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James
the Brother of Jesus

Where Was James Buried?

Making sense of contradictory accounts

By Jerome Murphy-O’Connor

Controversy over the burial of James, the brother of Jesus, is nothing new. As early as the fourth century A.D., the location of James’s tomb was disputed. In the words of the church father Jerome, writing in 392 A.D.: “Some monks think James was buried on the Mount of Olives, but their opinion is false.” Jerome continues, “He is buried near the Temple from which he was thrown down. The grave-marker was well known up to the siege of Titus [ending the First Jewish Revolt against Rome in 70 A.D.] and even that of Hadrian 035[ending the Second Jewish […]

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Endnotes

1.

Jerome, Famous Men, in Patrologia Latina 23.613, 23.615.

2.

Josephus, Jewish Antiquities 20.9.1.

3.

Hegesippus, quoted in Eusebius, History of the Church 2.23.18.

4.

Translation of 3Q15, 11:1–4, from Florentino García Martínez with Wilfred Watson, The Dead Sea Scrolls Translated: The Qumran Texts in English, 2nd ed. (Leiden: Brill; Grand Rapids: Eerdmans, 1996), p. 463.

5.

Jozef Milik, “Le Rouleau de cuivre de Qumran (3Q15),” Revue Biblique 66 (1959), pp. 327, 346.

6.

On the date, see Charles C. Torry, The Lives of the Prophets, Society of Biblical Literature (SBL) Monograph Series 1 (Philadelphia: SBL, 1946), p. 11; and Douglas Hare, “Prophets, Lives of,” in the Anchor Bible Dictionary (Garden City, New York: Doubleday, 1992), vol. 5, pp. 502–503.

7.

Lives of the Prophets 6–7, in Torry, Lives, pp. 34–35.

8.

Lives of the Prophets 2, in Torry, Lives, pp. 44.

9.

Josephus, Antiquities 20:201–203.

10.

Felix-Marie Abel, “La sépulture de saint Jacques le mineur,” Revue Biblique 16 (1919), p. 488.

11.

See Abel, “Sépulture de saint Jacques,” p. 485.

12.

It is greatly superior to the letter of Lucianos, which is also the story of the discovery of three skeletons, one of which proved to be that of Saint Stephen; see Marie-Joseph Lagrange, Saint Étienne et son sanctuaire à Jérusalem (Paris: Oucard, 1894), pp. 43–52.

13.

In the letter of Lucianos (see note, above), the three coffins are accompanied by a headstone bearing in large letters the words KEAYEA CELIEL, APAAN and DARDAN, which are interpreted by John, bishop of Jerusalem, as meaning “Servant of God” (that is, Stephen), Nicodemus and Gamaliel (Lagrange, Saint Étienne, p. 51).

14.

This was put forward by Abel as a highly speculative possibility that had nothing to do with history (“Sépulture de saint Jacques,” p. 499).

15.

One would expect Simon to be buried in the “tomb of the priests,” and this is implied for Zechariah in the Lives of the Prophets (Torrey, Lives, p. 47).

16.

John Wilkinson, Jerusalem Pilgrims Before the Crusades, 2nd ed. (Warminster, UK: Aris and Phillips, 2002), p. 109.

17.

My translation is from J. Braslavi, S.-J. Alobaidi, Y. Goldman, M. Küchler, “Le plus ancien guide juif de Jérusalem. Der Älteste jüdische Jerusalem-Führer,” in Jerusalem: Texte – Bilder – Steine, im Namen von Mitgliedern und Freunden des Biblischen Instituts der UniversitÄt Freiburg Schweiz zum 100 Geburtstag von Hildi + Othmar Keel-Leu, ed. M. Küchler and Charles Uehlinger, Novum Testamentum et Orbis Antiquus 6 (Freiburg: UniversitÄtsverlag; Göttingen: Vandenhoeck & Ruprecht, 1987), pp. 37–81, lines 15–22.

18.

Milik, “Le Rouleau de cuivre.”

19.

Howard E. Stutchbury, “Excavations in the Kidron Valley,” Palestine Exploration Quarterly 93 (1961), pp. 101–113.

20.

“Excavations in the Kidron Valley,” p. 107 = de Saulcy, Narrative of a Journey Around the Dead Sea, ed. de Warren (1854), vol. 2, p. 241.

21.

If so, one possibility is that the ossuary of “James, son of Joseph, brother of Jesus,” surfaced during Benjamin Mazar’s excavations along the southern Temple Mount wall earlier this century and was removed by looters.