James the Brother of Jesus and the Dead Sea Scrolls I (6 page)

The Jewish Historian Josephus

Josephus (37–96 CE) is important for a consideration of this whole period; without him, we would be almost completely ignorant of events. With him, we have a marvelous insight into – and almost encyclopaedic reportage of – what transpired.

From 62 CE onwards, the year of James’ death as recorded in the
Antiquities
, Josephus was a mature observer relying on his own experience and eyewitness reporting. His personal experiences are, in fact, incorporated in great detail into the book called the
Jewish War
, which he wrote directly after the events of 66–73 and which ends, significantly enough, with a description of the triumphal parade in Rome of Titus, the son of the new Roman Emperor Vespasian (69–79). Josephus, as a member of the latter’s staff, witnessed this event. The commemorative Arch of Titus still stands in the ruins of the Roman Forum today, a chilling reminder of these age-old cataclysms.

But Josephus was also a turncoat, a traitor to his people. When reading him, this should always be kept in mind. It was on the basis of this betrayal that he was allowed to live and was not put to death like others who played a role in the events he describes. For Josephus
did
play a role in these events. Originally, by his own testimony, he was military commander of Galilee – ‘commissar’ might be more accurate – responsible for its organization and fortification in the early days of the Revolt. Later, after his desertion, he was an interrogator of prisoners.

His popularity among his fellow countrymen can be deduced from the following episode which he describes in
The Jewish War
. Deputized by the Romans, presumably because he spoke the native language, to call up to the defenders on the walls of Jerusalem during its siege and ask for their surrender, he was hit on the head by a projectile thrown by someone on the battlements. When he fell, a spontaneous cheer erupted among those watching from the walls. Their enemy Josephus had been wounded (
War
5.541–7). With military commanders or commissars like Josephus, the Jews had no need of enemies, and the military catastrophe that overtook them was inevitable. Later he uses the prestige his priestly status allowed him in the eyes of the Romans to appeal to their credulity and the exaggerated awe they felt for such augurs or foreign oracles (
War
6.310–15).

It was to his role as a fortune-telling Jewish priest, supposedly held in high esteem by his own people, that his survival can be credited. He and several companions had taken refuge in a cave after the collapse of the military defence of Galilee, for which he was ostensibly responsible. The Romans were taking this time-honoured route on their way to lay siege to Jerusalem, and Josephus betrayed the suicide pact that he and a few companions had made – the normal ‘Zealot’ approach in such extreme circumstances. Instead, he and another colleague, after dispatching their comrades, surrendered to the Romans, an episode he relates quite shamelessly.

Ushered into the Roman commander Vespasian’s presence, Josephus proceeded to apply the Messianic ‘Star Prophecy’ to him, prophesying that Vespasian was the one foretold in Jewish Scripture, who was going to come out of Palestine and rule the world. This was the prophecy that was of such importance to resistance groups in this period, including those responsible for the documents at Qumran and the revolutionaries who triggered the war against Rome, not to mention the early Christians.
2
The following year Vespasian was to replace Nero (54–68 CE) as Emperor.

Of course, Josephus was not the only turncoat to whom sources attribute reversing the sense of the Messianic Prophecy, applying it to the
destroyer of Jerusalem instead of to its liberator.
The Rabbis, who became the Roman tax collectors in Palestine after the fall of the Temple, claim the same behaviour for the progenitor of the
form of Judaism they followed, Rabbinic Judaism-to-be, Rabbi Yohanan
ben Zacchai. Rabbi Yohanan seems also to have been involved in the process of fixing the Jewish Canon at the end of the first century. Like Hillel and Shammai before him with Herod, Rabbi Yohanan’s behaviour with the Romans has become paradigmatic. He is described in rabbinic sources as applying the same ‘Star Prophecy’, the most precious prophecy of the Jewish people at that time, to the conqueror of Jerusalem, Vespasian, who was elevated to supreme ruler of the known civilized world after his military exploits in Palestine.

As the rabbinic presentation of this story goes, Rabbi Yohanan, after having himself smuggled out of Jerusalem in a coffin – quite appropriately, as it turns out; besides, it was the only exit possible at the time – had an arrow shot into Vespasian’s camp, attached to which was a note claiming that ‘Rabbi Yohanan is one of the Emperor’s friends’.
3
Doubtless this was true, but the camp had to have been Titus’, because Vespasian, the founder of the new Flavian line of emperors, had already gone to Rome at this point to assume his crown, leaving Titus behind to wind things up in Palestine. Rabbi Yohanan, as Talmudic materials present him, then had himself ushered into Vespasian’s presence to proclaim the very same thing Josephus recounts
he
did, that Vespasian was the Ruler prophesied to come out of Palestine and rule the world.

Whether Josephus was a cynical opportunist or not, his account is the more credible, though both may be true. If so, Vespasian must have become very impatient of all these Jewish turncoats obsequiously fawning on him and proclaiming him the Ruler foreseen in Jewish Scripture, who was to come out of Palestine to rule the world (or maybe he didn’t). For his part, the Romans accorded R. Yohanan the academy at Yavneh, where the foundations of what was to become Rabbinic Judaism were laid; whereas Josephus was adopted for services rendered – writing the
Jewish War
being one of them – into the Roman imperial family itself.

In Josephus’ case, the contacts for his treachery had already been laid some time before. As he recounts it, he knew someone in the Roman camp, someone he had met on a previous mission to Rome on behalf of some obscure priests who, he contends, were being held on a ‘trifling’ charge of some kind.
4
These priests, like Paul according to Acts, had appealed to Nero, and were probably connected in some manner to the ‘Temple Wall’ Affair. In this affair, which in our view led directly to the death of James, a wall had been built – presumably by ‘Zealot’ priests – to block Agrippa II (49–93 CE) from viewing the Temple sacrifice while reposing and eating on the balcony of his palace (
Ant
. 20.189–90).

In his autobiographical excursus appended to the
Antiquities
called the
Vita
, Josephus describes how as a young priest he went to Rome on a mission to rescue those who had gone there and been detained as a result, presumably, of the ‘Temple Wall’ Affair. Somehow he had gained access through a well-connected Jewish actor to Nero’s wife, Poppea, whom he elsewhere describes as being interested in religious causes, Jewish or otherwise. It will be remembered that Nero, too, enjoyed the company of people of the theatre. So pleased was Poppea with the young Josephus that he apparently attained all he wished of her – and perhaps more – for he proudly brags that she sent him away laden with gifts. One wonders what else the artful young priest managed to achieve during his stay, apart from the contacts he made in Roman intelligence circles that served him so well when Roman armies finally did appear in Galilee three years later.

Josephus was obviously, then, very well placed to produce his accounts of the history of Palestine and matters such as the rise of the Flavians and their qualifications either for Jewish Messiahship or divine honours, as the case may be, for which he was duly rewarded. In writing the
Jewish War
, for instance, he was putting the Flavians on the same level as the forerunner of the previous dynasty, the divine Julius. The only difference was that, whereas Julius Caesar wrote his own histories, Josephus, an adoptee and a captive, wrote theirs.

Josephus is inaccurate when it comes to matters having a direct bearing on his own survival; in particular, his questionable relations with revolutionaries, apocalyptic groups, and sedition, as well as his attempts to ingratiate himself with his new masters. But his meticulous reproduction of the minutiae of day-to-day events is unparalleled. For this reason, we have an encyclopaedic presentation of events and persons in Palestine in this period without equal in almost any time or place up to the era of modern record-keeping and reportage.

Chapter 3

Romans, Herodians, and Jewish Sects

The Sects in the Second Temple Period

Josephus describes the Jewish sects of this period in a tendentious manner. The
Talmud
presents an equally tendentious picture of a Rabbinic Judaism opposed to all other groups, lumped together as
minim
– ‘
sects
’. Sometimes these last are even called ‘Sadducees’ without further elucidation as to who they really are.

In the Dead Sea Scrolls from Qumran, these Sadducees are ‘
the Sons of Zadok
’, evoking the term as employed in the vision of Ezekiel (chapters 40–48) of the reconstructed Temple of the Last Days. Related to it is the ‘
Righteousness
’ ideology expressed in the root letters
Z–D–K
of the Hebrew word underlying the Greek rendering ‘
Sadducee
’. The Sons of Zadok or Sadducees depicted in the Qumran materials have little in common with those in the New Testament or Josephus. Where these opposing groups of Sadducees – Herodian (Establishment) or separatist (Purist) – are concerned, there are common approaches to legal minutiae that so obsess the authors of Talmudic tradition. However, in the broad lines of hostility towards the ‘fornication’ of the Establishment (incest, polygamy, divorce, etc.), there is almost nothing in common between them. Moreover, the second group is characterized by an
antagonism to foreign rule
, including foreign-appointed kings, foreign-appointed High Priests, and foreign gifts and sacrifices in the Temple, which does not characterize the first group at all.

The same issues are fundamental to ‘
the Zealots
’, those who follow the demands of the
zeal
-oriented Covenant of Phineas (Num. 25:6–13). Where the relationship of the Scrolls to so-called ‘Zealots’ is concerned, it is interesting to point out that Phineas, portrayed in Numbers as functioning in the wilderness at the time of Moses, is accorded the High Priestly Covenant in perpetuity because of the ‘zeal’ he displayed in killing backsliders who were marrying foreigners, thereby deflecting
pollution
from the camp of Israel. 1 Maccabees 2:26 raises this Covenant on behalf of Judas Maccabee’s father, Mattathias, and presumably all of his descendants succeeding to him. But this Phineas, who was Aaron’s grandson, was also the High Priestly ancestor of the ‘
Zadok
’ of David’s time, an important connection between the ‘
Zealot
’ and ‘
Zadokite
’ ideologies. This idea of ‘
pollution
’ in the camp of Israel in the wilderness as relating to the issue of
mixing
with foreigners has important ramifications in the Qumran documents and is the focus of the ‘
Zealot
’ ethos.
1

Sadducees,
Essenes,
and Zealots

The group called ‘Essenes’ also have much in common with Qumran
Sadducees
– not to mention with the so-called Zealots and Palestinian Christians following James – but, as with Opposition or Purist Sadducees, they have nothing in common with Establishment
Sadducees
of the Herodian period as pictured in Josephus and the New Testament.

There is an even better description of these Essenes, which includes several important points linking them closely with James’ followers in Palestine, in a work called the
Refutation of All Heresies
, attributed to Hippolytus, an early third-century Church writer in Rome (160–235). This description is possibly an even earlier version of Josephus’ description of the Essenes in the
Jewish War
. In it, ‘Zealots’ and their more extreme counterparts, the ‘
Sicarii
’ (‘Assassins’ – so styled because of the Arab-style dagger they concealed under their cloaks), are seen only as
Essenes
less prepared to compromise (9.21).
This clarifies the sectarian situation in Palestine considerably.

At the end of the fourth century, Epiphanius, whose
Panarion
(
Medicine Box – Against Heresies
in Latin), has the greatest difficulty distinguishing Essenes from a group he calls ‘the Jessaeans’ (followers, according to him, of David’s father Jesse or of Jesus himself).
2
This is not surprising, because even modern confusions relating to the term ‘Essene’ are legion.

Philo of Alexandria, the first-century Jewish philosopher referred to their expertise in health or medicinal matters, including presumably curings.
3
For its part, the New Testament does not refer to Essenes at all, nor does the
Talmud
, not at least
qua
Essenes. This may be explained by the fact that all groups of this kind are simply being referred to retrospectively as
minim
(‘sects’) or
Saddukim
(‘
Sadducees
’) after the Pharisees took control of Jewish life in the wake of the failed Uprising against Rome. In using these notations, no attempt was made to draw fine distinctions, if in fact these were even appreciated by the time the Talmudic materials were finally redacted in the second and third centuries CE.