The synoptic tradition on James

Julius Africanus, they tell us, had a base in Emmaus. This was a site for Luke's Gospel. Where Julius cites later Christian history, trying to align it more firmly in Roman chronology, he defers to one Hegesippus.

Hegesippus like Julius was steeped in the Canaanite languages; they tell me as a Jew rather than as a Phoenician. As Papias, Hegesippus made a project of collecting ahadith. Let's look at what he said about James the Just.

Julius vouched for Hegesippus' orthodoxy. That Julius felt the need to do this may be because his contemporaries imagined Hegesippus for his own part had denied Paul's orthodoxy (here in a fragment Photius quoted of Stephen Gobaros). No reader of Luke's works could ever do that; it's been noted for awhile that Paul's teaching on circumcision is accepted in Mark, as well. Further if Hegesippus abandons Paul, I must ask Gobaros what 1 Timothy 6:20 is doing here, "falsely-called gnosis". Let's suppose Julius had counterparties more intelligent than Gobaros...

Hegesippus has James mirroring Mark 14:62 / Matthew 24:30 on Jesus "coming on the clouds of Heaven" and more exactly Matthew 21:9, "Hosanna to the Son of David". That would endorse any NT genealogy except Luke's. Although, by "let us throw him down", here is a "L" trope not in Mark or Matthew. And James utters Luke 23:34, forgive them for they know not - which isn't in all Luke MSS, although Bart Ehrman vouches for it there.

INTERJECT 7/23: Luke has James bar Zebedee cut down with the sword (Acts 12:2). This is in an aside, only for preface before the imprisonment of Peter. Luke, I think, had a problem with the James tradition . . .

Hegesippus' James doesn't eat meat nor drink alcohol; which seems a problem both for Seder-observant Jews and for partakers in the Eucharist. His hero doesn't use "the bath" either, which (I hope) means the public one. I detect asceticism in Hegesippus' turn of phrase like a virgin pure and uncorrupted. I smell a Syrian encratite among us, like Tatian.

We may never know if Hegesippus for source used a Tatian-like harmony of the Synoptics; or, independent traditions. I speculate at least the Gospel of Matthew, or - more likely - a followup, like POxy 840 (also no enthusiast for the communal bath). This implies Luke is transferring post-Mark tradition, from James the Martyr, to Jesus as martyr. Either way Hegesippus and Luke are dueling over the same turf.

"Mary of Clopas" is here also, whom Gospel readers encounter only in John 19:25; but I've long discussed how fraught that book's history is, and Hegesippus writes not as a Johannine but as a Markan-Matthean.

Hegesippus, to sum up, pushes the envelope in Christian orthodoxy. I can see how he raised eyebrows in Julius' wider Church. UPDATE 3/19/22: Alignment with the Epistle?