Mark 6:3
The brother of James
The home town lists the family to explain away the carpenter. The names given there include the man who will later preside in Jerusalem.
People of the Bible
James the brother of Jesus
Did not believe him during his life, saw him after the resurrection, and ended up chairing the council.
Mark names the brothers of Jesus in the carpenter’s shop scene, James first among them, and John says plainly that his brethren did not believe in him. So the starting position is scepticism inside the family, the hardest kind. Then Paul lists the resurrection appearances and includes one line with no story attached: after that, he was seen of James. Nothing describes it. What is described is the result, because by Acts 12 he is the man Peter sends word to when he gets out of prison.
Scroll down to the storyThe movements, in the order the text gives them.
The story of James the brother of Jesus
- 01
- 02
John 7:3-5
Neither did his brethren believe in him
They urge him to go to Judea and show himself, and the narrator adds the reason it is not friendly advice.
- 03
1 Corinthians 15:7
He was seen of James
One clause in a list of appearances. The gospels do not tell this story and nobody else refers to it again.
- 04
Acts 15:13-21
Wherefore my sentence is
He listens to everyone else first, quotes Amos, and lands the decision on not troubling the Gentiles. The council’s letter follows his wording.
- 05
James 1:22-27
Be ye doers of the word
His letter has almost no theology and almost nothing but instructions. Pure religion is visiting the fatherless and widows in their affliction.
Why it matters
At the Jerusalem council the argument runs long and Peter speaks and Barnabas and Paul report, and then James answers with the ruling. My sentence is that we trouble not them which from among the Gentiles are turned to God. The letter that follows is short and the burden it imposes is light. His own letter is the plainest book in the New Testament: be ye doers of the word and not hearers only, faith without works is dead, the tongue is a fire, and let your yea be yea.
6 songs
The music
Every song in the catalogue whose passage falls inside these chapters.
