of imagery and the moral pathos so characteristic of the Epistle may well have been derived from a close acquaintance with those prophetical books which every pious Jew knew so well.

The honour in which James the brother of the Lord was held on all sides might well have inspired the hope that a letter from him would impress even unbelievers of status amongst his fellowcountrymen. But this points, as Dr Weiss urges, to an early date, when Christianity was threatened not by Gentile but by Jewish authorities, and this date is confirmed by the fact that the Epistle shows no trace of the questions which arose when Gentile and Jewish Christians were brought into immediate contact.

But one further objection is common to all the adverse critics whose writings we have been considering. They all urge a secondcentury date for the Epistle of St James on the ground that the author, whoever he may have been, represents Christianity as a nova lex, a new law. It is difficult to understand the exact point of this objection, which is so persistently urged, and it is altogether misleading to assert that Christianity here appears quite in the secondcentury manner as a law, 'the perfect law,' i.e. the fulfilment of Judaism.

It would be more true to say that it does nothing of the kind. In chap. i. 25, cf. ii. 8, 12, the perfect law is not contrasted with Judaism as a religion, but the Jewish-Christian readers, to whom St James was addressing himself, are reminded of the royal law, the law of love, the fulfilment and not the abrogation of the Mosaic code (cf. Matt. xxii. 40, vii. 12; Rom. xiii. 8-10; and notes in commentary on James i. 25, ii. 12). The conception of the 'new law' in the so-called Epistle of Barnabas ii. 6, is quite different, as the context shows; it is opposed to the Mosaic law, which is regarded as antiquated, with its offerings and ceremonies. No doubt Justin Martyr, Dial. c. Tryph. xi. (cf. Hermas, Sim. v. 6. 3), speaks of a 'new law,' but the sense in which he employs the expression differs again from the language of St James; for the Mosaic law is declared to be abrogated, Christ Himself being given to us as the eternal and perfect law. Harnack alleges as a special point against the pre-Pauline authorship of the Epistle that the writer, when he speaks of law, never means the Mosaic law in the concrete, but a law which he had 'distilled' for himself. But what evidence of this do we derive from the Epistle? If a conception of law which regards the Decalogue, and the religious and moral contents of law as alone essential, is a 'distillation' of law, then we may fairly ask if

the same conception may not be found in St Paul, nay in our Lord's own teaching; and if so, why not in the teaching of St James? (see further note in commentary on 'the perfect law,' James i. 25)'.

But if there is no need to transfer to the second century St James's conception of law, the same remark may be made with regard to his treatment of faith and works.

Something has already been said as to the practical bearing of St James's remarks, in proof that his opposition is probably not to Paulinism, but to a Jewish acceptance of faith as purely intellectual, and to an antinomianism which might at any time invade the Church, and which St Paul, nay our Lord Himself, rebuked and condemned. Jülicher, however, insists that such a discussion of faith and works in relation to salvation could not have found any place before the time of St Paul's wide activity. But if St James's Epistle is not a document of primitive Christianity, then we are not in a position to say whether such a discussion could find any place or not, for we have no other writing of this early period to help us to an answer, since St Paul's earliest Epistles were addressed not to Jewish, but to mixed Churches. It is therefore difficult to see from what source Jülicher could obtain the information which would justify his assertion, and we have already seen that there is some reason to suppose that such a discussion might well have found a place in the Jewish schools before St Paul's day.

But Jülicher is not content with such arguments in proof of his theory that the Epistle before us dates from the second century. He characterises the attempt to assign it the earliest place in the New Testament as still more laughable than the attempt (that of B. Weiss and Kühl, amongst others) to place 1 Pet. before St Paul's writings. But we may be pardoned for thinking that it would be still more ridiculous for an unknown writer to attempt to pass himself off as James of Jerusalem, without making the slightest effort to claim the title of Apostle or Elder, or in any way of a leader of the Church, and to address from his obscurity an Epistle to the twelve tribes of the Dispersion. It has well been pointed out by Zahn that whilst the hostile critics differ amongst themselves as to the date of the Epistle, they nevertheless agree in one particular, viz. that the author wished that his writing should be taken for the work of the illustrious James, the head of the Jerusalem Church. But, if so, it is strange, as we have already seen, that no attempt is made by this

1 See further Weiss, Neue kirchliche Zeitschrift, May, 1904, p. 417.

unknown writer to assert his assumed dignity in an unmistakable

manner.

A further consideration may be fairly urged in view of this second-century theory. Any endeavour to assign the Epistle of James to such a late date is directly at issue with another phase of modern criticism, upon which we have already commented, that which is represented by Spitta and Massebieau. An Epistle cannot be a document of the second century, it cannot come to us from the reign of Hadrian, or even later, with nothing to indicate Jewish Christianity either in writer or readers, and at the same time be a product of the Judaism of the first century B.C. with nothing Christian in the writer or in those to whom the letter was addressed.

In contradistinction to these two extremes an endeavour has been made in the above pages to show that the Epistle bearing the name of St James is a document which comes to us from a very early date in the history of the Christian Church, and that it cannot at all events be placed after the death of James the Just, the brother of the Lord. Any theory which dates the Epistle after that event raises greater difficulties, not only as to authorship, but as to doctrinal and social questions, than those which it purports

to remove.

Note on the Brethren' of the Lord.

XII. Of the different views as to the exact relationship between our Lord and His 'brethren,' that which regards the latter as the sons of Joseph by a former marriage has much in its favour. This view cannot be said to be inconsistent with the language of the New Testament, and in some degree it affords a good explanation of it. The attitude e.g. of the 'brethren' towards our Lord is certainly that of elders to one younger in years, see above p. xxx. The fact, moreover, that our Lord commits His mother to St John and not to the 'brethren' is more easily accounted for, if we suppose, with good reason, that Salome was the sister of the Virgin mother, and that St John was thus the Virgin's nephew. A nephew might well be preferred to stepsons on the natural ground of closer relationship, to say nothing of the unbelief of the latter at the time of the Crucifixion. Professor Mayor who holds strongly the Helvidian view, viz. that the 'brethren' were the sons of Joseph and Mary, is also careful to point out how easily even in that case St John might have been preferred in the Saviour's choice of His mother's earthly home1. Mr Mayor supposes that

1 Art. Brethren of the Lord,' Hastings' B. D. 1. 324. Dr Zahn, who holds with Mayor the Helvidian view, considers that the preference of St John is accounted for not on the ground of relationship, but because of the unbelief of the 'brethren,'

our Lord's 'brethren,' that is to say, in his view, the younger sons of Joseph and Mary, were very probably married men with their own homes, and much more likely is it that if the 'brethren' were the stepsons of Joseph, and thus older than Jesus, they would have their own separate households. Moreover, this latter view gives a perfectly adequate account of the employment of the word 'brethren' in the Gospels, for if Joseph could be regarded popularly as the father of Jesus, it was not unnatural that the sons of Joseph should be regarded popularly as His brethren, and it must not be forgotten that the Virgin herself gives the title 'thy father' to Joseph, Luke ii. 48, although she knew the whole secret of the Lord's Birth. Moreover, the half-brothers of Jesus might well have been called adeλpoi (although if cousins, there was no reason why they should not have been called avevoí), just as in the O.T. we find the twelve patriarchs so called, although born of different mothers.

But this Epiphanian view, which we are now considering, can appeal also to the voice of tradition, and that too to tradition probably reaching back to the middle of the second century. It is no doubt quite true that the earlier sources of the tradition known to us are derived from two apocryphal books referred to by Origen, Comm. in Matth. xiii. 55, viz. the Gospel of Peter, and the Protevangelium Jacobi (this latter book being the oldest and apparently the most influential of the apocryphal Gospels)1. It would seem that Origen favoured this view himself, that the 'brothers' of Jesus were sons of Joseph by a former wife, and if Epiphanius mainly derived his information from Hegesippus (as Bishop Lightfoot urges), then the testimony of the latter may also be cited for the Epiphanian view, that is to say, the testimony of an early writer dating from Palestine about 160 A.D. and himself a Hebrew Christian. But on the other hand it must be remembered that Dr Zahn thinks it 'more than improbable' that Hegesippus shared the view afterwards associated with the name of Epiphanius, and he points out that in all the fragments of Hegesippus which he cites there is no evidence that the terms brother, cousin, uncle's son, grandson, are used in any but their natural sense. Quite apart, however, from the testimony of Hegesippus, it would seem that the Epiphanian view may at least claim the sanction of early tradition, a tradition which by no means necessarily has its base in a false asceticism, or in a depreciation of married life. And if we cannot say, with Lightfoot, that this view prevailed chiefly in Palestine, where such depreciatory views of the married state were not so acceptable as elsewhere in the Church,

1 This is the opinion of Dr Zahn, who regards this apocryphal Gospel as the oldest document containing the view advocated by Epiphanius. Dr Zahn apparently quite admits that the same view may have been held by Justin Martyr, but that he was influenced by the apocryphal Gospel just mentioned: Forschungen zur Geschichte des neutest. Kanons, p. 308; 1900.

2 It is of interest to note that Ephrem, although he maintains elsewhere the virginity of Mary, in the Armenian Version of his Commentary on Acts i. 13 plainly regards James and Jude as sons of Joseph: J. Rendel Harris, Four Lectures on the Western Text, p. 37.

K.

e

Epiphanius, it should be noted, claims to give us as his authority 'the traditions of the Jews.'

A writer in the Guardian, June 7, 1899, after stating very strongly his objection to a view based upon apocryphal Gospels, which places us ‘in the region of pure romance' (Zahn speaks of 'the legendary theory'), admits at the same time that the Hieronymian and Helvidian views are open to greater objections, and that it might even be necessary to fall back upon the Epiphanian if there was no other alternative to these three views. He therefore argues with great force for a modification of the Hieronymian theory, and represents James the brother of the Lord, and James the son of Alphaeus, as the same person, being the cousin of Jesus on the paternal side, while on the Hieronymian view he was a cousin on the maternal side. He believes that the only difficulty is to be found in the fact that we are obliged to make the word for 'brother' mean 'cousin.' But some objections to the identification of the two terms, especially in the present instance, have been already mentioned, see p. xxvii., and no adequate reason has yet been alleged as to why the Evangelists did not use the word avevo if they meant 'cousins1.' This modification of the Hieronymian view also finds favour with Canon Meyrick in his able discussion of the whole question in Dr Smith's B. D. 1.2 p. 1516, and he calls it the Hegesippian theory, whilst the writer in the Guardian prefers to call it the historical tradition of Hegesippus. But it may be fairly said that the passages in Hegesippus are open to a very different interpretation, and it seems strange that the theory associated above with his name should have obtained no hold in the Church if Hegesippus, in Canon Meyrick's words, is our earliest witness, being born about the year 100, and if his means of information, as a Palestinian converted Jew, were thus infinitely superior to those of others.

The Hieronymian view, to which reference has just been made, owes its origin to St Jerome2. But it must always remain a serious obstacle to its acceptance that until the days of its author it never seems to have occurred to anyone; indeed St Jerome never attempts to claim any traditional support for it3, and even he himself is inconsistent in his own want

1 See also Zahn, Forschungen zur Geschichte der neutest. Kanons, p. 360, and Farrar, Early Days of Christianity, pp. 273, 274.

2 Dr Plummer in a most interesting note, St James, p. 30, points out that Dr Döllinger in earlier days supported the identification of James of Alphaeus with James the Lord's brother, but in June, 1877, he told Dr Plummer that he regarded his former opinion as mistaken, and that he was convinced that the Apostle James of Alphaeus was to be distinguished from James the Lord's brother. The Eastern Church, he added, had always distinguished the two, and he considered that their identification in the West was due to the influence of St Jerome.

3 Dr Zahn examines at length, u. s. pp. 235, 320, the attempt to claim Hegesippus as a supporter of this view, but not only would it be strange that Hegesippus should advocate a view of which there is no trace in literature until 383 A. D. but he names James the first bishop of the Church of Jerusalem as the 'brother of the Lord,' and his successor Symeon as the 'cousin of the Lord.' Cf. Eus. H. E. II. 23, and Iv. 22. 4. Could Hegesippus have written thus, asks Dr Plummer, if James was really a cousin?