Father Mike Schmitz

So we left behind, as we said yesterday, Acts chapter 28.

And today we're starting the letter of James, very short letter, only two days, chapters one and two, and tomorrow will be chapters three, four, and five.

But James, who is James?

James is, as he says, servant of God and of the Lord Jesus Christ.

James is most likely, according to St.

Jerome, James was the son of Clopas and Mary, the wife of Clopas.

It says very clearly in scripture that Mary, the wife of Clopas, was the mother of James and

There is a, I'd say a more recent tradition that, well, we could go through this whole thing, but we would say this, that the ancient tradition of the church has always been that Mary was a virgin, that she had no other children other than Jesus.

We talked about this a couple of the times when we hit the gospels and how it said the brothers of Jesus is actually the Greek word Adelphoi, which means, could mean brothers, means relatives, could mean cousins.

So the earliest tradition of the church was that Jesus had no other brothers.

And that here again, even St.

Jerome in third and fourth century was like, no, no, James is a cousin of Jesus.

He's an adult boy of Jesus.

And he is the son of Mary, wife of Clopas, who is already indicated in scripture.

So that's who James is.

James is the Bishop of Jerusalem.

We got that going.

Okay.

So he's writing in Jerusalem to the tribes of the dispersion, basically to all those Jewish Christians who are outside Palestine, outside that region.

And this is, I love how Jeff talks about letter of James.