Evidence · Case 02 · Resurrection of Christ
James, the brother who had not believed
One exhibit from the free evidence repository at apologetics.pro.
Sources
Mark 3:21 and John 7:5, NASB,
Objections & responses
- The unbelief of Jesus’s brothers appears only in Mark 3 and John 7, both of which want to portray Jesus as rejected by his own. And Mark 3:21 is a hard phrase that translations render differently.
The translation of Mark 3:21 is debated, and that should be said plainly. But the broader picture of family skepticism is attested in Mark, in John, and in the absence of any family member among the disciples during the ministry, and it runs against the Gospels’ own interests: by the time they were written, James was a revered pillar of the Jerusalem church. Inventing a skeptical past for the church’s most respected leader is not something a propagandist does.
- Josephus records James’s death but says nothing about why he died or what he believed. Doesn’t using his martyrdom as evidence for the resurrection stretch the source?
The two sources are kept separate on purpose. Josephus confirms that James existed, was Jesus’s brother, and was executed at the high priest’s instigation in AD 62; the specifically Christian reason for his death comes from Hegesippus, a later and less reliable source. What Josephus establishes on his own is enough: a brother who had not followed Jesus during his ministry became the leader of the Jerusalem church and was killed by the same religious establishment that had condemned Jesus. Something changed his mind, and the earliest tradition says what it was.