Zealot - The Life and Times of Jesus of Nazareth

This
     is affirmed by later redactions of the text in which copyists have reversed the order
     to put Peter before James in order to place him as head of the church. Any question
     of James’s preeminence over Peter is put to rest in the passage of Galatians 2:11–14
     in which emissaries sent by James to Antioch compel Peter to stop eating with Gentiles,
     while the ensuing fight between Peter and Paul leads Barnabas to leave Paul and return
     to James.
    Bernheim outlines the role of dynastic succession and its use among the early Christian
     church in
James, Brother of Jesus
, 216–17. It is Eusebius who mentions that Simeon, son of Clopas, succeeded James:
     “After the martyrdom of James and the taking of Jerusalem which immediately ensued,
     it is recorded that those apostles and disciples of the Lord who were still surviving
     met together from all quarters and,
together with our Lord’s relatives after the flesh
(for the most part of them were still alive), took counsel, all in common, as to
     whom they should judge worthy to be the successor of James; and, what is more, that
     they all with one consent approved Simeon the son of Clopas, of whom also the book
     of the Gospels makes mention, as worthy of the throne of the community in that place.
     He was a cousin—at any rate so it is said—of the Savior; for indeed Hegesippus relates
     that Clopas was Joseph’s brother” (
Ecclesiastical History
3.11; italics mine). Regarding the grandsons of Jesus’s other brother, Judas, Hegesippus
     writes that they “ruled the churches, inasmuch as they were both martyrs and of the
     Lord’s family” (
Ecclesiastical History
3.20).
    It should be noted that the famous statement of Jesus calling Peter the rock upon
     which he will found his church is rejected as unhistorical by most scholars. See for
     example Pheme Perkins,
Peter, Apostle for the Whole Church
(Philadelphia: Fortress Press, 2000); B. P. Robinson, “Peter and His Successors:
     Tradition andRedaction in Matthew 16:17–19,”
Journal for the Study of the New Testament
21 (1984), 85–104; and Arlo J. Nau,
Peter in Matthew
(Collegeville, Minn.: Liturgical Press, 1992). John Painter demonstrates that no
     tradition exists concerning Peter’s leadership of the Jerusalem church. Such traditions
     that exist are only concerning Rome. See Painter, “Who Was James?” 31.
    Some scholars think that Peter was the head of the church until he was forced to flee
     Jerusalem. See, for instance, Oscar Cullman,
Peter: Disciple. Apostle. Martyr
(London: SCM Press, 1953). But that view is based mostly on an erroneous reading
     of Acts 12:17, in which Peter, before being forced to flee from Jerusalem, tells John
     Mark to inform James of his departure to Rome. Cullman and others argue that this
     is the moment in which leadership of the Jerusalem church transfers from Peter to
     James. However, as John Painter demonstrates, the proper reading of Acts 12:17 is
     that Peter is merely informing James (his “boss,” if you will) of his activities before
     fleeing Jerusalem. There is nothing in this passage, or for that matter, in any passage
     in Acts, which suggests Peter ever led the Jerusalem church. See Painter, “Who was
     James?” 31–36.
    Cullman also claims that the church under Peter was far more lax in its observance
     of the law before James took over and made the observance more rigid. The only evidence
     for this view comes from Peter’s conversion of the Roman Cornelius. While this is
     a story whose historicity is doubtful, it still does not prove a laxity of the law
     on the part of Peter, and it most definitely does not indicate Peter’s leadership
     of the Jerusalem assembly. The book of Acts makes it abundantly clear that there was
     a wide divergence of views among Jesus’s first followers over the rigidity of the
     law. Peter may have been less rigid than James when it came to observance of the law,
     but so what? As Bernheim notes: “There is no reason to suppose that the Jerusalem
     church was less liberal in 48/49 [than it was] at the beginning of the 30s,”
James, Brother of Jesus
, 209.
    Wiard Popkes details the evidence for a first-century dating of James’s epistle in
     “The Mission of James in His Time,”
The Brother of Jesus
, 88–99. Martin Dibelius disagrees with the first-century dating. He believes that
     the epistle is actually a hodgepodge of Jewish-Christian teachings that should be
     dated to the second century.