The Brother of Jesus: James the Just and His Mission

by Bruce Chilton (Editor), Jacob Neusner

James the Just was, in the time between Jesus' resurrection and James's death, the most prominent and widely respected leader in Christendom. These essays by eight renowned scholars address such issues as the Jewish context of the early church, the person of James, his literary message and mission, and James in relation to Peter and Paul.

228 pages, Paperback

First published October 1, 2001

About the author

Bruce Chilton (sometimes Bruce D. Chilton) (born 1949) is an American scholar of early Christianity and Judaism.
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Bruce_C...

Reviews

[Kristi Duarte · Rating 2 out of 5]

The problem with this book is that most of the sections are written by people who believe that everything in the Bible is the absolute truth. They base their "facts" on the parts of the bible that were authored by people who never met Jesus, who heard about him in third or maybe forth hand, and wrote down the story as it was presented to them 50 or more years after Jesus had passed away. In that sense, their opinions are skewed when they say "James said X, and that's his opinion only, because Jesus said Y." It's more probable in most cases that James' quotes are closer to Jesus' true sayings (he was Jesus' brother, after all) that the quotes linked to Jesus that were written by someone who heard about Jesus from someone else who heard about him. I'm not saying that the quotes by James were actually written by him, but they're less likely to be distorted. Having said that, and having already read dozens of other books on James, I did learn a couple of things about the era he lived in. Not so much new data about James.