The disciples said to Jesus, We know that you will depart from us. Who is to be our leader? Jesus said to them, Wherever you are, you are to go to James the righteous, for whose sake heaven and earth came into being. (12)
Somehow this section was missing from the text of the translation I used in commenting, so it was missing from the first printing. Fortunately someone wrote asking about James the Just (in this translation called “the Righteous”). As a result I spent a good deal of time looking into the various historical accounts still used today in the Christian East regarding the three apostles named James: James the Great, James the Brother of the Lord and James the Just. What I found was much confusion. What was found in the life of one disciple was often found in that of another–or even of all three. Untangling this confusion is impossible, so I will not even attempt to say which James is being referred to here.
What is significant is Jesus’ advice to seek guidance from one of the Jameses and not Saint Peter whom the West calls “Prince of the Apostles” and claim was the head of the apostolic Church. It also reveals that no one can determine much of the character of Christianity in its primal days.
For this reason I go to The Aquarian Gospel of Jesus the Christ by Levi Dowling and the writings of Paramhansa Yogananda, especially The Second Coming of Christ, to find out what Jesus really did and taught.
Certainly in the Aquarian Gospel we find that Peter, James and John (the two sons of Zebedee, called “the Sons of Thunder” by Jesus) had a definite spiritual primacy in the sight of Jesus. On the night of his arrest, Jesus took Peter, James and John apart and spoke to them of many divine mysteries, saying at one point: “You, my three, who constitute the inner circle of the Church of Christ, will show to men the attributes of all the Gods. And Peter shall make known the Power of God; and James shall show the Thought of God; and John shall demonstrate the Love of God” (164:42-44).
Read the next section in The Gospel of Thomas for Yogis: The Unspeakable