James the Brother of Jesus and the Dead Sea Scrolls I (43 page)

Even in the 400s, though emphasizing James’ ‘
Holiness
’ –
that is, his Naziritism
–
rather than his Righteousness
, Jerome, as we saw, puts the proposition much in the way Eusebius and Origen did, which makes it seem as if
these various commentators were seeing something like these words somewhere in Josephus’ works
. Still, Eusebius does not hesitate throughout his
Ecclesiastical History
to reinterpret the words he himself reports seeing and
castigate the Jews for what they did to Jesus, repeatedly asserting that the loss of their Temple and country was the result
.

But the attribution of the destruction of the Temple and the fall of Jerusalem to the death of James, of course, makes more sense not only because of the proximity of these several events;
but also the constant insistence on the theme of James’ Righteousness and the Oblias/Bulwark/Protection-imagery associated with it
. In ending his quotation from Hegesippus’ testimony to the circumstances and events surrounding the death of James, Eusebius collapses the time interval between these events even further, with the words: ‘
Immediately after this (that is, James being thrown down from the Pinnacle of the Temple and stoned) Vespasian invaded and took Judea
.’

Ananus’ Death and the Death of James

In the extant
Jewish War
, Josephus does relate someone’s death to the fall of Jerusalem; however, interestingly enough, it is
not James
, but his opposite number and nemesis,
the High Priest Ananus
. Responsible along with Agrippa II for the death of James, this Ananus, as we saw, was the son of the Ananus mentioned in the Gospels as having a role in the trial and condemnation of Jesus. Since Josephus is such an uneven observer, in the
War
he is at his obsequious best where Ananus is concerned; but in his
Vita
– appended two decades later to his
Antiquities
– he castigates this Ananus so vehemently that it makes one wonder whether he could be talking about the same person.

Since Josephus had business and other dealings with Ananus during his tenure as military commissar of Galilee, responsible – or so he claims – for its fortification; he had been in personal touch with the latter, who was then in control of affairs in Jerusalem – most notably, it would appear, perhaps profiteering or skimming the profits along with Josephus from the corn and olive-oil price-fixing schemes of another of Josephus’ enemies, John of Gischala.
44

Since Ananus does turn out to be the
bête noire
of our study, and the man primarily responsible for
the ‘conspiracy’ to remove James
and since these discrepancies are so glaring, it might be worth subjecting them to a little more scrutiny. Because of the animus he has developed against Ananus, who was involved in attempts to remove him from command in Galilee; Josephus characterizes such attempts as basically being ‘
bribes
’ and Ananus, consequently, as ‘
corrupted by bribes
’. He even implies that Ananus ‘was conspiring’ to have him killed, a theme bearing comparison to the characterization of the Establishment in its dealings with Pontius Pilate in the presentation of the execution of ‘Jesus’ of the Gospels.

In the
War
, however, Josephus describes Ananus quite differently. He describes him as ‘
venerable and a very Just Man
’, the very words that all sources use to describe
James
and our ‘
Zaddik
’ terminology again, now applied to James’ nemesis Ananus. Nothing loath, Josephus goes on to extol him, saying:

Besides
the grandeur of that nobility and dignity, and honour
, of which he possessed,
he had been a lover of equality (thus!). Even with the Poorest of the people, he was a great lover of liberty and an admirer of democracy in government, and did ever prefer the public welfare before his own advantage
.
45

Not only is it hard to suppress a guffaw here, but these are almost exactly the kinds of things one hears in sources about James.
Particularly the note about Ananus being ‘a lover of equality’ replicates the descriptions of James as ‘not deferring to persons’ we have already heard about
and will hear about further in descriptions of James’ death, not to mention their additional refurbishment in Paul above. Again, there would appear to be reversals going on in our literature here – now regarding James’ executioner Ananus,

Ananus is in control of Jerusalem after the initial rebellion in the period from 66–68 CE with another of Josephus’ very close ‘friends’ among the Chief Priests, Jesus ben Gamala. Josephus reproduces long speeches by both, demonstrating that they were
‘friends’ of Rome
, attempting only to reign in the extremist lunacy of those who had got control of the Temple and whom, for the first time,
he has started calling ‘Zealots’
. Though claiming, as he puts it, like the followers of James in Acts, to be ‘Zealots for good works’; in Josephus’ view, they were rather ‘Zealots for Evil and Zealots for Pollution’ – exactly the kind of thing we hear from Paul in Chapter 4 of his Letter to the Galatians.

Note here, too, how Jopephus has started using the language of the Qumran charges against the Establishment but, once again, reversed. This is the moment that those he is now calling ‘Zealots’ depose the High Priests. Preferring a venerable procedure of their own, the ‘
casting of lots
’ also employed in the election of James as ‘Bishop’ or the election to replace Judas
Iscariot
in Eusebius via Hegesippus, not to mention Qumran; they elect an individual of the meanest blood and circumstances, choosing one ‘
Phannius
’, that is,
Phineas, a simple ‘Stone-Cutter
’.

These ‘
Zealots
’ now invite another group of unruly and extremely violent individuals into the city, with whom, probably through their mutual Trans-Jordanian connections, they appear to be allied. Josephus calls
these unruly or ‘violent Gentiles’, ‘Idumaeans
’, and they are at this point, most certainly, pro-revolutionary and anti-Roman. Later, when the revolutionary cause goes badly, Titus himself personally conciliates them.
46
Let into the city by ‘
the Zealots’
, they rush crazily through its narrow streets, relieving the siege of the Zealots
in the Temple
by the orthodox High Priests. They then proceed to slaughter all the High Priests, in particular, Josephus’ two friends Ananus and Jesus ben Gamala.
Upbraiding and desecrating their naked bodies
– possibly even urinating on them or cutting off their sexual parts –
they then ‘cast’ (ballousin) their corpses outside the walls of the city without burial ‘to be devoured by dogs and gnawed on by wild beasts
’.
47

It is at this juncture that Josephus takes the opportunity to make his accusation against the whole of the Jewish people, now attributing the destruction of Jerusalem and the Temple to the ‘impious’ death of James’ opponent Ananus, not James’ (or even ‘Jesus’’ as per the contentions in Christian sources). He opines that:

I cannot but think
it was because God had doomed this city to destruction as a polluted city and was resolved to purge his Temple by fire
, that he cut off these
its greatest defenders and Protectors
, who had but a little time before worn the sacred vestments … and been esteemed venerable by those dwelling in the whole habitable earth ….
48

Not only do we have here again the Qumran language of ‘
pollutions
’, but also of ‘
Protection
’ applied to James in early Church sources, both, as usual, turned into their mirror reversals.

At this point, too, Josephus compares
the ‘Impiety’ involved in the treatment of Ananus’ corpse by the Zealots and Idumaeans to not taking down those crucified from the crosses before sundown
or, as he puts it:

They proceeded to such a degree of Impiety, that they cast out their corpses without burial, even though the Jews would take so much care for the burial of men, that they even took down malefactors, condemned to crucifixion, and buried them before the setting of the sun
.

It is difficult to escape the impression that this is the point being made in the parallel description in the Gospel of John about the crucifixion of Jesus (19:31–37), and, of course, the implied accusation of the ‘Impiety’ involved in
his
crucifixion. Points from this description also emerge in descriptions of the death of James, in particular, the motif of ‘breaking his legs’, but with slightly varying connotation, and further ones like breaking his skull with a laundryman’s club, and constant reiteration of the ‘casting’ language.

This is certainly bizarre and there is something peculiar here, particularly in view of the fact that in his later
Vita
, Josephus denounces Ananus as ‘corrupted by bribes’.
That all these early Church fathers, Origen, Eusebius, Jerome, etc., feel that they saw a copy of Josephus attributing the fall of Jerusalem to James’ death – not Jesus’ and probably not Ananus’ either – averring that the greater part of the Jewish people held this view as well, just compounds the conundrum
.

Josephus completes this panegyric by insisting that Ananus too knew ‘the Romans were not to be conquered’ and, like ‘Jesus’ in the Gospels, foresaw ‘
the Jews would be destroyed’
, then going on to attribute the destruction of Jerusalem and the purging of the Temple by fire to the impious things done to Ananus’ corpse by ‘the Zealots’ and ‘the Idumaeans’.

Not only do these points dovetail perfectly with the descriptions in the Dead Sea Scrolls,
relating the destruction of the Wicked Priest to ‘the Violent Ones of the Gentiles’ – paralleling ‘the Idumaeans’ – who took vengeance ‘upon the flesh of his corpse’ for what he had done to the Teacher of Righteousness
; they parallel almost perfectly the kinds of things being said about James the Just,
including the attribution of the fall of the city to his death in all these sources
.

In his description of Ananus’ trumped-up charges against James in the
Antiquities
and about how ‘
those of the citizens who cared most for equity were most uneasy at the breach of the Law involved
’, we have already seen that Josephus calls Ananus ‘
rash in temperament and very insolent’
and as a ‘Sadducee’ – meaning, an
Establishment
Sadducee – ‘
more savage than any of the other Jews in judging malefactors
’. If we add to these reversals the parallel embodied by the care displayed by the Jews to take those crucified down before sundown in order to afford them a proper burial – a key component in the story of the crucifixion of Jesus in the Gospels, it should be clear that one is treading in these accounts on very delicate ground indeed.

The solution to these numerous contradictions and overlaps will never be accepted by everyone, but certainly in the version of Josephus’ works that was circulating among Hebrew or Aramaic-speaking people in the East – most notably probably in Edessa and Adiabene in Northern Syria and Iraq – which Josephus says he wrote before the Greek which was produced for a more Roman-oriented audience in the West, one can imagine Josephus saying something of what he is recorded as saying about the High Priest responsible for James’ murder about James himself. This is particularly true if the ‘
Banus
’ referred to above, an individual Josephus seems to have viewed with more than ordinary affection, has any relationship to James. We have already expressed the view that he does.

PART IV

The Death of James

Chapter 14

The Stoning of James and the Stoning of Stephen

The Traditions about the Death of James

We are now in a position to discuss the several versions of the death of James and relate these not only to the religio-political circumstances of the Jerusalem of the day, but to the death of the High Priest Ananus, the death of the Righteous Teacher in the Dead Sea Scrolls, and, curiously as it may seem, the stoning of ‘Stephen’ in Acts. The best place to begin is, once again, early Church sources and Josephus.

Eusebius gives us three separate notices about the death of James: the first from Clement, the second from Hegesippus, and the third from Josephus. The first two, though patently distorted, are less corrupted by the retrospective imposition of a later religio-historical consensus than parallel materials in the Book of Acts. There are complementary materials in Epiphanius, Jerome, and in the Pseudoclementine
Recognitions
.

This raises the question of why the Book of Acts didn’t include such a pivotal event as the destruction of James, ‘the Bishop of Jerusalem’. Didn’t it know what happened to James? In turn, we are reminded of the puzzling fact that Acts didn’t include the equally important election or appointment of James as successor to his famous kinsman ‘Jesus’. It is these defects in Acts that make the material from extra-biblical sources about James, as persistent and numerous as these are, so impressive.

One does not usually get this sort of historical data about any other character in the New Testament from sources outside the New Testament. For instance, even a character as substantial as Paul all but vanishes when one considers reliable sources
outside
the New Testament. Jesus’ story, more highly mythologized and retrospectively fleshed out than Paul’s, is, again, virtually non-existent when one considers extra-biblical sources. Aside from Josephus’ picture of John the Baptist, only James emerges as a really tangible and historical character when one considers the length and breadth of these sources.

James’
Broken Legs
and Proclamation in the Temple at Passover

Eusebius recounts the death of James in two places. The first draws upon Clement of Alexandria’s lost work
Hypotyposes
(
Institutions
). This he gives right after Clement’s description of how Peter, James, and John, though they were preferred by Jesus, did not contend for the honour, but rather ‘
chose James the Just as Bishop of Jerusalem
’. Here Clement, aware of the difficulties inherent in both his account and that of the Book of Acts, adds: ‘
There were however, two Jameses, one called ‘the Just One’, who was thrown (bletheis) from the Pinnacle (or ‘Wing’) of the Temple and beaten to death with a fuller’s (laundryman’s) club, and the other who was beheaded
.’
1

Picking up this account again some chapters later in his discussion of the ‘
plots and crimes of the Jews
’ against Paul, and for that matter James, Eusebius states:

Unable to endure any longer the testimony of the man, who on account of his elevated philosophy and religion was deemed
by all men to be the most Righteous
, they slew him, using anarchy as an opportunity for power, since at that time Festus (Procurator 60–62) had died in Judea, leaving the province without governor or procurator.

The lack of a governor following Festus’ death in 62 CE is a detail from Josephus’ account of the death of James. He continues: ‘But as to the manner of James’ death, it has already been stated in the words of Clement, that “
he was thrown (beblesthai) from a wing of the Temple and beaten to death with a club
”.’
2

Jerome avers that this is the bare bones of what existed in early Church testimony from Hegesippus (now lost) and Clement, but he adds an important new element not found in previous accounts. Combining the material, as he himself states, from the Twentieth Book of Josephus’
Antiquities
with that of the Seventh Book of Clement’s
Institutions
, he writes:

Cast down
from a Pinnacle of the Temple,
his legs broken
, but still half alive, raising his hands to Heaven, he said, ‘Lord, forgive them for they know not what they do.’
Then struck on the head by the club of a fuller
, such a club as fullers are accustomed
to wring out wet garments with
, he died.
3

The point about James’ prayer is from Hegesippus, though it also appears in Acts’ account about Stephen and may have appeared in Clement as well. But there are several new points, including the more detailed description of the fuller’s club, and
the element of James’ broken legs
.

This is extremely important material and one does not know from where Jerome got it, but likely from Hegesippus. In any event, this phrase will provide one of the final keys to unravelling what really happened in these times of such importance to the ethos and self-image of Western historical understanding. It will be possible, even without this notice, by using other elements in these overlapping traditions about the death of James – not to mention Jesus’ – to determine what really took place, but, with it, we will be able to reach what amounts to confirmation of the scenario we are proposing.

Clearly we are in the tangle regarding the death of James’ nemesis, the High Priest Ananus, and the mix-up between what Josephus seems to have said about Ananus and what, according to other traditions, he said about James. For instance, Jerome knows the tradition attributing the downfall of Jerusalem to James’ death, saying, ‘This same Josephus records the tradition that this James was of such great Holiness and reputation among the people that the fall of Jerusalem was attributed to his death’; yet, in Josephus’ extant
Jewish War
, the same seemingly irrelevant note about
the Jews’ ‘breaking the legs’ of the victims of Roman crucifixion to ensure they received a proper burial before the sun went down
, follows the description of
what was done to Ananus’ corpse
. Both precede Josephus’ eulogization of
Ananus
’ ‘
Righteousness and Piety
’ and claim that
the removal of this ‘benefactor of his countrymen’ made Jerusalem’s destruction a certainty
. This claim, as remarked, even included
Ananus’ prediction of this destruction
. Once again, this tangle of themes exposes the overlap and revsion of materials we are encountering in these sometimes conflicting or diametrically opposed reports.

To return to the most detailed report about James, Eusebius notes, ‘
but Hegesippus, who belongs to the first generation after the Apostles, gives the most accurate account of him’
. Now quoting verbatim from the Fifth and final Book of Hegesippus’
Commentaries
: ‘Some of the seven sects, therefore, of the people, which have been mentioned by me in my
Commentaries
, asked him (James), “What is the Gate (or ‘Way’) of Jesus?”’ Eusebius retains Hegesippus’ internal references, even though at this point he does not enumerate what these sects were. He does in a later passage, where his note about the election of Simeon bar Cleophas to succeed James, for some reason, triggers a discussion of Hegesippus’ life.

Eusebius, not only notes here that Hegesippus knew Hebrew, but that he was ‘
a convert from the Hebrews
’. There can be little doubt, therefore, that Hegesippus knew the traditions of Palestine quite well, but came out of a group we should call, for lack of a better term, ‘
Jewish Christian
’. Hegesippus describes these ‘
sects
’ as
denying ‘the Resurrection’ and that ‘he was coming to give everyone according to his works’ (obviously meaning the Messiah)
. For some reason, then, describing them as ‘
being against the Tribe of Judah and the Messiah
’, Hegesippus insists that ‘
as many as did believe, did so on account of James
’.
4
Not only is this vivid testimony to the power of James’ presence in the Jerusalem of his time and, by consequence, his status as ‘
the
Zaddik
’, it is an unequivocal assertion of the clearest doctrine associated with James,
works Righteousness
, the denial of which Hegesippus sees as heretical.

This idea of someone ‘
coming to give everyone according to his works
’ is also part and parcel of his account that follows of James’ apocalyptic proclamation in the Temple at Passover – presumably 62 CE but possibly earlier – of
the imminent coming of the Messiah and the Heavenly Host with Power on the clouds of Heaven
.
This proclamation in Hegesippus’ account is the crucial one, lea
ding directly to James’ death
.

That Hegesippus portrays James as making it in the Temple at Passover (the Jewish National Liberation Festival) is significant. James is asked by the Pharisaic/Sadducean Establishment to pacify these assembled crowds in Jerusalem. He then delivers his oration. It is equivalent to lighting an incendiary and crying ‘fire’ in a crowded room.

James’ Popularity in Eusebius

James’ oration directly links him to the perspective of the War Scroll found near Qumran – the famous ‘
War of the Sons of Light against the Sons of Darkness
’ – which mounts to a climax in its interpretation of the key ‘Star Prophecy’ with the
same Messianic proclamation
, including even ‘
the coming of the Heavenly Host on the clouds of Heaven
’ in two columns – in the middle and at the end.

The proclamation of final Messianic Judgement that James makes – where the Messiah, Daniel-like, ‘on the clouds of Heaven’ leads the Heavenly Host – with the kind of apocalyptic ‘Judgement’ that in the War Scroll from Qumran ‘
is poured out like torrential rain on all that grows
’, would appear to be
an authentic piece of data from the biography of James
.

Hegesippus via Eusebius now proceeds to picture the consternation in the Pharisaic/Sadducean Establishment, and the ‘tumult’ related to James’ proclamation in the Temple. The Jewish Establishment is concerned that ‘there was danger that the whole people would now expect Jesus as the Christ’ (read ‘Messiah’, the ‘Christ’ concept in Greek probably having no currency in Palestine yet). Therefore, they send to James and say, ‘We beseech you, restrain the people, since they are being led astray regarding Jesus as if he were the Christ.’ Here, again, we have vivid testimony to James’ influence among ‘the people’ in the Jerusalem of his day.

This request to James, consistent in all sources, forms the backdrop of the Pseudoclementine
Recognitions’
account of the debates on the Temple steps between the Temple Establishment and the Apostles led by James. It forms the backdrop, as well, of accounts of how James’ putative forebear in the previous century, Honi the Circle-Drawer, is sent for by a similar configuration of parties, either to make rain or to quiet the assembled crowds opposing foreign rule in Pompey’s time, as it does the way another of Honi’s putative descendants in James’ time, one ‘Abba Hilkiah’, is sent for.

The
Talmud
portrays the representatives of this same Establishment, because they are afraid of Abba Hilkiah, as sending ‘two students’ to him
while
he is working in the fields
to ask him to make rain
(in a related incident, it sends
‘little children to get hold of the hem of the clothes’ of Hanan the Hidden – Honi’s daughter’s son
).
5
It is useful to remark in this episode, which forms part of the accounts of rain-making in Tractate
Ta‘anith
in the
Talmud
, how gruffly Abba Hilkiah treats the Establishment Rabbis, further bringing into focus
the picture of Opposition Zaddiks with power and influence among the people as opposing Establishment Pharisees and Herodians
.

In Hegesippus’ account, the Scribes and Pharisees are constrained not only to recognize James’ following ‘among the people’ as a popular charismatic leader, but also to utilize it in damping down the rampant Messianic agitation and expectation. This picture of rampant energized Messianism is borne out, not only by Josephus’ ascription of the final cause of the Uprising against Rome to
the effect of the Messianic ‘Star Prophecy’ on the young men ‘who were zealous for it’
, but also in the wide-ranging Messianism of the Dead Sea Scrolls.
6
Regardless of the tenor of his Messianism – whether pacifistic and Romanizing, like the picture of Jesus in the Gospels and Paul; or more aggressive and eschatological, the sense in Josephus and the Scrolls – one cannot escape the impression that James’ popularity
as ‘Zaddik’ of the ‘Opposition Alliance’
was of such magnitude that even the Establishment had to reckon with his pre-eminent standing among the people and defer to it, even while attempting to exploit it.

The same picture emerges in the
Anabathmoi Jacobou
, which, like the Pseudoclementines, focuses on James’ pre-eminent position in the Temple and Jerusalem twenty years earlier in the mid-40’s. As in the
Recognitions
, to which it is probably related, James is pictured as a powerful force among the masses. For its part, the scene in the
Recognitions
culminates in a debate on the Temple stairs. Even the Book of Acts, regardless of how overwritten, contains vestiges of these debates in its picture of early Christian comings and goings on the Temple Mount and the extreme interest generated by this among the people over the Messianic issues being discussed and disseminated.