Liturgy of James

A very ancient liturgy which is extant in Greek and Syriac. Early tradition ascribes it to James, Jesus' brother, mentioned in Matthew 27:56 and Galatians 1:19, etc. Tradition also makes him the first bishop of Jerusalem. Modern scholarship generally views the terminus a quo of its origin as a.d. 450, since this liturgy was used by both the Syrian Jacobites* and the main stream of orthodoxy after the Council of Chalcedon. The liturgy has some similarity to the one associated with Cyril, a fourth-century bishop of Jerusalem, and seems to contain a reference to the discovery of the “true cross” at Jerusalem in the fourth century.