(On the nearness of the fulfillment of prophecy)

James 5:7
"Be patient, therefore, brethren unto the coming of the Lord."

James 5:8
"Be ye also patient; stablish your hearts: for the coming of the Lord draweth nigh."

James 5:9
"Behold, the judge standeth before the door."



"Why do ye ask me concerning Jesus, the Son of Man ? He himself sitteth in heaven at the right hand of the great Power, and is about to come upon the clouds of heaven." (Eusebius' Ecclesiastical History - Chapter XXIII)

"Immediately after this [James' Execution] Vespasian began to besiege them." - Eusebius, The History of the Church 2,23

"James' martyrdom, says Hegesippus, was followed immediately by Vespasian's siege of Jerusalem (A.D. 70). Eusebius stresses that Hegesippus' account agrees basically with that of the Church Father Clement of Alexandria (2.23.3,19); hence it was apparently the standard Christian story." - John P. Meier, A Marginal Jew - Rethinking the Historical Jesus, Vol. 1.

"The entire 'siege of Jerusalem', he [Eusebius] says, meaning presumably the whole of the revolt in Judaea [66 C.E.], was a direct consequence of James's death - 'for no other reason than the wicked crime of which had been the victim'." - Baigent and Leigh, The Dead Sea Scrolls Deception

"These things happened to the Jews in requital for James the Righteous, who was a brother of Jesus known as Christ, for though he was the most righteous of men, the Jews put him to death." - Eusebius, The History of the Church 2, 23 quoting Josephus (in a passage no longer extant)



(On the date of James' martyrdom)
The date of the martyrdom of James, given here by Josephus, is 61 or 62 a.d. (at the time of the Passover, according to Hegesippus, §10, above). There is no reason for doubting this date which is given with such exactness by Josephus, and it is further confirmed by Eusebius in his Chron., who puts James's martyrdom in the seventh year of Nero, i.e. 61 a.d., while Jerome puts it in the eighth year of Nero. The Clementines and the Chronicon Paschale, which state that James survived Peter, and are therefore cited in support of a later date, are too late to be of any weight over against such an exact statement as that of Josephus, especially since Peter and James died at such a distance from one another. Hegesippus has been cited over and over again by historians as assigning the date of the martyrdom to 69 a.d., and as thus being in direct conflict with Josephus; as a consequence some follow his supposed date, others that of Josephus. But I can find no reason for asserting that Hegesippus assigns the martyrdom to 69. Certainly his words in this chapter, which are referred to, by no means necessitate such an assumption. He concludes his account with the words kai euquj Ouespasianoj poliorkei autouj. The poliorkei autouj is certainly to be referred to the commencement of the war (not to the siege of the city of Jerusalem, which was undertaken by Titus, not by Vespasian), i.e. to the year 67 a.d., and in such an account as this, in which the overthrow of the Jews is designedly presented in connection with the death of James, it is hyper-criticism to insist that the word euquj must indicate a space of time of only a few months' duration. It is a very indefinite word, and the most we can draw from Hegesippus' account is that not long before Vespasian's invasion of Judea, James was slain. The same may be said in regard to Eusebius' report in Bk. III. chap. 11, §1, which certainly is not definite enough to be cited as a contradiction of his express statement in his Chronicle. But however it may be with this report and that of Hegesippus, the date given by Josephus is undoubtedly to be accepted as correct. (Eusebius Footnote, #291)

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