took place according to the earliest chronology after that date. Nor is it probable that James the son of Alphaeus would be placed before Peter and John except upon one supposition, that he was James the Lord's brother, Gal. i. 19, and that that honour entitled him to the first place in the Jerusalem Church. Apart from this supposed identification we cannot say that we know anything of James the son of Alphaeus, but those who claim him as the author of the Epistle always regard this identity as a settled matter. But if James the son of Alphaeus vanishes from the New Testament after his mention in Acts i. 13 there would be nothing strange in the obscurity which he shares with the majority of the Twelve. The identification, however, which we are considering depends first of all upon the contention that 'brother' is equivalent to 'cousin.' And it may be admitted that the Hebrew word rendered 'brother' may be used to cover various degrees of relationship, but after all that can be said for this, Bishop Lightfoot's remark has not lost its force: It is scarcely conceivable that the cousins of any one should be commonly and indeed exclusively styled his brethren by indifferent persons; still less, that one cousin in particular should be singled out and described in this loose way, "James the Lord's brother'." With this view of the meaning of the word 'brother' is closely united another, viz. the view which maintains the identification of Alphaeus with Clopas (not Cleophas as in A.V.). But if we treat the two names philologically, it would seem that they must be regarded as distinct, or that at all events their identity is unproven2. In the ancient Syriac Version not Clopas, but a word very different from it, Chalpai, represents Alphaeus, although it has been suggested that the Jew Chalpai might have had also a Greek name Clopas or Cleopas, according to a common custom of having two names. In this connection it may be further observed that in John xix. 25, the only passage in which Clopas occurs, it is very doubtful whether 'Mary, the wife of Clopas' is identical with our

1 Galatians, p. 261. Sieffert points out that in the N.T. two other words are found to denote relatives and cousins, ovyyevýs and ȧvefiós, Mark vi. 4, Luke i. 36, ii. 44, Col. iv. 10, not ådeλpós, although we must remember that he is a supporter of the Helvidian view. Mayor, Art. 'Brother,' Hastings' B. D., rightly draws attention to the way in which Hegesippus applies the term cousin of the Lord to Symeon, who succeeds James the Lord's brother as Bishop of Jerusalem; cf. Euseb. II. 22, and iv. 22.

2 See in this connection Zahn, Forschungen zur Geschichte des neutest. Kanons, p. 343; Sieffert, Jakobus,' in Herzog's Encycl., Heft 77, p. 574, new edit.; Schmiedel, Art. Clopas,' Encycl. Bibl. 1. 851; and Art. Alphaeus' in Smith's B. D.2

Lord's 'mother's sister.' It is quite possible that St John mentions four women as standing at the Cross (as we find in the ancient Syriac Version), so that Mary the wife of Clopas is to be distinguished from the sister of the Lord's mother. Moreover, the expression 'wife of Clopas' might also mean in the original 'daughter of Clopas,' and in that case, as on the supposition that four women are intended John xix. 25, we should avoid the improbability that there were two sisters bearing the name Mary in the same family. It is also difficult to understand why St John should introduce into his Gospel the name Clopas at all, if he was writing for readers acquainted with the Synoptic tradition, in which Alphaeus, not Clopas, was found. But further, if Mary of Clopas is not related to Jesus, and yet is the same person as 'the mother of James the Less and of Joses,' as we gather from comparing Mark xv. 40 with John xix. 25, it follows that 'James the Less' is not identical with James the Lord's brother.

This title 'James the Less' reminds us that St Jerome, in his identification of James the Lord's brother with James the son of Alphaeus, argues that the epithet minor which he wrongly finds in Mark xv. 40 implies that there were only two persons, viz. the two Apostles, bearing the name of James. But the epithet in Mark xv. 40 is simply 'James the Little' which does not in itself imply comparison with only one person. We must further take into account the improbability that in the earliest days of the Church any one of the Apostles would have been known by the epithet 'the Great,' as would seem to follow from the contrast suggested by the term 'the Little'.'

St Jerome, again, lays great stress upon Gal. i. 19 in this same attempt to identify James the Lord's brother with James the son of Alphaeus, inasmuch as James in Gal. is in his view evidently one of the Twelve. But it cannot be said that we are by any means shut up to this conclusion. For even if the words mean 'I saw no other Apostle but James' (Gal. i. 19), it does not follow that he is included of necessity among the Twelve, since the word Apostle may be used here, as it often is, in a wider sense. Or the words may mean 'I saw

1 St Jerome writes 'major et minor non inter tres, sed inter duos solent praebere distantiam,' c. Helv. xiii. See further Mayor, Art. 'Brethren of the Lord,' Hastings' B. D. 1. p. 322, and Zahn, Forschungen zur Geschichte des neutest. Kanons, p. 346; 1900.

2 In 1 Cor. xv. 7 James is as little distinguished from all the Apostles as Peter from the Twelve; but in distinction from the Twelve the former title Apostle can

no other Apostle, but only James,' in which case there is no question of any inclusion of James among the Apostles, and the words in the first clause look back to Peter only. It is thus quite possible to endorse the interpretation attached to the words by Zahn and Sieffert, viz. that Paul intimates that although he saw no other Apostle, yet he had seen an illustrious personage, James the brother of the Lord.

Another consideration of no little weight is found in the fact that the brethren of the Lord are so often mentioned separately from the Twelve: cf. John ii. 12; Acts i. 13, 14; 1 Cor. ix. 5. Moreover, whilst John vii. 5 marks the unbelief of the brethren in contrast to the preceding confession of the Twelve, the same attitude of unbelief on the part of the former is plainly implied in Matt. xii. 46 (Mark iii. 31; Luke viii. 19).

But amongst these brethren there is one bearing the name of James, according to the two lists which are given in Matt. xiii. 55, Mark vi. 3, and in both cases his name stands first. We have, however, seen that it is somewhat precarious to identify 'His mother's sister,' John xix. 25, with Mary the wife of Clopas, so that her sons need not be meant in the James and Joses of the two Synoptic passages. It is also very noticeable that these brethren are never found with Mary of Clopas, but always in company with Mary the mother of the Lord, or with Joseph His reputed father. If we ask why the name of James stands first of the four brethren mentioned in Matthew and Mark, it seems a natural explanation that the bearer of it was the eldest of the four, and that he thus stood in a peculiarly close personal relation to our Lord, which might well account for his significant title 'the Lord's brother.'

It is sometimes urged against this that in the Acts we have two Apostles mentioned by the name of James, cf. i. 13, in the list of the Twelve, and that as, in xii. 2, one of these is put to death, it is obvious that by the name James alone, xv. 13, cf. xii. 17, the writer could only mean the other Apostle bearing that name.

But the brethren of the Lord were evidently in St Luke's view prominent persons, Acts i. 14, and, as we have already noted, the fact that James the son of Alphaeus should not be specially mentioned in the later history of the Church is not more strange in his case than in that of the other members of the Twelve. If too, as we have

only be used here in a wider sense; cf. Phil. ii. 25; Acts xiv. 4, 14. So Sieffert, 'Jakobus,' in Herzog's Encycl., Heft 77, p. 578; 1900.

every reason to believe, the James of Gal. ii. 9 is the same as the James of Gal. i. 19, and the James of Gal. i. 19 cannot be the son of Alphaeus (see above), it would seem that there was a third James occupying a prominent place in Jerusalem, who was known as James simply, or as James the Lord's brother.

Now if these brethren were the sons of Joseph by a former marriage, and so half-brothers of Christ, this fact would entitle them to special regard. It may be added that their attitude in the Gospels towards our Lord has not unjustly led to the inference that they were elder brothers. We may note, e.g. a certain action and tone of authority in the manner in which the brethren are associated with the mother of our Lord, Matt. xii. 47 (cf. Mark iii. 21, 31), and so too in the notice John vii. 1-5 we have not only the fact of their unbelief, which might well characterise elder brethren in face of the claims of a younger man, but also their tone of command and superior wisdom.

It has indeed been thought that it is inconceivable that one who shows himself so fully acquainted with the teaching of Jesus should have been amongst the unbelievers in His claim to be the Christ, and that the writer of the Epistle must have been an actual hearer of our Lord, and an Apostle. But if the writer was a half-brother of Jesus and brought up in a house where the head of the household could be described as 'a righteous man,' Matt. i. 19 (cf. Luke i. 6, ii. 25), it is surely not surprising that even as a believer in Jesus as the Christ he should show acquaintance with that side of His teaching which is so prominent in this Epistle, in which such stress is laid upon the 'fruit of righteousness' and upon its inward growth in the prayer of a righteous man,' and that he should still have regard to that aspect of our Lord's teaching in relation to the Law which would impress the mind of a pious Israelite'. Such a man might well find that his Christian life was no real contrast to his former state, and that all that he possessed in Christ was the perfecting of what he had before. Such a man might well present a picture of a piety to which both Old and New Testament contributed, and in him we might expect to find a wise scribe, instructed unto the kingdom of heaven, and bringing out of his treasury things both new and old. This too

1 The echoes in the Sermon on the Mount have been often noticed; but what especially concerns us to observe is how deeply St James has entered into that part of the Sermon on the Mount which we examined at the outset, the true manner of the fulfilment of the Law,' Hort, Judaistic Christianity, p. 151.

might well have been the case whether he had actually heard our Lord or not. For in the writer of this Epistle we are not only concerned with James the 'brother' of Jesus, but with James 'a servant of the Lord Jesus Christ,' with one who had joined the little band of the first believers (Acts i. 14), and to whom there is reason to believe that a special appearance of the Risen Lord had been vouchsafed, 1 Cor. xv. 7 (Lightfoot, Galatians, pp. 265, 274). 'He shall take of mine and shall show it unto you'; in that promise St James could claim a share, whether with the Twelve he remembered the words of the Lord Jesus, or whether he heard them for the first time from the lips of others'.

Men have sometimes contrasted the conversion of St James with that of St Paul-the sudden change of the latter from the side of the Pharisees to that of the Christians with the quiet passage of the former from the service of the old Covenant to that of the new. But in each case there was hostility and unbelief, and in each case there was a conversion. And as in the case of St Paul, so too in that of St James, we naturally ask ourselves what merely human influence could have sufficed to transform the unbeliever into the bondservant of Jesus, and the stern and rigid Israelite into a follower of the despised Nazarene? "Take upon you the yoke of the Law,' said the Rabbis, and you shall be free from the yoke of the world'; but here was a man trained in the observance of all legal righteousness, who had found a freedom from the bondage of the world and sin in obeying the voice of a fellow-man, Who belonged to no religious sect, and boasted of no training in the schools, the voice of One Who was both the Brother of men and their Lord: "Take My yoke upon you, and learn of Me; for I am meek and lowly of heart; and ye shall find rest for your souls.'

As we thus picture to ourselves the position of St James, and as we study in his Epistle the further revelation of his character, we may trace in some respects at all events a likeness to the traditional view of 'James the brother of the Lord' in the well-known account of Hegesippus. There he is described as bearing the name of 'the Just' (righteous), as ever on his knees in prayer, worshipping God and asking forgiveness for the people, as converting many to Jesus as the Christ, as having no respect of persons, as looking to the coming of the Son of Man on the clouds of heaven, and as fulfilling

1 See also the remarks of B. Weiss, Neue kirchliche Zeitschrift, June, 1904, p. 435.