James the Brother of Jesus and the Dead Sea Scrolls II (14 page)

If these arguments were directed to the inhabitants of Northern Syria (as to some extent, in the writer’s view, they are in the Dead Sea Scrolls as well), then the evocation of Abraham’s salvationary status is perhaps neither accidental nor very su
r
prising, particularly where those seeing themselves as inhabiting ‘
Abraham’s homeland
’ were concerned.

MMT
actually uses the language of ‘
works reckoned as Righteousness
’ (only really to be found elsewhere in the Letter of James) in
addressing the King
it compares to David, who would appear to be its respondent; and ‘
his People’
, that is, as we shall see, seemingly
a foreign People
.
74
By implication, this compares the salvationary state of this
King
with Abraham’s salvationary state, providing further evidence that this
King
is probably a foreigner and linking him to the individual Eusebius is calling ‘
the Great King of the Peoples beyond the Euphrates
’ and, even perhaps, Queen Helen’s son
Izates
– if the two, in fact, can be differentiated in any real way.
75

In the same vein, Muhammad’s subsequent ideological reliance on Abraham – prefigured, as it were, by Paul – is not so surprising either. Certainly Paul visited this area. But, in our view, so did Muhammad. Plainly he was heir to the traditions, however garbled, stemming from these lands as suggested by the striking references he provides to them in the Koran.
76
If Muhammad participated in the caravan trade, as the
Biographies of the Prophet
insist, then surely he visited the trading center Charax Spasini (modern Basrah) at the Southern end of the Tigris. It is here, in our view, he would have become familiar with the kinds of ideologies and new salvationary schemes we have been delineating above.

Nor are such foci surprising in a text like the Damascus Document which, as its name implies, focuses on ‘
the New Cov
e
nant in the Land of Damascus’
, in particular, the region ‘
north of Damascus
’ where for it, at some point, ‘
the fallen tent of David
’
was going to be re-erected
.
77
As we shall see, Acts 15:16 puts the same words about ‘
re-erecting the fallen tent of D
a
vid
’ into James’ mouth in its portrait of his speech at the Jerusalem Council, another incontrovertible parallel between Acts’ portrait of events it considers central to the development of the early Church and Qumran’s picture of its own history.
78
The position of this book will be that, not only are all these allusions parallel, but they argue for a parallel chronological provenance for documents in which they are to be found. In addition, they are directed towards
conversion activities in areas where Abr
a
ham
’
s name and his salvationary state were looked upon with more than a passing reverence
.

Not surprisingly, too, when James does send his messengers Silas and Judas Barsabas ‘
down from Jerusalem
’ to this region in Acts 15:22–35, it is to
Antioch
they direct their steps – the only question being, as we have suggested,
which Antioch was inten
d
ed
. Was it the one assumed in normative Christian tradition and by all commentators (though never proven)
Antioch-on-the-Orontes
, where nothing of consequence appears to have been happening in this period, or the more historically significant ‘
Antioch-by-Callirhoe
’ or ‘
Antiochia Orrhoe’
, also known as Edessa and all but indistinguishable from Abraham’s city Haran, where all these incredible conversions were going on and Abraham’s name was held in such regard? As far as I can see, the answer should be obvious – the second.

Izates’ Conversion and Circumcision

The connection of so many of these traditions and ideologies with Abraham is not simply fanciful as the theme, whether in the Koran, earlier Christian writings, Josephus, the
Talmud
, and even in the Dead Sea Scrolls, is too persistent to be i
g
nored. Not only do the people of Urfa connect the spring at Callirhoe (from which ‘
Antiochia-by-Callirhoe
’ or ‘
Edessa Orrhoe
’ derives its name) to Abraham to this day, but he was said to have been born in one of the caves in its environs as well.
79
Like the legends connected to both the births of John the Baptist and Jesus in Luke’s
Infancy Narrative
and the
Protevangelium of James
, Abraham too, according to these ‘apocryphal’ traditions, was said to have
been
‘
hidden
’
by his mother
there.
80

For Josephus, this is the Kingdom near Haran which was originally given to Helen’s favorite son Izates by his father (whom Josephus calls ‘
Bazeus
’ – whatever or whomever is intended by this).
81
Josephus calls this area, which
Bazeus
(evidently defective) gave Izates, ‘
Carrae’
, thus tightening even further the connection between Eusebius’ ‘
Great King of the Peoples b
e
yond the Euphrates
’ and the Royal House of Adiabene. If this was
Carrhae
just south of Edessa – namely, the place of Abr
a
ham’s origin
Haran
– then, of course, we are once again in the framework of Abraham’s homeland and heritage –
all the more reason why Izates should take Abraham for his role model
.

The etymological development from Haran to present day Urfa, the name by which Edessa goes in Turkey to this day, is also not completely irrelevant, going from
Haran
to
Hirru
to
Orhai
to
Orrhoe
to
Osrhoe
– the Kingdom over which ‘Agbarus’ reigned according to Eusebius – and finally to
Ruha
in Arabic, from which the present day Turkish
Urfa
is derived.

In the story of Izates’ conversion, the portrayal of Abraham as the role model for Izates’ ultimate decision to have himself circumcised, as opposed to Paul’s position on this issue and the position of Izates’ original teacher Ananias, is pivotal as well. As we saw,
Ananias
is also a principal player in Acts’ picture of parallel events – ‘
Damascus
’ there corresponding to the picture in the Scrolls, taking the place of wherever it was in Northern Syria or Iraq that Helen’s family was living at the time of her conversion. The story, as already remarked, is also to be found in the
Talmud
’
s
presentation of these events and, in my view, by refraction in the New Testament’s picture of
the conversion of the Ethiopian Queen
’
s eunuch
as well
.
82

In the
Talmud
and Josephus, which both focus on the same event, Izates is reading the passage about
Abraham circumci
s
ing his whole household
– in Genesis 17:12 supposed to include even the ‘
stranger dwelling among them
’ (conversely, in Acts 8:32–33
the Ethiopian Queen
’
s eunuch
is reading ‘
the Suffering Servant
’ passage from Isaiah 53:7–8) when the more ‘
Zealot
’ teacher
from Galilee
, whom Josephus is referring to as ‘
Eleazar
’ (‘
Lazarus
’? – in the parallel represented by Acts 8:30 this cha
r
acter becomes ‘
Philip
’), convinces Izates and Monobazus his brother that they should circumcise themselves too. Whereupon, they immediately do so.
83

For his part,
the Queen’s eunuch
– ‘
on his chariot
’ – who is reading
the Suffering Servant
passage from Isaiah when a teacher named ‘
Philip
’ calls him to be baptized, immediately orders his chariot to stop, whereupon both Philip and the eunuch went down into the water, and Philip baptized him. In our view, what we essentially have here is a Gentile Christian
parody
of Izates’ conversion replete with a sarcastic characterization of circumcision as castration which would have had particular meaning for Roman audiences especially after Nerva’s time (96–98 CE), and all the more so, after Hadrian’s (117–138 CE).
84

Per contra
, using Abraham as their prototype, both Josephus and the
Talmud
emphasize the ‘
circumcision
’ aspect of the conversion process despite the fact that at least Josephus portrays Queen Helen, the mother of Izates and Monobazus, as ‘
ha
v
ing horror of circumcision
’ because it would put her in ill repute with her people. Despite her conversion, allegedly to Judaism,
circumcision
as such was evidently not part of the religion she was taught by Ananias and his unnamed companion.
85
Cons
e
quently, not only is this the pivotal point in the controversy between
Ananias
and
Eleazar
over Izates’ conversion, but it is also the background against which Paul develops his whole polemic in Galatians, in particular, the dispute at Antioch in Galatians 2:7–12 where Paul calls the ‘
some from James’,
of whom Peter ‘
was afraid
’ and, after whose coming, ‘
separated himself and withdrew
’
from
‘
eating with the Gentiles
’ (
Ethnon
), ‘
of the Circumcision
’ or ‘
the Party of the Circumcision’
.

Therefore, just as the
Philip
/
Ethiopian Queen’s eunuch
conversion episode is a Gentile Christian parody of the Izates/Monobazus one, this whole tangle of data is echoed in Acts 15:1–3’s seemingly parallel portrayal of basically the same situation in its run-up to the so-called ‘Jerusalem Council’, when these ubiquitous ‘
some
’ – already referred to several times earlier in Acts (these same ‘
some
’ even appear in the Gospels) – ‘
come down from Judea
’
to Antioch
and ‘
teach the brothers that
unless you were circumcised
,
you could not be saved’
.

Nor is it inconsequential that Abraham’s paradigmatic support for circumcision is also cited by the Damascus Document at Qumran.
86
This occurs in the Damascus Document after evoking Deuteronomy 23:24 and 27:26, emphasizing the necessity of ‘
keeping the Commandments of the
Torah
’ and ‘
not to depart from the Law
’
even at
‘
the price of death
’
87
and is put as fo
l
lows: ‘
And on the day upon which the man
swears upon his soul
(or ‘
on pain of death
’)
to
return to the
Torah
of Moses
,
the Angel of
Mastema
(meaning here ‘
Divine Vengeance
’)
88
will turn aside from pursuing him provided that he fulfills his word. It is for this reason Abraham circumcised himself on the very day of his being informed
(
of these things
).’
89
Just as in the case with Izates’ and Monobazus’ conversion, the reference is to Genesis 17:9–27 and Abraham’s obligation therein set forth,
to
‘
circumcise the flesh of his foreskin
’
and that of all those in his household
– this last being an important addendum – which, the biblical passage adds,
he accomplished
‘
on
that very day
’
although he was ninety-nine years old
.