| As recorded by the first-century Jewish historian,
Josephus, James (Jacob or Ya'akov) was executed by stoning around 63s A.D. for his
devotion to Jesus (Yesua), and that was before the Roman destruction of Jerusalem, in 70
A.D. More than 2000 years later, according to biblical
scholars, including Hershel Shanks, editor of the Biblical Archaeology Review, after a
stone box was found in or near Jerusalem that bears the inscription "James, son of
Joseph, brother of Jesus," written in the ancient Aramaic language, it was concluded
that James' bones were placed on an ossuary (a limestone box), about a year after the body
was laid out in a burial cave, and the flesh desiccated and fell away - the two burial
practices that were standard among Jews in the first century.
James was the head of the Jerusalem church, and was called the
first bishop of Jerusalem by Eusebius.
The traditional Roman Catholic understanding of
"brother," as used regarding James in the New Testament, is that it means not
blood brother but kinsman. A second interpretation, early Catholic (Until the middle of
the 19th century, John Paul's predecessors, or Peter and his successors, ruled much of
Italy. They lost the Papal States around 1860 and Rome in 1870, at the time of Italy's
final unification. For the next 59 years, the church had no land solely its own, and popes
spoke bitterly of themselves as prisoners of the Vatican. It was only in 1929, in the
Lateran Treaty negotiated with fascist dictator Mussolini, that Vatican City was
established as a sovereign entity and the Vatican acknowledged the Italian government)
theology suggests that James was only the cousin of Jesus - also called in various
contexts, "Jesus Christ," "Christ," "Christ Jesus," and
"Jesus of Nazareth" (c. 4 B.C.-c. A.D. 29).
But Protestants generally read the new Testament to mean that
James was the son of Joseph (Yosef) and Mary, also known as "the Virgin Mary,"
"Our Lady," the mother of Jesus (Matthew 1:18-25). An interpretation dominant in
the Eastern Orthodox Church regards James as son of Joseph by a previous marriage.
However, more than two millennia later, to the great chagrin of
many, "history has again repeated itself," to paraphrase Marx, oddly this may
be, since Marx himself and the estimated one billion-plus of his political philosophy
(Communism) adherents are atheists, "and in an almost similar way."
Many Haitians - brothers, sisters, fathers, mothers, cousins,
husbands and wives - who have been at the forefront of the democratic cause, including
those suspecting of supporting it at a distance, in Haiti and abroad, as you will later
discover, have been tortured and brutally murdered by bestial dictator and chief bandit
Jean-Bertrand Aristide (in the photograph below) and totalitarian dictator François
"Papa Doc" Duvalier - add the latter son, Jean-Claude "Baby Doc"
Duvalier, though less chistiseable he may be for committing a lesser number of odious
crimes, a great many of them of the same nature, too, when compared to the latter two's.
Most of tyrant Aristide's victims' bones, contrary to those of
James, the apostle, have been consumed by flames only to be never recovered, for even
nonformal interment and burial ceremonies by their surviving relatives - many of whom the
ferocious dictator has already attempted to burn alive, and many times so, especially
after stealing their life savings (more than U.S.$220 million) in a cooperative
pyramid scheme and many others of sorts.
Accurately, all the barbaric acts or evils, complete with
prescriptions for exterminating the Haitian populace, of radical leftist and the former
priest of the shantytowns Aristide suggest is that civilization is being disrupted in the
Caribbean nation of Haiti, and sadly for a longtime so - I hope I am wrong. |
