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Gal_1:19. But another of the apostles saw I not, save James the brother of the Lord. Thus this James is distinguished indeed from the circle of the twelve (1Co_15:5) to which Peter belonged, but yet is included in the number of the apostles, namely in the wider sense (comp. 1Co_15:7; 1Co_9:5); which explains the merely supplementary mention of this apostle. After εἰ μή we must supply not εἶδον merely (as Grotius, Fritzsche ad Matth. p. 482, Winer, Bleek in Stud. u. Krit. 1836, p. 1059, Wieseler), but, as the context requires, εἶδον τὸν ἀπόστολον .
ἕτερον is not qualitative here, as in Gal_1:6, but stands in contrast to the one who is named, Peter. In addition to the latter he saw not one more of the apostles, except only that he saw the apostle in the wider sense of the term
James the brother of the Lord (who indeed belonged to the church at Jerusalem as its president),—a fact which conscientiously he will not leave unmentioned.
On the point that James the brother of the Lord was not James the son of Alphaeus,—as, following Clemens Alex., Jerome, Augustine, Pelagius, Chrysostom, and Theodoret, most modern scholars, and among the expositors of the epistle Matthies, Usteri, Schott, Baumgarten-Crusius, Jatho, Hofmann, Reithmayr, maintain,—but a real brother of Jesus (Mat_13:35; Mar_6:3), the son of Mary, called James the Just (Heges. in Eus. ii. 23), who, having been a Nazarite from his birth, and having become a believer after the resurrection of Jesus (1Co_15:7; Act_1:14), attained to very high apostolic reputation among the Jewish Christians (Gal_2:9), and was the most influential presbyter of the church at Jerusalem,[37] see on Act_12:17; 1Co_9:5; Huther on Ep. of James, Introd. § 1; Laurent, neutest. Stud. p. 175 ff. By the more precise designation, τὸν ἀδελφὸν τοῦ κυρίου , he is distinguished not only from the elder James, the brother of John (Hofmann and others), but also from James the son of Alphaeus, who was one of the twelve. Comp. Victorinus, “cum autem fratrem dixit, apostolum negavit.” The whole figment of the identity of this James with the son of Alphaeus is a result of the unscriptural (Mat_1:25; Luk_2:7) although ecclesiastically orthodox (Form. Conc. p. 767) belief (extending beyond the birth of Christ) in the perpetual virginity of Mary. Comp. on Mat_12:46; 1Co_9:5. We may add that the statement, that Paul at this time saw only Peter and James at Jerusalem, is not at variance with the inexact expression τοὺς ἀποστόλους , Act_9:27, but is an authentic historical definition of it, of a more precise character.
[37] Wieseler also justly recognises here the actual brother of Jesus, but holds the James, who is named in Gal_2:9; Gal_2:12 (and Act_12:17; Act_15:13; Act_15:21; 1Co_15:7) as the head of the Jewish Christians, not to be identical with this brother of the Lord, but to be the apostle James the son of Alphaeus; affirming that it was the latter also who was called ὁ δίκαιος . See, however, on Gal_2:9. The Gospel of the Hebrews, in Jerome, Vir. ill. 2, puts James the Just among the apostles who partook of the last Supper with Jesus, but nevertheless represents him as a brother of the Lord, for it makes him to be addressed by the Risen One as “frater mi.” Wieseler, indeed, understands frater mi in a spiritual sense, as in Joh_20:17, Mat_28:10. But, just because the designation of a James as ἀδελφὸς τοῦ κυρίον is so solemn, this interpretation appears arbitrary; nor do we find that anywhere in the Gospels Jesus addressed the disciples as brethren.