Something of which I am more and more convinced is the paramount importance of James the brother of Jesus to the survival of the Messianic movement in the critical years following the tragic and brutal murders of both John the Baptist and Jesus. Of course, as readers of The Jesus Dynasty know, I am convinced that James was the “disciple whom Jesus loved,” the one who became head of family, leader of the movement, and dynastic successor to Jesus as next in line of the royal lineage of King David. Jesus died in the year 30 AD and the earliest written records we have of the movement come from the apostle Paul in the early 50s AD–twenty years later. The historian John Dominic Crossan called these twenty years the “dark age” of the Jesus movement in that we have no surviving records from those crucial years. What little we know is based on attempts to try to read back what we might possibly construct from later materials–the Q source, Mark and the Synoptic sources, the gospel of John, the book of Acts, the Didache, the letters of Paul, the letter of James, the gospel of Thomas, and other fragmented “Jewish Christian” sources (Hebrew gospels, the Pseudo-Clementines, Ebionite traditions, etc.). James is pretty much written out of the story and it becomes difficult to even imagine how vital he was to the survival and development of the movement in those first critical decades.

One speculation I find appealing is the idea that James and Jesus were very similar in looks, voice, outlook, and personality. In other words, after Jesus was gone the community found solace in the physical presence of James and in gathering around James it was as if the spirit of Jesus was still among them in the person of his brother. I have wondered whether the original idea now embedded in latter part of the gospel of John, about the “Comforter” coming, was originally referring to be James. The Greek word is Paraklete and refers to one who represents or advocates. Later Christians personified this one as the “Holy Spirit” but in the various passages found in the Gospel of John “he” is spoken of in a very personal way, in the masculine gender, very much as one would speak of a person. Jesus says of this one that he will be “sent in my name,” and that he will be a Teacher who will remind the community of all that Jesus has taught them. The Ebionites had this idea of the “Christ Spirit” that “hastened through the ages” and rested upon various ones in a successive way. In other words, the spirit of Truth, that was passed on from John to Jesus, was now being passed on from Jesus to James. Jesus tells them that this one “abides with” them and will be “among” them. This one will “not speak on his own, but will speak whatever he hears, and he will declare to you the things that are to come.”

I am convinced that the earliest followers of Jesus and John regained their faith and resolve following Jesus’ crucifixion not by a spirit of ghost of Jesus appearing to them, nor by experiences of the resuscitated corpse of Jesus coming to life and living among them, passing through walls, and finally rising up bodily into the clouds into heaven, but by the living presence of James the beloved brother of Jesus and the spirit that he reflected and exhibited in those dark days of danger and disappointment when the scattered followers migrated back to Galilee after the Passover week ended. To have James with them was akin to having Jesus with them. In terms of historical explanations I think this one makes the most sense and it was James who led the group back to Jerusalem for the feast of Pentecost or Shavuot, 50 days after Jesus’ death, where they really began to consolidate things and found a new direction and hope for the expectation of the Kingdom of God to which they had dedicated their lives.

Paul does not show up with his version of the “visionary Christ” in heaven until at least seven years later and the story of how that version of things eventually dominated the story that was passed on down to us is one I will cover in the book on Paul upon which I am currently working.

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