See Did Paul Get His Gospel from James and the Apostles Who Knew Jesus? Transcript to YouTube here https://youtu.be/CBqX303SdA8?si=FrcwxNuWbGp__d-c; 34 minutes of Tabor’s Zoom Meeting on Sept. 29, 2024
Posts at Ehrmanblog.org
- The Book of James in a Nutshell August 2, 2025
- In this “New Testament in a Nutshell” thread I [Bart] come now to the intriguing book of James, long one of my favorites among the Catholic epistles. At one point in my earlier existence, I liked the book so well that I memorized it. Don’t ask me to recite it now; that was 50 years ago.
- Even so, I still think it is a terrific book. And now I realize it is intriguing for all sorts of reasons I never would have imagined back when I was able to recite it at a drop of the hat.
- I start here with a one-sentence, fifty-word summary. – The Book of James consists of ethical instruction for followers of Jesus who are to live in ways pleasing to God as a way of demonstrating their faith, since anyone who thinks they can be saved only through what they believe does not understand that “faith without works is dead.”
- James: Who, When, and Why? Does It Claim to be by THAT James (the brother of Jesus)? August 3, 2025
- In my previous post I summarized the major themes and emphases of the five-chapter letter of James, one of the Catholic Epistles. I now want to get into the questions of Who Wrote It, When, and Why. This will take a couple of posts, and I’ve decided to give a fuller scoop in this case than usual, by citing how I discussed the matter in my book Forgery and Counterforgery. I think the discussion is accessible to the non-expert. I have edited it a bit here, in paret to make it more more user-friendly). This issue is rather important for anyone interested in the history of early Christianity. Do we have a writing from Jesus’ own brother? Now *that* would be interesting!
- Could James, the Brother of Jesus, Even Write? August 5, 2025
- In my previous post I tried to show what the author of James is almost certainly claiming to be “that” James, the actual brother of Jesus. In this post and the next will be explaining why it probably (well, almost certainly was not, in my view) written by him. I’ve decided, as is my occasional wont, to get down into the weeds a bit here; sometimes that’s important because it’s oh so very easy to give broad and general reasons for a view that are so general and broad they’re not convincing to anyone who wants to get the real low down. So here we go, down low. (This taken from my book Forgery and Counterforgery, but I’ve edited it a bit to make it more user friendly, including by removing the academic footnotes).
- Why James Did Not Write James August 6, 2025
- Here I conclude my string of posts dealing with whether James the brother of Jesus wrote the book of James as the book itself implicitly claims. Again this is taken from my more academic study Forgery and Counterforgery, but I’ve edited it a bit for an audience of regular folk instead of irregular scholars.
- In my previous post I talked about how our ancient sources everywhere talk about the major concerns and interests of the the historical James and his focus on the Torah and keeping the law. Does this book reflect any of his widely known interests?
- Why Would Someone Forge the Letter of James? August 7, 2025
- In my previous three posts I’ve argued that the author of the book of James really does want his audience to think he is “James, the brother of Jesus,” but that in fact he was someone else. In modern parlance, that means the book is a “forgery.” Ancient Greek did not use the English word forgery, of course, but the terms they used for this kind of book were just as judgmental and, even, ugly. But why would someone forge this book, claiming to be James knowing he wasn’t?
Posts by James Tabor
- The Forgotten Brother of Jesus (Part 1), March 25, 2017
- Today I begin a series of posts on “James the Just,” the largely forgotten brother of Jesus, following up on my post “Another Comforter: The Forgotten Brother of Jesus” on the missing key to understanding Christian origins. [1]
- The Forgotten Brother of Jesus (Part 2), March 26, 2017
- Thus in Luke’s account in Acts, when James suddenly appears out of nowhere as leader of the Nazarene movement at the Jerusalem Council, we can see that Luke is well aware of James’s position. At this critical juncture he dared not leave James out of the story. We must begin our search for James by looking at our New Testament sources—for it is from here that his memory was largely erased.
