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Originally Posted by Mirage
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.
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First of all, thanks for your kind words.
As far as the above is concerned, we should recall an episode that appears in the gospels whereas Jesus' family appears concerned he may have fallen off the deep end, so we can see whereas the family was not all on-board the Jesus' Express-- at least at first. Now whether they came on-board later, and to what extent they agreed with Jesus' teachings, is not necessarily a "gimme". I think most Christians tend to believe that they did later, but that's not guaranteed either. Traditional Jewish families are very tight-knit, so even if they disagreed with him, that doesn't mean they'd abandon him.
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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.
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And we've seen this happen before. After Gandhi was martyred, many in the Hindu community began to deify him but, fortunately, Gandhi had stated and written many times he was not a deity (this needs to be qualified somewhat, if you know what I mean).
I think there's quite a bit of what eventually became Christian theology that was developed by those grieving over his death and really missing him. Therefore, the deification of Jesus may well have resulted from their rather natural reaction. I have a very difficult time picturing Jesus walking around saying "I'm God" even to his apostles. To any orthodox Jew, this would be very difficult to swallow.
There is no way we will ever know what Jesus wanted James to do. [/quote]
Good point. Maybe Jesus never thought he'd win James over. Maybe James only agreed with part of Jesus' teachings. And remember what is said about us Jews: 2 Jews = 3 different opinions on everything.