James the Brother of Jesus: The Key to Unlocking the Secrets of Early Christianity and the Dead Sea Scrolls

Rating:
Summary: sensationalistic biased nonsense
Review: If the Apostle Paul was the enemy of James and the Jerusalem community, as this book asserts, why would he encourage his converts to collect tithes for "the Saints in Jerusalem"? Why would he submit to James' authority on a number of decisions and why would the New Testament even mention this?
Paul died over 200 years before Christianity became the official religion of the Roman Empire. There was no way he could know that he would be cannonized as a saint hundreds of years later. Paul spent his last days in Roman chains and was executed by Rome. Eusebius and Clement both attest to this. He was hardly an agent of Rome as this book suggests.
The author is clearly a man with an agenda; to tear down something he doesn't like which is Christianity. The New Testament was written long before Christianity was "Romanized". The only way to understand it is to accept it for what it is instead of trying to rewrite it according to your own prejudices.

Rating:
Summary: "Poorly" argued
Review: Eisenman's favorite word in James, the Brother of Jesus "tendentious" is just what this argument is. Eisenman's basic assumption--a conspiracy theory that orthodox Christianity has subverted the message of its Founder(s)--is not very original. These founders, according to Eisenman, are Jesus' brothers, in particular, James the Just, who Eisenman connects to the Essene community of Qumran, site of the Dead Sea Scrolls. This Christianity of James is primarily Jewish, anti-imperialist, and focused on personal purity. Peter is a patsy, the other disciples either didn't exist or were someone else. Paul is a subverter of this message, a member of Herod's family, a Roman sell-out, even guilty of unjustly battering poor James. The only people to have visions of the risen Christ were James and his brothers-Paul has his own vision in order to gain the power to subvert their righteous rule. The original church, nationalistic and anti-Roman, is wiped out during the Jewish revolt of 66 CE, an uprising that starts because James falls victim to state terrorism. The remnant of the church, Paul's warped creation, survives to write anti-Jewish propaganda to please their Roman masters and hide the early prominence of Jesus' brothers, principle players in the revolt. In order to prove all this, Eisenman dispenses with the gospels entirely, and in doing so ignores a lot of serious criticism of groups like the Jesus Seminar, who claim the Gospels contain collections of authentic utterances of Jesus, collections of sayings and signs, and who are hardly the establishment scholars Eisenman seems anxious to offend. He focuses on scattered references to James in the New Testament, mostly the early Pauline letters. The rest of his "evidence" he gathers by resorting to a strange game of conflating names and words. As you read this book, note how frequently Eisenman resorts to this latter method of proving his argument. Pluck but one of Eisenman's basic assumptions--that many different names in widely scattered writings refer to the same person, for instance, and not several-and you quickly realize that Eisenman really has no "evidence," only a tendentious method. I found this an interesting read, if ultimately unconvincing, despite its attempt to sally in all directions, several times, during its1000 page trot. Eisenman's emphasis of the distance between the Epistles of James and Galations brought my attention back to those dichotomies, faith vs. works, freedom vs. obligation, and ultimately, I appreciated that.