The Battle for Jesus’s Legacy: James vs Paul
Part 2 of a 5-part series exploring Christianity’s lost path. Read the previous chapter here.
Imagine if John Wilkes Booth had survived, claimed a divine vision of Lincoln, and declared that he — not Lincoln’s family or cabinet — now understood the true meaning of the Gettysburg Address. The idea seems absurd, even offensive. Yet something remarkably similar happened in early Christianity, and the version of the story that won would shape Western civilization for two millennia.
In our previous exploration of “the Way,” we discovered that Jesus taught at multiple levels, offering public parables to the crowds while reserving deeper teachings for those prepared to receive them. After his death, this raised a crucial question: who could authentically interpret and transmit these teachings?
The Brother’s Claim
On one side stood James, Jesus’s own brother. Known as “the Just” or “the Righteous,” James led the Jerusalem church — the original community of Jesus’s followers. Our knowledge of this group comes from multiple sources: the Acts of the Apostles (though written from a later, pro-Paul perspective), Paul’s own letters (where he often finds himself in conflict with Jerusalem), and early church historians like Hegesippus and Eusebius.
These sources paint a compelling picture of the original followers of “the Way.” Under James’s leadership, they maintained strict adherence to Jewish law while embodying Jesus’s teachings about caring for the poor. According to Hegesippus, James was renowned for his piety, spending so much time praying in the Temple that his knees became “like those of a camel.” The community shared all possessions in common and focused intensely on social justice — seeming to continue Jesus’s emphasis on both spiritual practice and ethical living.
What’s notably absent from their version of “the Way” are many of the doctrines that would later become Christian orthodoxy. They didn’t abolish Jewish dietary laws or circumcision. They didn’t actively seek Gentile converts without full conversion to Judaism. They didn’t teach that the Torah had been superseded by faith in Christ. In short, they practiced what scholars now call “Jewish Christianity” — following Jesus while remaining fully Jewish.
Enter the Persecutor
Into this scene burst Paul, formerly known as Saul, who had actively persecuted Jesus’s followers. After a dramatic mystical experience on the road to Damascus, he claimed direct revelation from the risen Christ. In his own words, this authority came purely through spiritual experience: “I did not receive it from any man, nor was I taught it, but I received it through a revelation of Jesus Christ” (Galatians 1:12).
Paul seems to wear his independence from Jesus’s original followers as a badge of honor: “I did not immediately consult with flesh and blood, nor did I go up to Jerusalem to those who were apostles before me” (Galatians 1:16–17). When he finally did meet with the Jerusalem leaders after three years, he spent only fifteen days with Peter and saw only James. Even then, he emphasized that “they added nothing to me” (Galatians 2:6).
This is extraordinary when you think about it. Here was someone who had never met Jesus in life, never heard his teachings firsthand, and initially persecuted his followers — yet he claimed a more authentic understanding of Jesus’s message than those who had walked with him.
Two Visions Collide
The conflict between these interpretations of “the Way” comes to a head in Paul’s letter to the Galatians. He describes a confrontation in Jerusalem where he had to argue forcefully for his interpretation before James, Peter, and John. Though they eventually reached a compromise — Paul could teach his version to Gentiles while they maintained their Jewish practice — the underlying tension remained.
Paul’s version of “the Way” introduced concepts that would have been alien to Jesus’s original followers:
- Salvation by faith alone: “For by grace you have been saved through faith, and this is not your own doing; it is the gift of God — not the result of works” (Ephesians 2:8–9). James would later counter directly: “Faith without works is dead” (James 2:20).
- Original sin: Paul argued that through Adam “sin came into the world” (Romans 5:12) — an idea found nowhere in Jesus’s teachings or Jewish thought, which held that humans are born with the capacity for both good and evil.
- Break from Jewish law: “For through the law I died to the law, so that I might live to God” (Galatians 2:19) — a radical departure from the Jerusalem church’s continued observance of Torah.
- Universal religion: “There is neither Jew nor Greek, slave nor free, male nor female, for you are all one in Christ Jesus” (Galatians 3:28) — transforming a Jewish movement into a universal faith.
The Jerusalem Church’s Last Stand
The tension between these visions of “the Way” might have continued indefinitely, but history intervened. In 70 CE, the Roman army destroyed Jerusalem, decimating the original community of Jesus’s followers. Many of its leaders were killed, its members scattered.
Paul’s version of Christianity, divorced from its Jewish roots and more appealing to Gentile converts across the Roman Empire, was better positioned to survive. His emphasis on faith over works, his doctrine of universal sin and salvation, and his mystical yet accessible teachings about Christ proved more adaptable to the Greco-Roman world.
The influence of the Jerusalem church didn’t entirely disappear with its destruction in 70 CE. Instead, its core teachings survived in offshoots like the Ebionites and Nazarenes — groups that retained a strong connection to Jewish law and saw Jesus as a human prophet and teacher, rather than a divine figure. These communities kept alive a version of “The Way” that emphasized ethical living and adherence to Torah, continuing to practice what might be called “Jewish Christianity.”
Interestingly, some scholars suggest that these traditions may have influenced the development of early Islam, particularly through their monotheistic emphasis and reverence for figures like Jesus and James as righteous, human prophets. While this connection remains debated, it underscores the far-reaching impact of James’s interpretation of “The Way,” even as Paul’s vision came to dominate Christianity.
The Road Not Taken
The triumph of Paul’s interpretation raises fascinating questions about religious evolution. What if the Jerusalem church had survived? What if Christianity had remained a form of Judaism, emphasizing ethical behavior and social justice over faith alone? What aspects of Jesus’s original teaching were lost when his brother’s interpretation was overshadowed by that of someone who never knew him in life?
These questions become even more intriguing when we consider other early interpretations of “the Way” that developed alongside the James-Paul conflict. Some communities chose to preserve what they claimed were Jesus’s secret teachings, eventually burying them to protect them from destruction. Their rediscovery in 1945 would revolutionize our understanding of early Christianity.
But that’s a story for Part 3 of our series.
In Part 3, we’ll explore the accidental discovery of the Gospel of Thomas and what it reveals about a very different version of Jesus’s teachings — one that emphasized direct spiritual knowledge over both Paul’s faith and James’s works.
This is Part 2 of a 5-part series exploring the forgotten history of early Christianity. Follow me to be notified when the next installment is published.
