The Three Jameses

The New Testament names three men “James” (Greek Iakōbos): James son of Zebedee, the brother of John and the first apostle to be martyred; James son of Alphaeus, “the Less,” one of the Twelve of whom almost nothing is recorded; and James the Brother of the Lord, first bishop of Jerusalem. Their stories have been crossed and conflated since antiquity. This file lays out the texts that distinguish them and states the Orthodox tradition’s reckoning, which keeps all three as separate persons and commemorates them on three separate days.

Tradition: Pan-Orthodox (Apostle)

One Name, Three Men

The name borne by all three is Iakōbos, the Greek form of the Hebrew Ya’aqov — Jacob, the patriarch — Anglicized through Latin Iacomus into “James.” Because the name was common and the Gospels often identify a man only as “James,” with or without a patronymic, the three figures are easily run together; and the early traditions of East and West did in fact draw the lines among them differently (the full dispute is reserved for The Identity Question). Before that question can be weighed, the scriptural data for each man must be set out cleanly.

James Son of Zebedee — “James the Greater”

The first James is the son of Zebedee and brother of John, called by Christ from his nets beside the Sea of Galilee (Matt 4:21–22; Mark 1:19–20). He is one of the Twelve, and he stands within the innermost circle of the apostles: with Peter and his brother John, James alone is taken in to witness the raising of Jairus’s daughter (Mark 5:37), the Transfiguration on the mountain (Mark 9:2; Matt 17:1), and the agony in Gethsemane (Mark 14:33). With John he is surnamed by the Lord Boanerges, “sons of thunder” (Mark 3:17); the two ask to call down fire on a Samaritan village (Luke 9:54) and to sit at the Lord’s right and left in His glory (Mark 10:35–40). In every list of the Twelve he stands near the head, usually second or third (Matt 10:2; Mark 3:17; Luke 6:14; Acts 1:13).

This James is the first of the apostles to be martyred. Luke records it without ceremony: “About that time Herod the king laid violent hands upon some who belonged to the church. He killed James the brother of John with the sword” (Acts 12:1–2). The “Herod” is Herod Agrippa I, and the death is dated to about AD 44, shortly before Agrippa’s own death (Acts 12:20–23; cf. Josephus, Antiquities 19.8.2 on Agrippa’s death). The Orthodox Church commemorates him on April 30 (Greek and Slavic Synaxaria; cf. the Prologue from Ochrid, April 30). In the Western Church his cult settled at Santiago de Compostela in Spain, whose great pilgrimage rests on a later tradition of the translation of his relics — a tradition that belongs to the West and is not part of the Eastern commemoration. The point to fix is that this James, of the Twelve and of the inner three, died early and is never confused in the sources with the bishop of Jerusalem, who outlived him by two decades.

James Son of Alphaeus — “James the Less”

The second James is the son of Alphaeus, named in every list of the Twelve but otherwise almost a cipher: he appears only in those lists and nowhere acts or speaks in the narrative (Matt 10:3; Mark 3:18; Luke 6:15; Acts 1:13). He is commonly identified with the figure Mark calls “James the mikros” — “James the Less” or, more literally, “James the small/little” (Mark 15:40), an epithet that may distinguish him by stature, by age, or simply as the lesser-known of two apostolic Jameses over against James of Zebedee, “the Greater.” That same verse names a Mary as “the mother of James the Less and of Joses” among the women at the cross (Mark 15:40; cf. Matt 27:56), and this “Mary mother of James” detail becomes load-bearing in the identity question (see The Identity Question).

Of his life and death the New Testament says nothing further, and the later traditions are various and not firmly attested. What the texts give securely is only this: a son of Alphaeus, one of the Twelve, of whom Scripture records no deed. The Orthodox Church commemorates James son of Alphaeus on October 9 (Greek and Slavic Synaxaria; Prologue from Ochrid, October 9), keeping him as a distinct apostle with his own day.

James the Brother of the Lord — “James the Just”

The third James is the one this collection concerns: James the Brother of the Lord (Greek Adelphotheos, “Brother of God”), also called James the Just (ho dikaios). He is named among the “brothers” of Jesus in the Nazareth notice — “his brothers James and Joseph and Simon and Judas” (Matt 13:55; cf. Mark 6:3) — and Paul calls him simply “James the Lord’s brother” (Gal 1:19). What the Gospels’ “brother” language means is the subject of The Brothers of the Lord: the Orthodox reading, the Epiphanian, takes him to be a son of the righteous Joseph by a marriage before his betrothal to the Virgin — a stepbrother of the Lord, not a child of the Theotokos.

This James becomes the first bishop of Jerusalem and the head of the mother church (Acts 12:17; 15:13; 21:18; Gal 2:9; see The Throne of Jerusalem); he presides at the Apostolic Council; and he is martyred at Jerusalem about AD 62, by the account of Hegesippus preserved in Eusebius and the notice of Josephus (see The Martyrdom). Crucially for the present file, the Orthodox tradition reckons him not among the Twelve but among the Seventy — the wider company of disciples the Lord appointed and sent out (Luke 10:1) — and commemorates him as such. His feast is October 23 (Greek and Slavic Synaxaria; Prologue from Ochrid, October 23), and he is also numbered in the Synaxis of the Seventy Apostles kept on January 4.

The Orthodox Reckoning: Three Men, Three Feasts

The decisive observation is liturgical. The Orthodox Church does not commemorate two Jameses, nor one James under several titles, but three distinct persons on three distinct days:

James son of Zebedee — April 30
James son of Alphaeus — October 9
James the Brother of the Lord — October 23

These three commemorations, fixed in the Greek and Slavic Synaxaria and reflected in such accessible compilations as St. Nikolai Velimirović’s Prologue from Ochrid (at the three dates above), are the Church’s own answer to the confusion of the name. The calendar treats the Brother of the Lord and the son of Alphaeus as two different men, and it places the Brother of the Lord among the Seventy rather than among the Twelve.

This is precisely the point at which Orthodox practice diverges from the dominant Western pattern. The Roman tradition, following Jerome, tended to merge the Brother of the Lord with the son of Alphaeus — yielding the familiar Western equation “James the Less = James the Just = the son of Alphaeus = a member of the Twelve” — and to read “the Lord’s brother” as a cousin (see The Brothers of the Lord). The East declined that merger. It kept the bishop of Jerusalem outside the Twelve, among the Seventy, and gave him his own feast distinct from the apostle Alphaeus’s. The grounds on which the two traditions divide — Gal 1:19, John 7:5, and the “Mary mother of James” texts — are weighed in the companion file. Here it is enough to have the three men, and the three feasts, clearly before us.

References

The Holy Bible. Cited by book chapter:verse: Matt 4:21–22; 10:2–3; 13:55; 17:1; 27:56; Mark 1:19–20; 3:17–18; 5:37; 6:3; 9:2; 10:35–40; 15:40; Luke 6:14–15; 9:54; 10:1; Acts 1:13; 12:1–2, 17, 20–23; 15:13; 21:18; Gal 1:19; 2:9.
The Prologue from Ochrid. By St. Nikolai Velimirović. Trans. Mother Maria. Birmingham: Lazarica Press, 1985. (Commemorations of James son of Zebedee at April 30; James son of Alphaeus at October 9; James the Brother of the Lord at October 23.)
Eusebius of Caesarea. Ecclesiastical History (HE) 2.1, 2.23. Trans. in Nicene and Post-Nicene Fathers, Series II, Vol. 1. 1890. (Hegesippus on James the Just as first bishop of Jerusalem and his martyrdom.)
Josephus. Jewish Antiquities 19.8.2 (death of Agrippa I); 20.9.1 (death of James the Just). Trans. in the Loeb Classical Library.
Lightfoot, J. B. “The Brethren of the Lord.” Dissertation in St. Paul’s Epistle to the Galatians: A Revised Text with Introduction, Notes, and Dissertations. London: Macmillan, 1865. (The classic disentangling of the men named James.)