James the Brother of Jesus and the Dead Sea Scrolls I (70 page)

Parallel Sequencing in Acts and Josephus: the Conflation Unravels

In Josephus too, as in Acts and the Pseudoclementines, it is always the sequence of the events – not necessarily the precise substance – that is important. Josephus moves from the ‘Impostor’ or ‘Magician’ Theudas (Acts 5:36) to Tiberius Alexander (Acts 4:6), his crucifixion of James and Simon ‘the two sons of Judas the Galilean’ (Acts 5:37), to the riot after the Roman soldier exposed himself on the wing of the Temple at Passover, to the beating and robbing of ‘Stephanos, Caesar’s retainer’, just outside Jerusalem by seditious ‘Innovators’ or ‘Revolutionaries’ (Acts 6–7).

This is followed by the problems between the Samaritans and Jews because of confrontations with ‘the Galileans’, who were traveling through their country (paralleled in Acts 8:1–25 by the confrontations of Philip and Peter with Simon
Magus
in ‘Samaria’), and the crucifixion of the Jewish Messianic pretender ‘Doetus’ or ‘Dortus’ – ‘Dorcas’ in Acts and probably ‘Dositheus’ in the Pseudoclementines and other heresiologies – and four of his colleagues at Lydda (paralleled in Acts 9:31–42). It is at this point that the High Priest Ananias and his Temple Captain, Ananus ben Ananus, are sent to Rome in bonds to give an account to Claudius of what they had done, and there make the acquaintance of Agrippa II.

An additional, but shorter, set of sequencing, with much in common with this one, goes from the stoning of James (‘Stephen’ in Acts), to the plundering of the tithes of the Poor Priests by the Richer ones (the theme of squabbling over the improper food distribution to the ‘widows’ in the background to the ‘Stephen’ episode in Acts 6:1–3), to the riot led by Saulus, ‘a kinsman of Agrippa’, who with a bunch of thugs ‘used Violence with the people’, ‘plundering those weaker than themselves’, so that the ‘city (Jerusalem) became greatly disordered and all things grew worse and worse among us’.
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The riot led by Saulus in Acts (and the Pseudoclementines) is about as graphic.

There are three other matters overlapping material in Acts which are worth mentioning. The first is the visit by Simon the Head of ‘an Assembly (
Ecclesia
) in Jerusalem’ to Caesarea to inspect the household of Agrippa I in the early 40’s to ‘see what was being done there contrary to Law’. This is inverted in Acts’ presentation of Peter visiting the Roman Centurion Cornelius’ household in Caesarea (preceded by his vision of the Heavenly tablecloth giving him the Divine dispensation to do this).

The second is the conflict between the Jewish and Greco-Syrian inhabitants of Caesarea. The latter, though inferior to the former in wealth, in Josephus’ words, end up plundering them. This is paralleled, again in the background to the Stephen affair in Acts, by the squabbling between ‘Hebrews and Hellenists’ (6:1–15) – to say nothing of how, later in Acts, this same ‘High Priest Ananias’ goes down with ‘the whole Sanhedrin’ to Caesarea supposedly to complain about Paul (but apparently about no other ‘Christians’) for
introducing foreigners into the Temple
(Acts 24:1–25:12).

Finally, there is Acts 11:27–30’s note of how one Agabus, ‘a prophet’, ‘rose up’ and ‘via the Spirit’ predicted the Famine, in relation to which Paul and Barnabas, commissioned by the Community in Antioch, visit Jerusalem to bring Famine-relief funds. This visit is not paralleled by Paul in Galatians. Rather he specifically denies any such visit there – this on the strength of an oath ‘before God’ that he ‘does not lie’ (Gal. 1:17–2:1). But it is paralleled by the note in Josephus about Queen Helen of Adiabene’s grain-buying operations, in which she ‘spent vast sums of money
in Egypt
’, distributing it in Judea. This last is sandwiched in between Josephus’ two notices about Theudas’ beheading and the crucifixion of the two sons of Judas the Galilean, James and Simon, by Tiberius Alexander, who in Acts 4:6 actually does appear (somewhat anachronistically) as the enemy of
John
and
Peter
.

It is this grain-buying mission to Egypt on the part of Helen’s Treasury agents, as we shall see, that will serve as the underpinning for Philip’s encounter with the Treasurer of ‘the Ethiopian Queen’ Kandakes ‘on the way …
to Gaza
’ in Acts (8:26–38).
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We have already alluded to the conversion of this Helen, Queen of Adiabene – East of Edessa, though perhaps connected to its domains – in connection with Paul and the mysterious ‘Ananias’ he meets, according to Acts, at Damascus (Acts 9:12–20). We shall have more to say about this Ananias and Helen in due course, when it comes to discussing the so-called ‘prophet called Agabus’, who, as Acts would have it, supposedly predicts the ‘Great Famine’ (11:28).

In Syriac sources, Helen is always associated – as she is in Eusebius, drawing on these – with ‘Abgarus’ or ‘Agbarus’ (even contemporary commentators acknowledge the difficulty translating or transliterating names such as this), ‘
the King of Edessa
’ or ‘
of the Edessenes
’ or ‘
Osrhoeans
’ (Assyrians). Indeed, the legend concerning Abgarus/Agbarus’ conversion is very old and widely disseminated. Even Eusebius, who refers to him as ‘
the Great King of the Peoples beyond the Euphrates
’, reproduces it and there is a lively apocryphal tradition surrounding it.
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It is curious that whereas Josephus appears to misplace the riot led by Saulus in the 40’s, placing it after the stoning of James in the 60’s, for its part Acts misplaces the stoning of James, replacing it with the stoning of Stephen in the 40’s, following which, it too places a riot led by Saulus. There is very little one can do to explain these parallel inconsistencies, except remark them.

It is also clear from the
Antiquities
’ sequencing of the assassination of Ananus’ brother, the High Priest Jonathan, by ‘Robbers’ or ‘
Sicarii
’ around 55 CE, leading to the Temple Wall Affair and the conspiracy by Ananus and Agrippa II to remove James in 62 CE, that James is seen as being at the centre of these disturbances, at least in the eyes of the Establishment High Priest and the Herodian King. If the relationship of Saulus – ‘a kinsman of Agrippa’ – with Paul can be confirmed, it is legitimate to ask just what Paul’s repeated conversations during two years of protective custody in Caesarea with Agrippa II’s brother-in-law, the Roman Governor Felix and with Festus and Agrippa II himself, were really about (Acts 24:24–26:32).

If one places the
first
attack on James led by Paul in the 40’s, and the stoning of James, described in Josephus and in all early Church sources, in the 60’s – then it is clear that there was
not one but
two
attacks on James. The first was roughly as the
Recognitions
describes it. It was actually perpetrated by ‘the Enemy’ Paul. It is this Acts 9:1 tantalizingly refers to as Paul’s ‘
threats and murders against the Disciples of the Lord
’ and, in 22:4, even quotes Paul as admitting, ‘I persecuted this Way
unto death
’. But this attack did not result in James’ death, only his ‘headlong fall’ from ‘the top of the Temple steps’ (as we have seen, not ‘the Temple Pinnacle’ as in chronologically-later early Church conflations).

The second attack is as described in Josephus and it, too, is refracted with additional fabulous accretions in the early Church accounts delineated above. This attack correctly came in the early 60’s and really did involve a trial by a Sanhedrin for blasphemy. Unlike, however, Acts’ descriptions of Stephen and Gospel representations of what took place at ‘Jesus’’ trial; where James is concerned,
a full Sanhedrin trial really did take place and really did involve blasphemy
. Both of these attacks have been compressed in early Church accounts, as we have seen as well, into the single account of James’ death in the early 60’s. This process began with Hegesippus and Clement of Alexandria in the Second Century, ending with Jerome in the early Fifth – the final result containing elements from
both
attacks:
falling headlong down, being clubbed, praying on his knees, and being stoned
.

For its part Acts doesn’t directly mention either attack, telling us only about
the attack on Stephen
(also conflated), while the
Recognitions
tells us only about
the attack on James in the 40’s
which Acts replaces with the stoning of Stephen. Neither deigns to tell us about the stoning of James in the 60’s – which is where an undoctored Acts probably should have ended. If one keeps one’s eyes on the
two elements of the fall from the Temple stairs
and
the stoning
, one can sort these out. The keys to the conflation are the words ‘
throwing
’ or ‘casting down’ (
kataballo
in Greek) and the ‘
headlong
fall’ James takes at least in the first attack – in the New Testament,
‘Judas Iscariot’ and ‘Stephen’ along with him
.

In the final early Church accounts, whether at Nag Hammadi or in the Church Fathers – even reflected in later Manichaean texts – these are also conflated with Rabbinic notices either about: 
‘Zealot’ priests in the Temple pushing someone down from a wall, accidentally on purpose,
or
making someone, who is supposed to be stoned for infractions like blasphemy, accidentally fall into a hole
or
actually having his head split open.

This language of ‘
casting down
’, expressing this in Greek in all these accounts of the attack on or death of James in early Church sources, not to mention that of Stephen in Acts, is but another reflection of the mysterious language circle at Qumran having to do in its Hebrew variation with
B–L–‘
, ‘
swallowing
’ or ‘
consuming
’, and the associated nomenclature of ‘
Devilishness
’ connected to it in both languages – which, in turn, is always applied in Qumran texts to
the destruction of the Righteous Teacher by a Wicked Establishment
.
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Parallels with the Gospels: James and Jesus on the Pinnacle – Neither Ever Happened

To sum up: in the tradition known to the Pseudoclementines, but suppressed in Acts (though echoed three centuries later in Jerome’s allusion to James’ ‘broken legs’), the attack by Paul on James in the 40’s ends up with James only injuring one or both of his
legs
. It does not kill him. Both attacks, the one ending in the fall from the Temple stairs and the other, stoning – with the curious addition (probably from Talmudic sources) about James’ head being beaten in by a fuller’s club, not to mention the note about his being ‘cast down’ – are conflated in early Church accounts into a single whole involving
both
a ‘headlong fall’ or ‘being cast down’ and a stoning resulting in James’ death in the 60’s.

This last is also possibly reflected in notices in the Dead Sea Scrolls – depending on chronological problems in these – about the attack on or death of ‘the Righteous One’ or ‘Righteous Teacher’. In fact, both attacks on James, the first by ‘the Liar’ Paul and the second by ‘the Wicked Priest’ Ananus, are reflected in the Scrolls, if the dating problems regarding these can be resolved to everyone’s satisfaction – an unlikely prospect.

They are, however, very definitely reflected in other New Testament stories, like the ones about Judas
Iscariot
and Stephen, but also even Jesus himself. In the Gospels, Jesus like John the Baptist is also ‘led out into the wilderness by the Spirit, where he is tempted by the Devil’ and, as we saw, in another one of those typical reversals based on motifs in the James story, to ‘cast himself (
bale
) down from the Pinnacle of the Temple’ (Matt. 4:1 and pars.). The key to the textual dependency here, of course, comes in the tell-tale use of the expression, ‘the Pinnacle of the Temple’, not to mention the allusion to ‘casting down’ accompanying it, which is the language of all the presentations of James’ fall.

Actually, as one might have suspected from the beginning, there was no ‘fall from the Pinnacle of the Temple’ by James in the 60’s, only the Sanhedrin trial for ‘blasphemy’ and the stoning – correctly recorded in Josephus. That this, too, in turn relates to the proclamation James made and the other activities he was involved in the Temple, is confirmed in a rather bizarre manner in the Gospels themselves, where materials more appropriately relating to James are retrospectively absorbed into stories about Jesus.

In Matthew 9:2–8, Luke 5:17–26, and Mark 2:1–12, Jesus, who is portrayed as curing a man with palsy, ‘forgives his sins’. The Scribes and/or Pharisees then cry out, ‘blasphemy’, and insist only God ‘has the power to forgive sins’. Carefully considered, what is actually concretized in this exchange is the point in all the early Church accounts about James, that he
really did
go into the Holy of Holies on
Yom Kippur
to
ask forgiveness for the sins of the whole people
and
make atonement for them
.

Even in this obscure episode about ‘Jesus’’ ‘blasphemy’ and his ‘forgiving sins’ in the Synoptics, the tell-tale allusions to ‘the Son of Man’, ‘the Power’ and ‘glorying’, present in all the above accounts of James’ proclamation in the Temple, are incorporated, however tendentiously, into the context of Jesus curing this paralytic. Here Jesus is now made to say ‘
the Son of Man
has
Power
on earth to
forgive sins
’, upon which the crowd then ‘
glorifies God
’ – thus linking all these accounts together.