James the Brother of Jesus and the Dead Sea Scrolls I (36 page)

James and
Banus

To go back to this reference to James ‘
wearing only linen
’. Not only does it resonate with Qumran, but it also has interesting overtones with someone Josephus calls only ‘
Banus
’, clearly another of these individuals
dwelling in the wilderness showing the signs of ‘impending freedom
’ or ‘
Deliverance
’. John the Baptist and others are of the same mould. Never explaining what he means by
Banus
’ name, Josephus describes him as ‘living in the wilderness’ and ‘
eating only what grew of its own accord’, meaning, he was a
vegetarian
!

Even
Banus
’ name is probably really a title. Never definitively deciphered by scholars, it is probably a loan word via Latin having something to do with his most characteristic activity, ‘
bathing
’. If not, then like James’ other title, ‘
Oblias
’ or ‘
Protection of the People
’, it is probably a code.

There is a ‘Rechabite’ aspect to Josephus’ description of
Banus
, since he does not
cultivate
. Like Judas Maccabee earlier he eats
only wild plants
. Once again, many of the themes we have been pursuing come together.
Banus
has to have been functioning ‘in the wilderness’ in the mid–50s, the period Josephus – who was born in 37 CE – states he spent three years with him. If Josephus did spend three years with him, it would account for his sympathetic treatment, even though he is normally opposed to such religious
‘impostors and Deceivers’ who lead the people out ‘into the wilderness’
.

Three years, too, is the time frame Paul describes in Galatians of his having been ‘
to Arabia and then returned to Damascus
’ (1:17–18). It is also the approximate novitiate period for the Movement described in Qumran documents, another of these Communities ‘in the wilderness’ or ‘at Damascus’. However one takes this allusion by Paul to ‘Arabia’, ‘wilderness’ areas of this kind in Judea and Transjordan were not highly populated. Certainly Josephus’ knowledge of the ‘Essenes’ must have come from this period, as in the
Vita
he describes having made a trial of the three sects: Pharisees, Sadducees, and Essenes, undergoing great hardship in the process.

Josephus also describes ‘
Banus
’
as a daily bather and utterly chaste. This is exactly the same language Epiphanius uses to
describe James
, that ‘
he died a virgin at the age of ninety-six
’. Again, this links up with notices in both Josephus and Hippolytus about how incredibly ‘long-lived’ those they call ‘Essenes’ were because of their continent life-style: ‘
They are long-lived – most over a century – in consequence of the simplicity of their diet and the regularity of the mode of life they observe
’.
14
We can forgive exaggerations over the age of these ‘elderly and honourable’ men who followed the ‘Nazirite’ life-style. In a similar vein, following Hegesippus, Eusebius contends ‘
Simon
son of
Clopas
’ (
sic
) was crucified under Trajan at the age of a hundred and twenty’. This would have been in approximately the year 106–7.
15
These exaggerations should not be too disconcerting.

Epiphanius, quoting a book he calls ‘
The Travels of Peter
’ – meaning the Pseudoclementines – says that the Ebionites thought Peter was
celibate
too – in addition claiming that he was a
daily baptizer
and
vegetarian
. The reason, he says, the Ebionites give for this last is important:
because animal fare was
‘
the product of sexual intercourse
’ too.
16
For Epiphanius – and he does not give his source for this, but most likely it is Hegesippus – all ‘
Joseph
’s
sons revered virginity and the
Nazirite lifestyle
’.
17
In associating the ‘virginity’ of these life-long Nazirites with the doctrine of ‘the Holy Virgin’, Epiphanius once again points the way towards comprehending another reversal. But what makes sense with regard to James and individuals like ‘
Banus
’
following the regime of extreme purity in the wilderness
makes little, if any, sense when it comes to ‘
honouring the vessel in which the Salvation of the human race dwelt
’ – words, Epiphanius uses in explaining why the ‘
Holy Virgin
’ was also revered, aimed at and clearly originating in a Greco-Roman/Egyptian milieu; but, words,  in a Palestinian one,
more aptly descriptive of James
!

As Epiphanius, again so incisively, expresses this: ‘She would not have sexual relations
with a man
.’
18
But, of course, this claim, except theologically speaking, is absurd, and James’
chasteness
has simply been transferred in tradition to Mary and the ‘
Virgin birth
’ – comprehensible, as we have said, to Greco-Roman Society. It is almost certain, despite facile attempts to disclaim it, that whoever Mary was, she had
at least four sons and
two daughters
. Rather, it is James, who had
no sexual relations with women
, another example of retrospective theological inversion of, in our view,
real
detail from the life of James.
James’ and
Banus
’ ‘chaste’ life-style was, no doubt, connected to the extreme purity regime and that abhorrence of ‘fornication’, we have already seen integrally associated with James’ name, not to mention the ethos of the Scrolls.

Banus
’ eating things growing only of themselves is best explained by the notice about Judas Maccabee, who, when the sacrifice in the Temple was interrupted, retreated into the wilderness, lived in caves, and ate nothing but ‘
wild plants to avoid contracting defilement
’. Here, too, we have the extension of the ‘vegetarian’ theme to the Rechabite life-style of individuals, who, to avoid earthly attachments and corruptions would cultivate nothing and would not even construct a permanent dwelling. Doubtlessly they, too, lived in caves, tents, or lean-tos of the kind probably preferred in the wilderness ‘camp’ ideology of the Scrolls. All these matters are connected and, depending on the observer, a given nomenclature is employed to describe them – thus, the plethora of titles we see associated with them.

In any event, all these nomenclatures are not all separate reckonings. Where the descriptions overlap, however tenuously, they must be seen as the same or allied movements. The same for these various groups. They are connected with the Maccabean ideal of eating non-cultivated plants. They are connected with living in caves. They are connected with the extreme purity regime. They are connected with attempts to bring on ‘the Last Days’. They are connected with the description of the wilderness ‘camps’ in the Qumran literature. They are connected with Josephus’ numerous and fulsome condemnations of such groups – meant, of course, to impress his Roman overlords – even though as a young man he spent time among them. Paul too, no doubt, did the same. Hence his in-depth knowledge of them also.

A final note about
Banus
’ clothing, which now connects with our ‘linen’ theme where James is concerned, as it does the general one of noncultivation about Rechabites and that of not wearing
woollen
garments reported of James. When speaking of
Banus
’ clothing, Josephus tells us he wore nothing but ‘
clothing that grew on trees
’. He means ‘plant’- or ‘vegetable’-based not
woollen
clothes, that is, that ‘
Banus
’ and other ‘Priests’
would only wear clothing of natural fibre
or
linen
.

Not only are ‘
Banus
’ and James contemporaries, but the connections between them grow stronger, as do Josephus’ connections to and reticence about them both. We have already seen that by the time of writing the
Antiquities
in the 90s, Josephus felt more secure than he had directly after the Uprising. He could afford to be less circumspect regarding his own activities with such ‘wilderness’-dwelling types. In light of the execution of his patron Epaphroditus, and one or two other reputed Christians in the then-Emperor Domitian’s household, including Flavius Clemens (possibly the Clement of literary fame) and possibly his wife, Flavia Domitilla, and new accusations surfacing against Josephus himself; this sense of security might have been ill-founded.

Banus
’, John the Baptist’s, and James’ Bathing, Food, and Clothing

The ‘bathing’ ideology goes back, at least in Western Christian tradition, to John the Baptist. The kind of clothing John wore and the food he ate are matters of intense interest in all extant descriptions of his activities. He is described in the famous passages in Matthew and Mark as wearing ‘c
amel’s hair clothing
and a leather girdle
about his loins
’ and eating ‘locusts and wild honey’ (Mt 3:4/Mk 1:6). It is phrases like ‘about his loins’ and ‘wild’ that are the link to descriptions of our other
vegetarian
types and daily bathers like James and/or the ‘Essenes’, Masbuthaeans, etc. The
clothing
part of this description goes back to that of Elijah as ‘hairy and gird with a leather girdle about his loins’ (1 Kings 1:8).

In the second part of this description of John, if not the first, one must make allowances for inaccuracies arising out of translations of little understood terms from Hebrew or Aramaic into Greek. In both Josephus’ and Hippolytus’ descriptions of the ‘Essenes’, we observed that the idea of wearing ‘linen about their loins’,
even when they bathed
because of their modesty and sexual chastity, is a persistent one. In turn, this moves through descriptions of
Masbuthaean
Bathers in Northern Syria, like the ‘
Elchasaites
’, down to the
Mandaeans
in Southern Iraq – ‘
the
Subba‘
of the marshes’ down to the present day. Hippolytus in his extended presentation of ‘
the Essenes’
, when speaking of their ‘
ablutions
in cold water’
, actually uses the words ‘
linen girdles’ to describe how they clothed themselves ‘for the purpose of concealing their private parts
’. Josephus speaks of ‘the linen cloths’ with which the Essenes ‘girded their loins’ before ‘bathing their bodies in cold water’.
20
The only difference is that New Testament accounts, in portraying John as an Elijah
redivivus
, have substituted the ‘leather girdle’ for ‘linen girdles’. It is impossible to tell what the actual truth is here, but since what is at issue where John and the Essenes are concerned is ‘bathing’ – not an issue in the biblical accounts of Elijah’s archetypical, ‘exceeding great zeal’ – in the writer’s view this is what the New Testament accounts are really trying to say and are really aiming at.

In any event, where John’s food is concerned, it is doubtful such fare could have sustained him, nor was insect fare of this kind really considered fit consumption for strict constructionists of the Law, which these
wilderness ‘Keepers’
normally clearly were. Epiphanius’ lost ‘
Gospel of the Ebionites
’ maintained that John ate ‘wild honey’ and vegetarian ‘cakes baked in oil’, reflecting the picture of Lucian of Samosata’s daily baptizers in Northern Syria who ate ‘wild fruits and drank milk and honey’ and slept out ‘under the open sky’.
59
This description, coupled with the ‘eating nothing but wild plants’ in 2 Maccabees’ description of Judas’ wilderness regime, is a more convincing picture of the diet of these wilderness–dwellers than the highly improbable and even perhaps, quasi-illegal, ‘locusts and wild honey’.

In fact, Josephus’ description of ‘
Banus’
’ food consumption and the type of dress he wore would probably be a more accurate reflection of what John would have eaten or worn than these more popular New Testament retrospections. As will be recalled, Josephus contends that ‘
Banus
lived in the wilderness and wore no other clothing but that which grew on trees (
linen
) and had no other food than that which grew of its own accord, and bathed in cold water persistently, night and day, in order to preserve his chastity’
22
– the last paralleling Epiphanius on James’ sexual continence.

Where the rest of the New Testament presentation of John is concerned, it must be treated with the same extreme caution. At every point, Josephus is superior. For instance, for him, ‘John was a good man and exhorted the Jews to live virtuously, both as to
Righteousness towards one another
and
Piety towards God
. And so to come to baptism, for that
washing
would be acceptable to Him if they made use of it, not in order
to remit whatever sins they committed
, but for
the purification of the body
only, provided that the soul had been thoroughly
cleansed beforehand by practicing Righteousness’
.
23
Not only do we have here the Righteousness/Piety dichotomy, but this description of John’s baptism is exactly
the reverse
of New Testament ones and undoubtedly
more reliable
. It also accords with that in the Community Rule.
24