ed as certain. But whether he was identical with "James the son
of Alpheus," who was one of the twelve (Matt. 10:3; Mark 3:18; Luke
6:15; Acts 1:13), is a question which has been much discussed and on
which eminent biblical scholars are found arrayed on opposite sides. The
question turns very much on the interpretation of the words "brother,"
and "brethren" and "sisters," in the passages above referred to. If we
take them in their literal sense, as some do, then James the son of
Alpheus and James the Lord's brother are different persons. But others
understand them in the general sense of kindred or cousins, believing
that our Saviour was the only child of Mary. A statement at length of
the arguments and objections that are urged on both sides does not come
within the compass of the present work. Nor is it necessary. The author
of the present epistle is beyond all reasonable doubt the James who gave
the final opinion in the assembly of the apostles and elders at
Jerusalem (Acts 15:13-21), whom Paul names with Cephas and John as one
of the "pillars" there (Gal. 2:9), and who elsewhere appears as a man of
commanding influence in the church at Jerusalem (Acts 21:18; Gal. 2:12).
If any one doubts his identity with James the son of Alpheus, who was
one of the twelve, this cannot affect the canonical authority of the
epistle. The position of this James in the church at Jerusalem and his
relation to the apostolic college is such that, even upon the
supposition that he did not belong to the number of the twelve, his
writings must have to us the full weight of apostolic authority. See
above chap. 30, No. 42.

3. The _place_ where this epistle was written was manifestly Jerusalem,
where James always resided; and the _persons addressed_ are "the twelve
tribes who are in the dispersion" (chap. 1:1); that is, as the nature of
the case and the tenor of the epistle make manifest, that part of them
who had embraced Christianity. There is no allusion in the epistle to
Gentile believers.

_The dispersion_ is a technical term for the Jews living out of
Palestine among the Gentiles. We need not hesitate to understand
it here literally. The apostle _wrote_ to his Jewish brethren of
the dispersion because he could not visit them and superintend
their affairs as he could those of the Jewish Christians in and
around Jerusalem. Some take the term in a wider sense of the
Jewish Christians scattered abroad in and out o