James the Brother of Jesus and the Dead Sea Scrolls I (16 page)

The reference in Acts 12:17 to ‘brothers’ is interesting as well. One can take these ‘brothers’ as brothers in the generic sense, that is, communal brothers, or the like, which is how it is usually taken. Or, since we are following the traces of ‘the brothers’ in this work, it is possible to take them as ‘brothers’ in the specific sense, meaning James and the other brothers of Jesus. The first is more likely, but one should always keep in mind the possibility of the second, since Peter has gone to ‘Mary the mother of’ someone’s house to leave a message ‘for James and the brothers’ – otherwise unexplained.

These kinds of persecutions, too, we can take as authentic. Individuals like
Theudas or Judas – Jesus’ brother – really did lose their lives. But in Acts’ portrayal, the reasons for these persecutions become rather distorted. For instance, in Acts the Jewish crowd is pleased by ‘the beheading of James’ – that is, in our view, ‘
Theudas
’ – and in the picture of ‘Herod’ there, being encouraged to take the further step of imprisoning Peter, once again we have the slight lateral movement in the portrayal of these things already signaled in Josephus’ critique of the historians of this period.

Of course, the later theology of the Gentile Church is now being retrospectively read back into the history of Palestine as the cause of all the repressions these early members of the Messianic Movement or the ‘Jerusalem Community’ in Palestine are undergoing. This vituperative theology is fully developed in Eusebius’ works by the fourth century, but it is already highly developed in the second and third. But the real reason for these trials has to do with this constant revolutionary and religious strife, which, as Josephus documents, made its appearance with the Movement begun by Judas and
Saddok
at the time of the Census Uprising. These charismatic and religious leaders that punctuate the history of the next 135 years are all in one way or another connected with this Movement for political and religious freedom.

Take, for example, the appearance of another individual a decade or so after the beheading of Theudas, whom Josephus also designates as ‘a prophet’ and who so resembles ‘Jesus’ in Scripture. Josephus describes this
type of ‘Impostor’ or ‘Deceiver’ with amazing perspicuity. As a lead-in to
introducing this
prophet
, he says that these ‘
Impostors
and
Deceivers
called upon the people to follow them into
the
wilderness
, there to show them unmistakable wonders and signs, that would be performed in accordance with the providence of God’ (
Ant.
20.168–72). In the Slavonic Josephus, these signs are called the ‘
signs of their
impending freedom
’.

The individual in this episode
is designated by no epithet other than ‘the Egyptian’. Again he wants to do another ‘Joshua’- or ‘Jesus’-like miracle, commanding the walls of Jerusalem to fall down and allow his followers to enter the city and presumably liberate it. This
Egyptian
escapes, but 400 of his followers are butchered by the Roman Governor Felix (52–60 CE). For Acts the number grows to 4000 and his followers are specifically called ‘
Sicarii
’.

In Acts’ version of the strife in Jerusalem, repression of theological dissidents of the Pauline kind is substituted for repression of revolutionaries in Josephus, and the consonant pro-Roman and anti-Palestinian theology we know developed. As noted above, Acts’ author at this point frames the reference to James as if he had
already introduced him.
Of course, in Acts in its present form, he did not, but this is not to say that in the source underlying Acts he didn’t. I think we will eventually be able to show that he did.

He must have. It is not possible that James suddenly erupts into the text in the same chapter in which the other James is removed and the notice as it now exists assumes that we know who he is. The text as we have it does not say that Peter went to the house of Mary to leave a message for James the Just, Mary’s son, called the brother of Jesus. Nor does it, then, go on to delineate who this James was, which would have been normal if he had not previously been mentioned. No, it treats James as
known
– and he
was known
. We will be able to show, when analysing early Church sources and the Pseudoclementine
Recognitions
, that James was indeed mentioned earlier – probably on several occasions – but the traces have been overwritten with more obscurantist story-telling or mythologizing.

One of the places in Acts James would have been mentioned earlier would have been in the various comings and goings on the Temple Mount, where Peter and John are mentioned, but no James (3:1–11). This is surprising. These lacunae are made good in the Pseudoclementine
Recognitions
, where in the parallel material having to do with these early comings and goings on the Temple Mount, the
real James
– our James – is mentioned extensively.

In addition, James would have been mentioned in the first chapter of Acts, where the most important matter facing the incipient Church would have been regulated – that is, choosing the
successor
to the departed Jesus. Here the choosing of James as Leader of the Jerusalem Community would have been described. Instead, a more folkloric history takes its place, which purports to tell the story of what became of the individual who
betrayed Jesus
named ‘Judas’ – also the name of
the third brother of Jesus
. It is, rather, Judas’ end that is depicted in Acts in the most lurid detail – this and how the matter of
succession to Judas
was regulated.

Then, too, James was probably mentioned a little prior to the material in chapter 12 about Peter and James, which is paralleled by an episode in the Pseudoclementine
Recognitions
, after James is attacked by Paul in the Temple, describing how James sends off Peter from the Jericho area to confront Simon
Magus
in Caesarea. According to Acts’ chronology, this would be following the mention of Theudas and Judas the Galilean in chapter 5 and the story of the stoning of Stephen that follows in chapters 6–7 – itself probably replacing this attack on James.

Of course, there is no good reason
to stone
this ‘Stephen’ and we will show that this episode actually replaces a different one, also preserved in the Pseudoclementine
Recognitions,
about Paul’s activities prior to his famous vision on the road to Damascus. This episode will have to do with an actual physical assault by Paul on the Leader of the Community, James. This attack ended in grave injury to James – but not death – and his flight, together with most of the members of his Community, to somewhere in the Jericho area – that is, somewhere in the
neighbourhood of Qumran
. The substitution here will follow the same
modus operandi
as some of the other substitutions and overwrites we are noting here, but the main lines of the original materials are still discernible underneath.

Finally, there is the matter of the crucifixion of the two sons of Judas the Galilean, James and Simon, during the Procuratorship of Tiberius Alexander (46–48 CE). This crucifixion, which is a curious one, is also important. In Josephus, it follows the mention of the Famine, the Theudas episode, and the description of the appointment of Tiberius Alexander as procurator.

In an execution resembling both Jesus’ and that of John the Baptist, Tiberius Alexander ordered that these two sons of Judas the Galilean be crucified. Here, as we have seen, Josephus mentions Judas the Galilean, who caused the people to revolt at the time of the Census, which forms the basis of the parallel notice in Acts. But why Alexander had these two crucified and what they had done to deserve such punishment, Josephus never explains. In addition, the parallels between the Messianic-style families of Judas the Galilean and that family purportedly stemming from either ‘Joseph and Mary’ or Cleophas and Mary remain striking. What are the connections between these two clusters of Messianic individuals and in what manner do they overlap? Short of an undoctored presentation of this period we shall undoubtedly never know.

Chapter 7

The Picture of James in Paul’s Letters

James as Leader of the Early Church in Galatians

Paul gives us the most vivid and accurate first-hand account of the preeminence of James in the early Church in Galatians. Paul’s antagonism to those in the ‘Assembly’ in Jerusalem, whom he feels are misguided and persecuting him, is patent. As an admittedly lesser being in a hierarchical organization, he exhibits a certain amount of formal deference to these leaders: ‘those reckoned to be something’ (Gal. 2:6) or ‘recommending themselves, measuring themselves by themselves’ (2 Cor. 10:12.), among whom he would include James. In fact, as Paul’s tirades in these letters develop, it becomes very clear that, not only is James principal among them, but Paul’s respect for the Jerusalem Leadership is only superficial – nothing more.

Actually, he refers to this leadership in the most biting terms. In describing his flight from Judea to Syria and Cilicia in Galatians – locales always important when considering the extent of Herodian family influence in the East – he insists that he will ‘not give in or be subjected to those
false brothers
who spy on the freedom we enjoy in Christ Jesus,
so that they might enslave us’
(Gal. 2:4–5). The ‘freedom’ he is talking about is
freedom from the Law
; the ‘slavery’, both enslavement to it and the Jerusalem Leadership – the ‘we’ referring here to his communities. The ‘spying’ has to do not only with this freedom, but also probably, quite literally, their nakedness (or, as Qumran would have it, ‘looking on their privy parts’), that is, to see whether they were circumcised or not.
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It is in these passages, which end in an insistence that he ‘does not lie’ – again important for parallel Qumran aspersions on a person known there as ‘the Liar’ – that he describes how he first ‘made Peter’s acquaintance’ and ‘saw none of the
other Apostles except James the brother of the Lord
’ (Gal. 1:18- 20). In doing so, Paul states categorically that he did not ‘go up again to Jerusalem for fourteen years’ (2:1), which completely contradicts both chronological and factual claims in Acts. The latter describes Paul returning to Jerusalem ‘in the time of Claudius’ as part of famine-relief activities (11:28–30). This is the one in 46–8 CE that we have just highlighted with regard to the anachronism involving Judas the Galilean’s two sons. These famine-relief activities parallel those of another new convert from these Eastern regions, the legendary Queen Helen of Adiabene. For the moment, the reader can take it as a rule of thumb that where there is a conflict between Paul’s letters and Acts, the letters are to be preferred.

Paul’s Relations with the Jerusalem Leadership and the Pillar Terminology

Paul explains this second visit to Jerusalem extremely defensively as being a result of a private ‘revelation’ he had, establishing as well that, as he sees it, he had not
been summoned
to give an account of himself, as it might appear to less sympathetic eyes. In doing so, Paul claims a
private
‘revelation’; through it, he would appear to think that he is in direct communication with ‘Christ Jesus’. He states this in another way in the very first line of the letter: ‘Paul, Apostle, not from
men
, nor through [any]
man
, but rather through Jesus Christ and by God [the] Father, who raised him from [the] dead’. The point here is that he was neither appointed by any ‘man’, nor the earthly Jesus, whom he never met, nor, for instance, the Elders of the Jerusalem Church. Nor does he carry any letters of appointment from such men (2 Cor. 3:1), but is beyond temporal authority, and not beholden to it.

In particular, he is not beholden to James or the Jerusalem Church Leadership. He is prepared to discuss things with them, but not to defer to them. He makes this clear when he says that he was not called to account by them, but met ‘privately’, on his own recognizance as it were, to lay before those he speaks of as being ‘of repute’ (Gal. 2:2) or, sarcastically, as ‘considered to be something’ (2:6), the Gospel as he proclaimed it ‘among the Gentiles’, for fear that the course he ‘was running or had already run’ would be ‘in vain’. It is clear that what he means is that he is fearful that the leaders in Jerusalem might disavow the Gospel as he has already started teaching it – obviously without their permission – among the non-Jewish or Gentile ‘Peoples’.

At this point he begins to grow extremely agitated about this interview with the Jerusalem Leadership and starts to defend his doctrine that Gentiles coming into the new Movement – whatever one wants to make of it at this point – need not be circumcised. This was evidently part of ‘the Gospel’ as he taught it among ‘
the Peoples
’ or ‘
Nations
’. Introducing someone who accompanied him to this interview – now often referred to as ‘the Jerusalem Council’ – as Titus ‘a Greek’, Paul insists that on this account Titus was not ‘required to be circumcised’ (2:2–3).

Much of the rest of the letter has to do with Paul’s antagonism to the group he calls ‘of the circumcision’, even perhaps, ‘the circumcisers’, a party of people he actually identifies with James (2:12) and an issue he identifies with ‘slavery versus freedom’ – in this sense, ‘slavery to the Law’, the sign of which was circumcision, and, conjointly, a slavish adherence to the instructions of the Jerusalem Leadership.

In due course he concludes: ‘
Stand fast in the freedom with which Christ made us free
, and do not [submit] again to
the yoke of slavery
… Everyone who accepts circumcision is obliged
to do the whole Law
. Whosoever is justified by the Law
are set aside from the Christ
. You fell from Grace’ (Gal. 5:1–4). Here, one has a clear play on the kind of ‘setting oneself apart’ or ‘separation’ emphasized in the Dead Sea Scrolls or the ‘Naziritism’, based on the Hebrew root,
N–Z–R
/‘to keep apart from’, we shall encounter on the part of those like James. Words with this
N–Z–R
root are widespread in the Damascus Document and there are used to express what one should ‘stay away’ or ‘abstain from’, as for instance, ‘fornication’, ‘polluted Evil Riches’, and ‘unclean’ or ‘polluted things’ generally.
2
‘For in Christ Jesus, neither circumcision nor uncircumcision is in force, but rather Faith working by love. You were
running
well. Who stopped you, that you did not obey the Truth?’ (Gal. 5:6–7). One should compare this with the passage in the Letter of James: ‘For whoever shall keep the whole Law, but stumbles on one [small point], shall be guilty [of breaking] it all’ (Jas. 2:10). Not only does James use all the words Paul is using, like ‘love’, ‘doing’, and ‘Truth’, it is the clear riposte.

For his part, so incensed does Paul become at this point in Galatians that he concludes by making a pun on the act of circumcision itself: ‘I even wish that those who are throwing you into confusion would themselves [meaning their own privy parts]
cut off’
(5:12). Paul utters this crudity, not only in the midst of again evoking ‘being called to freedom’, but  the Love Commandment, that is, ‘love your neighbour as yourself, which he now describes as being ‘the whole Law’ (5:12–14). But this is precisely the Commandment cited in the famous passage from James on ‘the Royal Law according to the Scripture’, also evoking ‘doing’, but this time in the sense of ‘doing’ or ‘keeping the whole Law’, not breaking it (2:8–10). This Commandment is also evoked at a crucial juncture in these passages in the Damascus Document as well.

Paul is having problems with the Jerusalem leadership over circumcision, because as he attests in his own words, ‘some
false brothers
stole in secretly to spy on the freedom which we enjoy in Christ Jesus (Paul’s name for his Supernatural Saviour) so that they might reduce us to slavery’ or ‘bondage’. The
brothers/pseudo-brothers
parallel may be identical to the play on ‘false’ or ‘pseudo-Apostles’ in 2 Cor. 11:13, also in the context of ‘bondage’ and reiterating that he ‘does not lie’ (2 Cor. 11:20 and 31). Once again, despite the emotion he displays, Paul’s meaning in these passages is unmistakable. When speaking about the Law or James, he uses the language of ‘slavery’ and ‘falseness’.

Something has happened that has put Paul into bad repute with the leadership. That something clearly has to do with circumcision and the fact that some of those accompanying him were not circumcised. For Acts, Paul has such persons circumcised anyhow out of deference to the Church Leadership and in order to continue his missionary activities. We cannot necessarily depend on Acts here, but its gist is the same as Galatians on the issue of whether people like Titus or Timothy need to be circumcised. Galatians appears to be claiming Titus was not. Acts avers Timothy was. It is of little importance – the issue is the same.

Rather what is important is that at this point in Galatians Paul launches into an attack on the Jerusalem Leadership, in which he testifies to the undeniable fact that James was the principal leader and all, even Peter, were subordinate to him and had to defer to him. At the same time, he avows his intention to safeguard ‘the Truth of the Gospel’ as he teaches it among the Gentiles. As he puts it, ‘not even for an hour did we yield in subjection, so that the Truth of the Gospel might continue with you’ (2:5), this addressed to those for whom the letter was first intended, his coreligionists in Galatia in Asia Minor, whose situation he claims to be defending.

Paul then moves on to introduce his version of the Central Leadership Trio of the early Church in Jerusalem, and with it, another conundrum, for he does not refer – at least in most versions of this material as it has come down to us – to Peter
per se
, but rather at this point to ‘Cephas’. Normally ‘Cephas’ is taken as identical with Peter, even though Paul resumes the normative reference to ‘Peter’ two lines later in 2:11. In doing so, he introduces James for the second time and it is crystal clear
this
James is not ‘the brother of John’ as in the Gospels. ‘So James, Cephas, and John, those reckoned to be Pillars, being aware of the Grace which was given to me, shook hands with Barnabas and me in fellowship, that we [should go] to the Gentiles, while they [go] to the circumcision’ (2:9).

Here, then, we are not only apprised that James is someone ‘reckoned to be something’, but one of those in the front rank of the leadership, as it were a ‘Pillar’ or leader, in fact, as we shall see, the
all-encompassing Leader
. Paul has already belittled these in his aspersion, ‘whatever they were makes no difference to me’ and ‘those reckoned important conferred nothing to me’. In 2 Corinthians 11, Paul will call such persons ‘Hebrews’ (11:22) and ‘the Highest Apostles’ – literally ‘Apostles of the Highest Degree’ or, if one prefers, ‘Archapostles’ (11:5, repeated in 12:11).

Paul introduces this ‘Pillar’ terminology here, something we had not heard previously, in confirmation of their importance or status. It is similar to the ‘Foundation’, ‘Rock’ and ‘Cornerstone’ imagery one encounters in the Gospels and Letters with regard to Peter or Jesus himself. These terms can be found in the Dead Sea Scrolls, particularly in the Community Rule and Hymns, including additional ones like ‘a firm Foundation which will not shake’, ‘Wall, and ‘Tower’ or ‘Fortress’.
3
Where the idea of ‘Pillar’ is concerned, it is also in use in relation to the person of ‘the
Zaddik
’ in that tradition known as
Kabbalah
.

The allusion ‘Pillar’ certainly was originally used in Proverbs, which specifically asserts that ‘the
Zaddik
is the Pillar of the World’ (Prov. 10:25). In turn, this idea is expounded in
Zohar
tradition, where it is associated with Noah, the first ‘
Zaddik
’ mentioned in the Book of Genesis and, in fact, the first archetypal Saviour. The exposition is as follows:

Noah was a Righteous One
. Assuredly so after the Heavenly pattern, for it is written: ‘
The Righteous One is the Foundation of the world
’ and the Earth is established thereon. For, this is
the Pillar that upholds the world
. So Noah was called
Righteous in this world
… and acted so as to be a Perfect copy of the Heavenly ideal ... an embodiment of the world’s
Covenant of Peace.
(
Zohar
1.59b on
Noah
)

There is much more in the
Zohar
on ‘the
Zaddik
’, including both an allusion to ‘protecting the People’, an idea just encountered above having to do with James’ ‘Bulwark’ sobriquet and Noah’s expiatory suffering.
4
The connection of James with Noah, the first ‘Righteous One’, is another element that shines through the traditions about James. These include James’ vegetarianism, his rainmaking, and his Noahic-like directives to overseas communities as recorded in Acts, to the extent that one can conceive of a
redivivus
tradition associated with the first ‘
Zaddik
’ Noah, not unlike that associated with Elijah and John the Baptist in the New Testament.

In this passage from the
Zohar
, the pre-existence or supernatural nature of ‘the
Zaddik
’ is stressed, an idea encountered as well in the Prologue of the Gospel of John in terms of ‘
Logos
’ and ‘Light’ imagery, in the description of Jesus’ entrance into the world. But there is another allusion in the recently rediscovered Nag Hammadi Gospel of Thomas – ‘the Twin’ or ‘Judas Thomas’ – the putative third brother of Jesus after James and Simon. This bears on the ideal of this pre-existent
Righteous One
or Heavenly
Zaddik
– in more mundane terms, James in his role as
Perfect Righteous One
. In turn this also bears on the appointment of James as Leader of the Jerusalem Church and therefore of all Christianity everywhere as successor to Jesus. It reads as follows: ‘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’
(Logion 12).