and Colleges. GENERAL EDITOR: J. J. S. PEROWNE, D.D., London: C. J. CLAY & SON, CAMBRIDGE UNIVERSITY PRESS WAREHOUSE, AVE MARIA LANE. 1884 [All Rights reserved.] INTRODUCTION. CHAPTER I. THE AUTHOR OF THE EPISTLE. I. THE name of Jacobus or Jacob-which, after passing through various chances and changes of form, Spanish Iago and Portuguese Xayme (pronounced Hayme) and Italian Giacomo and French Jacques and Jamè, and Scotch Hamish, has at last dwindled into our monosyllabic James-was naturally, as having been borne by the great Patriarch whom Israel claimed as its progenitor, a favourite name among the later Jews'. In the New Testament we find two, or possibly three, persons who bore it: (1) James the son of Zebedee. (2) James the son of Alphæus. Both of these appear in all the lists of the Twelve Apostles. (3) There is a James described as the son of a Mary and the brother of a Joses or Joseph (Matt. xxvii. 56, Mark xv. 40), and a comparison of that passage with John xix. 25, defines this Mary as the wife of Clopas (not Cleophas as in the English Version) and possibly also (though the construction is not free from ambiguity) as the sister of our Lord's mother. To his name is attached the epithet, not of "the less" as in the English version, as though it indicated difference in age or position, but of the "little," as an 1 It is not without a feeling of regret, that I adopt in this volume the form in which the historical associations of the name have entirely disappeared. Usage, however, in such a matter, must be accepted as the jus et norma loquendi. |