Greek Iakōbos (from Hebrew Yaakov, "Jacob"). One of the half-brothers of Jesus (Matthew 13:55, Mark 6:3), son of Mary and Joseph, older brother of Jude. During Jesus' earthly ministry he did not believe (John 7:5), but after the resurrection Jesus appeared to him personally (1 Corinthians 15:7) and James became a pillar of the Jerusalem church (Galatians 2:9). He presided at the Council of Jerusalem (Acts 15) when the question of Gentile inclusion was decided, and authored the epistle of James. Martyred around AD 62 when the high priest Ananus had him thrown from the pinnacle of the temple and clubbed to death — so well respected as a man of prayer that even non-Christian Jews called for his death to be avenged.
James bears the nickname "James the Just" in early Christian sources, and Hegesippus (2nd century) describes his knees as calloused "like a camel's" from constant prayer. His epistle — probably the earliest NT document, written in the 40s AD — reads like Proverbs in Greek: concrete, sharp, practical. The famous tension with Paul ("faith without works is dead," James 2) is not a contradiction but a complement. Paul is addressing Pharisaic legalists who think works earn salvation; James is addressing complacent professors who think faith can exist without fruit. Paul: you cannot earn salvation by works. James: real faith always produces works; a "faith" that doesn't is dead. Together they give the balanced biblical doctrine: saved by faith alone, but the faith that saves is never alone. James's distinctives: treatment of the tongue (chapter 3), care for widows and orphans (1:27), warnings to the rich (5:1-6), and a theology of suffering that produces perseverance (1:2-4). He is the Sermon on the Mount in epistle form.