James the Brother of Jesus and the Dead Sea Scrolls I (35 page)

Epiphanius has substituted ‘mitre’ for ‘linen’ here, but in all Old Testament accounts ‘the mitre’ or High Priestly head-dress was made of linen anyhow (Exod. 28:39 and pars.). Since both Jerome and Epiphanius associate it with his entering the
Inner Sanctum
of the Temple, I think we can assume that James did wear linen, always keeping in mind that the claim of wearing the mitre of the High Priest – with the words ‘Holy to God’ emblazoned on its plate – was always possible as well.

James’ ‘asking forgiveness on his knees on behalf of the whole people’ is noted in all accounts of James’ death – accounts in which Epiphanius substitutes the name of Simeon bar Cleophas (‘Clopas’) for ‘one of the Priests of the sons of Rechab, a son of Rechabites’ found in Eusebius. Though it is possible Epiphanius confused ‘linen’ and ‘headplate’, both characteristic of what High Priests wore, it is difficult to believe that he made up ‘Simeon bar Cleophas’ as the witness to James’ death all by himself. For this reason and others, Epiphanius would appear to be operating from sources additional to Eusebius where these matters are concerned.
That all accounts connect James’ ‘praying on behalf of the people’ with both his atonement in the Temple and his stoning will have interesting consequences when it comes to connecting his stoning with the atonement in the
Inner Sanctum
. In Epiphanius Simeon bar Cleophas cries out with regard to James’ stoning, ‘Stop, he is uttering the most marvelous prayers for you’; in Eusebius simply, ‘the Just One is praying for you’.

James’ ‘knees growing as hard as the nodules’ of the knees of a camel, because of all the ‘supplicating God’ or the ‘praying’ in the Holy of Holies or in the Temple he did, is so original that it is difficult to imagine that Hegesippus simply made it up. It is eye-catching bits or snippets of information like this that often add to the credibility of the whole testimony. It is easy to imagine that at one point James did go into the Holy of Holies to make atonement on behalf of the whole people and that he was so ‘Holy’ and ‘Pious’ that he stayed there ‘on his knees’ the whole day in supplication to God. In other words, this was the Righteous prayer of a Priest/
Zaddik
.

This is one way of looking at it. There may be others. Much scorn has been heaped upon this testimony, particularly in Christian scholarship, but this was before the discovery of the Dead Sea Scrolls. Since that time, not only do we have the ideology to support such a picture of an ‘Opposition’ Righteous (or ‘Zadokite’) High Priesthood, but in the Habakkuk
Pesher
, there is a tantalizingly obscure notice about seemingly mortal difficulties between the Righteous Teacher’s followers – referred to as ‘the ‘Poor’/‘
Ebionim
’ – and the Wicked Priest.
2
The details of this scenario recommend themselves as a prelude to the events of James’ execution.

The Background to James’ Atonement in the Temple

James’ ‘wearing only linen’ also bears on the notice in Josephus about the lower priesthood winning the right to wear ‘linen’ at the end of the period James held sway in Jerusalem. Josephus does not date this event precisely, but he obviously considers it an ‘
innovation
’ and one more nail in the Temple’s coffin, for, as he puts it, ‘
all this was contrary to ancestral Laws, and such Law-breaking was bound to make us liable for punishment
’.
3
He means, of course, Divine retribution and Divine punishment and the coming destruction of the Temple.

He uses the same language to describe another ‘
innovation
’, the stopping of sacrifice on behalf of Romans and other foreigners in the Temple by these same lower priests in this same period, which started the Uprising against Rome. As he describes the run-up to this in the 50’s, he refers to the ‘
bands of brigands and impostors who deceived the masses. Not a day passed, however, but that Felix captured and put to death many of these Deceivers and Brigands
.’
4
For Josephus, it will be recalled, ‘
Those who would deceive the people and the religious frauds, under the pretence of Divine inspiration
fostering Innovation
and
change in Government
, persuaded the masses to act like madmen and
led them out into the desert
promising them that there God would give them
the tokens of freedom’
.
5

Having just described the attack ‘the Egyptian’ launches on the Temple, Josephus sums up the situation as follows: ‘
The Deceivers and the Brigands, banding together, incited Many to revolt, exhorting them to assert their freedom and threatening to kill any who submitted to Roman Dominion and forcibly to put down any who voluntarily accepted slavery’
. In the process, Josephus notes that these people went through Judea ‘
plundering the houses of the Rich and murdering their owners
’.
6
When the Revolt finally broke out, those Josephus describes as ‘
Innovators
’ or ‘
desirous for social or revolutionary change
’ burned the debt records in an attempt ‘
to turn the Poor against the Rich
’. Later, they not only burn the palaces of the Herodians and High Priests – the Herodians by this time had already departed into the Roman camp outside the city – most of whom, they killed, the High Priests that is. For his part, perspicacious reader must pay careful attention to the vocabulary of this period and all overlaps in the sources, no matter the context, while at the same time attempting to part the mist of purposeful obfuscation.

In the
Antiquities
, when describing the ‘
pollution
with which
the works
of the
Brigands infected the city
’, Josephus describes the situation that developed under Felix, during whose Procuratorship similar problems broke out in Caesarea between the Greeks there – who had the support of the legionnaires – and the Jews.
7
After the assassination of Ananus’ brother Jonathan by the most extreme group of Revolutionaries, he calls ‘
Sicarii
’; Josephus notes how:

They committed these murders not only in other parts of the city but even in some cases in the Temple; for … they did not regard even this as a
desecration
. This is the reason why, in my opinion,
even God himself,
loathing their Impiety
, turned away from our city, and because He
deemed the Temple to no longer be a clean dwelling place for Him
,
brought the Romans upon us and purification by fire upon the city, while He inflicted slavery upon us together with our wives and children
; for He wished to
chasten us by these calamities
.

Not only is the charge of ‘blasphemy’ we shall see leveled against James and, in the Gospels against ‘Jesus’, now turned against the extremists; but the woes of the Jews are now
the fault of the Sicarii
. This is the way, with hindsight, that Josephus describes the events in the 50s. He is, of course, turning the language of the pursuers of such ‘
Innovations
’ in upon themselves. One should remark how self-serving or facile his view of history is – not to mention, how closely it and he parallel the way the Gospels portray the death of Christ.

We shall see the same language used in the Damascus Document, but there applied to ‘
the Seekers after Smooth Things’
and other collaborators
who attacked ‘the Righteous One’ and ‘all the Walkers in Perfection with the sword
’. As a result of this,
‘the Wrath of God was kindled against their Congregation, devastating all their multitude, for their works were as unclean before Him’ and ‘He delivered them up to the avenging sword of vengeance of the Covenant’
– a favourite theme throughout the Damascus Document.
12

Josephus speaks the same way when the Roman garrison in the Citadel is slaughtered in the early days of the Uprising, all save one, its captain, who agreed to have himself circumcised: ‘And the city polluted by such a stain of guilt as could not but arouse a dread of some
Visitation from Heaven
, if not of vengeance from Rome’.
9
Josephus is, of course, writing with the advantage of hindsight, as did Eusebius much later:

The Divine Justice for their crimes against Christ and his Apostles finally overtook them,
totally destroying the whole generation of these Evil-Doers from the earth
.
But the number of calamities which then overwhelmed the whole nation
… the vast numbers of men, women and children that fell by the sword and famine, and innumerable other forms of death …
and the final destruction by fire
, all this I say, any one that wishes may see accurately stated
in the History written by Josephus
…
Such then was the vengeance that followed
the guilt
and
Impiety of the Jews against the Christ of God
.
10

Eusebius has no pity here, not even for the suffering of women and children, nor the starvation of thousands upon thousands; in fact, so intoxicated is he by theology that he revels in it.

But the real truth of the time undoubtedly lies embedded in these descriptions in Josephus and their obvious reversal of the real philosophy of ‘the Innovators’. This last, as repeatedly signaled in this book, can now be said to be manifestly revealed in the documents known as the Dead Sea Scrolls and a
real
understanding of the Community led by James the Just. Writing of the end of the governorship of Felix, Josephus states:

There was now enkindled
mutual enmity and class warfare
between
the High Priests on the one hand and the Priests and Leaders of the masses of Jerusalem on the other
. Each of the factions formed and collected for itself
a band of the most reckless Innovators, who acted as their leaders
. And when they clashed, they used abusive language and
pelted each other with stones
. And there was
not even one person to rebuke them
.
11

Here we have a moment of candour rare in Josephus. Seen in a different light, one can see in this description the debates in the Temple between the two factions, pictured in both the Pseudoclementines and Acts, however tendentiously – including even the rioting – and events like the stoning of James. Even the note of there being ‘no one to rebuke them’ is reversed in the picture in early Church sources of the words of James’ successor Simeon bar Cleophas, the ‘Rechabite Priest’ who
rebukes
those stoning James the Just.

Not only do we have in this picture both the themes of the High Priests being opposed by the lower priests – who, in turn, were ‘the leaders of the masses’ – but Josephus follows up this description with his picture of how
the High Priests shamelessly sent their servants to the threshing floors
‘
to steal the tithes of the Poorer
’ Priests, who consequently ‘
starved to death.
Thus did the violence of the contending factions overwhelm all Justice
.’
12
One can picture this description being applied to and even seen in terms of the death of James ‘the Just One’, who was the Leader of the faction calling itself – both at Qumran and in early Christianity – ‘
the Poor
’.

Josephus portrays the fact of the lower priests winning the right to wear linen in the context of these events and this kind of rioting. Though these facts all need further elucidation, for the moment it should suffice to state that James’ role as a priest among the masses in the midst of all this revolutionary strife is emerging. Nowhere is it better explained than in the Scrolls, the literature of that group we can now see as part of those seeking just these kinds of ‘Innovations’. We certainly do have in those texts the theme of
the Rich High Priests ‘stealing’ the tithes of the Poor Ones
.
13
Moreover its authors saw the Temple as ‘
polluted
’, but not for the reasons Josephus attempts to disseminate or, from a slightly different perspective, Paul and early Christian theologians following his lead do.
The Temple is polluted because of
the acceptance of polluted gifts in the Treasury
, because of the acceptance of fornicators in the Temple, because of improper ‘separation of Holy Things’, and relations with foreigners and those to whom Paul’s very mission is addressed – Gentiles.

In such a context, one can see Paul’s final entry into the Temple to show that ‘
there is no truth to the rumours’ that he does not ‘regularly follow the Law
’ as something of a stalking horse for Herodian family interests in the Temple. The charge raised among the mob in the riot Acts pictures as ensuing there is that Paul is
introducing foreigners in the Temple
. One way or another he is. The same cry is no doubt on the lips of these extreme ‘
Zealots
’ or ‘
Sicarii
’, who are behind the troubles in Jerusalem being described by Josephus. As Acts would have it, James’ followers are a mixture of ‘priests’ – obviously lower priests – and others who are ‘
zealous for the Law
’ (21:20). This is the same picture Josephus has just given us regarding confrontations and stone–throwing on the Temple Mount in the early 60s.