It appears jar files in an ear which are not in the <ear>/lib directory and are not an ejb jar file referenced from application.xml have no access to  javax.* classes.  It does not matter if the jar file is referenced by a MANIFEST.MF entry from the ejb jar file or not.  A java.lang.NoClassDefFoundError is raised when trying to access any javax.* classes in these jars.  Is this a JBoss 7.0.2 bug? 

MainEar.ear (META-INF/application .xml references MainBusinessLogic.jar as an ejb jar)

    MainBusinessLogic.jar (Has full visibility to javax.* classes)

    utilities.jar  (Referenced from MainBusinessLogic.jar in its MANIFEST.MF has no javax.* runtime visibility)

utilities.jar has no access to javax.*.  This seems to be a bug.