James the Brother of Jesus and the Dead Sea Scrolls I (58 page)

It would be interesting to know who the mother was – also unnamed but living in Jerusalem – of this young man who himself had such cordial relations with the Romans that he could enter their fortresses and produce such an astonishing results. Six years later, at the time of the outbreak of the War with Rome, Josephus’ ‘
Saulus
’ seems to enjoy a similar relationship with the Roman Chief Captain in either the Fortress called Antonia or the Citadel.

The mother of this ‘
young man’
–
‘
Paul’s nephew’
– is possibly to be identified with Cypros IV, the wife of ‘Helcias the Temple Treasurer’ (preceding the ‘Saulus’ in Josephus’ comrade and ‘
kinsman
’ Antipas above).
6
In Herodian genealogies, this would make her not only
the sister of both Saulus and Costobarus,
but also the mother of that ‘Julius Archelaus’, just mentioned above also, who like Josephus also
ended up in Rome obviously living in some comfort and an avid reader of the latter’s works
!

If this is so, then Paul comes from a very important line indeed and it is not surprising that his nephew – whom we might tentatively identify as ‘Julius Archelaus’ – had such ready access to the Temple Guard. As we have noted, this line goes back through
a daughter of Herod and his Maccabean wife Mariamme I to the Idumaean Costobarus
, the husband of Herod’s sister Salome I. The endogamy here, so roundly condemned at Qumran, is dizzying.

This is consistent as well with the picture of the ‘Herodian’ Paul in the Pseudoclementine
Recognitions
, leading the attack on James in the 40’s. The only problem is the time frame – approximately twenty years’ difference. The ‘Saul’ in Josephus reappears in 66 CE as the intermediary between ‘
the Peace Party’ in Jerusalem
and Herod Agrippa II’s army and that of the Romans outside it. Again, this Saul has either just escaped from Agrippa II’s palace or the Citadel where the whole Guard has just been slaughtered in the initial moments of the Uprising – all, that is, but the Captain who was
forcibly circumcised
thereby saving himself.
7

This linking of Saulus with the names of Costobarus and Antipas is certainly genealogical. This younger Antipas was also for a time Temple Treasurer as we signaled; however was killed by ‘
the Robbers
’ (the
Sicarii
– specifically, one ‘
John the son of Dorcas
’), prior to
the irruption into the city of ‘the Zealots’ with their ‘Idumaean’ partisans
and
their consonant slaughter of the High Priests, including James’ murderer Ananus
.
8

In the meantime, Saulus fled with his brother Costobarus and Philip to the Roman Commander Cestius’ camp, and, from there, to Nero who was, at that time,
residing
in Corinth
. There, Saulus reported on the situation in Palestine and blamed the then-Governor Florus (64–66 CE), rather than the Roman commander Cestius, for the catastrophe that had occurred. It is at this point and location that the future Roman Emperor Vespasian is given his commission to repress the Jewish Uprising in Palestine. Since this also seems to have been part of Saulus’ recommendation to Nero, Saulus may have accompanied him – but Josephus trails off here and we do not hear of his ultimate fate.

If Paul is related to the original ‘
Costobarus
’ and, in addition,
Herod Antipas
, that is, ‘
Herod the Tetrarch
’ – as the name ‘
Antipas
’ above would also seem to imply – whose ‘
foster brother’
was referred to in Acts 13:11 as one of the founders of Paul’s curious ‘Community’ in Antioch
where
‘
Christians were first called Christians’
; it would explain what Paul was doing on his mysterious visit to Damascus when he ran afoul of the Arabian King Aretas (2 Cor. 11:32). This is the same ‘Aretas’ who was, then, at war with Saulus’ putative kinsman ‘Herod Antipas’, who executed John the Baptist not long before or at about this time. For Acts 9:22, it will be recalled, Paul rather
ran afoul of
‘
the Jews, who dwelt in Damascus
’.

However these things may be, Acts’ presentation of Paul’s last days is fuzzy in the extreme. Acts appears to know nothing about Paul’s death or, if it does, is unwilling to tell us about it because, presumably, it was too embarrassing. It is to early Church sources we must turn for the information
that Paul was beheaded
, probably by Nero, and a somewhat preposterous version of Peter’s death as well.
9
Acts ends in 62 CE, the year of James’ death, with Paul under loose house arrest – if even this – in Rome (28:30–31).

In Romans 15:24–28, the same letter that includes these pointed greetings to Paul’s ‘
kinsman the Littlest
’ or ‘
youngest Herod
’ – more than likely the son of Salome and Aristobulus whose household in Rome, as we saw, has also possibly just been greeted in the preceding line (Rom. 16:10) – Paul also expressed
his intention to visit Spain from where Gallio and his brother Seneca came
. Galba, who succeeded Nero in 68 CE, had been Governor there too, and it was the place of origin of the future Emperors Trajan (98–117) and Hadrian (117–138).

Not only did Gallio, whose presence in Corinth in the early 50’s as Governor has been archaeologically verified, intervene to save Paul – even going so far as to have the Jewish leader of the synagogue there beaten in his presence because, as Acts 18:17 so charmingly puts it, ‘
none of these things
(that is, Jewish legal quibbles)
mattered to Gallio
’ – but a lively apocryphal correspondence has been preserved between his brother Seneca and Paul.
10
Here, Acts is involved in another of those stupefying reversals, mistaking Paul’s acolyte ‘Sosthenes’ in 1 Corinthians 1:1 for ‘the ruler of the synagogue’ there, whom Gallio had driven from the Judgement Seat in Corinth and beaten.

Seneca was the young Nero’s tutor and the real power, at first, behind Nero’s Emperorship before Nero forced him to commit suicide in 65 CE. There is no reason to suppose this correspondence between Seneca and Paul to be totally groundless but, whether it was or not, Paul’s contacts went very high up in the Emperor Nero’s household. At the very least these involved his own intimate associate ‘Epaphroditus’, by whom he sends greetings ‘
especially to those in Caesar’s household
’ (Phil. 2:25 and 4:18). It would be difficult to conceive that this Epaphroditus could be
anyone other than Nero’s
own
secretary
by the same name
, later blamed by Domitian for killing or, at least, helping Nero to kill himself.

This same Epaphroditus also seems to have been Josephus’ publisher and Josephus even notes, in a brief dedication to him, how he had been involved in ‘
great events
’. Eventually Domitian had Epaphroditus – who had been his secretary as well – executed in 95 CE, a year or two after the appearance of the
Antiquities
and about the time Domitian executed his own uncle Flavius Clemens for being ‘a secret Christian’! For his part, Josephus may have also run afoul of Domitian.

Whether or not everyone can agree with all these points, there is no reason to believe that Paul could
not
have returned to Palestine,
after his ‘appeal to Caesar’ and his initial trip to Rome to see Nero around 60 CE
. Of course, if he did so, this had to have been with and by Nero’s accord, that is,
he would have entered Roman service
. Perhaps this is why Acts is so silent as to Paul’s ultimate fate.

As noted, Paul is reputed to have planned or made at least one additional trip to Spain following his appeal to Caesar in Rome and, with the contacts he had in Corinth and Rome, this too would not have been surprising or difficult. If he did return to Palestine, thereafter, he could have done so around the time that the ‘Saulus’ in Josephus led the riot in Jerusalem in the run-up  to the Uprising against Rome.

Early Church texts put Paul’s death some time after the outbreak of the War against Rome, around the years 68–69 CE. Here we do begin to approach convergence with Josephus’ ‘Saulus’ who disappears at approximately the same time from Josephus’ reporting, though not before he provided Nero with a final briefing in Corinth on events in Palestine, as we saw, where he was possibly also involved in the appointment of the Roman General Vespasian as Commander of the troops in Palestine. There are too many coincidences here for them simply to be casual.

The Attack on James and the Attack on Stephen

These matters, true or otherwise, are not completely un-germane to the presentation in the Pseudoclementine
Recognitions
of Paul’s attack on James in the Temple in the 40’s, which itself bears on the tangle of data relating to the stoning of Stephen in the 40’s and the stoning of James in the 60’s. In Jerome’s presentation of James’ death, one or two interesting points emerge relating to how the
Recognitions
presents the attack on James in the Temple by ‘
the Enemy
’
Paul
in the 40’s
, if not
the 60’s
.

There is something very peculiar about the sequencing of events relating to these two ‘stonings’ as we have them in Acts and Josephus. Of course there is the twenty-year gap in the chronology between them but we have this concerning the two riots too, the one in Acts led by Paul after the attack on Stephen in the 40’s and the other in Josephus led by ‘Saulus’ after the attack on James in the 60’s. It is almost as if these two documents are totally remaking each other’s chronology. Then, too, though Acts places the riot led by Saulus in the 40’s – when, according to the
Recognitions,
it most likely occurred – it
transposes the stoning of James in the 60’s with that of Stephen in the 40’s
. Josephus does the same with the riot led by Paul in the 40’s seemingly transposing it with the one led by Saulus in the 60’s.

What is the explanation? There is none that will satisfy everyone. Not only does
the riot led by ‘Saulus’ in Josephus follow the stoning of James in the same manner that the riot led by ‘Saul’ in Acts follows the stoning of Stephen
, we also have the various repetitions in Josephus of the theme of
the ‘Rich’ Priests robbing those of the ‘Poorer’ kind
, which ties these matters directly to the picture in the Habakkuk
Pesher
at Qumran of
the death of the Righteous Teacher
. This is not to mention the picture of
the Rich High Priests
and their violent minions arguing with the ‘representatives of the People’ in the Temple
– which, in these various documents, always goes
from harsh debate to riot and stoning
– and the picture in both Josephus and the New Testament of
the violence such ‘Violent Ones’ are willing to use with the People
– terminology actually appearing and used at Qumran.

Again, the reader must always keep in mind that the Gospels and Acts have more the
character of literature
; while Josephus,
that of history
. Can we think that, for some reason, Josephus has transposed these two riots? It would be difficult to imagine why, and there is also the matter of the alleged crucifixion of Judas the Galilean’s two sons, James and Simon, in the 40’s in the
Antiquities
– all three of these, incidentally, being the names of Jesus’ three brothers – missing from the
War
, but seemingly foreshadowing the crucifixion of Simeon bar Cleophas and possibly the grandchildren of Jesus’ brother Judas under Domitian or Trajan.

On the other hand, the question about the authenticity of the picture in Acts is simpler – either one accepts Acts’ presentation as it is, full of fantastic history, repetitions, and rewriting and/or overwriting, or admits there are huge holes in it, mistaken historical information, bodily liftings from other sources, and over-simplification verging on disinformation and/or outright fallaciousness. Unfortunately, some of this last occurs in precisely the area having to do with final confrontation in Jerusalem between Paul and James, the arrest of Paul, his incarceration under protective custody in Caesarea, and his appeal to Caesar.

This last includes the picture of the Chief Priests wanting –
Sicarii
-style –
to kill Paul and making grandiose ‘plo
–
ts’ against him
, a totally unconvincing picture when we know that earlier in Acts they were
in league
with him
and, in Josephus, that at that time they were, in fact, rather
involved in intense internecine strife with the Leaders of the insurgent mob in Jerusalem
.