First Apocalypse of James
The First Apocalypse of James is a late second century Gnostic apocalypse. Contents. The form of the text is primarily that of a Revelation Dialogue/Discourse between James the brother of Jesus (James the Just) and Jesus, with a rather fragmentary account of the departure (possibly meaning martyrdom) of James appended to the bottom of the manuscript, connected to the remainder by an oblique reference to crucifixion. The first portion of the text describes James' understandable concern about being crucified, whereas the latter portion describes secret "passwords" given to James so that he can ascend to  the highest heaven (out of 72) after dying, without being blocked by evil "powers" of the demiurge. In the text, Jesus tells James, "you are not my brother materially." Manuscripts. The "First Apocalypse of James" is regarded as part of the New Testament apocrypha. Nag Hammadi. It was first discovered amongst 52 other Gnostic Christian texts spread over 13 codices by an Arab peasant, Mohammad Ali al-Samman, in the Egyptian town of Nag Hammadi late in December 1945. The Nag Hammadi Coptic manuscript is remarkably well preserved for its age; it was reported that the cache of texts called  the "Nag Hammadi library", when originally found, were sealed within a large terra cotta vessel. They were secreted during the fourth century, in an effort to hide the texts from destruction by others. Codex Tchacos. Another copy has more recently been found in the Codex Tchacos, where it is merely titled 'James'. Those texts were in the Coptic language. Oxyrhynchus. In 2017, the first Greek copy was found (the work was originally written in Greek) amongst unpublished Oxyrhynchus Papyri housed at Oxford University. The first-known Greek copy of the text was discovered in 2017 at Oxford University by Geoffrey  Smith and Brent Landau, religious studies scholars at the University of Texas at Austin. The fragments date from the fifth or sixth century and were probably a teacher's model used to help students learn to read and write. The fragments will be published in the Oxyrhynchus compilation "The Greco-Roman Memoirs".