Thanks, Metis. That a wonderful assessment from a non-emotional position.

I think there is also a very common assumption going on that few ever seem to question, which is that people are assuming James held exactly the same views and taught the same things as Jesus. Even a cursory study of history shows that family members and descendants of leaders quite often do not handle things the same way. Indeed, we do not need to look to leaders and statesmen and kings to see this. We have only to look at corporate successions, people we know, etc. to see that siblings often seek to distinguish themselves as individuals, as do children from their parents. We can see a rather clear example of this today in the Bush family. Bush Sr and and his son seldom appear together, and the two have displayed very different military styles and tactics. Is it possible that James might have spent some of his life espousing personal and religious views that Jesus might not have shared? I think so. He comes across as a bit less liberal to me from what we know of him, but yes, he might have changed his mind.

I have a sister. We are quite close. We belong to the same general religious and political classifications, and read most of the same books, but I think if I asked her to replace me as Mirage, you would all notice immediately that the poster was not me. We have different styles, different viewpoints, and different emphases. For starters, she is much more cogent!

James was not Jesus. None of those left behind were Jesus. There's a very good chance I think that in the vacuum left by the execution of Jesus, the Way may have done quite a bit of evolving in a relatively short time. It has always puzzled me that most people (Spong excepted) do not ever seem to wonder whether the death of Jesus itself might have changed some of their views. Surely it was a painful and cathartic experience, one would assume. And this is not to say that they did not continue to love and admire Jesus, but their physical, emotional, and spiritual needs might have shifted during the almost inevitable soul searching which follows the violent death of any leader as those left behind try to pick up the pieces.

In American history, you can see a lot of interesting things occurred after the assassinations of both Lincoln and Kennedy. There was a great deal of grief and glamorization, and there were also a lot of things done in the names of the dead which it is impossible to know whether they would have liked. Often when a person dies, the rewriting starts at the funeral. At my father's funeral I was actually informed by several distraught and grieving people that he would have hated it, but we did exactly what his detailed written instructions requested. We cannot know how detailed any instructions Jesus left might have been, nor whether or not they were followed. Sometimes families do not follow such requests, that happens too. There is no way we will ever know what Jesus wanted James to do.

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"For small creatures such as we the vastness is bearable only through love."
- Carl Sagan