James (brother of Jesus)

• James (brother of Jesus)

126:3.12Be­fore the end of this year Mary saw the fam­ily funds di­min­ish­ing. She turned the sale of doves over to James. Pres­ently they bought a sec­ond cow, and with the aid of Miriam they be­gan the sale of milk to their Naz­a­reth neigh­bors.

• James (brother of Jesus)

126:4.9This Sab­bath af­ter­noon Je­sus climbed the Naz­a­reth hill with James and, when they re­turned home, wrote out the Ten Com­mand­ments in Greek on two smooth boards in char­coal. Sub­se­quently Martha col­ored and dec­o­rated these boards, and for long they hung on the wall over James’s small work­bench.

• James (brother of Jesus)

126:5.8The close work at the car­pen­ter’s bench dur­ing this and sub­se­quent years de­prived Je­sus of the op­por­tu­nity of min­gling with the car­a­van pas­sen­gers. The fam­ily sup­ply shop had al­ready been taken over by his un­cle, and Je­sus worked al­to­gether in the home shop, where he was near to help Mary with the fam­ily. About this time he be­gan send­ing James up to the camel lot to gather in­for­ma­tion about world events, and thus he sought to keep in touch with the news of the day.

• James (brother of Jesus)

127:2.11James grad­u­ated at school this year and be­gan full-time work at home in the car­pen­ter shop. He had be­come a clever worker with tools and now took over the mak­ing of yokes and plows while Je­sus be­gan to do more house fin­ish­ing and ex­pert cab­i­net work.

• James (brother of Jesus)

137:6.1Je­sus’ first pub­lic ap­pear­ance fol­low­ing his bap­tism was in the Ca­per­naum syn­a­gogue on Sab­bath, March 2, A.D. 26. The syn­a­gogue was crowded to over­flow­ing. The story of the bap­tism in the Jor­dan was now aug­mented by the fresh news from Cana about the wa­ter and the wine. Je­sus gave seats of honor to his six apos­tles, and seated with them were his broth­ers in the flesh James and Jude. His mother, hav­ing re­turned to Ca­per­naum with James the evening be­fore, was also pres­ent, be­ing seated in the women’s sec­tion of the syn­a­gogue. The en­tire au­di­ence was on edge; they ex­pected to be­hold some ex­traor­di­nary man­i­fes­ta­tion of super­nat­u­ral power which would be a fit­ting tes­ti­mony to the na­ture and au­thor­ity of him who was that day to speak to them. But they were des­tined to dis­ap­point­ment.

• James (brother of Jesus)

137:6.4That af­ter­noon Je­sus and his apos­tles, with James and Jude, en­tered a boat and pulled down the shore a lit­tle way, where they an­chored while he talked to them about the com­ing king­dom. And they un­der­stood more than they had on Thurs­day night.

• James (brother of Jesus)

154:5.1May 22 was an event­ful day in the life of Je­sus. On this Sun­day morn­ing, be­fore day­break, one of David’s mes­sen­gers ar­rived in great haste from Tiberias, bring­ing the word that Herod had au­tho­rized, or was about to au­tho­rize, the ar­rest of Je­sus by the of­fi­cers of the San­hedrin. The re­ceipt of the news of this im­pend­ing dan­ger caused David Zeb­e­dee to arouse his mes­sen­gers and send them out to all the lo­cal groups of dis­ci­ples, sum­mon­ing them for an emer­gency coun­cil at seven o’clock that morn­ing. When the sis­ter-in-law of Jude (Je­sus’ brother) heard this alarm­ing re­port, she has­tened word to all of Je­sus’ fam­ily who dwelt near by, sum­mon­ing them forth­with to as­sem­ble at Zeb­e­dee’s house. And in re­sponse to this hasty call, pres­ently there were as­sem­bled Mary, James, Joseph, Jude, and Ruth.

137:4.4Early in the af­ter­noon Mary sum­moned James, and to­gether they made bold to ap­proach Je­sus to in­quire if he would ad­mit them to his con­fi­dence to the ex­tent of in­form­ing them at what hour and at what point in con­nec­tion with the wed­ding cer­e­monies he had planned to man­i­fest him­self as the “super­nat­u­ral one.” No sooner had they spo­ken of these mat­ters to Je­sus than they saw they had aroused his char­ac­ter­is­tic in­dig­na­tion. He said only: “If you love me, then be will­ing to tarry with me while I wait upon the will of my Fa­ther who is in heaven.” But the elo­quence of his re­buke lay in the ex­pres­sion of his face.

126:2.1All did go well un­til that fate­ful day of Tues­day, Septem­ber 25, when a run­ner from Sep­pho­ris brought to this Naz­a­reth home the tragic news that Joseph had been severely in­jured by the falling of a der­rick while at work on the gov­er­nor’s res­i­dence. The mes­sen­ger from Sep­pho­ris had stopped at the shop on the way to Joseph’s home, in­form­ing Je­sus of his fa­ther’s ac­ci­dent, and they went to­gether to the house to break the sad news to Mary. Je­sus de­sired to go im­me­di­ately to his fa­ther, but Mary would hear to noth­ing but that she must has­ten to her hus­band’s side. She di­rected that James, then ten years of age, should ac­com­pany her to Sep­pho­ris while Je­sus re­mained home with the younger chil­dren un­til she should re­turn, as she did not know how se­ri­ously Joseph had been in­jured. But Joseph died of his in­juries be­fore Mary ar­rived. They brought him to Naz­a­reth, and on the fol­low­ing day he was laid to rest with his fa­thers.

193:6.1Act­ing upon the in­struc­tion of Pe­ter, John Mark and oth­ers went forth to call the lead­ing dis­ci­ples to­gether at the home of Mary Mark. By ten thirty, one hun­dred and twenty of the fore­most dis­ci­ples of Je­sus liv­ing in Je­ru­sa­lem had for­gath­ered to hear the re­port of the farewell mes­sage of the Mas­ter and to learn of his as­cen­sion. Among this com­pany was Mary the mother of Je­sus. She had re­turned to Je­ru­sa­lem with John Zeb­e­dee when the apos­tles came back from their re­cent so­journ in Gal­i­lee. Soon af­ter Pen­te­cost she re­turned to the home of Sa­lome at Beth­saida. James the brother of Je­sus was also pres­ent at this meet­ing, the first con­fer­ence of the Mas­ter’s dis­ci­ples to be called af­ter the ter­mi­na­tion of his plan­e­tary ca­reer.

194:3.15Both the mother and brother of Je­sus were pres­ent among the one hun­dred and twenty be­liev­ers, and as mem­bers of this com­mon group of dis­ci­ples, they also re­ceived the out­poured spirit. They re­ceived no more of the good gift than did their fel­lows. No spe­cial gift was be­stowed upon the mem­bers of Je­sus’ earthly fam­ily. Pen­te­cost marked the end of spe­cial priest­hoods and all be­lief in sa­cred fam­i­lies.

190:2.2The third ap­pear­ance oc­curred about noon of this Sun­day at Beth­any. Shortly af­ter noon­tide, Je­sus’ old­est brother, James, was stand­ing in the gar­den of Laz­a­rus be­fore the empty tomb of the res­ur­rected brother of Martha and Mary, turn­ing over in his mind the news brought to them about one hour pre­vi­ously by the mes­sen­ger of David. James had al­ways in­clined to be­lieve in his el­dest brother’s mis­sion on earth, but he had long since lost con­tact with Je­sus’ work and had drifted into grave doubt­ing re­gard­ing the later claims of the apos­tles that Je­sus was the Mes­siah. The whole fam­ily was star­tled and well-nigh con­founded by the news brought by the mes­sen­ger. Even as James stood be­fore Laz­a­rus’s empty tomb, Mary Mag­da­lene ar­rived on the scene and was ex­cit­edly re­lat­ing to the fam­ily her ex­pe­ri­ences of the early morn­ing hours at the tomb of Joseph. Be­fore she had fin­ished, David Zeb­e­dee and his mother ar­rived. Ruth, of course, be­lieved the re­port, and so did Jude af­ter he had talked with David and Sa­lome.

190:2.3In the mean­time, as they looked for James and be­fore they found him, while he stood there in the gar­den near the tomb, he be­came aware of a near-by pres­ence, as if some­one had touched him on the shoul­der; and when he turned to look, he be­held the grad­ual ap­pear­ance of a strange form by his side. He was too much amazed to speak and too fright­ened to flee. And then the strange form spoke, say­ing: “James, I come to call you to the ser­vice of the king­dom. Join earnest hands with your breth­ren and fol­low af­ter me.” When James heard his name spo­ken, he knew that it was his el­dest brother, Je­sus, who had ad­dressed him. They all had more or less dif­fi­culty in rec­og­niz­ing the mor­ontia form of the Mas­ter, but few of them had any trou­ble rec­og­niz­ing his voice or oth­er­wise iden­ti­fy­ing his charm­ing per­son­al­ity when he once be­gan to com­mu­ni­cate with them.

190:2.4When James per­ceived that Je­sus was ad­dress­ing him, he started to fall to his knees, ex­claim­ing, “My fa­ther and my brother,” but Je­sus bade him stand while he spoke with him. And they walked through the gar­den and talked for al­most three min­utes; talked over ex­pe­ri­ences of for­mer days and fore­cast the events of the near fu­ture. As they neared the house, Je­sus said, “Farewell, James, un­til I greet you all to­gether.”

190:2.5James rushed into the house, even while they looked for him at Beth­page, ex­claim­ing: “I have just seen Je­sus and talked with him, vis­ited with him. He is not dead; he has risen! He van­ished be­fore me, say­ing, ‘Farewell un­til I greet you all to­gether.’” He had scarcely fin­ished speak­ing when Jude re­turned, and he re­told the ex­pe­ri­ence of meet­ing Je­sus in the gar­den for the ben­e­fit of Jude. And they all be­gan to be­lieve in the res­ur­rec­tion of Je­sus. James now an­nounced that he would not re­turn to Gal­i­lee, and David ex­claimed: “He is seen not only by ex­cited women; even strong­hearted men have be­gun to see him. I ex­pect to see him my­self.”

190:2.6And David did not long wait, for the fourth ap­pear­ance of Je­sus to mor­tal rec­og­ni­tion oc­curred shortly be­fore two o’clock in this very home of Martha and Mary, when he ap­peared vis­i­bly be­fore his earthly fam­ily and their friends, twenty in all. The Mas­ter ap­peared in the open back door, say­ing: “Peace be upon you. Greet­ings to those once near me in the flesh and fel­low­ship for my broth­ers and sis­ters in the king­dom of heaven. How could you doubt? Why have you lin­gered so long be­fore choos­ing to fol­low the light of truth with a whole heart? Come, there­fore, all of you into the fel­low­ship of the Spirit of Truth in the Fa­ther’s king­dom.” As they be­gan to re­cover from the first shock of their amaze­ment and to move to­ward him as if to em­brace him, he van­ished from their sight.

• very religious

127:3.2In pass­ing through Samaria, they saw many strange sights. On this jour­ney they talked over many of their prob­lems, per­sonal, fam­ily, and na­tional. James was a very re­li­gious type of lad, and while he did not fully agree with his mother re­gard­ing the lit­tle he knew of the plans con­cern­ing Je­sus’ life­work, he did look for­ward to the time when he would be able to as­sume re­spon­si­bil­ity for the fam­ily so that Je­sus could be­gin his mis­sion. He was very ap­pre­cia­tive of Je­sus’ tak­ing him up to the Pass­over, and they talked over the fu­ture more fully than ever be­fore.

• placated bellicose playmates by persuasion and nonresistance

127:4.5James and Si­mon grew up try­ing to fol­low Je­sus’ plan of pla­cat­ing their bel­li­cose and some­times irate play­mates by per­sua­sion and non­re­sis­tance, and they were fairly suc­cess­ful; but Joseph and Jude, while as­sent­ing to such teach­ings at home, made haste to de­fend them­selves when as­sailed by their com­rades; in par­tic­u­lar was Jude guilty of vi­o­lat­ing the spirit of these teach­ings. But non­re­sis­tance was not a rule of the fam­ily. No penalty was at­tached to the vi­o­la­tion of per­sonal teach­ings.

• well-balanced and even-tempered youth; good student, not overly spiritual

127:4.7James was grow­ing up to be a well-bal­anced and even-tem­pered youth, but he was not so spir­i­tu­ally in­clined as Je­sus. He was a much bet­ter stu­dent than Joseph, who, while a faith­ful worker, was even less spir­i­tu­ally minded. Joseph was a plod­der and not up to the in­tel­lec­tual level of the other chil­dren. Si­mon was a well-mean­ing boy but too much of a dreamer. He was slow in get­ting set­tled down in life and was the cause of con­sid­er­able anx­i­ety to Je­sus and Mary. But he was al­ways a good and well-in­ten­tioned lad. Jude was a fire­brand. He had the high­est of ide­als, but he was un­sta­ble in tem­per­a­ment. He had all and more of his mother’s de­ter­mi­na­tion and ag­gres­sive­ness, but he lacked much of her sense of pro­por­tion and dis­cre­tion.

• never wholly gave up faith in Jesus

134:9.6The next morn­ing Je­sus went to the chest con­tain­ing his per­sonal ef­fects, which had re­mained in Zeb­e­dee’s work­shop, put on his apron, and pre­sented him­self for work, say­ing, “It be­hooves me to keep busy while I wait for my hour to come.” And he worked sev­eral months, un­til Jan­uary of the fol­low­ing year, in the boat­shop, by the side of his brother James. Af­ter this pe­riod of work­ing with Je­sus, no mat­ter what doubts came up to be­cloud James’s un­der­stand­ing of the life­work of the Son of Man, he never again re­ally and wholly gave up his faith in the mis­sion of Je­sus.

• Jesus’ failure to make J. apostle caused gulf

138:0.1Af­ter preach­ing the ser­mon on “The King­dom,” Je­sus called the six apos­tles to­gether that af­ter­noon and be­gan to dis­close his plans for vis­it­ing the cities around and about the Sea of Gal­i­lee. His broth­ers James and Jude were very much hurt be­cause they were not called to this con­fer­ence. Up to this time they had re­garded them­selves as be­long­ing to Je­sus’ in­ner cir­cle of as­so­ciates. But Je­sus planned to have no close rel­a­tives as mem­bers of this corps of apos­tolic di­rec­tors of the king­dom. This fail­ure to in­clude James and Jude among the cho­sen few, to­gether with his ap­par­ent aloof­ness from his mother ever since the ex­pe­ri­ence at Cana, was the start­ing point of an ever-widen­ing gulf be­tween Je­sus and his fam­ily. This sit­u­a­tion con­tin­ued through­out his pub­lic min­istry—they very nearly re­jected him—and these dif­fer­ences were not fully re­moved un­til af­ter his death and res­ur­rec­tion. His mother con­stantly wa­vered be­tween at­ti­tudes of fluc­tu­at­ing faith and hope, and in­creas­ing emo­tions of dis­ap­point­ment, hu­mil­i­a­tion, and de­spair. Only Ruth, the young­est, re­mained unswerv­ingly loyal to her fa­ther-brother.

• learned to practice conciliation

139:4.13John was in prison sev­eral times and was ban­ished to the Isle of Pat­mos for a pe­riod of four years un­til an­other em­peror came to power in Rome. Had not John been tact­ful and saga­cious, he would un­doubt­edly have been killed as was his more out­spo­ken brother James. As the years passed, John, to­gether with James the Lord’s brother, learned to prac­tice wise con­cil­i­a­tion when they ap­peared be­fore the civil mag­is­trates. They found that a “soft an­swer turns away wrath.” They also learned to rep­re­sent the church as a “spir­i­tual broth­er­hood de­voted to the so­cial ser­vice of man­kind” rather than as “the king­dom of heaven.” They taught lov­ing ser­vice rather than rul­ing power—king­dom and king.

• permitted pride to interfere

154:6.1It was about eight o’clock on this Sun­day morn­ing when five mem­bers of Je­sus’ earth fam­ily ar­rived on the scene in re­sponse to the ur­gent sum­mons of Jude’s sis­ter-in-law. Of all his fam­ily in the flesh, only one, Ruth, be­lieved whole­heart­edly and con­tin­u­ously in the di­vin­ity of his mis­sion on earth. Jude and James, and even Joseph, still re­tained much of their faith in Je­sus, but they had per­mit­ted pride to in­ter­fere with their bet­ter judg­ment and real spir­i­tual in­cli­na­tions. Mary was like­wise torn be­tween love and fear, be­tween mother love and fam­ily pride. Though she was ha­rassed by doubts, she could never quite for­get the visit of Ga­briel ere Je­sus was born. The Phar­isees had been la­bor­ing to per­suade Mary that Je­sus was be­side him­self, de­mented. They urged her to go with her sons and seek to dis­suade him from fur­ther ef­forts at pub­lic teach­ing. They as­sured Mary that soon Je­sus’ health would break, and that only dis­honor and dis­grace could come upon the en­tire fam­ily as a re­sult of al­low­ing him to go on. And so, when the word came from Jude’s sis­ter-in-law, all five of them started at once for Zeb­e­dee’s house, hav­ing been to­gether at Mary’s home, where they had met with the Phar­isees the evening be­fore. They had talked with the Je­ru­sa­lem lead­ers long into the night, and all were more or less con­vinced that Je­sus was act­ing strangely, that he had acted strangely for some time. While Ruth could not ex­plain all of his con­duct, she in­sisted that he had al­ways treated his fam­ily fairly and re­fused to agree to the pro­gram of try­ing to dis­suade him from fur­ther work.

• feared for his safety

154:6.2On the way to Zeb­e­dee’s house they talked these things over and agreed among them­selves to try to per­suade Je­sus to come home with them, for, said Mary: “I know I could in­flu­ence my son if he would only come home and lis­ten to me.” James and Jude had heard ru­mors con­cern­ing the plans to ar­rest Je­sus and take him to Je­ru­sa­lem for trial. They also feared for their own safety. As long as Je­sus was a pop­u­lar fig­ure in the pub­lic eye, his fam­ily al­lowed mat­ters to drift along, but now that the peo­ple of Ca­per­naum and the lead­ers at Je­ru­sa­lem had sud­denly turned against him, they be­gan keenly to feel the pres­sure of the sup­posed dis­grace of their em­bar­rass­ing po­si­tion.

• suffered from failure to enjoy earlier association with Jesus

154:6.9It is for­ever true that all who may think they are mis­un­der­stood or not ap­pre­ci­ated have in Je­sus a sym­pa­thiz­ing friend and an un­der­stand­ing coun­selor. He had warned his apos­tles that a man’s foes may be they of his own house­hold, but he had hardly re­al­ized how near this pre­dic­tion would come to ap­ply to his own ex­pe­ri­ence. Je­sus did not for­sake his earth fam­ily to do his Fa­ther’s work—they for­sook him. Later on, af­ter the Mas­ter’s death and res­ur­rec­tion, when James be­came con­nected with the early Chris­tian move­ment, he suf­fered im­mea­sur­ably as a re­sult of his fail­ure to en­joy this ear­lier as­so­ci­a­tion with Je­sus and his dis­ci­ples.

• estranged from Abner

166:5.4It was the ap­par­ent mis­for­tune of Ab­ner to be at vari­ance with all of the lead­ers of the early Chris­tian church. He fell out with Pe­ter and James (Je­sus’ brother) over ques­tions of ad­min­is­tra­tion and the ju­ris­dic­tion of the Je­ru­sa­lem church; he parted com­pany with Paul over dif­fer­ences of phi­los­o­phy and the­ol­ogy. Ab­ner was more Baby­lo­nian than Hel­lenic in his phi­los­o­phy, and he stub­bornly re­sisted all at­tempts of Paul to re­make the teach­ings of Je­sus so as to pre­sent less that was ob­jec­tion­able, first to the Jews, then to the Greco-Ro­man be­liev­ers in the mys­ter­ies.

166:5.5Thus was Ab­ner com­pelled to live a life of iso­la­tion. He was head of a church which was with­out stand­ing at Je­ru­sa­lem. He had dared to defy James the Lord’s brother, who was sub­se­quently sup­ported by Pe­ter. Such con­duct ef­fec­tively sep­a­rated him from all his for­mer as­so­ciates. Then he dared to with­stand Paul. Al­though he was wholly sym­pa­thetic with Paul in his mis­sion to the gen­tiles, and though he sup­ported him in his con­tentions with the church at Je­ru­sa­lem, he bit­terly op­posed the ver­sion of Je­sus’ teach­ings which Paul elected to preach. In his last years Ab­ner de­nounced Paul as the “clever cor­rupter of the life teach­ings of Je­sus of Naz­a­reth, the Son of the liv­ing God.”

• suffered from failure to enjoy earlier association with Jesus

192:2.7When they re­turned to the oth­ers, Je­sus went for a walk and talk with An­drew and James. When they had gone a short dis­tance, Je­sus said to An­drew, “An­drew, do you trust me?” And when the for­mer chief of the apos­tles heard Je­sus ask such a ques­tion, he stood still and an­swered, “Yes, Mas­ter, of a cer­tainty I trust you, and you know that I do.” Then said Je­sus: “An­drew, if you trust me, trust your breth­ren more—even Pe­ter. I once trusted you with the lead­er­ship of your breth­ren. Now must you trust oth­ers as I leave you to go to the Fa­ther. When your breth­ren be­gin to scat­ter abroad be­cause of bit­ter per­se­cu­tions, be a con­sid­er­ate and wise coun­selor to James my brother in the flesh when they put heavy bur­dens upon him which he is not qual­i­fied by ex­pe­ri­ence to bear. And then go on trust­ing, for I will not fail you. When you are through on earth, you shall come to me.”

123:1.5The next im­por­tant event in the life of this Naz­a­reth fam­ily was the birth of the sec­ond child, James, in the early morn­ing hours of April 2, 3 B.C. Je­sus was thrilled by the thought of hav­ing a baby brother, and he would stand around by the hour just to ob­serve the baby’s early ac­tiv­i­ties.

128:7.13The day af­ter this dou­ble wed­ding Je­sus held an im­por­tant con­fer­ence with James. He told James, con­fi­den­tially, that he was prepar­ing to leave home. He pre­sented full ti­tle to the re­pair shop to James, for­mally and solemnly ab­di­cated as head of Joseph’s house, and most touch­ingly es­tab­lished his brother James as “head and pro­tec­tor of my fa­ther’s house.” He drew up, and they both signed, a se­cret com­pact in which it was stip­u­lated that, in re­turn for the gift of the re­pair shop, James would hence­forth as­sume full fi­nan­cial re­spon­si­bil­ity for the fam­ily, thus re­leas­ing Je­sus from all fur­ther obli­ga­tions in these mat­ters. Af­ter the con­tract was signed, af­ter the bud­get was so ar­ranged that the ac­tual ex­penses of the fam­ily would be met with­out any con­tri­bu­tion from Je­sus, Je­sus said to James: “But, my son, I will con­tinue to send you some­thing each month un­til my hour shall have come, but what I send shall be used by you as the oc­ca­sion de­mands. Ap­ply my funds to the fam­ily ne­ces­si­ties or plea­sures as you see fit. Use them in case of sick­ness or ap­ply them to meet the un­ex­pected emer­gen­cies which may be­fall any in­di­vid­ual mem­ber of the fam­ily.”

129:2.5When the fam­ily at Naz­a­reth heard that Je­sus had de­parted from Ca­per­naum, they, not know­ing of this fi­nan­cial ar­range­ment with John, be­lieved the time had come for them to get along with­out any fur­ther help from Je­sus. James re­mem­bered his con­tract with Je­sus and, with the help of his broth­ers, forth­with as­sumed full re­spon­si­bil­ity for the care of the fam­ily.

196:2.1Some day a ref­or­ma­tion in the Chris­tian church may strike deep enough to get back to the unadul­ter­ated re­li­gious teach­ings of Je­sus, the au­thor and fin­isher of our faith. You may preach a re­li­gion about Je­sus, but, per­force, you must live the re­li­gion of Je­sus. In the en­thu­si­asm of Pen­te­cost, Pe­ter un­in­ten­tion­ally in­au­gu­rated a new re­li­gion, the re­li­gion of the risen and glo­ri­fied Christ. The Apos­tle Paul later on trans­formed this new gospel into Chris­tian­ity, a re­li­gion em­body­ing his own the­o­logic views and por­tray­ing his own per­sonal ex­pe­ri­ence with the Je­sus of the Da­mas­cus road. The gospel of the king­dom is founded on the per­sonal re­li­gious ex­pe­ri­ence of the Je­sus of Gal­i­lee; Chris­tian­ity is founded al­most ex­clu­sively on the per­sonal re­li­gious ex­pe­ri­ence of the Apos­tle Paul. Al­most the whole of the New Tes­ta­ment is de­voted, not to the por­trayal of the sig­nif­i­cant and in­spir­ing re­li­gious life of Je­sus, but to a dis­cus­sion of Paul’s re­li­gious ex­pe­ri­ence and to a por­trayal of his per­sonal re­li­gious con­vic­tions. The only no­table ex­cep­tions to this state­ment, aside from cer­tain parts of Mat­thew, Mark, and Luke, are the Book of He­brews and the Epis­tle of James. Even Pe­ter, in his writ­ing, only once re­verted to the per­sonal re­li­gious life of his Mas­ter. The New Tes­ta­ment is a su­perb Chris­tian doc­u­ment, but it is only mea­gerly Je­su­so­nian.

127:3.1In the course of this year all the fam­ily prop­erty, ex­cept the home and gar­den, was dis­posed of. The last piece of Ca­per­naum prop­erty (ex­cept an eq­uity in one other), al­ready mort­gaged, was sold. The pro­ceeds were used for taxes, to buy some new tools for James, and to make a pay­ment on the old fam­ily sup­ply and re­pair shop near the car­a­van lot, which Je­sus now pro­posed to buy back since James was old enough to work at the house shop and help Mary about the home. With the fi­nan­cial pres­sure thus eased for the time be­ing, Je­sus de­cided to take James to the Pass­over. They went up to Je­ru­sa­lem a day early, to be alone, go­ing by way of Samaria. They walked, and Je­sus told James about the his­toric places en route as his fa­ther had taught him on a sim­i­lar jour­ney five years be­fore.

127:3.3Je­sus did much think­ing as they jour­neyed through Samaria, par­tic­u­larly at Bethel and when drink­ing from Ja­cob’s well. He and his brother dis­cussed the tra­di­tions of Abra­ham, Isaac, and Ja­cob. He did much to pre­pare James for what he was about to wit­ness at Je­ru­sa­lem, thus seek­ing to lessen the shock such as he him­self had ex­pe­ri­enced on his first visit to the tem­ple. But James was not so sen­si­tive to some of these sights. He com­mented on the per­func­tory and heart­less man­ner in which some of the priests per­formed their du­ties but on the whole greatly en­joyed his so­journ at Je­ru­sa­lem.

127:3.4Je­sus took James to Beth­any for the Pass­over sup­per. Si­mon had been laid to rest with his fa­thers, and Je­sus pre­sided over this house­hold as the head of the Pass­over fam­ily, hav­ing brought the paschal lamb from the tem­ple.

127:3.5Af­ter the Pass­over sup­per Mary sat down to talk with James while Martha, Laz­a­rus, and Je­sus talked to­gether far into the night. The next day they at­tended the tem­ple ser­vices, and James was re­ceived into the com­mon­wealth of Is­rael. That morn­ing, as they paused on the brow of Oli­vet to view the tem­ple, while James ex­claimed in won­der, Je­sus gazed on Je­ru­sa­lem in si­lence. James could not com­pre­hend his brother’s de­meanor. That night they again re­turned to Beth­any and would have de­parted for home the next day, but James was in­sis­tent on their go­ing back to visit the tem­ple, ex­plain­ing that he wanted to hear the teach­ers. And while this was true, se­cretly in his heart he wanted to hear Je­sus par­tic­i­pate in the dis­cus­sions, as he had heard his mother tell about. Ac­cord­ingly, they went to the tem­ple and heard the dis­cus­sions, but Je­sus asked no ques­tions. It all seemed so puerile and in­signif­i­cant to this awak­en­ing mind of man and God—he could only pity them. James was dis­ap­pointed that Je­sus said noth­ing. To his in­quiries Je­sus only made re­ply, “My hour has not yet come.”

127:3.6The next day they jour­neyed home by Jeri­cho and the Jor­dan val­ley, and Je­sus re­counted many things by the way, in­clud­ing his for­mer trip over this road when he was thir­teen years old.

135:8.2Je­sus’ broth­ers James and Jude had talked about go­ing down to John for bap­tism; and now that Jude had come over to Ca­per­naum for the Sab­bath ser­vices, both he and James, af­ter lis­ten­ing to Je­sus’ dis­course in the syn­a­gogue, de­cided to take coun­sel with him con­cern­ing their plans. This was on Sat­ur­day night, Jan­uary 12, A.D. 26. Je­sus re­quested that they post­pone the dis­cus­sion un­til the fol­low­ing day, when he would give them his an­swer. He slept very lit­tle that night, be­ing in close com­mu­nion with the Fa­ther in heaven. He had ar­ranged to have noon­time lunch with his broth­ers and to ad­vise them con­cern­ing bap­tism by John. That Sun­day morn­ing Je­sus was work­ing as usual in the boat­shop. James and Jude had ar­rived with the lunch and were wait­ing in the lum­ber room for him, as it was not yet time for the mid­day re­cess, and they knew that Je­sus was very reg­u­lar about such mat­ters.

135:8.6There was a tone of fi­nal­ity and au­thor­ity in Je­sus’ voice. John was atrem­ble with emo­tion as he made ready to bap­tize Je­sus of Naz­a­reth in the Jor­dan at noon on Mon­day, Jan­uary 14, A.D. 26. Thus did John bap­tize Je­sus and his two broth­ers James and Jude. And when John had bap­tized these three, he dis­missed the oth­ers for the day, an­nounc­ing that he would re­sume bap­tisms at noon the next day. As the peo­ple were de­part­ing, the four men still stand­ing in the wa­ter heard a strange sound, and pres­ently there ap­peared for a mo­ment an ap­pari­tion im­me­di­ately over the head of Je­sus, and they heard a voice say­ing, “This is my beloved Son in whom I am well pleased.” A great change came over the coun­te­nance of Je­sus, and com­ing up out of the wa­ter in si­lence he took leave of them, go­ing to­ward the hills to the east. And no man saw Je­sus again for forty days.

128:2.4Be­fore tak­ing up his new em­ploy­ment at Sep­pho­ris, Je­sus held one of his pe­ri­odic fam­ily con­fer­ences and solemnly in­stalled James, then just past eigh­teen years old, as act­ing head of the fam­ily. He prom­ised his brother hearty sup­port and full co-op­er­a­tion and ex­acted for­mal promises of obe­di­ence to James from each mem­ber of the fam­ily. From this day James as­sumed full fi­nan­cial re­spon­si­bil­ity for the fam­ily, Je­sus mak­ing his weekly pay­ments to his brother. Never again did Je­sus take the reins out of James’s hands. While work­ing at Sep­pho­ris he could have walked home ev­ery night if nec­es­sary, but he pur­posely re­mained away, as­sign­ing weather and other rea­sons, but his true mo­tive was to train James and Joseph in the bear­ing of the fam­ily re­spon­si­bil­ity. He had be­gun the slow pro­cess of wean­ing his fam­ily. Each Sab­bath Je­sus re­turned to Naz­a­reth, and some­times dur­ing the week when oc­ca­sion re­quired, to ob­serve the work­ing of the new plan, to give ad­vice and of­fer help­ful sug­ges­tions.

128:2.5Liv­ing much of the time in Sep­pho­ris for six months af­forded Je­sus a new op­por­tu­nity to be­come bet­ter ac­quainted with the gen­tile view­point of life. He worked with gen­tiles, lived with gen­tiles, and in ev­ery pos­si­ble man­ner did he make a close and painstak­ing study of their habits of liv­ing and of the gen­tile mind.

128:2.6The moral stan­dards of this home city of Herod An­tipas were so far be­low those of even the car­a­van city of Naz­a­reth that af­ter six months’ so­journ at Sep­pho­ris Je­sus was not averse to find­ing an ex­cuse for re­turn­ing to Naz­a­reth. The group he worked for were to be­come en­gaged on pub­lic work in both Sep­pho­ris and the new city of Tiberias, and Je­sus was dis­in­clined to have any­thing to do with any sort of em­ploy­ment un­der the super­vi­sion of Herod An­tipas. And there were still other rea­sons which made it wise, in the opin­ion of Je­sus, for him to go back to Naz­a­reth. When he re­turned to the re­pair shop, he did not again as­sume the per­sonal di­rec­tion of fam­ily af­fairs. He worked in as­so­ci­a­tion with James at the shop and as far as pos­si­ble per­mit­ted him to con­tinue over­sight of the home. James’s man­age­ment of fam­ily ex­pen­di­tures and his ad­min­is­tra­tion of the home bud­get were undis­turbed.

128:2.7It was by just such wise and thought­ful plan­ning that Je­sus pre­pared the way for his even­tual with­drawal from ac­tive par­tic­i­pa­tion in the af­fairs of his fam­ily. When James had had two years’ ex­pe­ri­ence as act­ing head of the fam­ily—and two full years be­fore he (James) was to be mar­ried—Joseph was placed in charge of the house­hold funds and in­trusted with the gen­eral man­age­ment of the home.

128:5.1This was Je­sus’ first year of com­par­a­tive free­dom from fam­ily re­spon­si­bil­ity. James was very suc­cess­ful in man­ag­ing the home with Je­sus’ help in coun­sel and fi­nances.

134:1.4Both Si­mon and Jude had for some time wanted to get mar­ried, but they had dis­liked to do this with­out Je­sus’ con­sent; ac­cord­ingly they had post­poned these events, hop­ing for their el­dest brother’s re­turn. Though they all re­garded James as the head of the fam­ily in most mat­ters, when it came to get­ting mar­ried, they wanted the bless­ing of Je­sus. So Si­mon and Jude were mar­ried at a dou­ble wed­ding in early March of this year, A.D. 24. All the older chil­dren were now mar­ried; only Ruth, the young­est, re­mained at home with Mary.

124:4.3From this time on he be­came more suc­cess­ful in get­ting along with his broth­ers and sis­ters. He was in­creas­ingly tact­ful, al­ways com­pas­sion­ate and con­sid­er­ate of their wel­fare and hap­pi­ness, and en­joyed good re­la­tions with them up to the be­gin­ning of his pub­lic min­istry. To be more ex­plicit: He got along with James, Miriam, and the two younger (as yet un­born) chil­dren, Amos and Ruth, most ex­cel­lently. He al­ways got along with Martha fairly well. What trou­ble he had at home largely arose out of fric­tion with Joseph and Jude, par­tic­u­larly the lat­ter.

134:1.1Af­ter tak­ing leave of Gonod and Ga­nid at Charax (in De­cem­ber of A.D. 23), Je­sus re­turned by way of Ur to Baby­lon, where he joined a desert car­a­van that was on its way to Da­mas­cus. From Da­mas­cus he went to Naz­a­reth, stop­ping only a few hours at Ca­per­naum, where he paused to call on Zeb­e­dee’s fam­ily. There he met his brother James, who had some­time pre­vi­ously come over to work in his place in Zeb­e­dee’s boat­shop. Af­ter talk­ing with James and Jude (who also chanced to be in Ca­per­naum) and af­ter turn­ing over to his brother James the lit­tle house which John Zeb­e­dee had man­aged to buy, Je­sus went on to Naz­a­reth.

137:7.1For four long months—March, April, May, and June—this tar­ry­ing time con­tin­ued; Je­sus held over one hun­dred long and earnest, though cheer­ful and joy­ous, ses­sions with these six as­so­ciates and his own brother James. Ow­ing to sick­ness in his fam­ily, Jude sel­dom was able to at­tend these classes. James, Je­sus’ brother, did not lose faith in him, but dur­ing these months of de­lay and in­ac­tion Mary nearly de­spaired of her son. Her faith, raised to such heights at Cana, now sank to new low lev­els. She could only fall back on her so oft-re­peated ex­cla­ma­tion: “I can­not un­der­stand him. I can­not fig­ure out what it all means.” But James’s wife did much to bol­ster Mary’s cour­age.

128:5.7But hu­man af­fairs on the worlds of time and space do not run smoothly for long. In De­cem­ber James had a pri­vate talk with Je­sus, ex­plain­ing that he was much in love with Esta, a young woman of Naz­a­reth, and that they would some­time like to be mar­ried if it could be ar­ranged. He called at­ten­tion to the fact that Joseph would soon be eigh­teen years old, and that it would be a good ex­pe­ri­ence for him to have a chance to serve as the act­ing head of the fam­ily. Je­sus gave con­sent for James’s mar­riage two years later, pro­vided he had, dur­ing the in­ter­ven­ing time, prop­erly trained Joseph to as­sume di­rec­tion of the home.

128:7.10In Novem­ber a dou­ble wed­ding oc­curred. James and Esta, and Miriam and Ja­cob were mar­ried. It was truly a joy­ous oc­ca­sion. Even Mary was once more happy ex­cept ev­ery now and then when she re­al­ized that Je­sus was prepar­ing to go away. She suf­fered un­der the bur­den of a great un­cer­tainty: If Je­sus would only sit down and talk it all over freely with her as he had done when he was a boy, but he was con­sis­tently un­com­mu­nica­tive; he was pro­foundly silent about the fu­ture.

128:7.11James and his bride, Esta, moved into a neat lit­tle home on the west side of town, the gift of her fa­ther. While James con­tin­ued his sup­port of his mother’s home, his quota was cut in half be­cause of his mar­riage, and Joseph was for­mally in­stalled by Je­sus as head of the fam­ily. Jude was now very faith­fully send­ing his share of funds home each month. The wed­dings of James and Miriam had a very ben­e­fi­cial in­flu­ence on Jude, and when he left for the fish­ing grounds, the day af­ter the dou­ble wed­ding, he as­sured Joseph that he could de­pend on him “to do my full duty, and more if it is needed.” And he kept his prom­ise.

190:1.10In about one week from this time John Zeb­e­dee took Mary the mother of Je­sus to his home in Beth­saida. James, Je­sus’ el­dest brother, re­mained with his fam­ily in Je­ru­sa­lem. Ruth re­mained at Beth­any with Laz­a­rus’s sis­ters. The rest of Je­sus’ fam­ily re­turned to Gal­i­lee. David Zeb­e­dee left Beth­any with Martha and Mary, for Phil­a­del­phia, early in June, the day af­ter his mar­riage to Ruth, Je­sus’ young­est sis­ter.

127:2.8Some­thing had to be done. He must state his po­si­tion, and this he did bravely and diplo­mat­i­cally to the sat­is­fac­tion of many, but not all. He ad­hered to the terms of his orig­i­nal plea, main­tain­ing that his first duty was to his fam­ily, that a wid­owed mother and eight broth­ers and sis­ters needed some­thing more than mere money could buy—the phys­i­cal ne­ces­si­ties of life—that they were en­ti­tled to a fa­ther’s watch­care and guid­ance, and that he could not in clear con­science re­lease him­self from the obli­ga­tion which a cruel ac­ci­dent had thrust upon him. He paid com­pli­ment to his mother and el­dest brother for be­ing will­ing to re­lease him but re­it­er­ated that loy­alty to a dead fa­ther for­bade his leav­ing the fam­ily no mat­ter how much money was forth­com­ing for their ma­te­rial sup­port, mak­ing his never-to-be-for­got­ten state­ment that “money can­not love.” In the course of this ad­dress Je­sus made sev­eral veiled ref­er­ences to his “life mis­sion” but ex­plained that, re­gard­less of whether or not it might be in­con­sis­tent with the mil­i­tary idea, it, along with ev­ery­thing else in his life, had been given up in or­der that he might be able to dis­charge faith­fully his obli­ga­tion to his fam­ily. Ev­ery­one in Naz­a­reth well knew he was a good fa­ther to his fam­ily, and this was a mat­ter so near the heart of ev­ery no­ble Jew that Je­sus’ plea found an ap­pre­cia­tive re­sponse in the hearts of many of his hear­ers; and some of those who were not thus minded were dis­armed by a speech made by James, which, while not on the pro­gram, was de­liv­ered at this time. That very day the chazan had re­hearsed James in his speech, but that was their se­cret.

127:2.9James stated that he was sure Je­sus would help to lib­er­ate his peo­ple if he (James) were only old enough to as­sume re­spon­si­bil­ity for the fam­ily, and that, if they would only con­sent to al­low Je­sus to re­main “with us, to be our fa­ther and teacher, then you will have not just one leader from Joseph’s fam­ily, but pres­ently you will have five loyal na­tion­al­ists, for are there not five of us boys to grow up and come forth from our brother-fa­ther’s guid­ance to serve our na­tion?” And thus did the lad bring to a fairly happy end­ing a very tense and threat­en­ing sit­u­a­tion.

163:2.7Al­most ev­ery hu­man be­ing has some one thing which is held on to as a pet evil, and which the en­trance into the king­dom of heaven re­quires as a part of the price of ad­mis­sion. If Mata­dor­mus had parted with his wealth, it prob­a­bly would have been put right back into his hands for ad­min­is­tra­tion as trea­surer of the sev­enty. For later on, af­ter the es­tab­lish­ment of the church at Je­ru­sa­lem, he did obey the Mas­ter’s in­junc­tion, al­though it was then too late to en­joy mem­ber­ship in the sev­enty, and he be­came the trea­surer of the Je­ru­sa­lem church, of which James the Lord’s brother in the flesh was the head.

166:5.3The Jews at Je­ru­sa­lem had al­ways had trou­ble with the Jews of Phil­a­del­phia. And af­ter the death and res­ur­rec­tion of Je­sus the Je­ru­sa­lem church, of which James the Lord’s brother was head, be­gan to have se­ri­ous dif­fi­cul­ties with the Phil­a­del­phia con­gre­ga­tion of be­liev­ers. Ab­ner be­came the head of the Phil­a­del­phia church, con­tin­u­ing as such un­til his death. And this es­trange­ment with Je­ru­sa­lem ex­plains why noth­ing is heard of Ab­ner and his work in the Gospel rec­ords of the New Tes­ta­ment. This feud be­tween Je­ru­sa­lem and Phil­a­del­phia lasted through­out the life­times of James and Ab­ner and con­tin­ued for some time af­ter the de­struc­tion of Je­ru­sa­lem. Phil­a­del­phia was re­ally the head­quar­ters of the early church in the south and east as An­ti­och was in the north and west.

194:4.12Stephen, the leader of the Greek colony of Je­sus’ be­liev­ers in Je­ru­sa­lem, thus be­came the first mar­tyr to the new faith and the spe­cific cause for the for­mal or­ga­ni­za­tion of the early Chris­tian church. This new cri­sis was met by the rec­og­ni­tion that be­liev­ers could not longer go on as a sect within the Jew­ish faith. They all agreed that they must sep­a­rate them­selves from un­be­liev­ers; and within one month from the death of Stephen the church at Je­ru­sa­lem had been or­ga­nized un­der the lead­er­ship of Pe­ter, and James the brother of Je­sus had been in­stalled as its tit­u­lar head.