"[22] The Pauline epistles and the later chapters of the Acts of the Apostles portray James as an important figure in the Jewish Christian community of Jerusalem.

In Paul's account of his visit to Jerusalem in Galatians 1:18-19, he states that he stayed with Cephas (better known as Peter) and James, the brother of the Lord, was the only other apostle he met.

The Antioch community was concerned over whether Gentile Christians need be circumcised to be saved, and sent Paul and Barnabas to confer with the Jerusalem church.

[26] James supported them all in being against the requirement (Peter had cited his earlier revelation from God regarding Gentiles) and suggested prohibitions about eating blood as well as meat sacrificed to idols and fornication.

[clarification needed][note 2] According to Schaff, James was the local head of the oldest church and the leader of the most conservative portion of Jewish Christianity.

[27] Apart from a handful of references in the synoptic Gospels, the main sources for the life of James the Just are the Pauline epistles, the Acts of the Apostles, Josephus, Eusebius and Jerome, the last two of which also quote the early Christian chronicler Hegesippus, and Epiphanius.

Festus was now dead, and Albinus was but upon the road; so he assembled the Sanhedrin of judges, and brought before them the brother of Jesus, who was called Christ, whose name was James, and some others, [or, some of his companions]; and when he had formed an accusation against them as breakers of the law, he delivered them to be stoned.

[32] Because Albinus' journey to Alexandria had to have concluded no later than the summer of 62 CE, the date of James' death can be assigned with some certainty to around that year.

[37][38][36] Modern scholarship has almost universally acknowledged the authenticity of the reference to "the brother of Jesus, who was called Christ, whose name was James" (τὸν ἀδελφὸν Ἰησοῦ τοῦ λεγομένου Χριστοῦ, Ἰάκωβος ὄνομα αὐτῷ) and has rejected its being the result of later Christian interpolation.

...Yet because of false brothers secretly brought in—who slipped in to spy out our freedom that we have in Christ Jesus, so that they might bring us into slavery—to them we did not yield in submission even for a moment, so that the truth of the gospel might be preserved for you.

Wherefore my sentence is, that we trouble not them, which from among the Gentiles are turned to God: But that we write unto them, that they abstain from pollutions of idols, and from fornication, and from things strangled, and from blood.

(Acts 21:17–18) The Synoptic Gospels, similarly to the Epistle to the Galatians, recognize a core group of three disciples (Peter, John and James) having the same names as those given by Paul.

He drank no wine or other intoxicating liquor, nor did he eat flesh; no razor came upon his head; he did not anoint himself with oil, nor make use of the bath.

[60] Epiphanius (4th century), bishop of Salamis, wrote in his work The Panarion (AD 374–375) that "James, the brother of the Lord died in virginity at the age of ninety-six".

[61] According to Jerome (4th century), James, the Lord's brother, was an apostle, too; Jerome quotes Scriptures as a proof in his work "The Perpetual Virginity of Blessed Mary", writing the following: Notice, moreover, that the Lord's brother is an apostle, since Paul says «Then after three years I went up to Jerusalem to visit Cephas, and tarried with him fifteen days.

[80] Raymond E. Brown also argues that "the immediate context favors a lack of future implication here, for Matthew is concerned only with stressing Mary's virginity before the child's birth".

[81][82] Jerome asserts in his tract The Perpetual Virginity of Blessed Mary, as an answer to Helvidius, that the term "first-born" was used to refer to any offspring that opened the womb, rather than definitely implying other children.

[82][88] Also, Aramaic and Hebrew tended to use circumlocutions to point out blood relationships; it is asserted that just calling some people "brothers of Jesus" would not have necessarily implied the same mother.

[89] Unlike some other New Testament authors, the apostle Paul had a perfect command of Greek, a language which has a specific word for 'cousin' and another for 'brother' calling James "the brother of our Lord" (Galatians 1:19).

These proponents find it unlikely that Mary would be referred to by her natural children other than Jesus at such a significant time (James happens to be the brother of one Joses, as spelled in Mark, or Joseph, as in Matthew).

Josephus reports that Hanan's act was widely viewed as little more than judicial murder and offended a number of "those who were considered the most fair-minded people in the city, and strict in their observance of the Law", who went so far as to arrange a meeting with Albinus as he entered the province in order to petition him successfully about the matter.

[101] Hegesippus cites that "the Scribes and Pharisees placed James upon the pinnacle of the temple, and threw down the just man, and they began to stone him, for he was not killed by the fall.

[101] Origen related an account of the death of James which gave it as a cause of the Roman siege of Jerusalem, something not found in the existing manuscripts of Josephus.

[102][103] Eusebius wrote that "the more sensible even of the Jews were of the opinion that this (James' death) was the cause of the siege of Jerusalem, which happened to them immediately after his martyrdom for no other reason than their daring act against him.

Josephus, at least, has not hesitated to testify this in his writings, where he says, "These things happened to the Jews to avenge James the Just, who was a brother of Jesus, that is called the Christ.

""[101] Eusebius, while quoting Josephus' account, also records otherwise lost passages from Hegesippus (see links below) and Clement of Alexandria (Historia Ecclesiae, 2.23).

"...Accordingly, the scribes and Pharisees threw down the just man... [and] began to stone him: for he was not killed by the fall; but he turned, and kneeled down, and said: "I beseech thee, Lord God our Father, forgive them; for they know not what they do."

[112] In the November 2002 issue of Biblical Archaeology Review, André Lemaire of the Sorbonne University in Paris published the report that an ossuary bearing the inscription "Ya'aqov bar Yosef achui d'Yeshua" ("James son of Joseph brother of Jesus") had been identified belonging to a collector, Oded Golan.

[113] On December 29, 2004, Golan was indicted in an Israeli court along with three other men – Robert Deutsch, an inscriptions expert who teaches at Haifa University; collector Shlomo Cohen; and antiquities dealer Faiz al-Amaleh.

According to the BBC, "when the police took Oded Golan into custody and searched his apartment they discovered a workshop with a range of tools, materials, and half finished 'antiquities'.