The Death of James, the Brother of the Lord

James appears in the New Testament as “the Lord’s brother”, whom Paul met in Jerusalem three years after his own conversion (Galatians 1:15–19). Paul counts him among those to whom the risen Christ appeared and among the “pillars” of the Jerusalem church (1 Corinthians 15:7) (Galatians 2:9). In Acts he gives the deciding opinion at the council on the Gentiles and receives Paul on his last visit (Acts 15:13–22) (Acts 21:18). The New Testament does not report his death.

The earliest surviving account is that of Josephus, written about thirty years after the event. Festus had died in office, and Nero had sent Albinus to replace him. In the interval King Agrippa gave the high priesthood to Ananus ben Ananus. Josephus calls him bold and insolent, and a Sadducee, of the party that he says was the most severe in judging offenders. Ananus assembled a council of judges and brought before it “the brother of Jesus, who was called Christ, whose name was James”, with some others. He accused them of breaking the law and handed them over to be stoned. Those in the city who were thought the fairest and the strictest about the laws protested to Agrippa, and some went to meet Albinus and told him that Ananus had no right to convene the council without his consent. Albinus wrote to Ananus in anger, and Agrippa deposed him (Josephus, Antiquities 20.197–203).

Christian tradition is later and fuller. Hegesippus, who wrote in the later second century (Eusebius, Church History 4.22.3–4), is quoted at length by Eusebius. He calls James “the Just” and says that he drank no wine, ate no meat, never cut his hair, and prayed in the temple so constantly that his knees grew hard like a camel’s. At Passover, he says, the scribes and Pharisees set James on the pinnacle of the temple to turn the people from Jesus. He proclaimed him instead as the Son of Man seated in heaven, and they threw him down, stoned him, and a fuller killed him with his club (Eusebius, Church History 2.23.4–18). Clement of Alexandria, about AD 200, in a sentence that Eusebius quotes, says that James was thrown from the pinnacle of the temple and beaten to death with a fuller’s club (Eusebius, Church History 2.1.4).

The two accounts differ. In Josephus a Sadducean high priest uses a court; in Hegesippus scribes and Pharisees act on the spot. They agree that James was put to death in Jerusalem and that he was stoned.

According to Hegesippus the church then chose Symeon son of Clopas, a cousin of Jesus, to lead it (Eusebius, Church History 4.22.3–4). Josephus’s sentence shows a first-century writer outside the church identifying James by his brother, “Jesus, who was called Christ” (Josephus, Antiquities 20.197–203).