James the Brother of Jesus and the Dead Sea Scrolls I (76 page)

It is leading into this that he asserts: ‘
After three years I went up to Jerusalem to make Peter’s acquaintance
, and I remained with him for fifteen days,
but
I did not see any of the other Apostles
, except James the brother of the Lord’ (1:18–20). Of course, the two accounts, Galatians and Acts, contradict each other here. Being earlier and on the surface anyhow not overwritten, Galatians is always to be preferred.

Acts finishes its version of this episode by having Paul now arguing with ‘
the Hellenists
’,
blaming them
– whoever they were and however illogical –
for the problems he was having
. It will be remembered that it was arguments between this same group and ‘
the Hebrews
’ that supposedly triggered Stephen’s stoning two chapters before. It will also be recalled that in 2 Corinthians, Paul’s opponents, the ‘Apostles of the Highest Rank’ were described as ‘Hebrews’. Now Acts recounts this as follows: ‘And he spoke and reasoned with
the Hellenists, but they took it in mind to put him to death
, but hearing of it, the brothers (whether symbolical or real)
brought him down to Caesarea and sent him away to Tarsus
’ (9:29–30). None of this, of course, makes any sense whatsoever and all is dissimulation or a garbled overwrite of more embarrassing material, of which the underlying lines should be clear.

Paul also refers to both
James and ‘the brothers of the Lord
’ in 1 Corinthians, the latter in the context of a reference to ‘those who would examine’ him as we saw (9:5). It should immediately be clear that this usage ‘brothers of the Lord’ is a variation of the way Paul described James as ‘the brother of the Lord’ in Galatians 1:19. In this 1 Corinthians material, Paul has just finished giving his answer to one of the key strictures of James’ prohibitions to overseas communities, as Acts presents them, ‘things sacrificed to idols’ – accusing those who made an issue over such matters of being ‘
weak
’ (1 Cor. 8:7–12).

This mention of ‘
weakness
’ is the same way he expressed himself with regard to those who ‘
eat nothing but vegetables’
in Romans 14:2. There he used it, not only to apply to people who were vegetarians, but also in the more general sense to apply to those who
made issues regarding dietary matters
. In Romans, he had just evoked
the Righteousness Commandment of ‘loving your neighbour as yourself
’ (13:8–11), called in the Letter of James ‘
the Royal Law according to the Scripture
’ (Jas. 2:8), and directed his followers ‘to
obey the governing Authorities’ and pay their taxes, since all governing officials are ‘Servants of God
’ (
sic
– Rom. 13:1–7).

Before going on to claim
in the name of ‘the Lord Jesus that nothing is unclean in itself
’ (Rom. 14:15) – this obviously meant to include unclean food as well as other things – Paul calls persons who eat only vegetables ‘weak’. In the same vein in a grandiloquent flourish at the end of the 1 Corinthians’ polemic against the ‘weak consciences’ of his opponents, who will not ‘recline in an idol temple’, nor ‘eat things sacrificed to idols’; Paul states: ‘Since
meat causes my brother to stumble
(lit. ‘scandalize my brother’, but Paul actually uses the language of ‘stumbling’ preceding this in 1 Cor. 8:9),
I will never eat flesh again for ever
, in order not to
cause my brother to stumble
’ (8:13). This crucial language of ‘
scandalizing
’ or ‘
stumbling
’ is reiterated, following the citation of ‘the all-Righteousness Commandment’, in the Letter of James in the famous allusion to ‘
stumbling
over one small point of the Law’.

At the conclusion to this Romans passage condemning vegetarianism and judging a brother’s eating habits, Paul speaks, in a play on the whole Jewish Christian notion of ‘adoptionist sonship’, in terms of being ‘received by’ or ‘adopted by God’. In the process, he repeatedly evokes the word ‘
standing
’ – again implying he knows the ‘
Standing One’
ideology as well: ‘
Do not let the one … who does not eat judge the one who eats
, for God has
adopted him for Himself
.
Can you judge another’s servant
(this is classic)? He
stands or falls
to his own master and he shall be
made to stand
, for God is able to
make him stand
’ (Rom. 14:3–4). This recapitulates almost precisely the language introducing the ‘Three Nets of Belial’ in the Damascus Document, that: ‘
at the completion of the end of these years
, there will be
no more joining to the House of Judah
, but each man
will stand on his own watchtower
(the Cairo version, which is probably wrong, has this as ‘
net
’)’.
6

Going back now to 1 Corinthians and continuing in this vein, Paul concludes preparatory to launching into his monologue on ‘
Communion with the blood of Christ
’: ‘
All things are Lawful for me … eat everything that is sold in the marketplace. There is no need to raise questions of conscience
’(always a euphemism in Paul for ‘
the Law
’ – 1 Cor. 10:23–27). At this point in 1 Corinthians, directly following his first reference to ‘Communion with the blood of Christ’ and imprecations to ‘flee the worship of idols’; to show that he is still talking about James’ directives to overseas communities, Paul again raises the issue of ‘things sacrificed to an idol’, which he now discusses – somewhat disingenuously – in terms of his ‘
freedom being judged by another’s conscience
’ (1 Cor. 10:28).

His meaning is, however, once again clear. Earlier, in raising this issue in terms of ‘
weakness
’, he had already used that same ‘
building
’ imagery so dear to the description of ‘
the Spouter of Lying
’ at Qumran (1 Cor. 8:1–12).
7
He had also, it will be recalled, even repeated the very assertion, ‘
all things are Lawful to me
’ of 1 Corinthians 10:23 – earlier in 1 Corinthians 6:12 in the midst of his ‘
food for the belly
’ and ‘
being joined to the flesh of a harlot
’ remarks introducing the subject of ‘
fornication
’ in 6:9–6:20.

Now in chapter 9 of 1 Corinthians, before mentioning ‘
the brothers of Jesus’ traveling around with women
– and before his excursus on ‘
being all things to all men’ and ‘running the race to win
’ – he asks defiantly, ‘
am I not free?
’ (1 Cor. 9:1). He asks this, starting with a direct reference to his own ‘
Apostleship in the Lord
’, as a prelude too to his cynically opportunist remarks about ‘
making himself weak to gain those who were weak
’ or ‘
outside the Law to gain those outside the Law
’ (1 Cor. 9:20–22).

At the same time he reveals a defensiveness against charges of profiteering from his ‘work’ or ‘mission’ and using, as he puts it, ‘the Authority’ of his office to enjoy its fruits (by which he clearly means monetary ones) or even ‘to stop working’. In particular, he enjoys the opportunity to indulge in a little additional word-play concerning his insistence on ‘
freedom from the Law
’ while, at the same time,
teaching the Gospel for ‘free’
(9:18–19). All this, he puts somewhat rhetorically as follows: ‘Am I not an Apostle? Am I not free (meaning ‘
free from the Law
’ and, by extension,
free of Authority
)?
Have I not seen Jesus Christ our Lord?
Are you not
my work in the Lord
?’ (1 Cor. 9:1).

Here, playing on the most well-known doctrine associated with James, ‘Justification by works’, he characterizes his Community as his ‘
works
’. In referring to ‘
seeing Jesus
’ too here, Paul is not only comparing himself to the other principal Apostles, but seems to mean that whatever visionary experience this involved was in the course of things sufficient to make him an ‘Apostle’. We shall see as we proceed that ‘seeing Jesus’ and the order in which this occurred were very important aspects to Apostleship generally (it is also a phraseology directly replicated towards the end of the Damascus Document from Qumran).

Paul now continues in this vein, thus proceeding to make his remark about ‘the brothers of the Lord’: ‘Even if to others I am
not an Apostle
(here Paul certainly recognizes that there are those who do not accept his Apostolic credentials), without doubt I am to you.
For you are the seal of my Apostleship in the Lord
’ (1 Cor. 9:2). The reference to ‘Apostleship in the Lord’ parallels James as ‘the brother of the Lord’.

As Paul continues, ‘My answer to those who would examine me is this. Do we not have authority to eat and drink?’ (1 Cor. 9:3). Here the dietary matter again, now expressed in terms of Apostolic rewards. ‘Do we not have authority to take a sister (or) wife around with us, as also the
other Apostles and the brothers of the Lord and Cephas do
? Or is it only Barnabas and I who do not have the authority not to work?
Who serves as a soldier at any time at his own expense?
’ (again his cynicism shines through – 1 Cor. 9:4–6 ). He also raises here the Biblical injunction: ‘You shall not muzzle an ox treading out corn’ (Deut. 25:4) which 1 Timothy 5:18 repeats in almost exactly parallel context. Paul does this to again raise the issue of ‘wages’ or ‘toil’, as usual taking the opportunity to play yet again with his allegorizing language on ‘sowing spiritual things’ (1 Cor. 9:9–11).

His reference here to ‘the brothers of the Lord’ then repeats the ascription in Galatians 1:19, only now it is in the plural. That these are grouped systematically with and on the same level as ‘Apostles’ is clear from the context. In Galatians, this was even clearer, as James was actually considered part and parcel of what was meant by ‘the other Apostles’.

There can be little doubt that Paul is dealing with the question of ‘Authority’ here – as he himself avers – his own and others’ over him. He puts this in terms of ‘
the authority to eat and drink
’, a key component of his rupture with James, but a euphemism, too, in the Gospels and in Paul used to attack a variety of individuals of the ‘Jamesian’ mindset generally – the point being that James and his followers
do
not freely eat
and certainly
did
not drink
.

The traveling around with women, as wife or in some other arrangement, would appear to relate to that brother of Jesus known as ‘Judas’ or ‘Jude’ – in other sources, sometimes referred to as ‘Barnabas’ and even, perhaps, ‘Judas Barsabas’. But it clearly did not relate to either James or his and Jesus’ alleged ‘cousin’, Simeon bar Cleophas, whom all our sources seem unanimous in identifying as
life-long
Nazirites ( and, likewise,  the
Homilies
, Peter).

No doubt James, anyhow, would have remained in Jerusalem and was never ‘on the road’, as it were, but if Hegesippus, Epiphanius, and Jerome are to be believed,
he probably was a ‘life-long virgin
’. Epiphanius, it will be recalled, even puts forth a claim to the High Priesthood on his behalf based on his Naziritism and purity, which as far as he, anyhow, was concerned – and probably Jesus and Simeon as well – included absolute sexual continence. We have already seen the relationship of such claims both for the later ‘Christian’ doctrine of the ‘Virgin’ Mary, but also for Josephus’ picture of the bathing ‘
Banus
’ constantly did ‘in cold water’.

This would not necessarily be the case for the other brothers, such as Judas who, as we have seen, according to the several notices in Hegesippus and Eusebius, had children or grandchildren. In this context, too, one must always keep ‘Joseph’ or ‘Joses Barnabas’ in mind. If he were one of these siblings, this would answer a lot of questions about the confusions regarding his forename and eponym, how suddenly he materialized out of nowhere, and how Paul got into the Movement in the first place – still, this is only a query.

The Central Three, the Poor, and Circumcision Again in Galatians

Where sequencing is concerned, Acts moves from ‘Agabus” prediction of the Famine (46–48 CE) to Saul’s and Barnabas’ Famine-relief mission to Judea – about which it tells us nothing – on to the death of ‘James
the brother of John
’ (12:2), Peter’s arrest and subsequent flight, and the introduction of James (12:17). As we have seen, its notice at this point about ‘
prophets coming down from Jerusalem to Antioch
’ parallels that in Galatians about the ‘
some coming from James
’, who were also ‘
of the circumcision
’. These come down ‘from Jerusalem to Antioch’, triggering the confrontation there over
the issue of table fellowship with Gentiles
, which for Acts also involves ‘
circumcision
’ and culminates in its presentation of the ‘Jerusalem Conference’.