authority to send men hundreds of miles from home.
- Paul also tells in his letter to the Galatians about the aftermath of this confrontation. He went to Jerusalem and made his case for the full equality of Gentiles within the Jesus Movement. James was there, along with the apostles Peter and John—together, they were the three “pillars” of the community. And Paul says that all of them accepted his claims. By this time, Peter had been gone from Jerusalem for about ten years. It’s not clear whether John still lived in Jerusalem (he is said to have eventually moved to Ephesus, on the western coast of Turkey). The New Testament doesn’t give any hard data on the travels of John. But this was a rare meeting—James, Peter, John, and Paul, all in one place.
- The book of Acts tells a very similar story about a council held in Jerusalem about this same time. In this telling of the tale, Paul makes his case, but then he runs into opposition from a group of Pharisees who were members of the Jesus Movement. (This may sound astonishing, that some early followers of Jesus were at the same time Pharisees, but the text is unambiguous. And we also know that Paul still considered himself a Pharisee, so maybe it shouldn’t be so surprising.) In any event, Peter then pitches in to support Paul. Up to this point, the community is divided. The fate of the Jesus Movement hangs in the balance. Will Gentiles continue to be second-class followers of Jesus, or will they gain full equality? At this crucial moment, James gives his verdict, which becomes official policy for all time. Gentiles are accepted as they are, without need to be circumcised. This episode in the book of Acts makes it crystal clear that James is now the first among equals. He alone has the authority to make the final decision.
The Final Years of James, the Brother of Jesus
- Several years later, in the mid-50s, Paul writes a letter to the Corinthians, who are chafing at his leadership in his absence. As part of his argument, Paul asks rhetorically whether he doesn’t have the right to financial support from the Jesus Movement, including the support of a wife, just like the brothers of Jesus and the apostle Peter. It’s not clear here which brothers of Jesus were getting financial support (along with their wives). Did this include James? Did James ever travel? Did James have a wife? We don’t know. But if not James, then some of his younger brothers, and they certainly had his blessing.
- The book of Acts tells the story of Paul’s final visit to Jerusalem, about the year 57. Paul met with James and the other leaders of the Jesus Movement. But there was a problem. Rumors were swirling in Jerusalem about Paul (possibly stoked by those Pharisees who opposed him a few years earlier—we don’t know for sure). Somebody suggested that Paul should visit the Temple to pay for some sacrifices as a PR gesture. It may have been James himself who suggested it. Certainly, James agreed to it. And this turned out badly. When Paul went to the Temple, a riot broke out, and he was nearly killed. Roman soldiers rescued Paul. (The story of this is told in my novel Transgression.) After a couple of years in prison, Paul was sent on to Rome, where he eventually was beheaded by Nero.
- The final episode in the life of James is not told by any source in the New Testament. The Jewish historian Josephus tells the story of how a certain high Priest, Annas the son of Annas, arrested James about the year 62. The Roman governor had recently died, and there was no replacement in Judea, so Annas ran a kangaroo court and executed James, along with a number of others. (The story of this is told in my novel Premonition.) Afterwards, certain upright citizens complained to the new governor when he finally arrived, and Annas was tossed out of office. Who were these upright citizens? We don’t know for sure, but they were possibly Pharisees, because Josephus was himself a Pharisee and always speaks of them in glowing terms. If it was Pharisees who complained about the unfair execution of James, that tells us something about how well James got along with them. In any event, he seems to have been a popular, much-loved man in the city of Jerusalem.
Two Books of the New Testament
- There is a book of James in the New Testament. The author of this letter identifies himself only as “James,” without further explanation. Was this written by James, the brother of Jesus? This book was written in Greek. We know that James the brother of Jesus spoke Aramaic as his native language. Ultimately, the church of later centuries came to believe that the book was written by James, the brother of Jesus. But the New Testament itself doesn’t actually say so.
- There is also a book of Jude in the New Testament. The author identifies himself as “brother of James.” Was this Jude the same man as the brother of Jesus named “Judas” mentioned in Mark and Matthew? Again, this brother would have spoken Aramaic, and this letter is written in Greek. And again, the church of later centuries attributed this book to Judas, the brother of Jesus. But again, the New Testament doesn’t say so.
Final Thoughts
That is essentially all the information we have from the first-century sources on James, the brother of Jesus. (Unless I’ve forgotten something.) It’s not a lot. But it gives us a fuzzy picture of James, enough to know that he was a man who led his people through turbulent times.
We know that he made a decision that has had a lasting impact for twenty centuries—the decision to give full equality to Gentiles.
And we know that he met his end at the hands of the son of the high priest Annas who had killed Jesus. We might guess that there was some sort of vendetta of the family of Annas against the family of Jesus. We can’t know for sure, but it seems plausible.
Some pious legends about James were written in the second century and later. The later the legend, the harder it gets to figure out what’s fantasy and what’s reality. The basic data on James the brother of Jesus comes from the New Testament and the one passage in Josephus.
by Randy Ingermanson | Dec 18, 2018 | Jesus of Nazareth, New Testament History |
Homecomings don’t always work out the way you expect. Three of the gospels tell accounts of Jesus returning to his hometown, Nazareth, where he got a rather rude welcome.
The earliest account appears in Mark 6:1-6. Jesus teaches in the synagogue on Shabbat, and his friends and neighbors are, to say the least, unimpressed. Jesus responds by saying that a prophet is not without honor, except in his own country. The townspeople take offense at him. The end result is that, aside from healing a few sick people, Jesus doesn’t make much of a splash.
The next-oldest account comes up in Matthew 13:53-58, and it runs along pretty much the same lines as the story in Mark. Jesus teaches in the synagogue. The people want to know where he learned it all, and they take offense. Jesus responds with his saying about how a prophet is not without honor, etc.
The newest account from the gospels is the one told in Luke 4:16-30, and it’s a slightly longer tale. In this telling of the incident, we see a full-scale riot. On Shabbat, Jesus goes to the synagogue and is invited to read from the book of Isaiah. He reads a certain passage and breaks off reading it in mid-stream, just before the part about the Day of Vengeance. The villagers ask who he thinks he is. Jesus elaborates on the idea that prophets never get any respect in their own country. The villagers rise up in rage, drag him away to the “brow of the hill,” and try to throw him over the edge. Somehow or other, Jesus escapes death. (Wouldn’t we like to know how!)
What Ancient Nazareth was Like
I’ve been to Nazareth several times. It’s a good-sized town in the northern part of modern Israel, with a population of more than 70,000. In the oldest part of the town, streets are tight, traffic is intense, and buildings are packed close together. You can visit numerous churches, including the famous Basilica of the Annunciation.
If you visit Nazareth, you could easily get the idea that it must have been a large, bustling town in the time of Jesus. But in fact the archaeological remains from the first century are pretty scarce. The first-century village appears to have been very small.
I’ve seen estimates that Nazareth in the first-century was a village of 200 to 400 people. In a village that small, everyone pretty much knows everyone. In a village that small, everyone is related to pretty much everyone. In a village that small, old grudges can last a long time.
Nazareth Village
If you do visit Nazareth, I highly recommend that you visit a site called Nazareth Village. When I first heard of Nazareth Village and browsed its website, I got the impression that it was just a hyped-up tourist trap. But I was wrong. I talked to one of my friends who’s a New Testament scholar with a lot of experience working on archaeological digs, and he assured me that Nazareth Village is absolutely worth visiting. It’s backed by solid research. The workers there wear clothes in the style of first-century Galilee. The steeply sloping ground has been terraced much as it was in the first century. You can see people threshing grain, caring for animals, weaving cloth, and working with carpenter tools, much as it was done in the first century. A wine vat has been excavated there that dates to the first century, and it’s easy to imagine that Jesus himself might have stomped grapes on that very spot as a young man. If you arrange things in advance, you can eat a meal of foods that were common in the first century.
I’ve been to Nazareth Village twice and really enjoyed it. One of the high points of the site is a small synagogue replica constructed in much the same way that the village synagogue would have looked in the time of Jesus. (A number of first-century synagogues have been excavated in Israel, so modern archaeologists have a reasonable idea of how they looked.)
The Synagogue at Nazareth Village
The first thing you notice about the synagogue at Nazareth Village is that it’s small. Most American houses cover more area than this synagogue.
When you go inside, you see stone benches that rise up like bleachers on all four sides. But these “bleachers” only go up three levels. So seating in the synagogue was very limited. You could fit in 100 people comfortably. Possibly 200, if you really packed them in. Here’s a photo I took from one corner of the synagogue. I’ve blurred out the other tourists in the photo:
There’s a small table in the center of the synagogue where someone could read from a Torah scroll or one of the prophets.
The roof of the synagogue has a shallow slope, just enough to shed rainwater. It’s supported by wooden rafters. Large reeds are laid cross-wise on these rafters. On top of the reeds is a thick layer of hard-packed clay.
And that’s the synagogue. Easy to build, and easy to maintain, but without a lot of creature comforts. As a side note, we know that Jesus and his father were builders of some sort. English Bibles usually call Jesus a “carpenter,” but the Greek word used is “tekton,” which means someone who works in stone or metal or wood. Or all three. So it’s possible that Jesus and his father and other family members may have helped build the synagogue at Nazareth. It seems very likely to me that they would have helped maintain it. For more about the family of Jesus, see my blog post The Mysterious Brothers of Jesus.
Imagine the Scene
Sitting in the synagogue, I could imagine a Shabbat service gone bad. In a dirt-poor village where a local boy gets famous and comes home, it might look to his old friends like he’s gotten too big for his britches. Old grudges could easily surface. I could imagine angry grumbling, then barbed insults, then loud shouting, and then a riot.
There’s more to say about this story, and I’ll say more in future blog posts. The riot scene in the synagogue at Nazareth will play a key role in Book 1 of my Crown of Thorns series. But for the moment, it’s enough to get a feel for the place itself—the tiny village and the tiny synagogue that were home to a Jewish boy who grew up to make a name for himself far beyond what his friends ever imagined.
by Randy Ingermanson | Nov 7, 2018 | City of God, Jesus of Nazareth, New Testament History |
One of the most surprising verses in the New Testament is Luke 6:15, where we read that one of the twelve disciples of Jesus was a Zealot. His name was Simon, and Luke refers to him as “Simon who was called the Zealot.”
The passage in Luke has two parallel passages in Mark 3:18 and Matthew 10:4. Newer translations of these passages typically also call this disciple “Simon the Zealot.” Older translations usually call him “Simon the Cananaean.” (“Cananaean” is just the Aramaic word “qanay” transliterated into the Greek word “kananiten” and then transliterated into the English word “Cananaean.” And the Aramaic word “qanay” means approximately“zealous one.”)
What was a Zealot doing in the band of Jesus? What did he think about Jesus’s command to “love your enemies?”
That’s a good question, and we don’t actually know the answer. If you ask Biblical scholars, you’ll get a wide range of suggestions, but we don’t really know which is right.
But we do know quite a lot about the Zealots.
Who Were the Zealots?
Back in the 1980s, when I began researching my first novel about first-century Jerusalem, I came across a book by David Rhoads, titled Israel in Revolution 6-74 CE. The book covers the years 6 through 74 of the first century and it’s about the events that led up to the Jewish Revolt, which began in the summer of 66 and ended at Masada in either 73 or 74 (opinions vary).
It’s a good book by a good scholar, and I read through it carefully. Several times.
One thing I learned is that there were several different factions of revolutionaries in first-century Israel.
I can’t cover them in huge detail in a blog post, but here’s a list of the five factions Dr. Rhoads identified:
- The Sicarii
- The Zealots
- John of Gischala
- The Idumeans
- Simon bar Giora
Most of these were active only during the Jewish Revolt, which began in the year 66. The Zealot party appears to have been created late—in the winter of 67-68. In naming themselves the “Zealots,” it looks like they were reusing a word that had been used for a long time before. (That is, there were probably zealous people, “zealots” with a lower-case, who were looking for revolt for many years before they got one. When the revolt finally began, some of them formed an organization and named themselves “Zealots” with an upper-case.)
The Zealot party came late to the game, but the Sicarii began working for revolution a good 60 years earlier. It’s worth saying a few words about them.
Who Were the Sicarii?
The Sicarii movement began about the year 6. A certain Galilean named Judas led an armed revolt against the Romans in Judea. The revolt didn’t get very far, and we don’t know what became of Judas. His revolt is mentioned by the Jewish historian Josephus and also by the New Testament, in Acts 5:37.
We do know that his movement lived on. Judas the Galilean had two sons, James and Simon, who were crucified by the Romans about the year 46.
In the 50s, men of this movement assassinated a number of chief priests in the Temple. Their tactic was very simple. They came into Jerusalem for one of the festivals, went into the Temple courts, found their intended victim, and stuck a knife in his back. Then they escaped in the confusion.
The knives they used were short sickles call “sica” and so they were called “Sicarii”—meaning approximately “knife-men.”
Judas had another son (or more likely grandson) named Menahem who played a major role in the Jewish Revolt in the year 66. He led the group who captured the Roman garrison at Masada by some sort of trick at the start of they war. They held it for 7 or 8 years, until the very end of the war, when they committed mass suicide to avoid being captured.
Menahem and his knife-men play a role in my novel Retribution, set in Jerusalem in the years 62 to 66.
What About Simon the Zealot?
So what was Simon the Zealot? If there was no Zealot party until the winter of 67-68, then how is it that Simon the Zealot was following Jesus in the early 30s?
Nobody knows for sure, because we just don’t have much info on Simon. But my best guess is that Simon identified with the revolutionary spirit of Judas the Galilean and his Sicarii. That is, he was a lower-case “zealot.”
Simon the Zealot was not necessarily a close friend of Judas the Galilean. He may never have met him.
But revolution was in the air, and I would guess that Simon the Zealot breathed deep from that air.
But that’s just a guess, because we’re very short on facts.
Here’s what we know. Simon the Zealot was not the only person breathing that revolutionary air. It’s reasonable to think that most Jews of the time would have longed for freedom.
Rome captured Jerusalem in the year 63 BC, and they never went home. So for the hundred years before Jesus came on the scene, Rome had been grinding its iron boot into the face of Israel.
And then Jesus of Nazareth came along, talking about a new “kingdom of God” that was right around the corner.
Anyone breathing that revolutionary air would have heard these words of Jesus as a call to revolt.
Which raises one more question.
Was Jesus a Zealot?
Some historians think so, although not very many. The problem is that the saying “love your enemies” doesn’t fit very well with the zealot idea of “drive the Romans into the sea.”
It’s true that Jesus used some words (“kingdom of God”) that a revolutionary would use. But many of his other words don’t fit with a revolutionary. And neither do his actions.
But here’s an important point. When you understand the revolutionary spirit that pervaded Galilee and Judea in the first century, you begin to read the story of Jesus in a new way. You begin to see connections you didn’t see before. Like why a man named “Simon the Zealot” might be attracted to Jesus.
And maybe, just maybe, you understand the story of Jesus a little better.
That’s why I’ve been interested in the zealots and the Jewish Revolt for many years.
I’m sure I’ll have more to say on this in many future blog posts.
by Randy Ingermanson | Nov 1, 2018 | City of God, Jesus of Nazareth, New Testament History |
If you’ve read through the New Testament, you might be rather surprised at how often “King Herod” keeps popping up in the story.
The book of Matthew tells a story of how the evil King Herod killed all the babies in Bethlehem in an attempt to get rid of the infant Jesus. In the story, Joseph and Mary escape with their son to Egypt, and only return a few years later when they learn that Herod is dead.
Thirty years later, Jesus is an adult preaching in Galilee, but then he gets in trouble with … King Herod again! And this King Herod captures and kills John the Baptist and is on the lookout for Jesus. You may be wondering what’s going on here? Wasn’t King Herod already dead? Did somebody make a mistake?
Another dozen years pass, and King Herod pops up yet again, this time in the book of Acts, where he arrests one of the apostles (James) and has him beheaded. Then he arrests another apostle, Peter, who miraculously escapes. Then there’s a short story about him getting a bit conceited at a festival when the crowd acclaims him as a god. In this story, Herod is suddenly stricken with a strange illness and dies a few days later.
More than a decade later, the apostle Paul is arrested in Jerusalem and taken to the port city of Caesarea, where he meets the Roman governor. The governor talks to Paul for a bit, and then puts him in prison in … Herod’s palace. So which Herod is this?
How the devil does King Herod keep popping up for so many decades? Is he a zombie or what?
Four King Herods
Here’s what’s going on. The New Testament actually tells about four different king Herods, all part of the same dynasty. And it mentions a few other members of this family. Here’s a brief summary of the four main Herods:
- King Herod the Great was born about the year 73 or 74 BC and died about the year 4 BC. He’s the King Herod who appears in the Bethlehem Massacre story in the book of Matthew. He took ten different women as wives and had a lot of children. But he was a bit paranoid and executed his favorite wife and three of his sons. People joked that it was safer to be Herod’s pig than his son (since Herod kept kosher and therefore didn’t eat pigs). Herod was a prolific builder, and you can see his work today all over modern Israel—including the gigantic stone platform now known as the Temple Mount. He also created the city of Caesarea and built a palace there where Paul would be tried many decades later.
- Herod Antipas was one of the sons of Herod the Great and inherited a third of his kingdom. Herod Antipas was not actually a king. His official title was tetrarch, but people sometimes flattered him by calling him king. He was born before 20 BC and died sometime after AD 39. He’s the Herod who arrested and beheaded John the Baptist, and then went asking around for Jesus. Antipas divorced his first wife so he could marry his niece—who also happened to be his brother’s wife. His step-daughter later married another of his brothers. The Herod family tree was about as incestuous as you can get.
- Herod Agrippa I was a grandson of Herod the Great and nephew of Antipas. He was educated in Rome and eventually became king. He ruled over Judea for only a few years, from AD 41 to 44. He’s the Herod who beheaded the apostle James and arrested Peter and then died mysteriously at the festival. But he also played a central role in choosing one of the emperors, Claudius Caesar. In a very real sense, Agrippa played the role of king-maker. In doing so, he prevented the Roman Senate from destroying the position of emperor and returning the empire to a republic. This decision had repercussions for twenty centuries, right down to our own time.
- Herod Agrippa II was the son of Herod Agrippa I and ruled for some years over certain small territories north of Galilee. He presided over one of the trials of the apostle Paul, along with his sister Bernice. There were rumors that Agrippa and his sister were sleeping together. Bernice later became the mistress of the Roman general Titus, the one who captured Jerusalem in the year AD 70. I don’t believe Bernice was quite the terrible person that some of the historians want to make her. She did one thing that was undeniably heroic. So I made her a fairly major character in two of my novels, Premonition and Retribution, where I show her as the flawed hero I think she probably was.
The above summary only scratches the surface on the amazing Herod family. We know a lot more about them from the historical records. They were, in a word, a remarkable dynasty that had a major impact on the Roman empire. In a future blog post, I’ll give more details about each of the four Herods.
And why does this all matter? Because Jesus of Nazareth grew up in a real world, with real enemies. Some of his most powerful enemies were members of the Herod family. So you can bet that the Herods are going to come up in my Crown of Thorns series.
The more you know about the world of Jesus and the real historical people in that world, the better you’ll understand the mission and message of Jesus.
by Randy Ingermanson | Oct 25, 2018 | Crown of Thorns, Jesus of Nazareth |
The mysterious “brothers of Jesus” are mentioned several times in the New Testament. Were they really his brothers? Or something else?
That’s a much more complicated question than it looks. I think a good starting point is with the gospel of Mark.
Most New Testament scholars believe that the gospel of Mark was the first of the four gospels to be written, sometime around the year AD 70.
There’s an interesting story in Mark chapter 6, verses 1 to 6, about Jesus going to his hometown after he’d gotten somewhat famous in the rest of Galilee. You can read it here.
Take a look at verse 3, in which the people of Nazareth complain about Jesus: “Is not this the carpenter, the son of Mary, the brother of James, and Joses, and of Juda, and Simon? and are not his sisters here with us? And they were offended at him.” (KJV)
There are a lot of interesting points in this one verse. Let’s take a look at a few of them.
What We Learn About the Family of Jesus
Here are four things we learn from this text:
- Jesus was a “carpenter.” This is the only verse in the Bible (other than the parallel verse in Matthew 13:55) that tells us what Jesus did for a living. The Greek word is “tekton” which is a broad term that can include people who work in wood, metal, or stone. So we don’t actually know for sure whether Jesus was a carpenter, or a metal-worker, or a stone-worker.
- Jesus is called “the son of Mary.” That’s rather odd. We know that Mary was married to Joseph. So why isn’t Jesus called the “son of Joseph?” You can probably think of several possible reasons, but we don’t know which is right. We can guess, but we don’t know with certainty.
- Joseph is not mentioned at all in this verse. Most scholars think it’s because Joseph was dead. This seems likely to me, but again, nobody knows for sure.
- Four brothers of Jesus and at least two sisters are mentioned. The brothers are named James, Joses, Judah, and Simon. The sisters aren’t named, and we don’t know how many there were.
What Does it Mean by “Brothers?”
Scholars have debated for centuries what the words “brothers” and “sisters” mean. You might think it’s “obvious” what these words mean, and it certainly would be obvious if the Bible was originally written in English. But the New Testament was originally written in Greek, and it’s about people who spoke Aramaic. So there’s always the possibility that something got lost in the double-translation from the Aramaic story world to the Greek texts to the English translations.
It’s worth noting that there are several other New Testament texts that refer to these “brothers.” We’ve already mentioned Matthew 13:55, which is Matthew’s restatement of the text in Mark. In Mark 3, Matthew 12, and Luke 8, there are three parallel stories about Mary and the brothers of Jesus coming to look for him. Also, the apostle Paul talks about “James, the Lord’s brother” in Galatians 1:19. And Paul also mentions the “brothers of the Lord” in 1 Corinthians 9:5.
The elephant in the room is that there is an ancient tradition that says Mary was a perpetual virgin. Maybe you don’t believe the tradition, and maybe you do, but the point here is that many people over the centuries have believed it. And, for them, that means these “brothers” and “sisters” of Jesus can’t be born of Mary.
Three Theories on the Brothers of Jesus
So here are the three main options that Christians have come up with over the years on the brothers (and sisters) of Jesus: (These theories are discussed in more detail in a Wikipedia article here.)
- Joseph was married earlier to another woman, by whom he had four sons and at least two daughters. This first wife died and then Joseph married Mary, who was already pregnant with Jesus. (This view is common among modern Eastern Orthodox Christians.)
- Joseph married Mary, who was already pregnant with Jesus, and Jesus was the only child in this nuclear family. The four “brothers” and the “sisters” were actually cousins of Jesus, born to his uncle Clopas and aunt Mary. Either this uncle Clopas was the brother of Joseph, or this aunt Mary was the sister of his mother Mary, or both. (This view is common among modern Catholics.)
- Joseph married Mary, who was already pregnant with Jesus, and then they later had four more sons and at least two more daughters. (This view is common among modern Protestants.)
And there are other theories held by various Biblical scholars which I won’t go into, because it gets complicated very quickly. My friend, Prof. James Tabor, has written extensively about this on his blog and in his books. (James is one of the directors on the archaeological dig I’ve worked on several times. We agree on many things and disagree on many things, and we can have a spirited discussion without getting angry.)
Which Theory is Right?
Large groups of Christians have defended each of these major options. Various of the early church fathers supported each of these options.
Which theory is right?
That’s a loaded question. There are some strong theological opinions bound up here, and sometimes people get extremely angry.
I think we don’t all have to agree on the answer. We can discuss it without getting emotional. Different people have different beliefs and we can respect other people’s beliefs, even if we don’t agree. The reason I’m blogging about it here is that not everyone is aware that there actually are different viewpoints. I was raised not knowing that Options 1 and 2 existed. I had an email from one of my fans not long ago who didn’t realize that Option 3 existed.
The main point of this blog post is to point out that there are several live options, and that people of good will can disagree on which is right.
I was raised Protestant, and grew up believing Option 3 is correct. (As I mentioned above, for a long time, I didn’t know there even were Options 1 and 2. I thought everyone believed Option 3.)
My view is that we can’t know for certain which option is correct. It looks to me like most historians and New Testament scholars believe that the “brothers” and the “sisters” are best understood as being sons and daughters of both Joseph and Mary, as in Option 3. But not all historians. Not all New Testament scholars. History is fuzzy.
How a Novel is Different from History
Historians often will lay out all the evidence and then make a list of the possible interpretations of the evidence, the way I did above. Usually, they say which interpretation they think is most likely. But they leave open the possibility that one of the other interpretations could be right.
It works fine to keep our history a bit fuzzy. None of us knows everything. We have to always remember we could be wrong.
But fuzziness doesn’t work so well in writing a historical novel.
If you’re writing a novel about Jesus, and if all the members of his family are important characters in the novel, then you can’t dither around by quoting probabilities. You have to make a definite choice and stick with it, even though you know the choice might be wrong.
Because a novel is not fuzzy. A novel is written in sharp focus.
I’m currently polishing up Book 1 in my Crown of Thorns series on the life of Jesus. I had to decide early how to refer to these “brothers” of Jesus—James, Joses, Judah, and Simon.
I decided to write them as biological children of Mary and Joseph. Some people will agree with this choice. Some will disagree, but they’ll realize that it’s just a story, which means I make no claim to be exactly right on things we can’t know for sure. And I suppose some will disagree and be angry about it.
No matter which option I choose, somebody somewhere would disagree, so I might as well just choose the one that makes the most sense to me.
So that’s what I’ve done. If I catch a little heat for it, that’s okay. Heat comes with the job.
by Randy Ingermanson | Oct 8, 2018 | Jesus of Nazareth |
We’ve all seen paintings of Jesus. He always looks pretty much the same—long hair that hangs to his shoulders, parted in the middle, with a neatly trimmed beard. He normally gets a bleached white flowing robe that reaches his ankles, although sometimes it’s blue and sometimes it’s red. Often, he also gets some sort of mantle or whatever that hangs over one shoulder or drapes over his head.
There are a lot of minor variations, but there’s one basic theme. If you went to a costume shop and asked for a Jesus costume, you’d be pretty sure what you were going to get. And you could be very sure that anyone who saw you wearing it would instantly recognize it as a Jesus costume.
But Is That Real?
The obvious question to ask is whether that Jesus costume would look anything like the real Jesus who walked around on real roads in Galilee and Judea in the early part of the first century.
And since we don’t have any paintings or statues of Jesus, how would we know?
There’s a recent book titled What Did Jesus Look Like? that I’ve found very helpful in nailing these questions down. The author is Prof. Joan Taylor, and she does a very nice job of pulling together all the info we have. The main sources of info from the middle east in the first couple of centuries are these:
- Paintings and statues of various people.
- Documents describing or mentioning clothes.
- Actual clothes found in archaeological digs.
As usual, we don’t have as much info as we’d like, but we have enough to get a fairly clear idea.
Jesus most likely wore the same clothes as other poor people of his time—a tunic, a belt, a pair of sandals, a light cloak (in cool weather), and a heavy cloak (in cold weather). Let’s talk about all these in more detail. First, the basics …
Basic Clothes
A man’s tunic was made of wool and hung down to just below his knees. It could be unbleached wool, or it could be dyed in various colors—yellow, red, green, blue, purple, and even orange. Purple and red were generally colors worn by rich people. But a poor man could wear any of the other bright colors, if he wanted.
A woman’s tunic was similar, but it hung down further, reaching her ankles.
But these tunics were not bleached white, as they are in all the modern pictures. (Essenes wore white clothes, made of linen, but Jesus was not an Essene.)
For both men and women, the tunic was terribly unstylish. Imagine a rectangle made of wool, almost a yard wide and three yards long. Cut a hole in the exact center for your head to poke through. Put your head through the hole and drape the rest over your body so that half hangs down in front and half in back. Now sew the front and back together to make seams running most of the way up both sides, leaving room for your arms to hang out. That’s very roughly how a tunic was made.
The belt could be a rope or leather string or a broad strip of cloth. You just wrapped it around your waist and then tied it loosely to keep your tunic from billowing out. If it was a strip of cloth, you could fold it a couple of times lengthwise and it would hold a few coins or a short knife or whatever other small things you might want to carry. (Your tunic didn’t have pockets, so you needed somewhere to put your car keys, right?)
Sandals were made of flat soles of leather cut to the shape of your foot, with leather cords that looped around the back of your ankle and fastened to the sole at three points—one on each side of your ankle, and one between your toes. Archaeologists have found sandals at Masada and Qumran that look surprisingly modern.
During the summer, Israel can be very hot, and the tunic with belt and sandals would be all you’d need. (It appears that people didn’t wear any sort of headgear.) But when the temperature dropped a bit, you’d need another layer, or more than one …
Optional Clothes
In cooler weather, you could add a light cloak on top, which was basically just a rectangle of wool. By tradition, this had blue and white tassels at each of the four corners. (The tassels were called tsitsit in Hebrew. In the story where a woman touched the “fringes” of Jesus’s cloak to be healed, those fringes are exactly these tsitsit.)
It can get cold in Israel in the winter. It rains either a little or a lot, depending on where you are. It can even snow occasionally at the higher elevations. (Jerusalem is a couple of thousand feet above sea level, and it snows there sometimes.) When it’s cold, you need something more than a tunic and a light cloak. You need a heavy cloak.
The heavy cloak was quite large. It was rectangular in shape and was maybe a yard and a half wide, and two and a half to three yards long. You could wrap it around yourself and get reasonably warm. And it made a primitive sleeping bag when you were traveling. You could just roll yourself up in your heavy cloak and sleep on the ground. That’s exactly what poor people did.
And … what about underwear? I emailed Prof. Taylor to ask about that, since her book didn’t mention underwear. In paintings of the crucifixion, Jesus usually gets a loincloth, so I asked whether Jewish people in the first century wore loincloths. She wrote back to say no, it doesn’t look like they did. It’s possible, of course, and we can’t be absolutely sure, but some of the Dead Sea Scrolls have a discussion about the fact that if your tunic is poorly made, it’ll expose your nakedness. And that’s only possible if you’re not wearing a loincloth. (In any event, when Romans crucified a man, they stripped him completely naked, so the loincloths in the paintings are not accurate. Crucifixions were all about total humiliation.)
Hair and Beards
And what about hair? Did Jesus wear his hear long, like in all the modern paintings?
We have a number of paintings of people in Egypt from the time of Jesus. Men wore their hair short, and they trimmed their beards fairly short also. The main exception we know of was quite rare—people who had taken a lifelong Nazirite vow never cut their hair. John the Baptist is the most obvious example from the first centry. But Jesus was not a Nazirite, so there’s no reason to think he wore his hair long.
It would be nice to have a few photos of Jesus and his family and his disciples. But we don’t have that.
When you’re doing ancient history, you put together fragments of information from a lot of different sources. You can’t be sure you get it 100% right. All you can do is your best.
For now, this is the best I’ve been able to find.
by Randy Ingermanson | Sep 18, 2018 | City of God, Crown of Thorns |
In the first scene of my novel Transgression, my heroine Rivka finds herself at the back of a mysterious cave in Jerusalem. She doesn’t know it yet, but she’s traveled back in time through a wormhole to the year AD 57.
When she comes out of the cave, she looks up and sees the Temple Mount rising in front of her. But it’s not the Temple Mount she remembers from the tour she took in Jerusalem on a hot summer day in the twenty-first century.
The Temple Mount she’s looking at is clean. Spotless. New.
And she begins to realize that something very weird has happened.
Rivka goes on to have an adventure in first-century Jerusalem. She meets some new friends and makes some dangerous enemies. She finds some surprises that challenge what she thought she knew. And, oh yeah, she saves the life of the apostle Paul.
Late in the novel, she ventures back to the cave where it all began, because that’s her ticket back to the 21st century. And something happens there that changes everything for her and her new friend Ari. (If you’ve read Transgression, you know what I’m talking about.)
The Cave is Real
By the way, the cave is real. I’ve never mentioned this fact publicly before, but the cave in the novel is real.
You can visit the cave today. I went there myself in the summer of 2016.
But I already knew the cave existed way back in the summer of 1997, when I wrote that first scene of Transgression.
How did I know the cave existed?
Because I read about it in the July/August 1995 issue of Biblical Archaeology Review. Prof. Joan Taylor wrote an article about the cave that captured my imagination.
What’s special about this cave?
The cave may very well be the exact spot where Jesus was arrested on the night he was betrayed.
Why This Cave Might Be Where Jesus Was Arrested
The cave is at the base of the Mount of Olives, right next to the traditional Tomb of the Virgin, and less than a hundred yards from the traditional “Garden of Gethsemane.”
As Prof. Taylor points out in her article, the cave would be a perfect spot for Jesus and the Twelve to camp out during the Passover season. You could build a small fire inside and keep the whole place reasonably warm. You’d be protected from the elements. You’d be safe from the prying eyes of the authorities—unless one of your friends turned traitor on you.
And there’s a notch in the wall that used to hold the end of the beam of an olive press. That’s important, because the word “Gethsemane” is just a transliteration of the Aramaic word “Gat-Shemanin,” which means “oil-press.” The cave is right next to a grove of ancient olive trees. In the first century, the owner of the olive grove pressed his olives into oil in that cave. The olive harvest comes in the fall. In the spring, (at Passover time), the owner wasn’t using his cave. He may well have rented it out to visitors for the feast of Passover.
The cave is about 60 feet long and 36 feet wide and could easily have held a few dozen people.
The reason you can visit the cave today is because there’s a long tradition (going back to at least the fourth century) that this was the site of the arrest of Jesus. So they built a small chapel in the cave, and it’s been there ever since.
What The Gethsemane Cave Looks Like Today
If you visit the cave, you’ll see a small plaque at the entrance that says this might be the place where Jesus was arrested. Here’s a picture of the plaque:
The place is an actual chapel, so they hold religious services there to this day. When my wife and I visited in the summer of 2016, we sat down in the chapel, took out our phones, opened our electronic Bibles, and read the accounts of the arrest of Jesus in Mark, Matthew, Luke, and John.
If you ever visit Jerusalem, I recommend that you do that too. You’ll get an amazing sense of the reality of the story. Because that reality will be all around you.
Here’s a photo of the cave that I took:
As you can see, the cave today is an odd mix of ancient and modern. That’s typical in Jerusalem. I’ve been to a restaurant in the Old City where part of the wall was originally a stone in the city wall in the first century. I’ve been to another restaurant and sat at a table right next to a small monument to the Tenth Legion (the one that destroyed the city in AD 70). Wherever you go in Jerusalem, you’ll find the very old sitting cheek-by-jowl with the very new.
More On The Gethsemane Cave In My Next Novel
I’m working on a new series of novels about Jesus of Nazareth right now, with the working series title Crown of Thorns. You can bet the cave will show up in these books. Because I’m pretty sure Jesus knew the owner of this cave and spent time here when he needed a quiet place.
So when you read Crown of Thorns (the first book in the series will be coming out next year), watch for the cave!
Some interesting things will happen there.
by Randy Ingermanson | Aug 29, 2018 | About the Blog |
I’m creating this post mainly because my blog is empty right now and the blog page has been giving an error message.
This blog is about my books and related stuff. So I’ll talk about first-century Jerusalem, history, archaeology, early Christianity and Judaism. I’m not a theologian and I won’t be talking much about theology. But I will occasionally blog about the history of theology, especially in the first century.
Why the first-century and why Jerusalem? Because three big things happened in that place and time, and they’ve set the course for the last twenty centuries of western civilization.
The first big thing was the Jesus Movement, which began in the early 30s and grew into Christianity. It’s obvious that our world would have been very different without two thousand years of Christianity. But there would have been no Christianity without the Jesus Movement.
The second big thing was the Jewish revolt, which ended with the burning of the Jewish Temple in the year 70 and ended with the disaster on Masada, in either the year 73 or 74. As a result of this catastrophe, the Jesus Movement cut itself off from its Jewish roots and turned into something different. You can decide for yourself if this was good or bad, but without the Jewish revolt, history would have turned out very differently.
The third big thing was the birth of rabbinic Judaism, shortly after the Jewish revolt. Historians have usually given Rabban Yohanan ben Zakkai the credit for founding rabbinic Judaism, although it’s probably more complicated than that. Modern Judaism goes back to rabbinic Judaism, so if you are Jewish, then rabbinic Judaism matters to you. If you are Christian, then you should be aware that we would not understand either the New Testament or the Old Testament very well if rabbinic Judaism had not survived.
I write novels set in the first century, in and around Jerusalem. My City of God series is of course named after Jerusalem, and features some time-travelers from our century who go back to Jerusalem shortly before the Jewish revolt. Bad stuff happens. They see it all.
Right now, I’m working on what I’m planning to be a four-book series titled Crown of Thorns. It’ll cover the life, death, and resurrection of Jesus of Nazareth.
