Book of James

[Michael Wyatt]

Hello all--
We did talk about this on the UCLA listserve.
James in Compostela is the brother of John, not the brother of Jesus
(another James).

 From our discussion of the Protoevangelion, I retrieve and send on the
following:

The "apocryphon" and the "secret gospel" are, as I understand it, the same
thing, just called differently; we are talking about the Nag Hamadi text.

I was speculating that the book was attributed to James, Jesus' brother, for
the reasons I gave (first, he was the leader of the church in Jerusalem, and
second, it seems odd to drop John without comment from Jesus' preferred trio
of disciples, but not odd to isolate Peter).  So that attribution was only
mine.  If a critical edition attributes it to James, John's brother, I have
no quarrel.  There seems to me to be nothing in the text itself that would
clinch either argument.
The Infancy Gospel of James is certainly another thing: an early story,
popular in the Middle Ages, about Mary.  The "I, James" of the author makes
sense as Joseph's son, Jesus' brother, given Mark 6:3, where Jesus is
dismissed because his family (including his "brother James") is known.   The
INfancy Gospel was presented, then, as the product of "Jesus' brother" (in
Catholic tradition, an older half-brother).

Sorry if that's a little garbled, but I can't find the previous message it
refers to.  At any rate, the Protoevangelion seems traditionally to be
attributed to "our" James.

Nice to recall all this.

Michael Wyatt

-----Original Message-----
From: Road to Santiago Pilgrimage [mailto:GOCAMINOapete.uri.edu]On
Behalf Of Preston Pittman
Sent: Thursday, March 01, 2001 12:43 PM
To: GOCAMINOapete.uri.edu
Subject: Book of James


I found the full text (in English) of the Protevangelium, or Book of
James...
http://wesley.nnu.edu/noncanon/gospels/gosjames.htm

Linda and Maryjane, I think we had a discussion about this once on the UCLA
list serve.  This James is James the "brother" of Jesus.  This is not "our"
James, is it?  I know there is James the Greater and James the Lesser, but I
seem to recall some discussion about another First Century James, as well.
Could someone clarify?

When I was looking for this, I found another site that was quite charming -
about the childhood of the Blessed Virgin Mary:
http://mysticalrose.tripod.com/infant.html

pax,
Preston
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