James, the brother of Jesus, is described as one eating no animal food, and is specifically named as one of the apostles who were heirs to Jesus' authority in directing the early spiritual community in Jerusalem after the death of Jesus in Eusebius' Ecclesiastical History, an official history of the Catholic Church from the time of Jesus to Constantine.

"Control of the Church passed to the apostles, together with the Lord's brother James, whom everyone from the Lord's time till our own has called the Righteous, for there were many Jameses, but this one was holy from his birth; he drank no wine or intoxicating liquor and ate no animal food (emphasis mine); no razor came near his head; he did not smear himself with oil, and took no [public] baths.  He alone was permitted to enter the Holy Place, for his garments were not of wool, but of linen.  He used to enter the Sanctuary alone....Because of his unsurpassable righteousness he was called the Righteous...Bulwark of the People."  Pp. 99-100. Ecclesiastical History II. xxiii, Eusebius.  Translated by G.A. Williamson. Augsburg Publishing House, Minneapolis, Minnesota, 1953.

  Eating "no animal food" to us indicates not just a vegetarian diet, but a vegan diet, to which a number of Buddhists as well as Hindus adhere.  Like contemporary advocates of animals' rights, James wore linen, not leather or furs.  And later in Christian history the Albigensians, declared heretics by the Roman Catholic Church in the thirteenth century, accepted James and Jesus and their intimates as vegans, and themselves ate no flesh, eggs, or dairy products.
 

       According to Peter in the Pseudoclementine Homilies, Jesus prophesied the coming of the false prophet.  Peter obviously sees that person as Paul.  In the Pseudoclementine Homilies Peter's message at Tripoli defers to the authority of James, an authority given to him by Jesus, to arbitrate the correctness of those spreading the messages of Jesus.

   Here Peter is warning that Jesus prophesied that his message would be perverted.  How does Peter say the early followers of Jesus are to be guarded against such perversion?  To Peter, the hand-picked intimate disciple whom Jesus said was to be the rock, as well as to the early community of Jesus' followers, the answer was clear: by following the teachings of James, the brother of Jesus.

"Our Lord and Prophet, who has sent us, declared to us that the Evil One, having disputed with him forty days, but failing to prevail against him, promised He would send Apostles from among his subjects to deceive them.  Therefore, above all, remember to shun any Apostle, teacher, or prophet who does not accurately compare his teaching with [that of] James...the brother of my Lord...and this, even if he comes to you with recommendations." Pseudoclementine Homilies, 11. 35
 

   The Nag Hammadi "Gospel of Thomas" also portrays Jesus naming vegan James as the arbitrator of controversy after he is gone.  Jesus regards James as a genuine representative of divine values.  "The Disciples said to Jesus: `We know that you will depart from us. Who is it that shall be great over us [meaning after he is gone]?' Jesus replied to them: `In the place where you are to go [presumably Jerusalem], go to James the Just, for whose sake Heaven and Earth came into existence.'"  Nag Hammadi "Gospel of Thomas," Logion 12.
 

  When Paul says that he is going to see the saints in Jerusalem, and he describes his meeting with James, the brother of the Lord, in "Galatians," he obliquely acknowledges that a vegetarian is the head of the spiritual community there.  James is not named as a vegetarian by the NT writers, because that would undermine or defeat their purpose in portraying a Jesus who for the most part names all foods clean and therefore condones the meat industry.  James, however, is blatantly documented as a vegetarian by Eusebius in his Ecclesiastical History quoted above.  In his epistles Paul's ongoing arguments with the hand-picked apostles and disciples of Jesus reveals the early battle between the poor, the Ebionites, who were also the pure, who promoted vegetarianism and egalitarianism, and the Pauline elitists, those favoring Roman or orthodox Jewish ways, sexism, slavery, and hierarchical class structures.
 

   Epiphanius says of the "Ascents of Jacob" (James), a work in which the brother of Jesus argues on the Temple steps against the Jewish hierarchy defending animal sacrifices: "For they set forth certain Ascents and Instructions forsooth in the "Ascents of Jacob," representing him as holding forth against both Temple and sacrifices, and against the fire on the altar...so that they are not ashamed in them even to denounce Paul..." Panarion, xxx. 16.

    Jesus' hand-picked disciples saw Paul as an enemy of the truth, an apostate, who, like the false prophets of Judaism earlier and the false scribes of Islam later, turned from the true Way of vegetarianism and egalitarianism and instead created a carnivorous and elitist cult, which the Essenes, Ebionites, and Nazarenes regarded as demonic.

    A number of scholars have seen Paul variously as the antichrist himself and an agent of Rome. Robert Eisenman in his monumental work James the Brother of Jesus argues quite convincingly that in the Dead Sea Scrolls the Habakkuk Commentary's "spouter of lies" and "wicked priest" is Paul.  Baigent and Leigh in their Deception and the Dead Sea Scrolls state that Paul was a double agent, pretending conversion, yet working for Rome, and it is hard not to draw these conclusions when one understands that Paul affirms carnivorism, slavery, sexism, social elitism, and bigotry against homosexuals.  These vices are not at all in line with the Essenes' and with Jesus' teachings in the Ebionite Gospel of the Nazarenes, or, for that matter, with statements by Jesus in the New Testament itself.
 

   For Paul, the Romans are a deus ex machina, a force which comes to Paul's rescue when he is threatened by others desiring to kill him.  Paul's house arrest in Rome reminds one of Mafia dons living in luxury prison apartments in our own time.  Paul states that he paid for his apartment out of his own money, thereby asserting through his own words that he was nothing like the Ebionites (the word is derived from ebionim, Hebrew for the poor), who owned virtually nothing and shared everything communally.
 

   In his Ecclesiastical History Eusebius reports that it was a Rechabite friend who pleaded with those beating James to stop beating him, the brother of Jesus, to stop, thereby documenting the on-going connection between the earliest followers of Jesus and the vegetarian Rechabites. Rechabites lived only in tents or temporary dwellings and refused to invade the earth and disturb, oppress or destroy creatures living there. They did not drink wine, did not dig into the ground, and did not generally stay in city dwellings. Though some Rechabites worked when necessary, they were similar to the renunciates of India, and no doubt lived in or periodically withdrew into the wilderness to fast and pray and regain spiritual energy.

    The Rechabites may be likened to Esdras who, at the command of the angel Uriel, goes to live in a field of vegetation and flowers, where no human habitat has been built, so that the land has no experience of human exploitation such as digging into the earth, the home of other creatures.

    The works of Robert Eisenman and Matthew Black and others document the wilderness communities of the earliest, pre-Pauline Christians.

     A number of scholars have seen Paul variously as the antichrist himself and an agent of Rome.  Robert Eisenman in his monumental work documenting the Pauline distortion of Ebionite Christianity, James the Brother of Jesus, argues quite convincingly that in the Dead Sea Scrolls the Habakkuk Commentary's "spouter of lies" and "wicked priest" is Paul.  Baigent and Leigh in their Deception and the Dead Sea Scrolls state that Paul was a double agent, pretending conversion, yet working for Rome, and it is hard not to draw these conclusions when one compares Paul's affirmation of carnivorism, slavery, sexism, social elitism, and bigotry against homosexuals with the Essenes' and with Jesus' denunciation of these institutions in the Ebionite Gospel of the Nazarenes.