SHALL THESE BONES LIVE AGAIN?
COMMENTS ON THE OSSUARY OF JAMES THE JUST
We are obviously pleased with the world attention now focused on James, brother of Jesus and first leader of Chrstianity. This surprise has occurred because of a recent breathtaking discovery of a stone burial box in Jerusalem - called an ossuary - in which the bones of James are believed to have been interred. It has caused a sensation in many circles of scholarship and promises to force the Church to investigate its true origins.[1]
At the time of this writing, the box has been transported to a Toronto museum for closer inspection by scholars. With each passing day, the authenticity of the box increases in credibility. It no longer contains his bones. We believe they were spirited out of Jerusalem just prior to its seige in 70 AD, and taken with Christian refugees to Pella (or Petra), a mysterious hidden city carved out of rock in the trans-Jordan region. However, the box is clearly inscribed in Aramaic with these words: "James, son of Joseph, brother of Jesus". That, with other archaeological factors, has created a unique aura around this precious find.
Biblical Archaeology Review has been responsible for bringing this artifact to world attention. The story is outlined in detail in its November/December Issue (2002) and the reader is encouraged to search it out at the magazine's website:http://www.biblicalarchaeology.org . We have always thought highly of the work and professionalism of its editorial staff and correspondents. Over a decade ago, they were responsible for applying the pressure of world opinion on those who were sitting on the Dead Sea Scrolls. With this find, they continue to bring to light important discoveries.
Was there a real Jesus?
I have found the reaction to the discovery to be, perhaps, more fascinating than the find itself. When I bought my copy, one young clerk told me what was probably on the minds of millions of people: "I didn't know that this was the first archaeological proof of Christ's existence". He was stumped. He thought that there must have been many artifacts. I told him that there aren't any. All of our evidence, up to this point, has been literary. What has passed for holy relics these many centuries have been pious frauds, as monasteries and churches have competed with one another for acclaim and supremacy.[2]
There was a real Jesus. Our fathers did not lie to us. There will be more discoveries like this one which will confirm their witness. But the real Jesus is not the same as the plastic Jesus of Churchianity.
Why this? Why now?
Believing in a Guiding Hand in history as I do, I have to ask what this discovery means for Christianity. Nothing is random, although it seems so. A shepherd boy chases his goat into a cave, only to find the greatest archaeological find of the 20th Century: the Dead Sea Scrolls. He doesn't know it, of course. Nor does a bewildered monk understand the joy of a visiting scholar when he sees a centuries-lost manuscript in a monastery trash can. On and on, it goes. Many precious discoveries have occurred in such providential ways. It's as if there is a great celestial contest: one side which is trying its best to eradicate any memory of the gentle Galilean, and the other, which is fighting to save every clue it can to rescue our skeptical age from an intractable unbelief.
Many voices are speaking and ours is a tiny one. But one thing is certain: this discovery will strengthen the argument that the Jamesian tradition is the true Christian tradition, and that all others are innovations. What the Jamesian tradition is, is of course a new debate which has scarcely begun.
Brothers or Cousins?
Liberal scholars are focusing their attention on the old controversy of our Lord's Incarnation and the Virgin Birth. Because the box says that James was "the brother of Jesus", they want to use it to discredit the Church doctrine concerning Christ's origins. They want to say that James was our Lord's full-blooded brother, meaning that they both had the same mother and father. Gone is the miraculous conception by the Holy Ghost and gone is the Virgin Birth.
References to the "brothers of Jesus" is nothing new; it's in the Scriptures themselves (Matthew 12:47; 13:55 et al). So why the liberals think this discovery sheds any new light on the debate, I don't know.
Even Biblical Archaeology omits one important option. Listing three alternatives - that James was either our Lord's full brother, his cousin, or his step-brother - they fail to mention the possibility that he was his half-brother, related by blood through sharing a common mother: Mary. While we do not see James as Mary's son either, that is not to say that she did not have more children after Jesus was born.
Not taking into account how royal harems worked in ancient times or the levirate custom of the Old Testament, modern scholars seem unwilling to accept that a cousin can be called a brother. In the case of James and Jesus, our Tradition would make them cousins and step-brothers because Jesus was miraculously conceived and they were a part of the same royal clan and family brotherhood.
Jewish Christianity or Davidic Christianity?
The Evangelicals are confused in a different way. One of my correspondents related this story of an Evangelical representative from Asbury Theological Seminary who told his audience at the Toronto museum: "If the ossuary is authentic, we will need to re-evaluate and re-emphasize the Jewishness of the early Christians."
"The Jewishness of Christianity"? After a decade of pouring over the Dead Sea Scrolls, the Evangelicals still miss the mark. How could it not be Jewish? Christians were not even called "Christians" until late in the 1st Century. Evangelicals think Christianity is not Jewish because it bears little similarity with the Judaism we see around us today. But not all Judaism is the same. Rabbinic Judaism is Phariseeism. It has always been so. Christianity, on the other hand, was Messianic Judaism and can be easily associated with Essenism. Phariseeism was a Judaism of expediency. The Pharisees were collaborators. And ever since then, Judaism has been a religion of collaboration. They bribed their way into power then, and they do it today.[3]
Messianic Judaism was radical and romantic, although not necessarily militant. It was not extremist, like the Sicari and the Zealotes, but it was a movement to restore the Davidic throne to its rightful heir. That had obvious political implications. While Christianity modestly sought to achieve that goal by transforming society, it was still distrusted and persecuted by the state. Messianists (a term with a synonomous etymology with the word "Christian") were more like chivalrous knights of the Middle Ages or the gentleman soldiers of the Bellum South - willing to suffer martyrdom than to compromise their principles and fight dirty.[4]
Restoring the Jamesian Tradition
The hand of the LORD was upon me, and carried me out in the spirit of the LORD, and set me down in the midst of the valley which was full of bones . . . And he said unto me, Son of man, can these bones live? And I answered, O LORD God, thou knowest.
- Ezekiel 37:1,3
One of the most dramatic prophetic visions of the Old Testament is found in Ezekiel 37. There Ezekiel sees a great valley heaped with randomly scattered human bones. He is commanded to prophesy upon them and to speak life to them. And so it happens that
they lived, and stood up upon their feet, an exceeding great army. (v.10)
Then God tells him that these bones represent the "whole house of Israel" (v. 11):
Behold, they say, Our bones are dried, and our hope is lost: we are cut off for our parts.
The prophecy closes with this promise:
Behold, O my people I will open your graves, and cause you to come up out of your graves, and bring you into the land of Israel. . . And shall put my spirit in you and ye shall live, and I shall place you in your own land: then shall ye know that I the LORD have spoken it, and performed it, saith the LORD.
- v. 13, 15
Messianic Judaism and the mission of Jesus cannot be understood apart from this prophecy. Jews at the time of Jesus knew that Israel could not be resurrected until its Davidic prince was resurrected. Jesus rose from the dead on the third day. By doing so, He became the only legitimate heir to the Throne of David. It followed then that the mission of the Church was to resurrect and reconstitute the House of Israel (see Kinsman-Redeemer). This was to be done through the Five Sacraments of the Jamesian Church. Consider the Eucharistic Prayer of the Didache, a 1st Century Christian document:
As this broken bread was scattered over the hills and was brought together becoming one, so gather Your Church from the ends of the earth into Your kingdom
9:4
So what was James and the Jerusalem Church doing? Consider James' salutation in his Epistle:
James, a servant of God and of the Lord Jesus Christ, to the twelve tribes which are scattered abroad, greeting.
They were resurrecting and reconstituting the House of Israel. The Dead Sea Scrolls were quite plain in saying so of the Essenes, as well. They did not complete that mission. The Gentile Churches did not understand nor did they support the movement. However, the Apostles taught that it must occur to bring the consummation of history (Romans 11:12-15).[5]
So with artifacts like this little ossuary, Divine Providence is gently instructing the Church of its mission. It is not enough to preach the "sweet bye and bye". We must preach that God's kingdom must come, and that His will must be done on earth as it is in heaven.
James W. Stivers
Update, September, 2003: The world has been told recently by the Antiquities authority of the government of Israel that this ossuary is a fraud. Without going into detail (you are welcome to make personal inquiries at overseer@grailchurch.org), we believe that this action represents a cover-up by the Israeli authorities. Both the State of Israel and the Vatican have vested interests which would be seriously jeopardized if this artifact were authenticated.
[1] This website is dedicated to learning and teaching the Jamesian Tradition. You are welcome to explore it by starting at our menu or archives.
[2] Even though we call ourselves "the Grail Church", we do not necessarily believe in the literal existence of the Cup of the Last Supper, although we wouldn't be bothered if it did exist. We believe the legends were allegorical.
[3] There are many fine people in the Jewish community who today are heroically struggling against corruption and trying to purify their movement.
[4] See the Preface to my book, The Mother Heart of God. The book is an introduction to the Jamesian tradition.
[5] Reconstituting Israel is more than a mission of sentimentalism. Restoration of the moral law in the civil institutions of society will bring about the Millennium of peace and well-being to our planet. We are not talking here about the modern State of Israel; the new Israel will encompass the whole world (Romans 4:13). "Israel" is the covenant community of Jesus Christ and its manifestation in time and on Earth. See also St. James Pesher.