James the Brother of Jesus and the Dead Sea Scrolls I (44 page)

These chapters from Acts 3–6 clearly provide a retrospective and highly-Paulinized, anti-Semitic picture of these debates in the Temple or on its steps. Though these are framed in terms of arguments about the doctrine of the supernatural ‘Christ’ and Jews as ‘Christ-killers’ and, from which, James as a central figure is entirely deleted; still, shining through the whole is the true situation of the time and
the extreme ‘Messianic’ agitation of the period from the 40’s to the 60’s CE
.

For his part, Hegesippus puts the gist of this request by the Scribes and Pharisees as follows:

We beseech you, persuade all the people who are coming for the Passover Festival concerning Jesus, for we all have confidence in you. For
we and all the people testify to you that you are the Just One and not a respecter of persons
. Therefore, persuade the people not
to be led astray
concerning Jesus, for
we and all the people must obey you
.

Again, this is extremely revealing testimony, for it shows James’ influence and position among the general populace. However, yet again, it mirrors what Josephus has just finished telling us about James’ opposite number, namely that Ananus ‘delighted in treating the humblest persons as equals’. To repeat, it is difficult at this point not to break out laughing at such blatant dissimulation by pro-Roman and Establishment writers of this kind.

The traditions Eusebius has preserved about James’ popularity among the people and being a ‘
Zaddik
and not respecting persons’ –
most particularly, where ‘Riches’ or ‘Poverty’ are concerned
– do not aid Roman Church claims for the pre-eminence and proper traditional line of Peter, which Eusebius also presents. Rather, Eusebius
reproduces these claims on behalf of James in spite of himself, because they were in his sources
. When taken seriously, this testimony about James’ popularity and his influence – and that of the ‘
Zaddik
’-idea generally – over the mass is of the utmost importance for understanding the true state of affairs in Jerusalem in the run-up to the War, as it is for understanding some curious and thoroughly unexpected positions in the Scrolls.

If one allows for the retrospective understanding of Second- and Third-Century Church theologians, who are already convinced about the antiquity of ‘the Christ’ terminology, one imagines that what James was called upon to discourse on in the Temple to quiet the Passover crowds hungering after the Messiah was the nature and understanding of ‘the Messianic idea’. This is the basic issue in the debates on the Temple steps, as recorded in the Pseudoclementine
Recognitions
,
leading to the attack on James by the ‘Enemy’ Paul. Epiphanius’
Anabathmoi Jacobou
adds the two issues of
the legitimacy of the Herodian Priesthood and the rejection of the sacrifices
. Whatever the conclusion about these things may be, these issues set the stage for the final destruction of James.

James’ Proclamation in the Temple and Jesus’ Temptation by the Devil

Eusebius, quoting from Hegesippus, now continues his description of these tumultuous events:

‘Stand, therefore, upon the Pinnacle of the Temple that you may be clearly visible on high and your words readily heard by all the people, for because of the Passover all the tribes have gathered together and numbers of Gentiles too.’ So the aforesaid Scribes and the Pharisees made James stand on the Pinnacle of the Temple, and shouting to him, cried out, ‘
O Just One, whose word we all ought to obey, since the people are led astray after Jesus, who was crucified, tell us what is the Gate to Jesus?
’ And he answered shouting out loudly, ‘
Why do you ask me concerning the Son of Man? He is now sitting in Heaven at the right hand of the Great Power and is about to come on the clouds of Heaven
.’

The word ‘Pinnacle’ (
Pterugion
) here may also be translated ‘wing’ or ‘parapet’ and it is twice repeated in the narrative. This links it indisputably with the famous story about ‘Jesus’’ ‘Temptation in the Wilderness’ after his baptism by John where exactly the same phraseology is used: ‘
He (the Devil (Diabolos)) set him upon the Pinnacle of the Temple
’ (Mt 4:5, Lk 4:8). In this episode, Jesus ‘
is led by the Holy Spirit out into the wilderness’, where he is ‘tempted by the Devil’ for forty days
. Rather than ‘
Diabolos
’, Mark 1:13 uses ‘
Satan
’ and portrays Jesus, not as ‘
led
out
’ as in Matthew and Luke, but ‘
cast out
’ (
ekballei
).

This ‘Temptation’ episode in the Synoptics is nothing but a negative parody of Josephus’ ‘
Deceivers and false prophets, who lead the people out in the wilderness, there to show them the signs and wonders of their impending freedom
’. In Matthew 4:3 and Luke 4:3, ‘the Devil’ even tells Jesus that, if he is ‘the Son of God’, he should ‘command these stones to become bread’,
precisely the kind of miraculous ‘signs or wonders’ Josephus condemned
. In later Gospel episodes, Jesus does do such miracles – even this very ‘multiplication of loaves’ in the wilderness, this ‘Temptation by the Devil’ episode,
denies he is willing to do
(Mt 15:33 and Mk 8:34)!

But to come to the point about ‘the Pinnacle of the Temple’, as the episode continues, the Devil now ‘sets him (Jesus) upon the Pinnacle of the Temple’ and challenges him to ‘cast (himself) down’. This is precisely the scenario in the James story, including almost the exact same language. The only difference is that in Clement and Hegesippus, as we saw,
James actually is ‘cast down’ from the Pinnacle of the Temple
– in the Pseudoclementines, as we shall see later,
‘headlong’ and from its ‘steps’
.

The implication in these Gospel scenarios – which in this sense must be
late
– is that what happened to James was ‘
Evil
’
or a ‘temptation by the Devil’. Jesus wouldn’t do such things! In the Gospel rewriting, Jesus is only
challenged
by the Devil to ‘cast himself down’. Though the Devil (‘
Diabolos
’) offers him ‘all the Kingdoms of the world and their Glory’, Jesus refuses, answering in words now proverbial, ‘Get thee behind me Satan’ (Mt 4:10, Lk 4:8).

Since these Gospel Temptation narratives are, at once, so polemical and symbolic and so clearly directed against those going out into the wilderness to do miracles or, as Josephus explains, ‘
to show the people the signs of their impending freedom there
’; there can be little doubt
–
regardless of how astonishing this might at first appear
–
that
the original tradition about ‘being set upon the Pinnacle of the Temple’
first appeared in these traditions about James
being placed upon ‘the Pinnacle of the Temple’ to quiet the Passover crowds hungering for the Messiah, conserved by Hegesippus in the middle of the Second Century.

The Gospel refurbishments of these various materials are, once again, clearly directed
against
those looking to build earthly ‘Kingdoms’ and to challenge Caesar’s Dominion in this world. But this is exactly the point about the polemic over the tax issue accompanying the description of Jesus (not James) as ‘
not deferring to anyone nor regarding the person of men
’ in the series of questions put to Jesus (again not James) by the Establishment Parties, directly followed in Matthew and Mark (Luke puts this elsewhere) by the citation of
the Righteousness/Piety dichotomy
, in particular, ‘
you should love your neighbour as yourself
’. This is exactly the order followed by Paul in Romans 13:6-9, citing
the Righteousness Commandment
as a reason for
‘paying taxes’ to Rome and ‘giving all their due’
.

In these Gospel renditions of Jesus’ responses to the Establishment, Jesus is portrayed as recommending, at least on the surface, ‘to give tribute unto
Caesar
’, which all these Zadokite-style Revolutionaries were quite unwilling to do. In fact, the ‘Galilean’ or ‘
Sicarii
Movement’, founded by Judas and
Saddok
, is pictured in Josephus as beginning on just this note of
opposition to paying the tax to Rome
. By the same light, for Luke 23:2, ‘
misguiding the people, forbidding (them) to pay tribute to Caesar, claiming that he himself, “Christ”, was a King’, is just the charge leveled against Jesus
.

In addition to all these retrospective and polemical reversals; it should now be growing clear that the tradition about the Devil ‘setting Jesus upon the Pinnacle of the Temple’ and Jesus’ refusal to ‘be tempted’ and ‘cast himself down’ (
kataball¯o
) was first probably an element in these traditions about James, to whom – like the related matter of
Jerusalem’s fall – they more properly appertained
. In addition to this, it should be clear that the extent of the absorption of materials about James into the biblical narrative about ‘Jesus’ is also increasing.

The phrase about ‘the Door’ or ‘Gate to Jesus’, too, is also a possible synonym for the ‘Way of Jesus’. In fact, in John 10:9, ‘Jesus’ calls himself ‘the Door’, by which he appears to mean ‘
the Gate of Salvation
’. In Hegesippus’ version of these matters, James ostensibly declines to answer the question about ‘the Gate of Jesus’ in favour of the more apocalyptic and biblical proclamation of
‘the Son of Man’, ‘sitting in Heaven on the right hand of the Great Power about, to come on the clouds of Heaven.’
For him, anyhow, ‘
the Son of Man
’ is literally ‘
the Gate of Jesus
’ or ‘
the Second
’ or ‘
Primal Adam
’.

Before proceeding, however, it is important to grasp that in Hebrew ‘Son of Man’ literally is ‘Son of Adam’ and, therefore, the reference to the imminent ‘
coming of the Son of Man on the clouds of Heaven
’ is basically a more incendiary version of the ‘Primal’ or ‘Perfect Adam’ ideology. As Paul puts it in his own inimitable way in 1 Corinthians 15:45–47: ‘
Also it is written, “the First Man Adam became a living soul”, so the Last Adam became a life-giving Spirit … The First Man is made of dust out of the earth. The Second Man is the Lord out of Heaven
.’

The quotation attributed by Hegesippus to James, which we compared to throwing a lighted match into an excited mix of pilgrims, is both immediate and intense. When one grasps its aggressively-apocalyptic Messianic character, it becomes the central proclamation of one of the most amazing episodes ever recorded in religious history. Not only are the words attributed to James paralleled almost word-for-word in the War Scroll from Qumran, they come precisely at the point where the Messianic ‘Star Prophecy’ is being elucidated in that Document.

James’ Proclamation of the Son of Man Coming on the Clouds of Heaven and the Dead Sea Scrolls

The sequence in Church accounts of the destruction of James followed by the appearance of the foreign armies and their devastation and destruction of the country is, for all intents and purposes, replicated in the Habbakuk
Pesher
. That Commentary expounds the first two chapters of the Prophet Habakkuk in an eschatological and apocalyptic manner, including both James’ and Paul’s key proof text ‘the Righteous shall live by his Faith’ which it elucidates in terms of a final apocalyptic Judgement.

The subjects treated – though not exactly in order – are:
the destruction of the Righteous Teacher by the Wicked Priest for which ‘the Cup of the Lord’s Vengeance would come around to him
’ (the Wicked Priest); the devastation of the country by foreign armies, called ‘the
Kittim
’ or ‘the Additional Ones of the Peoples’; and how the booty and Riches ‘
of the Last Priests of Jerusalem, who gathered Riches and profiteered from the spoils of the Peoples’
, would ‘
in the Last Days be delivered up to the hand of the Army of the Kittim’
.
7
In the last Column, all of these will ultimately be condemned and ‘
destroyed from off the earth
’, as would all backsliders and idolaters generally – including
‘all Gentiles serving stone and wood’ which ‘would not save them on the Day of Judgement’
(apostate Jews would be included under the idea of ‘
backsliders
’).
8

Anyone conversant with Scripture will recognize that James’ response to the Scribes and Pharisees alludes to Daniel 7:13: ‘And I gazed into the visions of the night and I saw, coming on the clouds of Heaven, one like a Son of Man.’ This title, ‘the Son of Man’, is one of the most precious of those applied to ‘Jesus’ in Scripture, but what is not normally recognized is that ‘Son of Man’ means exactly what it says – someone with the image of a ‘man’ but not exactly one. As for ‘the Messiah’ and ‘the clouds of Heaven’, one should realize that the War Scroll is operating in exactly the same ideological and scriptural framework.