StephenGoranson wrote: ↑Tue Jul 27, 2021 5:17 am
Those example are not all strictly "virtues."
There's--in later reports--the earlier high priest Simeon/Shimon/Simon the Just/ZDK.
Interestingly, in
The Perpetual Virginity of Blessed Mary/Against Helvidius, c. 383: Jerome uses the phrase "just Simeon". (In the Latin, is the equivalent of "Simeon the Just"?)
"...and when he [Joseph] had seen
just Simeon embrace the infant and exclaim, Now let your servant depart, O Lord, according to your word in peace: for my eyes have seen your salvation..."
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However, the phrase "James, the Just" does not appear, even though it might well have been appropriate to mention it somewhere in the vicinity of this discussion of the NT Jameses:
"Observe, Mary is the mother of James the Less and of Joses. And James is called the less to distinguish him from James the greater, who was the son of Zebedee...
No one doubts that there were two apostles called by the name James, James the son of Zebedee, and James the son of Alphæus. Do you intend the comparatively unknown James the Less, who is called in Scripture the son of Mary, not however of Mary the mother of our Lord, to be an apostle, or not? If he is an apostle, he must be the son of Alphæus and a believer in Jesus, For neither did his brethren believe in him. If he is not an apostle, but a third James (who he can be I cannot tell), how can he be regarded as the Lord's brother, and how, being a third, can he be called less to distinguish him from greater, when greater and less are used to denote the relations existing, not between three, but between two? Notice, moreover, that the Lord's brother is an apostle, since Paul says, Galatians 1:18-19 Then after three years I went up to Jerusalem to visit Cephas, and tarried with him fifteen days. But other of the Apostles saw I none, save James the Lord's brother. And in the same Epistle, Galatians 2:9 And when they perceived the grace that was given unto me, James and Cephas and John, who were reputed to be pillars, etc. And that you may not suppose this James to be the son of Zebedee, you have only to read the Acts of the Apostles, and you will find that the latter had already been slain by Herod. The only conclusion is that the Mary who is described as the mother of James the Less was the wife of Alphæus and sister of Mary the Lord's mother, the one who is called by John the Evangelist Mary of Clopas, whether after her father, or kindred, or for some other reason. But if you think they are two persons because elsewhere we read, Mary the mother of James the Less, and here, Mary of Clopas, you have still to learn that it is customary in Scripture for the same individual to bear different names."
https://www.newadvent.org/fathers/3007.htm
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All this talk of the NT Jameses by Jerome, and with a mention of "just Simeon" (the first mention?), but with no usage of the phrase "James the Just".
What is going on? I have my own hypothesis, but I doubt it will win support. Neverthess, here goes: I think Jerome found it embarrassing since "James the Just" was coined around the time of Gospel of Hebrews and gThomas to differentiate the ambiguous James of Mark 16:1 ("Mary of
the James", aka James, son of Alphaeus, the original "greater James", the original "James the Just") from the embarrassing James of Mark 15:40 ("Mary, mother of
the lesser James and Joses", i.e. the very same ones reputed to be the mother and
same womb brothers of Jesus in his hometown Mark 6:3). At this stage in Jeromes career, if he knew the phrase, "James the Just", as way of distinguishing between the son of Alpheus--the greater James-- and "the lesser James", the blood brother of Jesus, then he had reason to eliminate the phrase from his telling the story (In his version, the son of Alphaeus and James the Less are one and the same).