James the Brother of Jesus and the Dead Sea Scrolls I (103 page)

We now can see where perhaps some of these criss-crosses between ‘
James the son of Alphaeus
’ and Matthew as ‘
Levi the son of Alphaeus
’ may have come from. Clearly we have a large measure of garbling and overlap here, but, whatever else these correspondences may imply, it is clear that as early as Hippolytus’ time – Second–Third Century CE – many of these doctrines, ‘Gnostic’ or otherwise, were being ascribed to ‘James the brother of the Lord’.

One should also note that in addition to teaching that ‘the Christ’ descended on Jesus in the form of a dove, Cerinthus is said to have taught that ‘Jesus was
not born of a virgin
, but he sprang from Joseph and Mary similar to
the rest of men
’, whom he only ‘
exceeded in Righteousness
, wisdom, and understanding’.
19
These are the doctrines, of course, that Eusebius, a century after Hippolytus, is ascribing to the ‘
Ebionites
’ not Cerinthus. According to Hippolytus, these Ebionites not only saw Christ in the manner of Cerinthus, but ‘live in all respects according to the Law of Moses, insisting that one could only be justified – that is, ‘made Righteous’ – in such a manner’.
20

For Hippolytus, too, Cerinthus is already teaching the doctrine that ‘Christ’ did not suffer on the cross, but departed from Jesus at that moment. This reappears in slightly more developed form in the Gnostic texts at Nag Hammadi and, from there, the Koran.
27
For some of these ‘Gnostics’, it was rather Simon of Cyrene, who carried the cross in Gospel accounts, who thus suffered (one should always watch this usage, ‘
Simon of Cyrene
’ because it may be that we have another mix-up with ‘
Simeon bar Cleophas
’, who actually
was crucified
). For Hippolytus, the Elchasaites, whom we have already met, have the same doctrine. For them ‘the Christ’, who is superior to the rest, is transfused into many bodies frequently and was now in Jesus … likewise this Jesus afterwards was continually being transfused into bodies and was manifested in many at different times.
22

This doctrine is, of course, simply that of Shi‘ite or ‘
Imam
ate’ Islam, only now, instead of ‘
the Christ
’, the Supernatural incarnationist figure is called ‘
the Imam
’ and considered to be ’Ali, Muhammad’s ‘first cousin’/‘son-in-law’/and ‘legitimate Successor’. Again, this term in Arabic bears some relationship to ‘
the Standing One
’ doctrine –
for other groups, as we have seen, ‘
the Primal
’ or ‘
Perfect Adam
’ –
not only in kind, but because it actually derives from and means ‘
the One Standing before
’.

The Elchasaites follow a teacher called ‘
Elchasai
’ – a name Hippolytus thinks translates as ‘Righteous One’; for others, such as Epiphanius, as we saw, it is ‘Great’ or ‘Hidden Power’. He is a contemporary in some respects to our Simeon bar Cleophas above – if the reports about Simeon’s extreme longevity can be believed. These ‘Elchasaites’ are virtually indistinguishable from another group Epiphanius is later calling the ‘Sampsaeans’, another probable corruption or variation of the Syriac/Islamic ‘Sabaeans’ or ‘Masbuthaeans’, that is, Daily Bathers.

For Hippolytus, ‘Elchasai’ came in the third year of Trajan’s reign (101 CE), the period of the latter’s difficulties in the East with Parthia and the time both Eusebius and Epiphanius equate with Simeon bar Cleophas’ martyrdom. It is also the time of Messianic unrest, as we have seen, in Egypt and North Africa under ‘Andrew’ or ‘Andreas of Cyrene’. A book ascribed to ‘
Elchasai
’ was apparently brought to Rome during the second year of Hadrian’s reign (119 CE). This book included the important reference to ‘the Standing One’, already encountered above in the Pseudoclementines. There purportedly it was also a revelatory Angel ‘standing’ some ‘ninety-six miles high’ (in competing accounts this is the risen Christ), whose feet were approximately fourteen miles long!
23

The height of ‘ninety-six’ here, manifestly, is nothing but the number of years Epiphanius – two centuries later – considers to be
James’ age
when he died. ‘Elchasai’, for Epiphanius, is ‘a false prophet’. He joined the Ebionites, who it would appear – according to him – were already extant and no different from the ‘Sampsaeans’, ‘Essenes’, and the ‘Elchasaites’, again tying all these groups together. (In fact, for Epiphanius, who amid all the confusion and fantasy sometimes has extremely good, factual material, the ‘Elchasaites’ and ‘Sampsaeans’ – at least in ‘Arabia’ and ‘Perea’ – are equivalent.) These all taught the doctrine that ‘Christ’ and ‘Adam’ (‘Man’) were the same thing. As he puts it, ‘the Spirit, which is Christ’ put on ‘Adam’s body’ or ‘him who is called Jesus’.
24

For Hippolytus, ‘
Elchasai
’ received this doctrine from a group in Northern Mesopotamia or Persia called ‘the
Sobiai
’, clearly ‘the
Sabaeans
’ or ‘Daily Bathers’ we have already encountered in Islam – but these now in
the First or Second Century CE
. Elsewhere in Hippolytus, it is clear this area is not far from ‘the country of the
Adiabeni
’, whom we shall now presently meet in the story of the conversion to Judaism or ‘Christianity’ of Queen Helen of Adiabene. It is also clear that these Mesopotamian ‘
Subba
‘’ or ‘
Sabaeans
’ are no different really from Hippolytus’ and Josephus’ ‘Essenes’, the name simply being expressed in a different linguistic framework.

Conclusions as to James the son of Alphaeus, Simon the Zealot, and Judas the Brother of James

We are now getting to the point where we can draw some conclusions about these various overlaps, substitutions, and changes in Gospel lists where those called ‘Apostles’ are concerned. It is clear that the ‘James the son of Alphaeus, Simon the Zealot, and Judas (the brother) of James’ – also called in Greco-Syriac tradition ‘Judas
Zelotes
’, that is, ‘Judas the Zealot’ – are obviously those being reckoned in the picture of the Synoptic Gospels as ‘the brothers of Jesus’ and that, therefore, ‘Alphaeus’ and ‘Cleophas’ (or ‘Clopas’) must be identical. The same as far as the term ‘
Lebbaeus
’ is concerned, which also may be a variation of another term we have seen applied to James, ‘
Oblias
’.

But one can go further. If one takes into account the witnesses to the execution and resurrection of Jesus – or, depending on the account, the empty tomb – it becomes quite clear that purposeful obfuscation or garbling of traditions is going on. Still, ‘Mary the mother of James and Joses and the mother of the sons of Zebedee’ in Matthew 27:56 and ‘
Mary the mother of James the less and of Joses and Salome
’ in Mark 15:40 and ‘Mary the mother of James’ in Luke 24:10 are all, simply,
Mary the mother of Jesus
. I think we can take this as a
first
conclusion.

In the Book of Acts, after ‘
James the brother of John
’ has conveniently been disposed of and the
real
James introduced, the ‘Mary the mother of John Mark’, to whose house Peter goes after escaping from prison to leave a message for ‘
James and to the brothers
’ (12:12), is none other than this
same
Mary – either ‘Mary the mother of Jesus’ or ‘Mary the mother of James’, despite obfuscations stemming from Mary being ‘
a life-long virgin
’ or James being
the son of Joseph by a previous wife
. In any event, this is precisely what she is called in Mark 16:1 and Luke 24:10.

‘
James the Less
’ is hardly James the less (Mk 15:40). Rather,
he is James the Great
– James
the Just
– the victim of more obfuscation, in this instance aimed at ‘
belittling
’ him – literally. The same for ‘
James the son of Alphaeus’
. ‘
Mary the sister
’ of Jesus’ mother ‘
and the wife of Clopas’
in John 19:25 is, once again, simply James’ or Jesus’ mother Mary – if Jesus had a mother called Mary or if Mary had a son called Jesus (John doesn’t know either point) – it being normally absurd for someone to have the same name as her own sister. Thus, the proliferation of all these Mary’s diminishes.

‘
Cleopas
’ and ‘
Alphaeus
’ are simply Jesus’ father Joseph or, as the case may be, ‘
Clopas
’ or ‘
Cleophas
’ – ideological attempts to dissociate Jesus from his forebears notwithstanding. Garblings or mix-ups such as these might strike the Western ear as surprising, until the nature of oral tradition is understood. For instance, in the Middle East, the old Greek Constantinople has become, via the shortening ‘
Stanbul
’, today’s ‘
Istanbul
’. A city like Nablus on the West Bank of Palestine comes out of the Greek ‘
Neopolis
’, there being, for instance, no letter equivalent to ‘p’ in the Arabic alphabet. Even the romantic and seemingly melodious name ‘
Andalusia
’ for Spain comes via the Arabic from the less pleasing one ‘
Vandals
’, that is, in Arabic, ‘
al-Andals’
/‘
the
Andals’, who sacked Rome in the Fourth Century and came via Spain to Tunisia in North Africa – where the Arabs first encountered them.

This raises the question of whether Jesus’ father was ever really called ‘Joseph’ at all except via literary re-creation. The Gospel of John, once again, implies something of this tangle, when Philip tells the Disciple it calls ‘Nathanael’ – either Bartholomew or our old friend, ‘James the Less’ again, in the Synoptics and, in our view, James – at almost the first breath, that ‘Andrew’ and ‘Peter’ ‘have found the one written of by Moses in the Law and the Prophets, “Jesus the son of Joseph from Nazareth”’ (1:46). But if we take this statement at face value, there is, plainly, no ‘Jesus the son of Joseph from Nazareth’ written about in either the Mosaic Law (the five Books of Moses) or the Prophets.

At this point, too, John is anxious to mask the true thrust of the ‘Nazoraean’ terminology, which, as we have been discovering, means ‘Keeper’ – either ‘Keeper of the Law’ or ‘Keeper of the Secrets’ – transforming it into ‘Nazareth’. Either this, or perhaps it relates to the ‘Nazrene’/‘Nazirite’ usage, not to mention the ‘Cana’/‘Cananite’/‘Cananaean’ terminologies. There is, however, the biblical ‘Joshua the son of Nun’, of the Tribe of Ephraim, a ‘son of Joseph’. It is passages of this kind in ‘the Law of Moses’ that John appears to be evoking. To put this in the shortest manner possible, the biblical ‘Joshua’, the individual upon whom Jesus is typed – Jesus being the closest Greek homophone to the name ‘
Joshua
’ or ‘
Yeshu‘a
’ in Hebrew, which literally does mean ‘
save
’ or ‘
Saviour
’ – really
was
a true ‘
son of Joseph’
through Ephraim. This does not mean that the actual ‘Jesus’ of history
was
.

In addition, because of overlaps in the biblical text between the Books of Joshua and Judges, there is another twist to the relationship of this name ‘
Jesus
’ to ‘
Joshua
’. Joshua, who is pictured as having died at the end of the Book by his name (24:29) as well as in the first line of the next book Judges (1:1), is then depicted as being alive again and giving his final instructions to the tribes in Judges 2:6. Of course modern exegetes understand this as being a problem of composite sources; but here we have a scenario in that some over-zealous ancient biblical exegete might have interpreted in terms of a dead-alive ‘
Joshua
’ or ‘
Jesus
’ in these biblical books too – ‘
Joshua
’ and ‘
Jesus
’ being cognates.

In addition, in Jewish tradition or folklore, two Messiahs are often pictured, a ‘
Messiah ben Judah
’ and a ‘
Messiah of Israel
’, matching the dual nature of the Southern and Northern Kingdoms. The Northern Kingdom was, in effect, the Kingdom of the descendants of Joseph, these being the most numerous and the principal tribe there. This was of course the tribe of Ephraim, Joshua’s tribe. Therefore in Talmudic allusion, the latter is often dubbed the ‘
Messiah ben Joseph
’, that is, the ‘
Messiah the son of Joseph
’.

The story of Jesus’ birth parentage may, in fact, be no more complex than this. These kinds of matters are perhaps also reflected to some extent in the Qumran notion of a dual or two Messiahs, if such a notion, in fact, exists at Qumran, which is questionable. The evidence is unclear and depends on the meaning of usages that may be idiomatic. All the same, the issue has to do with a priestly or a lay Messiah, as it does in Hebrews, or a combination of both, and has very little relevance to the question of Jesus’ parentage, whether real or simply formulary.

The ‘Papias’ Fragment and Conclusions as to Jesus and Joses

However, there is a passage from the early Church father Papias (
c.
60–135 CE) from Hierapolis in Asia Minor, a contemporary of the younger Pliny, that can help us tie all these passages together and resolve these difficulties. Papias is perhaps the oldest Church father, aside from Clement of Rome (
c.
30–97) and Ignatius (c. 50–115), his older contemporary. Irenaeus (
c.
130–200) calls Papias a friend of Polycarp (69–156) and a hearer of John, meaning the John of Ephesus to whom the Gospel is attributed.

It is to Papias that Eusebius owes the information that Mark, who never saw the Lord, but who was called in 1 Peter 5:13 Peter’s ‘son’, was Peter’s associate and disciple overseas – probably in Rome – and that ‘Matthew put together the oracles in the Hebrew language, and each interpreted them as best he could’.
25

This last is very important information, because it gives us a certain insight into the manner in which the Scriptures were put together – in the first place, by culling biblical Scripture for the prophecies and passages relevant to Messianism. Some call these ‘
Oracles of the Lord
’, but it should be clear they are Old Testament prophecies or proof-texts. Then there was the interpretation – that is, the various stories developed upon these proof-texts.

A fragment from a medieval manuscript found at Oxford attributed to Papias has him saying that: ‘
Mary the wife of Cleophas or Alphaeus … was the mother of James the Bishop and Apostle, and of Simon, Thaddaeus, and one Joseph
’.
26
This is very startling testimony! Not only does it unwaveringly confirm James’ role as
both ‘
Bishop and Apostle’, but it also now affirms that one of these brothers – ‘
Judas
’ in all other texts – is here simply and straightforwardly denoted ‘
Thaddaeus
’. This was the implication rendered by a comparison of Gospel Apostle lists anyhow, where ‘
Thaddaeus
’ in Mark and ‘
Thaddaeus surnamed Lebbaeus
’ in some of the versions of Matthew give way to ‘
Judas (the brother) of James
’ in Luke.

Not only is this testimony startling, but it is exactly in line with what we shall be discovering from other sources. Our conclusion is that, whoever wrote it, it is
early, very early
, and
it
is
authentic. Interestingly, it also goes on to identify another ‘
Mary Salome the wife of Zebedee
’ as ‘
an aunt of the Lord
’ and ‘
the mother of John the Evangelist and James
’. Again, this is really starting detail, but the same fragment then goes on to note,
ever so laconically
, that she was probably ‘
the same as Mary (the wife) of Cleophas
’ – all this obviously alluding to the infuriating notice in John about ‘
Mary
’ being
both
‘
the wife of Clopas
’ and ‘
the sister
’ of Jesus’ mother (19:25 – in most sources usually also
called ‘Mary
’!).

The fragment (if it is genuinely from Papias and we think it is) already gives evidence that Jesus’ ‘
brothers
’ are slowly turning into his ‘
cousins
’ – a doctine finally made ‘official’ two centuries later by Jerome. To put it in a nutshell: ‘
mothers
’ become ‘
aunts
’ (not to mention finally turning into
their own sisters
!), ‘
Fathers
’
become ‘uncles’
and, if one really wants to go that far, ‘
Jesus
’ himself turns into his own brother ‘
Joses
’ (two letters in linguistic theory being sufficient to determine a loan – here there are three). All have to do in some sense with the developing doctrines of ‘
Jesus’’ Divine birth
and
the Supernatural
‘
Christ
’ as well as its concomitant, the ‘
perpetual virginity
’
of Mary
as also concretized in the contemporary Second-Century
Protevangelium of James
. This ‘
Infancy Gospel
’ ascribed, as it were, to James (therefore, how could anyone contradict it?) excludes all other births on Mary’s part thereby
directly contradicting the Gospels even as we have them
.

It may be that some of this reflects later emendation, but still the notice as we have it provides us with the key to sorting out all these confusing relationships and basically echoes what we have already been delineating and have come to suspect. In the first place it avers that Cleophas and Alphaeus are identical. We did not need this fragment to suspect this, but it confirms it. It also makes it very clear that this Cleophas or Alphaeus (‘Clopas’ in Hegesippus) was also the father of James and that,
of course
, James the son of Alphaeus in Apostle lists
is
our James.

Finally, it confirms that Cleophas cum Alphaeus was actually
the husband of Mary
. Whether he was also called ‘Joseph’ or not will never be known, but it is beside the point. It, also, ever so gently points to further garblings between ‘Joses’ and ‘Joseph’, which bear on those between ‘Joseph Barsabas Justus’ and ‘Judas Barsabas’ above. But ‘Joses’ really does appear to be the name of the
fourth brother
. All sources are more or less in agreement on this. Mary and Cleophas (or Alphaeus) have
four sons
not five, to wit: James, Simon, Judas of James or Thaddaeus, and Joses. This Jude/Judas of James or Thaddaeus is also called Lebbaeus in some versions of Matthew, which possibly means ‘
Oblias
’ or further garbles the name of the father of all these various children, Cleophas, Alphaeus, or ‘Clopas’. This, of course, makes James and Simeon bar Cleophas
brothers
not ‘cousins’, as we have already come to suspect anyhow.