Author’s Note

Then he appeared to James . . .

1 CORINTHIANS 15:7 (ESV)

“That there was a meeting of James and the risen Christ is certain. What passed at that sacred and intimate moment we shall never know. But we do know . . . James who had been the hostile and unsympathetic opponent of Jesus became His servant for life, and His martyr in death.”

WILLIAM BARCLAY, The Letters of James and Peter

Research is to writing what a hinge is to a door. The story of James turns on John 7:5: “Not even his brothers believed in him” (ESV). It turns on 1 Corinthians 15:7, where we learn that Jesus appeared to James after his resurrection. It turns on Acts 1:13–14, where we learn James was with the believers in Jerusalem before Pentecost. The epistle of James is certainly a hinge, and in some fascinating historical documents, I found other hinges as well.

The early Jewish historian Flavius Josephus speaks of the martyrdom of James in his Antiquities of the Jews. Eusebius, a Greek Christian writer (circa 260–339), draws his account of James from an earlier writer, Hegesippus, a Jewish Christian historian who belonged to the first generation after the apostles. Jerome, Latin Bible translator and scholar (circa 347–419), refers in his writings to a fragment of an apocryphal Gospel of the Hebrews, which provides another account of Jesus’ appearance to James after the Resurrection.

From the sources outside canonized Scripture, I pick and choose what I actually believe about James. For instance, I would like to believe Hegesippus, that James’ knees were reputed to be as leathery as a camel’s, from his earnest habitual prayer upon them. The idea of James refusing to eat until he saw Jesus risen from the dead, as Jerome quotes the apocryphal Gospel of the Hebrews, is the dramatic sort of thing writers love. Eusebius even says that James was so esteemed for his righteousness, by Jew and Gentile alike, that the sack of Jerusalem in 70 ad was payback for the martyrdom of James the Righteous. (This may have been news to Vespasian and Titus. If the Romans had no qualms about crucifying Jesus, it is doubtful they would have torn their garments over his younger brother —let alone level an entire city.)

These historical documents contain fascinating hinges, but we cannot be certain what is true. Even in the event of James’ martyrdom, we have options: Hegesippus says he was thrown from the parapet of the Temple, then stoned because the fall didn’t kill him, then clubbed because the stoning didn’t kill him. Josephus doesn’t mention the Temple at all, nor the clubbing; only that James was delivered along with others to be stoned on a charge of breaking the Law.

The hinges in the Bible hold the most fascination for me. It was the life of James, not his death; his unbelief, then his belief; what he said and what he didn’t say that gets my attention. I wonder why he never once mentioned his common blood with Jesus? Instead of beginning his famous epistle with “James, a blood brother of the Lord Jesus Christ, so listen up . . . ,” he opened with “James, a bond-servant of God and of the Lord Jesus Christ.” He went from blood brother to bond-servant, and for me it means the story of James is not about James at all.

The hinges I found in books reminded me of the shells and stones I found in Israel.

I tend toward sentimentality, and arrival in Israel for contextual research was only the beginning of a sticky, humid, nonstop epiphany. As we walked out of the Tel Aviv airport, I breathed to my husband, “Jack, Jesus walked here.” When I got out of the car in Nazareth I said, “Jack, Jack . . . Jesus walked here.” When we walked along the beach of the Sea of Galilee, Jack snapped the coolest picture of a trail of my footprints on the shore. I picked up shells and stones and crooned, “Jack . . . Jeeee-sus walked here!”

The headiness had me fit to walk on water. I was about to attempt it when Jack spoke.

For the whole trip, he had remained silent while listening to my impassioned ruminations. While I bawled and sprawled and wailed over a stone Jesus may have kicked with his sandal toe, Jack maintained an indifference that irritated me. It was on the shore of Galilee when Jack had had enough.

“Tracy.” He put his hand on his chest and said, “Jesus walked here.”

It’s neat to think the stone I brought home was kicked by Jesus. And maybe the fact that James had blood in common with Jesus awed a few people he hung around with; James himself had enough indifference not to record it. Stones in Israel, hinges in history books, even common blood —all quite interesting.

Rich Mullins said, “Where are the nails that pierced his hands? Well, the nails have turned to rust, but behold the Man.”

What if James had knees like a camel, and what if people thought he might walk on water too, and what if we put Josephus and Eusebius in a ring and let them fight it out while we placed our bets? I fancy James himself wouldn’t care what the historians said about him. If we asked him about his knees or what was up in 1 Corinthians 15:7 or what exactly happened at his death, I fancy he’d only shrug and say something like my husband did that day in Galilee, just one thing:

Jesus walked here.

Tracy Groot