Walking into any building built in the 1200’s can blow your mind. When that building is a cathedral, it tends to blow your mind even farther. Imagining the people who have walked through those doors over the decades, no, centuries, no, millennia (!) makes you realize that you become just one of a long line of people, a very long line of people, who have come to encounter God in some way in that place.

Last year when I walked into the Santiago de Compostela Cathedral, I walked it as a tourist. This year, I entered it as a pilgrim. I carved out two days after my Camino de Santiago to find the collective wisdom of that place. I wanted to know two things. One, what was the oldest document they had on how one of Jesus’ disciples (St. James) got to end up in Northwest Spain? The second was to read whatever commentaries people had on the book of James, figuring that over 1200 years, this would have been a magnet for Jacobean studies, the study of St. James.

Well, on the first count they showed me a reproduction of the Codex Calixtinus, a document that dates to the year 1000 or so. And they brought out three books that translated the document into English (from Latin). There I read about the rather fantastic way they say St. James got there. It was most interesting, if not compelling. This is a book which is a 1470’s copy of a now lost original work from 1070 or so, describing events that happened in the year 70 or so. The oldest document we have about an event that happened in 70 AD is 1400 years after the fact. Remember that.

Secondly, I asked for commentaries on the Book of James. I expected to be walked into stacks of ancient books, written by monks for at least 500 years. When I asked about the commentaries, the librarian looked at me kind of funny and asked, “What is a commentary?”  I was in the library of the Cathedral of St. James! After half an hour he came back and suggested that I go the theological library of the Monastery next door, another mind-blowing old building not unlike the Cathedral. There I got special entrance, got to speak to the librarian of the theological library, and she too didn’t know what a commentary was. When she figured it out, we went into the stacks, and found one, can I say it again–ONE, commentary on the Book of James. I have three in my office.

I was disappointed on so many fronts. The only other patron of the library was trying to figure out when the Cathedral went from cash accounting to accrual accounting. They brought him book after book, I wanted a book about the Bible, and they had none. John Wesley said, “I am a man of one book.”  He wasn’t. He was well read. But he wanted to make the point that he was truly devoted to the Word of God. And we fall into that tradition.

And that Book? Do you know that the oldest document that we have of the Old Testament is from the Book of John, and it dates to the year 100 AD or so? That is 70 years after Jesus died, and 20 years after the original would have been written. And the number of documents that followed that grows exponentially.

The document I read, which supposedly chronicled what happened to the body of St. James, had a span of 1400 years between the event and the actual writing. For the Bible, the time span is 70 years. Just on a literary science basis, I will question the prior and put my faith in the latter. I will trust the story of Jesus, put my faith in Him and the order of my life in what He said. On whether St. James is buried in Santiago de Compostela or not? Not so much.

I wish the libraries of Santiago had that same emphasis. We truly are people of “one Book.”  Today we’re going to spend some time in James Chapter 2. I’m glad you’re here!

Glad to be here too,

Craig

Keep this Book of the Law always on your lips; meditate on it day and night, so that you may be

careful to do everything written in it. Then you will be prosperous and successful. Joshua 1:8 (NIV)