his letters to new christian communities, the epistles, make up a third of the new testament. his teachings show how determined he is to reach out to gentiles. jesus said, go and make disciples of all the nations, and that meant not just the jews. if i were james and i had heard about paul and what paul was doing, i would be hugely frustrated. paul never met the human jesus. here was james, who was jesus brother, and this upstart was presuming to teach jesus message and go out among the gentiles with this message. things get so bad in the relations between paul and james that ultimately they have to have a big conference in jerusalem to sort it out. around 50 ad, 20 years after the execution of his brother jesus, james presides over a council of the movement s leaders.
the outcome will decide the future. will they remain a small jewish sect, or will christianity stand alone? paul comes to defend the salvation afforded by the death and resurrection of christ that also extends to gentiles, and he brings a saved christian to jerusalem in order to try to prove his point. here is my friend, titus the greek. paul brings with him titus, an uncircumcised greek, as a sort of symbol of the gospel that he s preached, and he s really bringing him there to say to everyone, so what are you going to do about this? the only thing that counts is faith. when we read the acts of the apostles, it s quite clear that there s tension, and there s especially tension between james and paul. so if you were jesus brother and this upstart came along preaching and teaching a different message from the one
back in 1970s jerusalem, there is a vibrant market for antique ossuaries. i didn t see anything particular in this ossuary. it was sat for many years at my parents apartment together with several other ossuaries that i purchased at that time because i didn t put any special attention to this ossuary. but in april 2002, golan invites andre lemaire, a renowned scholar of ancient aramaic, to examine some items in his collection. lemaire s attention is immediate drawn to the unidentified ossuary golan bought 30 years before. lemaire deciphers the mysterious inscription. it reads, james, son of joseph, brother of jesus. he found that there is a very high probability that it belonged to james, the brother of jesus christ.
frankly i didn t even know that jesus christ had brothers or sisters. he immediately sends it to the geological survey of israel to help with it s authentication. using high power microsofts they inspect it and the encryptions. they conclude the lettering has not been made by modern tools. it s not a question of authentic. it s a question of if it belongs to james. intrigued about the probability of finding the names james, jesus and joseph in more than one family in first century jerusalem, he asked them to audit the names on the encrypti encryption. we have 168 from that period in jerusalem. while joseph appears on 7%, jesus on 4 and james on 2%, he
the gospel of the hebrews portrays james as being in jerusalem in the immediate aftermath of the crucifixion. james has probably found the whole business of jesus being crucified about as traumatic and about as life changing as you can imagine. he goes into a period of fasting and mourning. something that no one else of jesus followers did. but then t bible revealed that james s grieving is brought to a sudden end. jesus returns. he was buried and he was