James, Son of Zebedee #79

James, son of Zebedee and brother of the apostle John, was one of the twelve disciples of Jesus and part of the inner circle of three, together with Peter and John. He and his brother were fishermen on the Sea of Galilee who worked in their father’s boat with hired workers, and Luke describes them as partners of Simon Peter (Mark 1:19-20; Luke 5:10). He is sometimes called James the Greater to distinguish him from James the son of Alphaeus and from James the brother of Jesus, though the Bible does not use that title.

Biblical Significance

When Jesus called James and John by the lake, they left their father and the boat and followed him immediately (Mark 1:19-20). Jesus gave the two brothers the nickname Boanerges, which Mark translates as “sons of thunder” (Mark 3:17). The name seems to fit episodes in which they appear as zealous and impulsive. When a Samaritan village refused to receive Jesus, James and John asked if they should call down fire from heaven to consume it, and Jesus rebuked them (Luke 9:51-56). In another account, James and John, or in Matthew’s version their mother on their behalf, asked for the places of honor at Jesus’s right and left in his glory. Jesus asked whether they could drink the cup he would drink, and they said they could. He answered that they would indeed drink it, but that places of honor were not his to give, and he taught the Twelve that greatness in his kingdom comes through service (Mark 10:35-45; Matthew 20:20-28).

James was one of only three disciples allowed to be present when Jesus raised the daughter of Jairus (Mark 5:37), and he was with Peter and John on the mountain at the transfiguration (Mark 9:2). He was also among the three whom Jesus took further into the garden of Gethsemane and asked to stay awake and watch with him (Mark 14:32-34). Along with Andrew, he heard Jesus’s teaching about the destruction of the temple on the Mount of Olives (Mark 13:3).

Legacy

James was the first of the apostles to die for the faith. Acts records briefly that King Herod Agrippa I, who ruled Judea in the early 40s AD, had James put to death with the sword (Acts 12:1-2). His prediction that he would drink Jesus’s cup was thus fulfilled, and it is one of the few martyrdoms of an apostle described in the New Testament itself. Later tradition, which has no basis in the New Testament, holds that James had earlier taken the gospel to Spain, and that his remains were later brought to Santiago de Compostela, which became one of the great pilgrimage destinations of medieval Europe. Historians regard the Spanish connection as a legend. His feast day is July 25 in the Western church.