The Rev. Jeffrey J. Biitz holds a Master of Divinity degree (magna cum laude) from Moravian Theological Seminary and a‏ جار جار جاو
١ Master of Sacred Theology degree from the Lutheran Theological Seminary at Philadelphia, where he wrote his thesis on‏
2 Reviews James the brother of Jesus under the late John Reumann. Ordained in the Lutheran Church, he has served as pastor in
Write review churches in eastern Pennsylvania since 1996 and has dual standing in the E.L.C.A. and the United Church of Christ. He has
been an adjunct professor of Religious Studies and Philosophy at Pennsylvania State University since 2002. His bachelor's
degree is in Earth & Space Science and his first career was as a high school science teacher. He is currently an ongoing
participant in the Mount Zion Archaeological Expedition, one of the most important archaeological digs in Israel, and a
participant in many inter-religious dialogue groups.
The Brother of Jesus and the Lost
Teachings of Christianity
By Jeffrey J. Butz While the inscription on the purported James
ossuary that led to so much media hoopla—“James, son of Joseph, brother
of Jesus’—may yet be proven a James himself is not only the
real brother of Jesus and his successor to the “throne” of Jerusalem, but he
—who was called the “Brother of God’—just may be the one figure who can
today bring peace to the Middle East and reunite the divided family of
Abraham. In James there is a potential bridge over severely troubled water,
a bridge to a common understanding of the root source of the theological
estrangement of the people of the Book: Jesus.
THE WALL OF ESTRANGEMENT
As abundant evidence has shown us, after Jesus’ crucifixion his family and
disciples continued to worship together in the Temple in Jerusalem,
manifesting no difference from their fellow Jews except in their belief that
Jesus was the Davidic Messiah. Unfortunately for these harmonious
beginnings, Pauline Christianity increasingly adopted an understanding of
Jesus that Judaism could not ultimately bear: the Hellenistic theological
belief that Jesus was literally God incarnate in human flesh. As the doctrine
of the incarnation became ever more central to Gentile Catholic Christianity,
an impassible theological wall arose between Jews and Christians.
The doctrine of the incarnation is also the great wall that separates
Muslims and Christians. Most Christians today are completely unaware that
Muslims highly revere Jesus and honor his teachings (they even believe in
the virgin birth), but like their Jewish cousins, the strict monotheism of Islam
could never accept the key Christian dogmas of the incarnation and the
Holy Trinity. It is therefore potentially significant for interreligious dialogue
today that one of the firm conclusions modern research into James has
revealed is that neither Jesus’ family, nor the apostles, nor his Jewish
disciples, believed that Jesus was literally God. They believed that Jesus
was the Davidic Messiah, “adopted” by God as his “son” at his baptism by
John, but still a human being. That the earliest Christian doctrine was in no
way incompatible with Jewish doctrine is evidenced above all by the fact
that the Jews in Jerusalem continued to accept Jesus’ followers as fellow
Jews; in fact, they saw them as being particularly rigorous and pious Jews.
It is more than intriguing that the Muslim understanding of Jesus is very
much in conformity with the first original Jewish
Christian understanding of Jesus.
If Jewish Christianity had prevailed over Pauline Christianity, history
would likely have been written quite differently. It is quite likely that such
atrocities as the Crusades, the Inquisition, and the Holocaust would never
have transpired. If the Jewish Christian understanding of Jesus had
prevailed, Jews and Christians might never have parted ways, and Islam
would never have become Christianity’s perceived enemy. To this day, it is
the refusal of Jews and Muslims to accept the full divinity of Jesus that
makes them “pagans” and “heathens” in the eyes of many Christians.