According to what legend did "James the Lord's brother" look like Jesus?

[gryan]

I recall reading about some ancient text describing "James the Lord's brother" as looking physically similar to Jesus. It said that sometimes even their mother could not tell them apart.

Frustratingly, I cannot find the document or the citation!

Can anyone help?

[andrewcriddle]

I recall reading about some ancient text describing "James the Lord's brother" as looking physically similar to Jesus. It said that sometimes even their mother could not tell them apart.

Unfortunately, I cannot find the document!

Does anyone know of such a document?

Golden Legend (late source)

James the Apostle is said the Less, how well that he was elder of age than was St. James the More, because like as is in religion he that entered first is called aine and great, and he that cometh after shall be called less, though he be the older, and in this wise was this St. James called the Less.

He was called also the brother of our Lord, because he resembled much well our Lord in body, in visage, and of manner.

Andrew Criddle

[gryan]

Golden Legend (late source)

James the Apostle is said the Less, how well that he was elder of age than was St. James the More, because like as is in religion he that entered first is called aine and great, and he that cometh after shall be called less, though he be the older, and in this wise was this St. James called the Less.

He was called also the brother of our Lord, because he resembled much well our Lord in body, in visage, and of manner.

Andrew Criddle:

Thanks!

Now I'm wondering if we have a written source used by Golden Legend writer, Jacobus Voragine (1275). I'm also wondering about the story of Mary not being able to tell Jesus and James apart sometimes.

[DCHindley]

I recall reading about some ancient text describing "James the Lord's brother" as looking physically similar to Jesus. It said that sometimes even their mother could not tell them apart.

Frustratingly, I cannot find the document or the citation!

Can anyone help?

One of Robert Eisler's obsessions (that's what I call them) was that we can reconstruct a pen portrait of Jesus possibly derived from his original wanted poster. He looked at a number of sources, including some pen portraits of Paul from apocryphal acts, which might touch on James the Just.

IMHO, any such discussion of similarity of Jesus and James his "brother" is affected by the fact that around the late 2nd century many Christians were not willing to believe that Jesus really had a brother by the same mother (perpetual virginity of Mary).

This kind of thing was already going on when the Ignatian epistles were redacted into their longer Greek forms. All this is online, including Greek and English, of the entire Ignatian corpus, in PDF documents I had attached to my ancient posts entitled 'Crazy Kat or Crazy Editor?' (and variants) from 2013 onwards.

DCH

[John T]

I recall reading about some ancient text describing "James the Lord's brother" as looking physically similar to Jesus. It said that sometimes even their mother could not tell them apart.

Frustratingly, I cannot find the document or the citation!

Can anyone help?

Brothers from a different mother? In the Methodist church I went to as a young man, a portrait of Jesus was overlooking us. Jesus had very distinct Aryan features, including blue eyes. Of course his step-brother James looked very Jewish and sporting a mullet.

[gryan]

"He [James] was called also the brother of our Lord,
because he resembled much well our Lord in body, in visage, and of manner."

---Golden Legend, Jacobus Voragine (1275)


Yes, this would seem to be a rare description of James, the Lord's brother vis-a-vis Jesus!

I'm in search of more of the same.

Do we have an earlier written source Jacobus Voragine may have drawn on for this similarity between Jesus and James as brothers?

Do we have later expansions on the theme of the similarity between James and Jesus in "in body, in visage, and of manner"?

I like the idea that sometimes, even Mary could not tell them apart! But surely I did not invent it. Where did that notion come from?

[gryan]

"According to an early tradition, he [James] so nearly resembled our Lord in person, in features, and deportment, that it was difficult to distinguish them. 'The Holy Virgin herself,' says the legend, 'had she been capable of error, might have mistaken one for the other': and this exact resemblance rendered necessary the kiss of the traitor Judas, in order to point out his victim to the soldiers.

This characteristic resemblance is attended to in the earliest and best representations of St. James and by this he may usually be distinguished when he does not bear his club, which is often a thick stick or staff."

--- Anna Brownell Jameson, Sacred and Ledgedary Art, 1857, no source cited.
https://www.google.com/books/edition/Sa ... 20soldiers

I'm still looking for a more ancient source.

[DCHindley]

Here was the reference in Eisler's Messiah Jesus & John the Baptist (German original and English translation 1931), page 449:

According to the pseudo-Ignatius letter addressed to John, not Judas but the Saddiq Ja'aqob was the twin-brother and exact double of Jesus. (10)

n10: Rendel Harris, loc. cit. [I think this refers to his book The Twelve Apostles, Cambridge, 1927,] p. 57.

Unfortunately, this epistle of Ignatius to John was not treated by me in my more ancient posts as there was no shorter Greek version to compare this letter usually attached to manuscripts of the longer Greek recension.

As to it's date, that is, when the manuscripts of the longer Greek recension were edited as we have them, I'd be guessing.

Here it is in the ANF edition volume 1:

[347] A Second Epistle of Ignatius to St. John.

Second Epistle to St John

His friend(906) Ignatius to John the holy presbyter.

If thou wilt give me leave, I desire to go up to Jerusalem, and see the faithful(907) saints
who are there, especially Mary the mother, whom they report to be an object of admiration
and of affection to all. For who would not rejoice to behold and to address her who bore
the true God from her(908) own womb, provided he is a friend of our faith and religion? And
in like manner (I desire to see) the venerable James, who is surnamed Just, whom they relate
to be very like Christ Jesus in appearance,(909) in life, and in method of conduct, as if he were
a twin-brother of the same womb. They say that, if I see him, I see also Jesus Himself, as to
all the features and aspect of His body. Moreover, (I desire to see) the other saints, both
male and female. Alas! why do I delay? Why am I kept back? Kind(910) teacher, bid me hasten
[to fulfil my wish], and fare thou well. Amen.

Notes:
906 Literally, “his own.”
907 Some omit this word.
908 Literally, “of herself.” Some read, instead of “de se,” “deorum,” when the translation will be, “the true God
of gods.”
909 Or, “face.” Some omit the word.
910 Or, “good.”

Here is what they say about the spurious epistles of the longer Greek recensions:

278 Introductory Note to the Spurious Epistles of Ignatius

To the following introductory note of the translators nothing need be prefixed, except
a grateful acknowledgment of the value of their labours and of their good judgment in giving
us even these spurious writings for purposes of comparison. They have thus placed the
materials for a complete understanding of the whole subject, before students who have a
mind to subject it to a thorough and candid examination.

The following is the original Introductory Notice:—
We formerly stated that eight out of the fifteen Epistles bearing the name of Ignatius
are now universally admitted to be spurious. None of them are quoted or referred to by any
ancient writer previous to the sixth century. The style, moreover, in which they are written,
so different from that of the other Ignatian letters, and allusions which they contain to heresies
and ecclesiastical arrangements of a much later date than that of their professed author,
render it perfectly certain that they are not the authentic production of the illustrious bishop
of Antioch.

We cannot tell when or by whom these Epistles were fabricated. They have been thought
to betray the same hand as the longer and interpolated form of the seven Epistles which are
generally regarded as genuine. And some have conceived that the writer who gave forth to
the world the Apostolic Constitutions under the name of Clement, was probably the author
of these letters falsely ascribed to Ignatius, as well as of the longer recension of the seven
Epistles which are mentioned by Eusebius.

It was a considerable time before editors in modern times began to discriminate between
the true and the false in the writings attributed to Ignatius. The letters first published under
his name were those three which exist only in Latin. These came forth in 1495 at Paris, being
appended to a life of Becket, Archbishop of Canterbury. Some three years later, eleven
Epistles, comprising those mentioned by Eusebius, and four others, were published in Latin,
and passed through four or five editions. In 1536, the whole of the professedly Ignatian letters
were published at Cologne in a Latin version; and this collection also passed through several
editions. It was not till 1557 that the Ignatian Epistles appeared for the first time in Greek
at Dillingen. After this date many editions came forth, in which the probably genuine were
still mixed up with the certainly spurious, the three Latin letters, only being rejected as
destitute of authority. Vedelius of Geneva first made the distinction which is now universally
accepted, in an edition of these Epistles which he published in 1623; and he was followed
by Archbishop Usher and others, who entered more fully into that critical examination of
these writings which has been continued down even to our own day.

[279] The reader will have no difficulty in detecting the internal grounds on which these eight
letters are set aside as spurious. The difference of style from the other Ignatian writings will
strike him even in perusing the English version which we have given, while it is of course
much more marked in the original. And other decisive proofs present themselves in every
one of the Epistles. In that to the Tarsians there is found a plain allusion to the Sabellian
heresy, which did not arise till after the middle of the third century. In the Epistle to the
Antiochians there is an enumeration of various Church officers, who were certainly unknown
at the period when Ignatius lived. The Epistle to Hero plainly alludes to Manichæan errors,
and could not therefore have been written before the third century. There are equally decisive
proofs of spuriousness to be found in the Epistle to the Philippians, such as the references
it contains to the Patripassian heresy originated by Praxeas in the latter part of the second
century, and the ecclesiastical feasts, etc., of which it makes mention. The letter to Maria
Cassobolita is of a very peculiar style, utterly alien from that of the other Epistles ascribed
to Ignatius. And it is sufficient simply to glance at the short Epistles to St. John and the
Virgin Mary, in order to see that they carry the stamp of imposture on their front; and, indeed,
no sooner were they published than by almost universal consent they were rejected.

But though the additional Ignatian letters here given are confessedly spurious, we have
thought it not improper to present them to the English reader in an appendix to our first
volume.(695) We have done so, because they have been so closely connected with the name
of the bishop of Antioch, and also because they are in themselves not destitute of interest.
We have, moreover, the satisfaction of thus placing for the first time within the reach of one
acquainted only with our language, all the materials that have entered into the protracted
agitation of the famous Ignatian controversy.

Note:
695 [Spurious writings, if they can be traced to antiquity, are always useful. Sometimes they are evidence of
facts, always of opinions, ideas and fancies of their date; and often they enable us to identify the origin of corruptions.
Even interpolations prove what later partisans would be glad to find, if they could, in early writers.
They bear unwilling testimony to the absence of genuine evidence in favour of their assumptions.]

DCH

[DCHindley]

Lastly, here is Eisler on Jesus and a Twin, whether Thomas or even Jacob the Just:

448 sqq.
The Stigmata of Jesus on Paul, The Early Traditions
about a Twin-Brother and Double of Jesus

The author of the Acts of Paul must already have been conscious
of the similarity of the descriptio~i of Paul to that of Jesus,
for in § 21 he says of Thekla :
' As a lamb spies around in the wilderness, so she sought for Paul.
And while she let her glance move over the crowd, she saw the Lord
sitting there in the form of Paul.'

This strange motive, which in itself does not necessarily presuppose
that the author believed Jesus and Paul to have resembled each
other,6 must be compared with the parallel passages in the Acts of
Thomas, where time and again Judah Thauma, i.e. ' Judas the
twin,' appears as strikingly like his deceased brother Jesus, whose
twin he was. Suffice it to mention the story of the princess and
her bridegroom who had both been persuaded by Judas Thomas to
make a vow of chastity. During the wedding night Jesus himself
appears to them in the shape of Thomas, and the bridegroom quite
naturally observes : ' But thou hast just left ; how then art thou
still here ? ' But the Lord replies to him : ' I am not Judas, I am
[449] the brother of Judas.' He then sits down on the bed and reminds
them of what Thomas had told them previously. A donkey upon
which Thomas had conferred the boon of human speech forthwith
addresses the apostle as ' thou twin-brother of the Messiah.'
Nor does the Greek text differ in the slightest in this respect.
The physical likeness of the twin-brothers is emphasized in the
speech of a demon driven out of a woman : * ' What have we to
do with thee, thou ambassador of the Most High . . . why doest
thou resemble God thy Lord, who concealed his majesty and
appeared in the flesh ? '

No less ambiguously the girl saved from death says of her
saviour Jesus Christ to Thomas : ' and he took me without the
place, where there were men ; but he who resembled thee (…)
took me, brought me to thee and said . . .'

As will be seen, the aretalogy of Judah Thauma knows no
greater item to report in his praise than his resemblance to his
twin-brother Jesus, reported to have been so pronounced that he
appears as the double of Jesus, just as Jesus is often taken for
Thomas.

Dr. Harris has shown furthermore that this strange tradition
occurs also in the Latin, where it was found objectionable at a
comparatively late period. Priscillian speaks with perfect unconcern
about ' Judas apostolus . . . ille didymus domini.' A
writer so generally read as Isidore of Seville says of him : ' Thomas
apostolus, Christi didymus nominatus et iuxta Latinam linguam
Christi geminus ac similis salvatoris. . . .' Yet this explanation
of the name did not at all necessitate such an emphasis of the likeness
of Thomas and Jesus. In the Anglo-Saxon Church the same
explanation occurs in the Gospel narrative it~elf,a~nd in the
opinion of Dr. Harris the Latin original of the Anglo-Saxon version
already had these words.

According to the [2nd] pseudo-Ignatius letter addressed to John, not
Judas but the Saddiq Ja'aqob was the twin-brother and exact
double of Jesus.(10)

There can be no question about the essential fact that a
tradition like this does not spring up overnight and without
[450] historical foundation of some sort. For what Christian would
have been foolish enough to invent such a legend, seeing that it is
most apt to undermine the very basis of the orthodox tradition
concerning the resuscitation of Jesus ? For if Jesus were given such
a double, every adversary of Christianity would immediately jump
to the conclusion that the person appearing to Peter, to the
disciples at Emmaus, to the women, and to the Five Hundred, was
simply the twin-brother of Jesus, call him Judas Thomas or
Ja'aqob the Saddiq. In exactly the same way the incredulous
neighbours in John ix. g had maintained that the beggar who had
received back his eyesight from Jesus was not the blind-born
beggar at all but another individual closely resembling him (…).
In other words, the story of the resurrection
would have to be judged in the same manner as the appearance
of the dead Alexander, slain by Herod the Great, who deceived the
Jews of Melos and was explained by Augustus as the attempted
imposture on the part of a double, presumably an illegitimate slave
brother of Alexander. The reader will also recall the famous
story of the pseudo-Smerdes, recognized as the genuine brother of
Cambyses even by the latter's sister, the queen At0ssa.l Similarly,
Tacitus mentions the appearance of a false Agrippa Posturnus,
whom Tiberius decided to have secretly slain; and SuetoniusJ
account of a false Nero will also come to mind.2

If, in spite of all this, the expected explanation is not found in
the pages of the rabbi Tryphon, the Jewish opponent of Justinus,
or of Celsus as handed down by Origen, this merely proves that
these two polemists did not know the tradition of a twin-brother
of Jesus, and his double. Yet there must have been earlier opponents
of Christianity better informed ; for it is certainly significant
that the story in the Gospel of John is careful to emphasize that
when Jesus appeared to the disciples while all the doors were
closed, Judas Thomas was not with them. It is most striking to
see how the text of the West Saxon Bible allows this tendency to
appear with a rare clearness--. John xx. 19 : in the evening, behind
barred doors, from fear of the Jews, the disciples are sitting together,
when suddenly Jesus stands among them, calming them
with the greeting, 'Peace be with you.' And the disciples are glad
to see the Lord. Without regard for the context there
was added, precisely between the greeting and the expression of
the disciples' joy, a sentence to the effect that Jesus showed them
his wounds, evidently without this frightful sight interfering in the
[451] least with the joy of the disciples. The resuscitated Jesus is then
recognizable by his wounds, which his double, 'Jude Thomas, who
was so like him,' would not have been able to show, and this
significant phrase was inserted at a later date.

Nor did all this suffice. John xx. 24 has thought it wise to
state expressly that Thomas the alter ego was at that time not with
the others, thus precluding the simple explanation that in the
twilight the frightened disciples might have taken him for the
risen Jesus. The last step was to make Thomas himself express
the greatest doubts about the reality of Jesus' appearance and to
feel his wounds. Nor is it accidental that in John xxi. 2, where
Jesus appears on shore to the disciples in a boat, the presence of
Thomas among the latter is expressly mentioned.

Lastly, the theory according to which the Saddiq Ja'aqob was
the twin-brother of Jesus, and his double, is probably responsible
for the emphasis laid in I Cor. xv. 7 on the appearance of Jesus to
this very Ja'aqob.

All this goes far to prove that the tradition about a twin brother
of Jesus resembling him in every detail is very old, and
caused no small trouble to the early apologists, precisely because
it furnished a most plausible, natural, and altogether satisfactory
explanation of the appearances of the supposed risen Jesus.

[TedM]

If it is true that they looked a lot alike, it occurs to me that it is possible that some people mistook James for Jesus after his crucifixion. If they saw James around the disciples and around Jesus' family -- rumors could have been started. All speculative, but for those that believe Jesus was a real person who was crucified and who have trouble accepting the idea that scriptures/hallucination etc were the sole reason that some started reporting that they had seen him alive, this is alternative explanation.

Golden Legend (late source)

James the Apostle is said the Less, how well that he was elder of age than was St. James the More, because like as is in religion he that entered first is called aine and great, and he that cometh after shall be called less, though he be the older, and in this wise was this St. James called the Less.

He was called also the brother of our Lord, because he resembled much well our Lord in body, in visage, and of manner.

Andrew Criddle:

Thanks!

Now I'm wondering if we have a written source used by Golden Legend writer, Jacobus Voragine (1275). I'm also wondering about the story of Mary not being able to tell Jesus and James apart sometimes.