Up until his big moment in Episode 2 of The Chosen Season 3, Little James has played an appropriately small role in The Chosen. With only a handful of lines in The Chosen Season 1, most viewers barely even took notice of him. In Season 2, The Chosen finally started giving James a little more depth through his interactions with the other disciples. With the premiere of Season 3, however, Little James has finally been given a moment to shine.
I’m looking forward to exploring James’ big moment. But in order to truly appreciate that moment, we need to take a step back and consider the challenges to adapting the Bible’s depiction of “Little James” (aka James the Lesser or James the Younger). Because the Bible describes a number of figures named “James,” the creators of The Chosen had to navigate some complicated interpretive questions in order to decide who exactly they were portraying. After they determined the identity of Little James, the creators also had to find a way to give him a distinct personality and function in their story – a tricky task, given how little the Bible says about him. We’ll explore both of these challenges below.
Jordan Walker Ross as Little James in The Chosen Season 3
Did Little James In The Bible Have A Disability
Luke 9:46-48
In the Bible, we come across the story of Little James in the book of Luke. This story is found in Luke 9:46-48 where Jesus’ disciples were arguing amongst themselves about who was the greatest. In response, Jesus called a little child to him and said, “Whoever welcomes this little child in my name welcomes me; and whoever welcomes me welcomes the one who sent me. For it is the one who is least among you all who is the greatest.”
Matthew 18:1-5
Another account of this incident can be found in the book of Matthew 18:1-5, where Jesus tells his disciples, “Truly I tell you, unless you change and become like little children, you will never enter the kingdom of heaven. Therefore, whoever takes the lowly position of this child is the greatest in the kingdom of heaven. And whoever welcomes one such child in my name welcomes me.”
Mark 9:33-37
In Mark 9:33-37, we see a similar story where Jesus asks his disciples what they were arguing about on the road. They remained silent because they had been arguing about who was the greatest. Jesus then sat down, called the Twelve, and said, “Anyone who wants to be first must be the very last, and the servant of all.” He then took a little child whom he placed among them and taking the child in his arms, he said to them, “Whoever welcomes one of these little children in my name welcomes me; and whoever welcomes me does not welcome me but the one who sent me.”
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Little James: Brother of Jesus? Cousin of Jesus? Or Someone Else?
The name “Little James” is derived from a single reference. During Jesus’ crucifixion, Mark offers this description:
There were also women looking on from a distance, among whom were Mary Magdalene, and Mary the mother of James the younger and of Joses, and Salome. (Mark 15:40, ESV)
The description “younger” has been understood by many as a reference to physical or spiritual stature instead of age. As a result, it’s been alternatively translated as “James the Lesser” or “Little James.”
Most biblical scholars distinguish this James from James the son of Zebedee and brother of John. Indeed, James the Lesser is most likely “lesser” in comparison to James the son of Zebedee. The comparison may be due to a difference in height or it may also be a reference to how the son of Zebedee was member of Jesus’ inner circle and was considered a greater figure in the early church.
Scholars disagree over whether we should distinguish Little James from Jesus’ brother. Paul mentions that Jesus had a brother named James while describing his own biography, noting:
Then after three years I went up to Jerusalem to visit Cephas and remained with him fifteen days. But I saw none of the other apostles except James the Lord’s brother. (Galatians 1:18-19, ESV)
On a surface level, this seems to suggest that Jesus had a brother named James. However, since the time of Jerome, one of the early church fathers, many Catholics have believed that Paul used the word “brother” in a looser sense and that it could actually be translated “cousin.” Jerome reached this conclusion by comparing the passage above that describes how Mary, the mother of Little James, was at the crucifixion with a similar passage in the Gospel of John:
…but standing by the cross of Jesus were his mother and his mother’s sister, Mary the wife of Clopas, and Mary Magdalene. (John 19:25, ESV)
By comparing these two passages, Jerome concluded that Mary, mother of Little James described in Mark 15:40 must have been the same Mary who is described as the sister of Jesus’ mother in John 19:25. If Mary, mother of Little James, was indeed the same person as Mary, Jesus’ aunt, that would make Jesus and Little James cousins. Of course, there are couple other possibilities:
- There could be 4 Marys at the cross: Mary (mother of Jesus), Mary (mother of James), Mary (aunt of Jesus), and Mary Magdalene
- If there are only 3 Marys (the mother of Jesus, the aunt of Jesus/mother of James, and Mary Magdalene), Jesus could have a cousin named James and a brother named James
Interpreters also have to figure out how Little James and James the brother/cousin of Jesus are related to:
- James, the son of Alphaeus, who is listed among the 12 apostles (Matthew 10:1-4)
- James the Just, who plays an important role in the early church (e.g., Acts 15), and
- James, the servant of Jesus, the writer of the Epistle of James (James 1:1)
The traditional Catholic view identifies all of these figures as a single person (i.e., Little James = James, cousin of Jesus = James, the son of Alphaeus = James the Just, bishop of Jerusalem = the author of the Epistle of James), while still distinguishing that person from James the son of Zebedee. There are a variety of other views among Protestants (and some Catholics), but it’s common to distinguish between 3 different people named James:
- James the son of Zebedee
- James the Just, the half-blood brother of Jesus, key leader in the early church & writer of the Epistle of James
- Little James, the son of Alphaeus and one of the Twelve Apostles
So far, it seems like this is the direction The Chosen is going. We haven’t seen any sign that Jesus and Little James are related, either as brothers or cousins. If they were related, we would expect Jesus to mention it, especially given how he often mentions that John the Baptist is his cousin. Episode 2 hinted that Jesus is going to Nazareth soon, so we’ll probably get a clearer picture of his family situation in the near future.
Little James in The Chosen
Little James, Disability, & the Power of Weakness
The problem with distinguishing Little James from James, the brother of Jesus, is that it leaves us with very little biblical information about who Little James was or what he accomplished. All we can say, based on Scripture, is that Little James was an Apostle and that he was younger or of less stature than James the son of Zebedee.
This is a problem from the perspective of adaptation. In a literary biography like the Gospels, it’s easy enough to mention James briefly in a list of the Apostles without giving us any other details about who he was or what he did. But in an ongoing television series, viewers expect recurring characters to have a distinct personality and serve a clear function. So how do you adapt a character who is a total cypher in the original source material?
Instead of treating the lack of biblical information about Little James as a problem, The Chosen takes this as a cue for understanding his personality. In The Chosen, Little James is meek and soft-spoken – the kind of person who doesn’t draw a lot of attention to himself. This fits perfectly with how little attention is drawn to him in Scripture. If the historical Little James was anything like the character who is portrayed in The Chosen, it’s not hard to understand why he wouldn’t show up very often in biblical stories. Even if he was present at important moments or if he performed powerful miracles, he doesn’t seem like the kind of person who would make a big deal about it. He’d be content to minister faithfully in obscurity.
The meekness and humility of Little James is embodied concretely in his physical disability. People with disabilities have always had a difficult life. Even today, after years of advocacy, it’s still easy for members of the disabled community to be overlooked and underestimated. In Jesus’ day, people with disabilities got even less attention and respect, often being relegated to a life of begging and exclusion. Even in Scripture itself, people with disabilities are expressly forbidden from serving in certain capacities (e.g., Leviticus 21:16-21). We don’t get to spend a lot of screen time with Little James, but it’s not hard for us to imagine how his status as a marginalized member of society would make him less outspoken and confident than one of the other apostles like Simon or John.
Too often churches equate leadership with strength, extraversion, charisma, and social dominance. As a result, Christians who are meek and soft-spoken can feel like they are unable to contribute to God’s work in a meaningful way. The character of Little James functions as a stand in for all those among us who are overlooked and under-appreciated because of these dynamics. During their conversation in Episode 2 of The Chosen Season 3, Jesus lets Little James (and those of us who are like him) know that he is seen and appreciated by God – even if he lacks the qualities that are most easily seen and appreciated among men. More importantly, Jesus helps James see how his weakness in the eyes of the world can actually end up magnifying God’s goodness. It’s easy to say God is good when he heals us. To be able to say that God is good, even when he doesn’t heal us, is an even more powerful testimony.
[Side Note: For the most part, in this post I’m focused on how the character of Little James functions in The Chosen as a finished show. I’m more interested in questions like: “What purpose does Little James serve in the show?” and “How does the disability of Little James affect the meaning/significance of his character?” and so I haven’t really delved into the background of Jordan Walker Ross, the actor who portrays Little James, and the part that he played in shaping the character. However, it is worth noting that Jordan Walker Ross has a disability in real life. In fact, based on interviews that Jordan has given, it appears that the creators of the show originally didn’t conceive of the character of Little James as a person with a disability. After Jordan was cast and it became apparent that hiding his disability wasn’t a viable option, the creators of the show decided to incorporate his disability into the character of Little James. It’s an interesting example of how an adaptation is not the product of a single mind (e.g., Dallas Jenkins) but is instead shaped by a number of collaborators and influences. Jordan’s story is really worth listening to and I encourage you to check out some of the interviews he’s given about the show, like the one below.]
Several people have asked me whether the scene between Little James and Jesus is in the Bible. As I’ve already noted, the Bible tells us hardly anything about Little James, and it certainly doesn’t give us anything like this scene. That being said, there are biblical parallels for this scene that I suspect the creators of The Chosen were drawing on. In particular, I’m thinking of the famous passage Paul writes about his own weakness:
So to keep me from becoming conceited because of the surpassing greatness of the revelations, a thorn was given me in the flesh, a messenger of Satan to harass me, to keep me from becoming conceited. Three times I pleaded with the Lord about this, that it should leave me. But he said to me, “My grace is sufficient for you, for my power is made perfect in weakness.” Therefore I will boast all the more gladly of my weaknesses, so that the power of Christ may rest upon me. For the sake of Christ, then, I am content with weaknesses, insults, hardships, persecutions, and calamities. For when I am weak, then I am strong. (2 Corinthians 12:7-10, ESV)
God’s strength isn’t perfected in the power and ability of those who are esteemed in the eyes of the world. Rather, it is most clearly and completely on display in those who, like Little James and the Apostle Paul, are weak, marginalized, and looked down on by the world but who nevertheless can proclaim the goodness of God’s grace. That’s a powerful message – and one that I hope Little James, in his small but significant role in The Chosen, will be able to communicate to thousands of meek and marginalized viewers who struggle to understand the purpose behind why they suffer or are overlooked by others.
Who in the Bible had a disability?
“Zacchaeus was a wee little man, and a wee little man was he.” I remember, as many Christians do, regularly singing these lines when I too was a wee little man. Though, of course, the reality of my wee-ness is fundamentally different from Zacchaeus’s. I grew to become 6 foot 4—maybe a little too tall for England—but physical growth was not part of Zacchaeus’s fate.
Zacchaeus is one of a long list of disabled people in the Bible. The list is longer than we usually think. For some, the biblical authors have given us their names, like Paul, Bartimaeus, Jacob, or Mephibosheth. For the most, we only know them by their disability; like the slave-girl in Philippi who has a Pythian spirit, or the man born blind in John 9. Some stories of disabled people in the Bible contain a healing, but many do not.
Let’s think a little about disability and Bible.
Physiognomy
It is and has been common to associate someone’s appearance with their character. I often hear a phrase like “they have an honest face.” This is very peculiar if you think about it. How can a face be honest? Or people call certain activities “lowbrow,” meaning they are uncultured or uncivilized. In the ancient and not so ancient world, there was an entire field of study dedicated to deriving inner qualities from physical characteristics: physiognomics. It was, basically, nothing more than making a pseudo-science of judging books by their covers.
The Bible is no different. Why is it important that Saul and David were beautiful? Why is the bad king Eglon fat? Why else couldn’t people with “blemishes” become priests and take part in the services of the temple? What led the disciples to assume that the blind man was a sinner or, at the very least, that his parents were?
Did judging books by their covers influence how people saw Zacchaeus? I think it did. The story shows how stigmatized Zacchaeus was from the very beginning. He is introduced as a chief tax collector and a rich man. Luke regularly groups tax collectors with sinners and definitely does not like the rich! Right after that he is called short in stature, so short that he can’t even see over a crowd! For any ancient audience, there is no doubt. This man is clearly a sinner.
What Is Disability?
Scholars of disability have pointed out that there are different ways of looking at it. On the one side, we can look at disability from a medical point of view. This places disability within the individual. The individual is then responsible for “solving” their disability, with medication, prostheses, assistance, or whatever. In this way of looking at people, the problem lies in the body of a person and the solution is up to them.
From within the disabled community, a different way of looking at disability arose, what we call the social model. Disabled people pointed out that the problem was not their bodies but rather the expectations society had of their bodies. A wheelchair user can easily get around, as long as we don’t insist that everyone should be able to climb stairs. A Deaf person can easily communicate, as long as we don’t insist on only speaking. From this point of view, it is society that is disabling people, not their bodies.
With these models in mind, the first thing that we could think about is Zacchaeus’s inability to see Jesus. If we think of disability as purely an individual situation, then Zacchaeus does exactly what we expect from disabled people. Their problem lies in their body, and Zacchaeus just needs to get taller. Either he must climb trees or carry a stepladder around, that way he can be just as tall as the rest.
But if we think slightly more carefully from the experience of disabled people, what is the actual reason Zacchaeus could not see Jesus? The obvious answer is because he was too small, but this answer falls woefully short. Zacchaeus couldn’t see Jesus, and I am quoting Luke here, “on account of the crowd” (Luke 19:3). Maybe I’m reading a little too much into it, but to me it looks like Luke doesn’t think it’s Zacchaeus’s problem that he cannot see. Luke blames the crowd. They could have stepped aside, made a little room, and let Zacchaeus stand at the front.
Now we can see what the social model does—it highlights our biases. Much of society is “ableist.” That means it expects everyone to be able-bodied in the same way, and people who cannot live up to that norm are marginalized. Yet reality is that almost everyone is not able-bodied, at least not all the time! Luke’s story of Zacchaeus is another in his long list of stories that are concerned about the outcast, the marginalized.
Ableism and the Bible
This thinking about ableism and disability has fundamentally shifted how many people read certain Bible texts. Firstly, we need to honestly admit that in some places the authors of the Bible repeat ableist language and stigmas—just like they repeat racist, sexist, or patriarchal language. Take for example blindness. Very often the Bible calls people who cannot understand difficult teachings or who are stubborn in their ways “blind,” leading more than 500,000 hits for “spiritual blindness” on Google.
In other places, the Bible challenges our ableism, asking us to think differently about our own bodies. Let me give a simple example from a book on disability and the Bible. Jesus has famous words about removing your eyes if they cause you to sin (Mark 9:43–48). At first glance, this is the time-old story of disability being somehow worse, of disability being undesirable. Sin is so bad that disabling yourself is better. It would be better to be blind than to desire another person.
But on closer examination, there is more going on here. We know that often in the Bible disability is seen as a punishment for sin. Yet Jesus here is saying that sin can be avoided through disability. Indeed, it is the able-bodied, seeing person who is led astray. The disabled blind person is safe. Disability here is not the mark of sinfulness but rather a preventative cure.
The Disabled Jesus
Disability might be much more than simply a cure; it might be at the core of the gospel. Paul’s famous thorn in his flesh springs to mind here (2 Corinthians 12:7–10). Paul tells the Corinthians that he is tormented by this thorn: his body is in pain. He remembers that he begged God three times to heal him, and three times God refused. God’s justification is simple. “Power is perfected in weakness.” The word the Bible has here literally means something like “un-strength.” The link to our word “dis-abled” is rather obvious.
“Power is perfected in disability,” Paul writes, “and whenever I am disabled, I am strong.” This statement is paradoxical to say the least. At the same time, it is key to all of Paul’s theology and his understanding of Jesus’s sacrifice. God’s absolute power was perfected in ultimate weakness: the cross.
Paul readily admits how problematic Jesus’s death on the cross was; it is a scandal and absolute madness. The savior of the world should not die on a cross. The cross is an ultimate example of disability, both from a medical and a social viewpoint: Jesus was completely unable to do anything and was completely stigmatized by society. Yet it is this symbol and this action that stands at the center of Paul’s faith. His view of the cross is one where disability conquers. And just as Jesus’s disability opens up the possibilities of salvation and a new world, Paul’s disability allows him to share in Christ’s suffering and atonement.
Jesus’s death and—remember he still carries the scars—permanent disfigurement reminds us that Christians need to think differently about ability and disability. Though disability often marginalizes people, it is at the absolute core of the gospel. Jesus’s death and Paul’s theology move disability from the margins of society to the center of Christianity. To summarize, I don’t think I could say it any better than my friend Isaac Soon does:
“Paul’s paradox of power in weakness puts disability right where it belongs. Disability isn’t at the margins. It’s not liminal. It doesn’t dwell in the interstitial spaces. It is at the center. It brings everything together. To remove disability from Christ was to remove the scandal of the cross, and while his pagan interlocutors would no doubt have found this paradox to be nonsense—a world turned upside down—for Paul the role of God’s power in weakness was a sign that the world had been finally turned right-side up.”