HELP!! Manton Quote Concerning James

[N. Eshelman]

Can anyone help me to figure out why Thomas Manton says this about James the brother of Jesus:

"Of so great temperance, that he drank neither wine nor strong drink, and ate no flesh. So pious, that his knees were made like camel's hoof by frequent prayers." -Thomas Manton, James (Carlisle, PA: Banner of Truth, 1998), p.13.

Where on earth does Manton get any of this information??

No wine.
No strong drink.
No meat.
Calloused knees.

Huh??

 

[DMcFadden]

Can anyone help me to figure out why Thomas Manton says this about James the brother of Jesus:

"Of so great temperance, that he drank neither wine nor strong drink, and ate no flesh. So pious, that his knees were made like camel's hoof by frequent prayers." -Thomas Manton, James (Carlisle, PA: Banner of Truth, 1998), p.13.

Where on earth does Manton get any of this information??

No wine.
No strong drink.
No meat.
Calloused knees.

Huh??

James’s devotion to the law was underscored in later tradition. For example, according to Hegesippus (writing ca. 180 and as quoted by Eusebius, Hist. Eccl. II.23.4–18), “from his excessive righteousness he [James] was called the Just and Oblias, that is in Greek, ‘Rampart of the people and righteousness,’ as the prophets declare concerning him.” While the precise meaning of the attribution “Oblias” remains obscure (see Barrett 1953:15), it appears to witness to James’s role as a support, i.e. a pillar, among his people. Hegesippus also reports that James constantly prayed in the temple where he spent so much time on his knees that they became hard like a camel’s.

According to this same source, James was martyred at the hands of Scribes and Pharisees in Jerusalem by being cast down from a pinnacle of the temple and then stoned and clubbed to death. Josephus (Ant 20.200) had earlier and in less detail reported a similar tradition according to which the high priest Ananus accused James and “certain others” of having “transgressed the law” and delivered them up to be stoned. Both of these traditions place the death of James shortly before the destruction of Jerusalem in 70 C.E. The Hegesippus narrative says James was buried on the spot by the temple where he was killed.

The source of Hegesippus’s report was apparently an Ebionite Acts of the Apostles. This work is not preserved in its original form but is mostly incorporated into the pseudo-Clementine literature (i.e. the Clementine Recognitions and Homilies). The Ebionites’ veneration of their patron James the Just is also reflected in the Gospel of Thomas, an Egyptian compilation evidently dependent in part on a Jewish-Christian, probably Ebionite, source (Bruce, 1977:119). According to Saying 12: “The disciples said to Jesus, ‘We know that you are going to leave us: Who will be chief over us?’ Jesus said to them, ‘In the place to which you go, betake yourselves to James the Just, on whose behalf heaven and earth alike were made’.”

David Noel Freedman, vol. 3, The Anchor Yale Bible Dictionary (New York: Doubleday, 1996), 621.

 

[NaphtaliPress]

David King sent me the following on this: "Manton got this information about James from Eusebius' Ecclesiastical History, Book 2, Chapter twenty 23 (It is pious tradition), where Eusebius writes, "He drank neither wine nor fermented liquors, and abstained from animal food. A razor never came upon his head, he never anointed with oil, and never used a bath. His alone was to enter the sanctuary. He never wore woolen, but linen garments. He was in the habit of entering the temple alone, and was often found upon his bended knees, and interceding for the forgiveness of the people; so that his knees became as hard as camel's, in consequence of his habitual supplication and kneeling before God."