The Lord's Prayer in Aramaic

Just James provides a fascinating treatment of Jesus' brother based on all the ancient sources: New Testament, early church fathers, Nag Hammadi codices, and other early Christian writings. Painter evaluates the importance of this towering figure of the early church whose contributions have been obscured from the consciousness of modern Christianity. The author explores James' relationship to Jesus, Mary's perpetual virginity, James' receipt of special revelations from the risen Lord, and his status as one of the first martyrs of the church.
Just James
The Brother of Jesus in History and Tradition
John Painter (Author)
"In early church tradition, James the brother of Jesus held central stage for some time. He was the fountainhead of traditions used to further interests and causes of a variety of groups, including Jewish Christian, the Great Church (Catholic), and Gnostic. By the end of the patristic period, this fountain had run dry. In the traditions of Eusebius (Hegesippus, Clement of Alexandria, Origen), James was the first bishop of the Jerusalem church...In the early church traditions representing both Peter and Paul obscured the importance of James...however James was too important to surrender to the Gnostics."
John Painter
First, there is James himself, as well as Jesus’ mother and brothers. Jesus was gone but James, as we will see, became a towering figure of faith and strength for Jesus’ followers, as I discussed in the post yesterday. To have Jesus’ own brother with them, his own flesh and blood, and one who also shared Jesus’ royal Davidic lineage, had to have been a powerful reinforcement. And this would be the case with Jesus’ family as a whole. They became the anchor of his movement... Unfortunately, we ­don’t have many details about how James was able to accomplish what he did as leader of the movement. As we will see, his role has been almost totally marginalized in our New Testament records, but the results are evident.
jamestabor.com....
"I have always thought of the historical Jesus as a homeland Jew within Judaism within the Roman Empire. For me, then, within Judaism within the Roman Empire has always been the absolutely necessary matrix rather than the annoyingly unnecessary background for any discussion of earliest Christianity."
John Dominic Crossan