But Josephus[38] gives an entirely different and much more credible narrative of the death of James, placing it about A.D. 62 or 63. He charges the Sadducees through the high priest Ananus with the death of James and adds: “Ananus, therefore, as being a person of this character, and thinking that he had a suitable opportunity, through Festus being dead, and Albinus still on his journey (to Judaea), assembles a Sanhedrin of judges; and he brought before it the brother of Jesus who is called Christ (his name was James) and some others, and delivered them to be stoned, on a charge of being transgressors of the law.” So he won a martyr’s crown. He was called “the Just.” He had accused the wicked rich of killing “the righteous one” (James 5:6). II To the Twelve Tribes Which Are of the Dispersion Simple Address The writer is wonderfully simple and direct in his greeting as compared with Paul in Romans 1:1-7, for instance. There is no principal verb, and the nominative absolute occurs with the infinitive, as is so common in the letters found in the papyri. Originally a word like “sends” may have been used also. But this short address is in perfect keeping with the business-like character of James and the pointed, pungent tone of the epistle. The Readers They are evidently not a local church. “The twelve tribes which are of the Dispersion” naturally refers to the Jews who are scattered in the Gentile world outside of Palestine. The technical term _diaspora_ occurs in only two other places in the New Testament (John 7:35; 1 Peter 1:1). In John the word has its usual significance. The Jewish leaders scoffed at Jesus as a failure in Palestine. Perhaps he meant to go and teach the Jews of the dispersion. The term “twelve tribes” in James merely means the Jews as a whole in the dispersion, for the tribes were not preserved in a distinctive way outside of Palestine. The “lost ten tribes” evidently had no significance for James. As a matter of fact, they are no more “lost” than Judah and Benjamin. The Jews of Palestine after the destruction of Jerusalem by the Romans were once more scattered abroad, as their ancestors had been twice before, to mingle as “Jews” in various parts of the world. Doubtless, modern Jews are simply a blend of all the twelve tribes. At the time when James wrote, the Jews were very numerous in all the great commercial centers of the world, such as Alexandria, Antioch, Babylon, Ephesus, Miletus, Pergamum, Rome, Thessalonica. But it is more than probable that James has in mind chiefly the Eastern dispersion in Babylonia and Mesopotamia, as Peter (1 Peter 1:1) addressed the Western dispersion.