The final piece of evidence regarding James to be found in the New Testament is the dramatic account of Paul’s last visit to Jerusalem in Acts 21, generally dated around the year 56. This is one of the “we” sections of Acts — apparently a first-hand account, often thought to be written by Luke himself — and, unlike the debate over Acts 15, has generally been considered an accurate historical account by almost all scholars. The section relevant to James begins at 21:17 —

       When we arrived in Jerusalem, the brothers welcomed us warmly. The next day

Paul went with us to visit James; and all the elders were present. After greeting them, he related one by one the things that God had done among the Gentiles through his ministry.

Of note here is the fact that James is singled out as being the leader of the elders, the main person Paul is there to see. What the elders relate to Paul, after hearing of his successful ministry among the Gentiles, is filled with intrigue:

       When they heard it, they praised God. Then they said to him, “You see, brother, how many thousands of believers there are among the Jews, and they are all zealous for the law. They have been told about you that you teach all the Jews living among the Gentiles to forsake Moses, and that you tell them not to circumcise their children or observe the customs. What then is to be done? They will certainly hear that you have come.”

Extremely interesting developments! It is plain that James and the elders are quite proud of the zeal for the Law which the Jewish believers possess. It is almost as if the elders of the Jewish Christians are trying to “one up” Paul after he tells of his great success among the Gentiles, kind of like: “Oh, yeah? Well, wait till you hear how many thousands of Jews we’ve converted! And they obey the Law!”

 

The elders obviously have quite a bit of concern about the reputation that Paul is garnering among the Jewish believers in Jerusalem, due to stories circulating that Paul is turning Jews living outside of Palestine away from the Law. There seems to be concern not only for Paul’s reputation, but for his safety: “What then is to be done? They will certainly hear that you have come.”

 

It is interesting that earlier, in Acts 21:11, a prophet name Agabus had warned that Paul would be in danger from “the Jews in Jerusalem,” and Paul’s companions strongly urged him not to go. Their misgivings would, unfortunately, soon be borne out. Fearing for his safety, the elders prescribe a course of action for Paul to take which will publicly demonstrate to all that he is in fact loyal to the Law of Moses:

       “So do what we tell you. We have four men who are under a vow. Join these men, go through the rite of purification with them, and pay for the shaving of their heads. Thus all will know that there is nothing in what they have been told about you, but that you yourself observe and guard the law. But as for the Gentiles who have become believers, we have sent a letter with our judgment that they should abstain from what has been sacrificed to idols and from blood and from what is strangled and from fornication."  [Acts 21:23-25]

More interesting developments. Paul is advised, as a public demonstration of his orthodoxy, to financially sponsor some men who are apparently taking what was known as a Nazirite vow. The Nazirites were a strict Jewish religious order that observed ascetic practices such as abstaining from alcohol, fasting, not cutting their hair, and rigorously upholding the Law. The great biblical hero and Israelite judge, Samson, despite his well-known lust for women, was a Nazirite. In urging Paul to make a public demonstration of his loyalty by publicly sponsoring these Nazirite novices, James and the elders appear to be on Paul’s side, and seem to realize that the charges against him are untrue. Indeed, while Paul fought for a minimum adherence to the Law for Gentiles, it is quite unlikely that Paul would have taught Jews to abandon the Law. But, rightly or wrongly, the Jewish Christians in Jerusalem are obviously not at all enamored by Paul, to put it mildly.

 

In any event, Paul does as the elders urge him, sponsors the men, and goes into the Temple with them to undergo the rite of purification. Toward the end of this seven day long ritual, the fears of all are realized when some “Jews from Asia” (Asia Minor, modern-day Turkey) see Paul in the Temple and a riot ensues:

       When the seven days were almost completed, the Jews from Asia, who had seen him in the temple, stirred up the whole crowd. They seized him, shouting, “Fellow Israelites, help! This is the man who is teaching everyone everywhere against our people, against our law, and this place . . .” Then all the city was aroused, and the people rushed together. They seized Paul and dragged him out of the temple, and immediately the doors were shut. While they were trying to kill him, word came to the tribune of the cohort that all Jerusalem was in an uproar. Immediately he took soldiers and centurions and ran down to them. When they saw the tribune and the soldiers, they stopped beating Paul. Then the tribune came, arrested him and ordered him to be bound . . . [Acts 21:27-33]

Paul likely owed his life to the quick intervention of the Roman tribune and his cohort. Paul is taken into protective custody and a series of trials ensue in the Roman courts. Because Paul is a Roman citizen, he manages to have his case taken all the way to the imperial court of the Roman governor Festus, as Acts goes on to relate.

In all of this, Luke seems to be quite candid in his depiction of the very real friction between Paul and the Jewish Christians; but, then, this is an eyewitness account written in the first person. Still, we have to wonder how much is left unsaid because of Luke’s well known tendency to whitewash many of the antagonisms that existed between Paul and Jerusalem. The way Luke depicts things, James and the elders were solidly on Paul’s side, and the trouble that erupted was all due to a simple misunderstanding among those “zealous for the law.” One has to wonder, though, couldn’t James and the elders have simply explained the truth about Paul to their more conservative brethren in the Jerusalem church? Would they not have listened to James and their elders?

 

Some intriguing questions have been raised around these issues by the highly respected New Testament scholar James Dunn, who makes some startling suggestions as to what Luke does not say in Acts:

". . . when Paul was arrested and put on trial we hear nothing of any Jewish Christians standing by him, speaking in his defence – and this despite James’s apparent high standing among orthodox Jews . . . Where were the Jerusalem Christians? It looks very much as though they had washed their hands of Paul, left him to stew in his own juice. If so it implies a fundamental antipathy on the part of the Jewish Christians to Paul himself and what he stood for." [Unity and Diversity in the New Testament, p. 256, italics Dunn’s]

As shocking as this may sound, there are some scholars who go so far as to claim that James and the elders purposely lured Paul into a trap! If you think such an idea is totally unfounded, note well the end of verse 30: “They seized Paul and dragged him out of the temple, and immediately the doors were shut.” But such speculations take us far beyond the evidence and are little more than conjecture. Yet, Dunn’s assertion, while it goes against the rosy picture that the church has held throughout the centuries, is congruous with all the other evidence we have examined to this point. It should be quite obvious by now that Paul was completely despised by the Jewish Christians.

What is also quite curious about chapter 21 of Acts, is that the stated reason for Paul’s visit to Jerusalem — to deliver the collection which he had gone to such great lengths throughout his journeys to take up on behalf of “the poor” in Jerusalem — is, quite strangely, never mentioned by Luke! This is a highly unusual omission of what would have certainly been a momentous event in the history of the church. Acts’ silence about the collection being delivered has caused more than a few scholars to conclude that the collection was actually rejected by the elders! That would have been a bitter pill for Paul to swallow; and, if indeed the collection was rejected (quite likely in light of the bitter attitude of the Jewish Christians in Jerusalem), it is reasonable to suppose that Luke, who was at pains to put a good spin on things, likely would have covered up this embarrassing faux pas for relations between Paul and Jerusalem. Luke’s silence on the collection speaks loudly.

 

If it is true that the collection was rejected, then relations between Paul and Jerusalem had indeed reached the breaking point. Even a conservative evangelical commentator like Ralph P. Martin admits that, by the time of Paul’s final visit to Jerusalem, his “ministry was decisively rejected by James and the Jerusalem leadership” [James, Word Biblical Commentary #48, p. xxxvii]. The official acceptance of a collection gathered from Paul’s Gentile congregations would be seen as tacit approval of Paul’s teachings.

By the time that Luke wrote his two-part history of the church near the end of the first century, the church had largely been transformed from a Jewish phenomenon into a Gentile phenomenon. Therefore, the beliefs and teachings of James slowly became subsumed under the beliefs and teachings of Paul. This led to a not-so-subtle prejudice against the thoroughly Jewish form of Christianity that the Jerusalem Church and its leaders represented, which ultimately led to the “blackballing” of James in the New Testament.

 

While James had unflagging zeal for the Law, it was Paul’s relentless zeal for the mission to the Gentiles that won the day. Due almost single-handedly to Paul’s ceaseless efforts, Christianity increasingly became a Gentile movement, and the importance of the Jewish Law naturally waned. There were also factors beyond either James’s or Paul’s control — namely, the Jewish revolt against Rome in the year 66 and the resultant sack of Jerusalem in 70, resulting in the second Diaspora of the Jewish people. After 70, the Jewish form of Christianity which James represented, and which was so thoroughly rooted in Jerusalem, found it difficult to survive in the Gentile world and was quickly on the road to extinction, while Paul’s new Gentile form of Christianity continued to flourish and soon evolved into Christianity as we know it today. While the emerging catholic Church abandoned the dogmas associated with adherence to the Law, it quickly developed dogmas of its own to replace them, one of which was the doctrine of the Virgin Birth. With the rise of the doctrine of the Virgin Birth, and especially with the growth of the belief in the perpetual virginity of Mary, James and the rest of Jesus’ siblings became an embarrassment that needed to be hidden in the closet. Soon the memory of their importance, and even their existence, was tragically lost.

But this memory was not lost by all. There were those who continued to keep a candle burning in memory of James, and continued to uphold his theology and teachings. They have generally been referred to in history as the Ebionites.