Galatians 1:19 - Additional Notes

"James the Lord's brother." This verse has been the subject of much discussion. Many have considered the turn of expression used by the apostle to imply that the James here spoken of was himself one of the original apostolic body to which Cephas belonged. And from this it has further been inferred that the passage favours the notion that "James the Lord's brother" was identical with "James the son of Alphaeus"—the word "brother" being interpreted to mean "near kinsman," and taken in the present ease to describe one conceived to have been in reality a first cousin. But there are so many serious difficulties and precarious assumptions attaching to this theory, that students of the sacred history have of late shown an unwillingness to acquiesce in the above-mentioned identification. They are struck by observing that, so far as has been shown, the notion that "James the Lord's brother" was in reality only his cousin was never heard of in the Church till it was broached by Jerome very near the end of the fourth century; and further, that in the New Testament the term "brothers," when used to describe family relationship, is always used in its usual and obvious sense of persons who were regarded as being children of the same father or of the same mother. When mention is made of James (the son of Zebedee) being the brother of John, or of Andrew being the brother of Simon Peter, the reader never stops to consider whether they might not have been cousins, but at once assumes that they were brothers in the ordinary acceptation of the term. In reference to the ease now before us, some in ancient times, as for example Helvidius—against whom Jerome wrote the controversial treatise in which the theory of cousinship is first found stated and argued for—and some also quite recently, have supposed "the Lord's brothers" to have been later children of his mother Mary, born of her union with Joseph. But, apart from any repugnance that has been felt to this view which has its origin in sentiments of pious reverence, not to speak of mariolatrous fanaticism, there is another hypothesis which seems to fit much better in with all the circumstances, namely, that which regards our "Lord's brothers" as children of his adoptive father Joseph, whom everybody regarded as his father—children born to Joseph in a former marriage. This view has been proved to have been, with only doubtful exceptions, £ the one generally accepted in the early Church for more than three centuries (see Bishop Lightfoot, 'Galatians,' Dissertation it., "The Brethren of the Lord"). This is scarcely the place for discussing at length the details of the critical controversy. I cannot, however, forbear drawing attention to one aspect of the question, which, so far as I am aware, has not been sufficiently considered. For the purpose of the present Commentary it has the recommendation of involving no subtleties of disputable interpretation, but of making its appeal at once to the common instincts of human feeling. We have the express testimony of St. John ( John 7:5 ) that, down to within a few months of our Lord's death, "his brothers did not believe on him." In the history of the Acts, indeed, immediately after the Ascension, we find them associated with that innermost circle of believers who, with the eleven, were devoutly waiting for "the Promise of the Father." But on the eve of the Feast of Tabernacles in the previous autumn, they had not as yet professed themselves to be Jesus' disciples. This statement of St. John's is made of them as a body. No hint is given of any exception, either by St. John or by the Synoptists. Ingenious combinations of various extremely questionable premisses would fain interpolate into the evangelist's statement at least one exception; but none presents itself upon the face of the story. There the brethren of the Lord stand before us as unitedly holding aloof, and as even inclined to treat his claims with derision. Which of those two hypotheses which we are now comparing with each other, as to the nature of their brother-ship to our Lord, is the one which the better agrees with this unquestionable fact? Let us first consider the one which supposes his brothers and his sisters to have formed an elder branch of Joseph's family born of a former marriage. There must have been at least six in number living at the time of our Lord's ministry ( Mark 6:3 ), and there may have been more than six then; and there may, again, have well been some others besides, then deceased. It is therefore probable that some of them—James, for example, the eldest apparently of the brothers were adolescent, or even quite grown up at the time of their father's second marriage. Judging front the ordinary experience of human households, what would seem likely to have been the attitude of feeling animating this whole group of brothers and sisters, and in particular animating James—who would, of course, take the place of their representative and domestic champion, and who is shown in the Acts and by his own Epistle to have been a person of singularly grave, taciturn, and magisterial temperament—both towards their probably youthful stepmother from the time of her marriage with their father, and towards the Lord Jesus himself during the period of his boyhood, youth, and early manhood? May it not be probably assumed that it was apt to be at least unsympathetic—reserved? We know from the "Fear not" of the Divine message recorded Matthew 1:20 , that the circumstances attending on our adorable Lord's incarnation well-nigh proved a stumbling-block even to the just-minded, pious, Heaven-directed Joseph. Is it conceivable that, in so small a town as Nazareth, misjudging gossip did not make itself during those months only too busy with a theme, the real character of which men could not possibly understand, and which yet was so sure to attract attention—distressfully busy, both for the holy Virgin herself and for her affianced husband? And would none of that malign whispering percolate to the ears of the older members of Joseph's family, depositing in their minds almost ineradicable seeds of prejudice against their stepmother and against her offspring? Shame and sorrow invested our Redeemer's decease from the world; shame and sorrow overclouded also even his entrance into it; by the necessity of the ease, all, whether old or young, who after the flesh were then brought into close connection with him, were also brought into fires of temptation. out of which only much especial interposing grace could rescue them unscathed. At all events, the new brother whom Joseph's already numerous family were called upon to accept must have been to their feeling no own brother of theirs; his mother was not their mother. This was a super-engrafted scion, half alien to the original stock to which they belonged. In ordinary domestic experience is not this usually of itself a source of jealousy and estrangement? We can well believe that, in course of time, the beauty of their stepmother's character would be certain to win their esteem and their confidence. And that it really did so seems betokened by what we read in the evangelical history some thirty years after their father's union with Mary, when he had himself, for some while apparently, departed this life; the mother and the brethren of Jesus, though not as yet knit together by mutual faith in him, are, however, seen acting in unison, as if swayed by their mutual feeling of family connection. It is, however, questionable whether the stainless purity and the exalted moral excellence which characterized their stepmother's Son would in an equal degree draw their hearts to him. Of old, Joseph the son of the patriarch Jacob was isolated flora his elder half-brothers by the very virtues which exalted him. They hated him, if in part for certain other causes of offence, yet no doubt mainly for this, that they felt that in moral quality he was not of them. But the contrast which obtained between the moral being of the Lord Jesus and his adoptive half-brothers must have been incomparably greater than that which made Joseph the "separated kern his brethren." He was altogether "holy and harmless ," and therefore altogether "separate from sinners." True, his human nature and his human life touched theirs in a thousand ways; but none the less must they have been conscious that, in moral and spiritual temperament, he was not one of themselves. Must not this consciousness have been a source of inward annoyance?—of an annoyance all the more fretting because they would, of course, be so wholly unable to understand how it was that such a difference obtained? Would not they too be not seldom "moved with envy" against this new Joseph? In intellectual gifts, and especially in the faculty of moral judgment and spiritual intuition, the youthful Jesus was, in the judgment of all around, and doubtless to his brethren's own consciousness, incomparably their superior. Could such superiority have been acquiesced in by them easily and patiently in the case of one so much their junior, who in fact was at the best only half their brother? His views and conceptions of religious truth when be was twelve years old were such as astonished the doctors of the Law at Jerusalem; we therefore cannot but feel sure that, even in those earlier years of his life, his thoughts and reasonings were wont to move amongst the intensely loved revelations of God's Word with a freedom wholly alien to their habits of mind; neither shackled by Judaical legalism, nor regardful of rabbinical hair-splitting, nor disposed to respect the traditions and dicta of the elders. To the James and the Jude, whose natural mental physiognomy, though in its now renewed Christianized aspect, is conspicuous to us in their Epistles, the strain of religious thinking and utterance which we may reverently believe to have been familiar with the youthful Redeemer must in the days of their as yet carnal and unripened religiousness have seemed alike repugnant and unintelligible. Granted, however, that they could neither appreciate nor comprehend, yet, as being so much older in years, they may well have deemed themselves authorized, by virtue of their domestic relation, to censure and rebuke. And supposing that they did undertake by argument to gainsay words of his which more especially offended them, how could it have been possible for them to stand their ground in encounter with One who in after years was seen in the supreme arena of the nation, confuting and putting to silence, and sternly rebuking, the most powerful reasoners in Jerusalem itself? Had he no occasion in those youthful days to employ against them similar implements of both intellectual and moral correction? And since they would not submit to be taught by him, would they not perforce resent their defeat? Under conditions such as these, is it not quite easy to imagine that, when the hour came for Jesus to be manifested to Israel, it found James and his brothers altogether unprepared to attach themselves to him as disciples; that they would be much more ready to stand aloof from him as at least an enthusiast—nay, by-and-by to openly pronounce, as in fact they did, that he must have gone clean out of his mind? This commends itself to our acceptance as a perfectly self-coherent hypothesis. Let us next turn our attention to the other interpretation of the relation, namely, that the brethren of the Lord were his own uterine brothers. A moment's reflection shows how different the conditions would have been. On the supposition that they were his younger brothers, sons of his mother, then we may consider that, from their earliest years, they had been trained, and would naturally be disposed, to regard him with the profound deference which in a Jewish household was instinctively accorded to the firstborn. This natural sentiment of deference we must in all reason believe to have been intensified by their consciousness of his extraordinary mental gifts, both intellectual and moral, as well as by the estimation conceded to him by all around; while this sentiment would be sweetened in its tone by their sense of the fairness and the affectionateness with which he had always treated them, even when, as elder brother, and especially after their father's death, he may have had occasion to control or reprove them. The high estimation with which their neighbours as well as their common mother regarded him would, in this case , have been no occasion of offence or jealousy; he being in blood-relationship one of their very selves, their representative, respect shown to him would have been rather a cause for pride: who (they would feel) should be so loved and honoured as their dear Jeshua? With such habits of willing affectionate deference, might it not be reasonably expected that, when he issued forth as the religious Teacher of his countrymen, his brethren would be found among his most cordial adherents? In that lower sense in which we are wont to employ the expression with reference to one another, they had always believed in him; they knew and therefore loved him too well not to do so: would it not have seemed strange if this constant attitude of their minds towards him had not now at least helped them forwards towards that higher faith which the evangelist denotes by the term? But they, one and all, did not believe in him! 'The moral probability, that is, the probability founded upon the consideration of the natural effect of environing circumstances upon human character and action, affords an argument in favour of the former hypothesis which, to the present writer, appears of exceeding great weight, and in fact decisive. James must have been a son of our Lord's adoptive father. But if the person here cited by the name of James was our Lord's brother in the sense now given, he could not have been one of the twelve. How, then, are we to account for his being mentioned in this passage in a way which certainly does, prima facie , favour the supposition that he was an apostle? A solution has been sought in tile consideration that, in various places in the New Testament, the designation of "apostle" is applied to others besides those who were apostles in the highest sense. There were in truth apostles in a secondary sense; in that sense of ecclesiastical delegates which the reader will find discussed in the dissertation on the subject of "Apostles," in the Introduction. But this will not help us here. For