James the Brother of Jesus and the Dead Sea Scrolls I (51 page)

In the story of the stoning of Stephen from Acts 7:58–8:1, the ‘witness’ becomes James’ (and presumably Simeon’s) ideological adversary
Paul
. As Acts puts it, after describing how ‘having cast him out of the city, they stoned him’: ‘And
the witnesses
put down
their clothes
at the feet of a young man Saul. And
they stoned Stephen as he was praying
(repeated a second time) … And Saul consented to putting him to death’.

The ‘
clothes
’ theme is an important one, as in the traditions about James we have the reiteration of the type of ‘
clothes
’ he wears, but there is also the play on the special linen bath-clothing the Essenes wore generally and now the additional implied play on the ‘
laundryman beating out clothes
’ in the picture of
James’ death. What are we to make of these curious usages and overlaps? How else can sense be made of such senseless survivals from earlier traditions? Why would the witnesses lay ‘their clothes’ anywhere when, according to Talmudic tradition, it is the condemned individual who was to undress?

However this may be, once again, in line with the mirror reversals we find in this literature, Paul takes the place of his opposite number, James’ successor in Palestine, Simeon bar Cleophas – the only difference being that, while one approves of what was done, the other disapproves. We shall have more to say about interesting juxtapositions such as this presently, but before attempting to resolve some of the contradictions and
non sequitur
s
in this account, we should take a look at two other sources: the two Apocalypses of James and Jerome’s account.

The Stoning of James at Nag Hammadi

In the First Apocalypse of James from Nag Hammadi, an oracle to ‘leave Jerusalem’ is attributed to Jesus. In early Christian usage, the ‘Pella Flight Tradition’ is attributed to James or occurs either consonant with or as a consequence of his death.
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Throughout this First Apocalypse, not only do we have repeated reference to the ‘seizing’ found in these early Church accounts of the death of James, but also the omnipresent use of the language of ‘casting down’ or ‘casting out’, which also occurs in the Second Apocalypse.

The Second Apocalypse of James is more straightforward, containing many of the details of James’ death with which we have already become familiar in these early Church accounts. In its picture, James is standing not ‘
on the Pinnacle
’ but, as in the Pseudoclementines, ‘
on the steps of the Temple’
– in this instance ‘
the fifth flight
’ – whether to deliver his ‘discourses’, or the speech in Hegesippus, or as part of ‘
Ascents
’ of some other kind, is not completely clear (45:24).

By far the most interesting material in the Second Apocalypse comes in the first place, at the beginning with the reference to ‘
Theuda
(‘
Theudas
’?),
the relative of the Just One
’, who basically takes the place of the individual referred to as ‘
Addai
’ (‘
Thaddaeus
’?) in the First Apocalypse and, at the end of the Apocalypse, with the narrative of
the stoning of ‘the Just One’
. It contains many colourful new details which are, certainly, not all reliable, but they show how vibrant and alive this tradition about James’ stoning was in the East in the Second and Third Centuries.

After a reference to the coming destruction of the Temple and to ‘the judges taking counsel’ (60:20–25), it reads as follows: ‘On that day, the whole people and the crowd were getting stirred up and appeared to be disagreeing with each other; and he arose, after speaking in this way and departed. But he entered again the same day and spoke for a few hours (this appears to parallel the debates on the Temple steps, as recounted in the Pseudoclementine
Recognitions
, which has James’ departing after his first speech only to return again the next day). And I was with the Priests, but I did not reveal our kinship.’

It is difficult to understand who this narrator can be other than Simeon bar Cleophas, the witness to the stoning of James in Epiphanius’ version of Hegesippus – either him or a reference of some kind to the ‘
kinship
’ of James and Jesus. The mention of ‘Priests’ is interesting in view of the reference to James’ Disciple ‘Mareim’ (which so parallels the female names of ‘Mariamme’ or ‘Mary’ elsewhere) at the beginning of the Apocalypse as being ‘one of the Priests’ and the whole issue of the relationship of Rechabite/Nazirite/Essene Priests to those in the Temple generally. It also links up with the peculiar notice in the Book of Acts of
a large number of Priests having made their conversion
. The ‘
kinship
’, then, is either between James and Jesus or Simeon bar Cleophas and James – even perhaps Jude and James – it is difficult to decide which.

The Second Apocalypse continues: ‘For all of them were crying out in unison, “
Come, let us stone the Just One
.” And they arose, saying, “Yes, let us put this man to death, that he will be taken from out of our midst,
for he is abhorrent to us
.”’ But, of course, this is almost a word-for-word quotation from the account of Hegesippus, including even the citation from Isaiah 3:10, ‘
Let us remove the Just One, for he is abhorrent to us
’ (according to the Septuagint version) now moulded into the very narrative itself, ‘and when they came out, they found him
standing on the Pinnacle of the Temple beside the
firm Cornerstone
.’

The ‘
Cornerstone
’ allusion attached to this episode about James’ death is a new element, but not a completely surprising one. The imagery of ‘
Stone
’ and ‘
Cornerstone
’ is part and parcel of that applied to the Disciples in early Christianity and omnipresent in the Dead Sea Scrolls as we have seen. It is interesting, too, that in the Epistle of Barnabas the imagery of the ‘
firm Cornerstone
’ is linked to the quotation of this same Isaiah 3:10 passage above.
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There can be little doubt that what we now have here in this Apocalypse is the picture of
James standing on the Temple Pinnacle
or
possibly the Temple balustrade
, common to all these early Church accounts.

The text then reads: ‘And they were bent upon
throwing him down
from that height. And
they cast him down
.’ As in Epiphanius’ and Eusebius’ version of Hegesippus, the ‘
casting down
’ language is repeated
twice
. Unfortunately, there now follows a short lacuna in the text and, though one would like to know what is missing, the narrative then resumes with a completely new twist: ‘And they … seized him (this clearly after his ‘
fall
’) and (struck) him as they dragged him on the ground. They stretched him apart and
placed a stone on his stomach
(this ‘
placing a stone on his stomach
’ reflects Talmudic parameters for stoning),
which they all kicked with their feet
, saying, “
You have gone astray
.”’

Not only do we have here the allusion to ‘being misled’ or ‘erring’ that one has in Hegesippus, but one assumes that what was meant here was the accusation of ‘
blasphemy
’ regarding James, lost somewhat in translation, though the sense of theological error is present. Our writer now, of course, fairly runs away with himself in blood-thirsty enthusiasm:

Again, they raised him up since he was still alive. They made him dig a hole. Then they made him stand in it. After they covered him up to his stomach, they stoned him in this way (all this is truly original, but, except in so far as it reproduces Talmudic parameters for stoning, one can assume, more or less apocryphal). But he stretched forth his hands,
saying the following prayer
, which he was accustomed to saying.

We are now in familiar terrain again, including the element of ‘
praying
’. We shall treat this gruesome account of their making him dig a pit and placing a stone on James’ stomach further below. Once again, these last have to do with refracted Talmudic accounts of such procedures.

The prayer that is given is not the ‘Forgive them Father, for they know not what they do’, but rather an entirely original, more Gnosticizing, one. One can imagine that this prayer was recited in the Community that produced this account in commemoration of what it thought James said when he was stoned. It is a totally original ‘discourse’ and may be one of the ‘
discourses
’ he was said to have ‘
given Mareim
’ at the beginning of the Apocalypse or something from Epiphanius’
Anabathmoi Jacobou
. In kind, though not in subject, it is not so different from the discourse attributed to James in the debates on the Temple steps in the Pseudoclementine
Recognitions
before he was ‘
cast down headlong
’ by ‘
the Enemy
’ Paul.

Its main emphasis is on asking for ‘Grace’, ‘Salvation’, and ‘resurrection’. Interestingly enough, it uses the language of ‘Strength’, so associated with James in the other sources, and of ‘Light’, ‘Power’, and ‘being saved’ – the last phraseology prominent in the description of the destruction of the Righteous Teacher in the Habakkuk
Pesher
at Qumran.
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Even more interestingly, there is the tell-tale reference to the ‘Enemy’, that appears in the Pseudoclementine account of the attack on James by Paul.
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The Importance of James in Jerome

The material about the stoning of James in Jerome, though derivative and clearly abbreviated, is equally interesting. This is not only because of the prominence Jerome accords both James
and
Jude, but because of the way Jerome combines sources and finally introduces new – and in fact crucial – material that will eventually show the way towards a synthesis of
all our sources
.

We have already seen how in his Commentary on Paul’s famous testimony to James in Galatians, Jerome supplies the additional piece of information that ‘
so Holy was James that the People tried to touch the fringes of his garment’ as he passed by
. For Jerome, James is second in importance only to Simon Peter; and Jude, whom he identifies (as in the Letter attributed to his name) as ‘
the brother of James’
, he places fourth after Matthew – even before Paul, whom he places fifth. Jerome is writing about ‘famous’ or ‘illustrious writers’ in the history of the Church up to his time, among whom he includes – notably – the non-Christians Philo, Seneca, and Josephus as eleventh to thirteenth respectively. In this work,
Lives of Illustrious Men
, treating one hundred and thirty-five persons from Simon Peter onwards,
the section on James is the longest except for Origen.

Beginning once again with James’ cognomen, ‘
the Just One’
, Jerome allows Joseph as his father. However, like his sometime acquaintance Epiphanius, he continues the theme of
a
second mother
, only adding the preposterous
Mary ‘the sister of’ her own sister Mary
of the Gospel of John as his candidate.
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He goes on to give most of the details regarding James’ person and life, we have already encountered in other sources, most notably his view that James ‘
was immediately appointed Bishop of Jerusalem by the Apostles after our Lord’s Passion
’. ‘Immediately’ is the operative word here, which echoes the position of the Pseudoclementine
Recognitions
on this point, only for him James ‘
ruled the Church at Jerusalem for thirty years
’, while for Epiphanius above it was only ‘
twenty-four
’.

He quotes Hegesippus on James’ Naziritism (he ‘was Holy from his mother’s womb’), i.e., his abstention from strong drink, meat, anointment with oil, shaving, etc. He insists he wore
only linen, not ‘woollen clothes’
. Here is the omnipresent theme of ‘
clothing
’ again. In addition, there is the one of his being ‘on his knees’ and ‘praying’ and how ‘his knees were reputed to be of the hardness of camels’ knees’ because of all the praying he did, i.e., ‘
He alone enjoyed the privilege of entering the Holy of Holies … and went into the Temple alone and prayed on behalf of the people, to such a degree that his knees were reputed to have acquired the calluses of a camel’s knees
.’ But in this he agrees with Epiphanius, whom he considered ‘an old fool’, not Eusebius. To arrive at the picture of a perfect
Yom Kippur
‘atonement’, one has only to substitute the phraseology: ‘
he
went into the Holy of Holies alone
’ – not the Temple.