James the Brother of Jesus and the Dead Sea Scrolls I (71 page)

This is followed in all Synoptics by an episode where Jesus purposefully eats with ‘Sinners’ (in Gospel code, ‘Gentiles’) and ‘tax collectors’ (Herodians) – as opposed, for instance, to the barring of such classes from the Temple in the Temple Scroll alluding to the catchword ‘
balla
’’ or ‘
Bela
‘’. Jesus even goes so far as to call one of his Apostles in Mark, ‘Levi the son of Alphaeus’ – this is supposed to be ‘Matthew’ – out of ‘
the tax office
’ (Mk 2:14 and pars.)! The Scribes and Pharisees, echoing precisely the ‘Zacchaeus’ episode we just examined in Luke above, now ‘murmur at his Disciples, saying, “Why do you
eat and drink with tax collectors and Sinners
?”’ (Lk 5:30 and pars.). Jesus is then made to answer, rather pointedly, the now proverbial, ‘
I did not come to call the Righteous to repentance, but Sinners
.’

To show that in all this symbolic and polemical repartee, we are still in the world of James’ ‘Righteous’
Yom Kippur
atonement, this is immediately followed in all Synoptic Gospels with an aspersion on, of all people, the Disciples of John the Baptist. To compound this particular circle of
non sequiturs
, it is these
very classes
of ‘Scribes and Pharisees’ – just presented as ‘murmuring against’ Jesus and his Disciples ‘eating and drinking with tax collectors and Sinners’ – that John
fulminates against
and rejects, characterizing them as ‘
offspring of vipers
’ (Mt 3:7)!

Not only is this ‘
eating and drinking
’ theme basic to differences between Paul and James, but here in the follow-up to these reverse ‘blasphemy’ and ‘eating and drinking’ charges in the Synpotics, ‘John’s Disciples’, linked with ‘the Pharisees’, supposedly now complain: ‘Why do we and the Pharisees
fast often
, but your Disciples
do not fast at all
?’ (Mt 9:14 and pars.). Luke 5:33 actually changes the ‘
fasting
’ here to ‘
eating and drinking
’, showing that in his mind all these matters are the same. But, of course, Jews ‘fast’ on
Yom Kippur
, and the direct evocation of the theme of ‘fasting’, immediately following the portrait of ‘Jesus’ being accused of ‘blasphemy’ following his
forgiving men their sins
in the matter of
the curing of a paralytic
, ties this whole set of episodes and allusions to James’
Yom Kippur atonement in the Temple
. In addition, it is conveniently linked to an attack on ‘
the Disciples of John
’ – who, like ‘
Nazirite’ daily-bathers
generally, followed the Law in the most extreme manner conceivable – whom it
compares to
the Pharisees
!

This linking of John’s followers with ‘the Pharisees’ bears on the linking of James’ representatives with ‘the Pharisees’ in Acts 15:5 (even though it was Paul who specifically claimed to be ‘a Pharisee’ in Phil. 3:5). These Pharisees, it will be recalled, complained at the ‘Jerusalem Conference’ over the issue of circumcision, and, according to the view of modern scholarship, represent the ‘Judaization’ of early Christianity at this point – a Judaization that never occurred. The opposite is the more likely scenario, that is,
a progressively more all-encompassing Gentilization
!

But this portraiture is patently tendentious and what we really have here in this language in these Gospel episodes is
symbolic skirmishing
between opposing polemical groups – ‘Pharisee’, at this point anyhow (if not elsewhere), representing a catchphrase for those
following the Jamesian orientation on things like circumcision
,
table fellowship
(that is, ‘
eating and drinking’ or keeping dietary regulations
), and the like.

Beelzebul
,
Belial
, and
Satan Casting out Demons

The set of themes now recurs in another very significant episode that follows in Mark – some time later in Matthew and Luke – in regard to ‘
blasphemy’, ‘forgiveness for sins’, allusion to ‘the Son of Man’, and Jesus’ healing, this time of ‘a blind and dumb man’
. Again ‘the Pharisees’ object, this time to the all-important formulation, ‘
casting out demons
’ (
ekballo
), supposedly being done with the help of ‘
Beelzebul
, Prince of Demons’ – also now identified with ‘Satan’ (Mk 3:22–30, Mt 12:22–37, and Lk 11:14–18 –
n.b.,
in the Greek, this is not the more well-known ‘
Beelzebub
’ which is
an incorrect modern transliteration
).

The lengthy speech that ensues, which is ‘Jesus’’ response to the Pharisees and basically gibberish, turns on the confusion of the two terms, ‘
Beelzebul
’, that is, ‘
Belial
’, and ‘Satan’. Not surprisingly, the formulation ‘
casting out
’ (
ekballo
) is repeated approximately six times in just this one speech – a usage we have already encountered in Acts’ picture of Stephen ‘
being cast out of the city and stoned
’ and which Josephus uses to describe what Essenes do to backsliders!
8

For his part, Mark places this episode immediately following Jesus’ appointment of the ‘Twelve who would be with him’, to whom he gives the authority on earth ‘
to cast out demons
’ (
ekballein
). By contrast, in Luke 5:1–11, this appointment episode is preceded by Jesus’ calling of Simon Peter and ‘James and John the sons of Zebedee’, Simon’s fishing ‘partners’, all now presented as
fishermen on the Sea of Galilee
. Another long discussion ensues, this time rather about their ‘nets’, which is simply another play on and adumbration of the Dead Sea Scrolls’ ‘
Three Nets of Belial’
theme. Whereas in the Markan scenario, it is Beelzebul ‘casting our demons’, in Luke Jesus’ principal Apostles are ‘washing’ and ‘letting down’ their ‘nets’ (5:2–4). But later this will actually involve these being ‘cast out’ as well.
9

In Mark this episode about Jesus appointing his Apostles follows an account of the crowds trying ‘to touch’ Jesus (3:10), paralleling Jerome about
the people in Jerusalem trying to touch James because of his superabundant Holiness
. Also, these episodes about John the Baptist fasting, and Beelzebul casting out demons are followed by the twin issues of Jesus ‘
forgiving sins’ and blaspheming
– this time directed to ‘
the Sons of Men
’. This is expressed in terms of ‘
whatsoever blasphemies they blasphemed’ being forgiven, ‘except the one who blasphemes against the Holy Spirit, who shall not be forgiven
’ (Mk 3:28–29 and Mt 12:31–32).

In both Mark and Matthew, this leads directly into
a key attack by Jesus on his mother and his brothers
(Mk 3:31–35 and Mt 12:46–50). In Luke this does not come until 8:19–21, right before Jesus goes out on the boat, once again, with his Disciples to ‘command’ the wind and the raging sea, but
immediately after ‘
the Parable of the Tares’. Not insignificantly, in the light of this telltale context, the mother and brothers of Jesus are described in all the Synoptics as ‘
standing outside
’ (again, allusion to the ‘
standing
’ ideology should be remarked), but unable to get into him ‘because of the crowd’.

Jesus then responds, ‘Who is my mother and who are my brothers?’ Looking at his new Apostles sitting around him in a circle, he pointedly adds, ‘Behold, my mother and my brothers.’ All three Gospels now have him attach to this pronouncement a reference to that ‘
doing
’, so much connected to the name of James and, as it turns out, ‘
the Righteous Teacher
’ at Qumran – for Matthew and Mark, ‘
doing the will
of my Father’; for Luke, ‘
doing the word
of God’.

A related episode in John now presents this ‘blasphemy’ as involving Jesus making the twin claims of being ‘the Christ’ and ‘the Son of God’ (also here in Mk 3:11 and as in the Synoptic trial scenes before ‘
the Sanhedrin’ at the ‘High Priest’s house
’), for which ‘the Jews’ in this picture now actually ‘
take up stones in order that they should stone him
’ (Jn 10:24–36). These are, of course, the two themes – together with the third, the ‘Son of Man’ related to them – which we have already encountered with regard to the two attacks on James in the Pseudoclementines and early Church sources.

This conflation of the stoning of James for ‘blasphemy’ in the 60’s, as recorded in Josephus, with the account of the attack by Paul and James’ resultant ‘headlong fall’ from the Temple stairs in the 40’s, gives some idea of the lateness of these Gospel scenarios, late enough for these kinds of conflations to have occurred and then been retrospectively absorbed into the story of Jesus. Conversely, this also means that the traditions about these attacks on James and the transformations they underwent are as early as these first Gospel portraits incorporating aspects of them into the story of their ‘Jesus’.

These notices about Jesus’ blasphemy in the Gospels, not to mention the charge against Stephen in Acts of ‘speaking blasphemy’ against Moses, God, the Law, and the Temple, provide the best proof, however tendentious, that James was
tried for ‘blasphemy’ as a result of the atonement he made on behalf of the whole people in the Holy of Holies on Yom Kippur
. Once again, they show, however indirectly, the
modus operandi
of the Gospel artificers. If one collates them, one finds that the significant ones are almost always connected to the motif of
the ‘Son of Man having Power’ to ‘forgive sins on earth
’. This, as already noted, was not blasphemous in itself – only the
pronouncing of the Divine Name of God in conjunction with an atonement of this kind
. This is exactly what James would have done in the Holy of Holies if these early Church reports have any substance.

Outside Palestine, the significance of this, together with James’ proclamation of ‘
the Son of Man coming on the clouds of Heaven with Power
’, would easily have become garbled and confused with something relating to his being able to, or in this instance the Messiah being able to, ‘forgive men’s sins’ or ‘forgive sins on earth’, which in Palestine, of course, no one ever claimed, imagined, or thought to be an issue. What was thought in Palestine was that the atonement performed by the High Priest in the Temple on
Yom Kippur
, whether the Establishment one or the Opposition, was for
forgiveness of sins
. The association of words like ‘the Son of Man’, ‘Power’, or ‘glorified’ with many of these passages in the Gospels just further increases the points of contact with the proclamation James is reported to have made in the Temple according to all accounts.

The motif of being ‘in the wilderness’, found in the Temptation of ‘Jesus’ by ‘
Satan’
or ‘
Belial
’, also just tightens the connections with the similar allusions at Qumran about ‘
making a Way in the wilderness
’ or ‘
going out from the Land of Judah and dwelling in the Land of Damascus
’. This last is connected to the definition of ‘
the Sons of Zadok
’ at Qumran or
flights to the wilderness camps
, again assimilated into all traditions about John the Baptist as well. The idea of a ‘fall’ or ‘casting oneself down’ in these materials, in any event, fits more logically and more realistically into the story of James’ lectures on the Temple stairs, reflected in another, no longer extant work reported by Epiphanius, the
Ascents of James
.

But the themes of James ‘falling’ or ‘being cast down’ from the ‘top’ of something – in the first instance, only injuring himself; in the second, being murdered – clings to James in all the traditions. There is, doubtlessly, an element of truth in them. It is also more credible than any parallel stories like those of Jesus’ ‘Temptation by the
Devil
’ or Stephen’s improbable execution. In the 60’s, anyhow, if not the 40’s, there was only a stoning not a fall. This stoning probably took place outside the city, as all sources and Acts’ narrative about ‘Stephen’ suggest. Here James was buried on the spot, as both Eusebius’ source and Jerome attest. Curiously enough, the story of James’ Tomb together with its marker leaves off with the testimony of Jerome in the fourth-fifth centuries.

Three-four centuries later, the thread reappears, at least according to tradition, in the stories about bringing the bones or ossuary of someone also identified as ‘James’ – allegedly the
other
James – to a village outside Santiago de Compostela in Northern Spain, the pilgrimage to which continues to the present day. Since there probably really was no ‘
James the brother of John
’ and we know such a burial marker regarding James really
did exist
, wouldn’t it be ironic, if, after all these years, what was being revered in this peculiar survival in Northern Spain were, in fact, the bones of ‘James the brother of Jesus’ not his fictional counterpart – not only ironic, but extremely fitting.