James the Brother of Jesus and the Dead Sea Scrolls II (3 page)

There are also problems with designations such as ‘
Cypriots
’ or ‘
Cyrenians
’ which do not always represent what they seem. Take for example the case of Simon
Magus
’ double in Paphos on ‘
Cyprus
’ in Acts 13:4–12, the supposedly
Jewish
magician and
‘false prophet whose name was Bar-Jesus’
; this name is further alluded to as ‘
Elymas Magus
’ in the Greek of Acts 13:8. Nor is this to mention the virtual repeat of this episode in ‘
the Seven Sons of Sceva
’ episode in Acts 19:10–20 – supposedly the sons of a ‘
Jewish High Priest
’, who were also going around
Asia
casting out Evil spirits
or ‘
practising magical arts
’ – the very name of whom,
Sceva,
in Hebrew means ‘
Seven’
. It is in this episode on
Cyprus
, too, right at the beginning of Paul’s first missionary journey, as Acts depicts it, that Paul meets his namesake, one ‘
Sergius Paulus
’, the former never seemingly called ‘
Saulos
’ ever again. Nor is the latter ever heard from again. Neither is this to mention that Simon
Magus
’ place of origin and principal theater of operations, according to both early Church accounts and the Pseudoclementines (but not Acts), seems originally to have been ‘
Samaria
’, the town of ‘
Gitta
’ there being his birthplace.
25

What am I saying? Actually, sometimes ‘
Cyprus
’ may mean ‘
Samaria
’ because the earlier confrontation between Simon
Magus
and Peter in the aftermath of the ‘
Stephen
’ episode in Acts 8:14–24 – being parodied here in Acts 13:6–12’s ‘
Elymas Magus
’ episode – almost certainly took place either in ‘
Samaria
’ or ‘
Caesarea
’, the closest major coastal city to Samaria, as it does, for instance, also in the Pseudoclementines.
Caesarea
is also the locale in which Josephus places the character he calls in the
Antiquities
‘
a Magician called Simon’
.
26
In some manuscripts this is ‘
Atomus
’, an almost certainly garbled allusion to the characteristic doctrine assigned to
Simon Magus
according to the Pseudoclementines and early Church reports,
the incarnated
or
Primal Adam
ideology of which, for Paul in 1 Corinthians 15:22 and 45–48, Jesus is ‘
the Second
’ or ‘
Last
’ – ‘
the Lord out of Heaven’
.
27

The reason for this particular geographical confusion – above and beyond the purposeful obfuscation involved – is pro
b
ably because Jews in this period (including Josephus)
often referred to Samaritans
as
‘
Cuthaeans’
.
28
This seems, in some co
n
voluted manner to have become confused in translation with
Kittim
, an important usage also in the Dead Sea Scrolls which, despite the fact that its earliest signification must surely have been ‘
Crete
’, even in the Bible represents
Cyprus
, the closest i
s
land of any size in the direction of Crete off the Judean coast.
29
This is to say nothing of the additional possible confusion b
e
tween ‘
Cuth
’
, ‘
Kitte
’, and ‘
Gitta
’ in the above-mentioned allusion to Simon
Magus
’ birthplace.

Herodians at Antioch

Notwithstanding all these points, among these founding members or ‘
Hellenists
’ in the Christian Community of Antioch (where ‘
the Disciples were first called Christians
’ – 11:26), as Acts presents them, were even individuals of
the Herodian genus
. Though not himself expressly listed as a founding member of the Community in Acts, a good example of this kind of indivi
d
ual would be ‘
Titus
’ (in other presentations, also possibly ‘
Timothy
’ – not always distinguishable from one another
30
), ‘
the son of a certain Jewish believing woman whose father was a Greek
’ (Acts 16:3). The situation described by this last would be typ
i
cal of descendants of either of Herod’s two
Jewish
wives both named ‘
Mariamme
’ (‘
Mary
’).
31

Another individual of this genus – who along with ‘
Judas Barsabas’
(to say nothing of Barnabas and Paul) is described as bringing the
letter
containing James’ directives to overseas communities ‘
down to Antioch
’ in Acts 15:27 – is ‘Silas’ (elsewhere possibly ‘
Silvanus
’, its equivalent in Latin, and, like ‘
Titus
’ and ‘
Timothy
’, not always distinguishable one from the other). In coeval materials in Josephus from the Forties to the Sixties CE, an individual called
Silas
is the Commander of King Agrippa’s bodyguard in Caesarea.
32
This, like many of the parallels noted above, may simply be coincidental, but if these other equiv
a
lences hold – and their number does begin to mount up – there is no reason to think it is. Both
Silas
and
Judas
, interestingly enough, are referred to in Acts 15:32 as ‘
Prophets
’, ‘
strengthening and exhorting the brothers by much discourse’
. Not only is this
Prophet
designation – or usually rather ‘
pseudo-prophets
’ – being widely used in Josephus in this period; but in this i
m
agery of ‘
Strengthening
’ we again have language paralleling what we shall encounter in both the Damascus Document from Qumran and early Church accounts of James.
33

Another of these match-ups, officially listed among these five founding ‘
certain ones
’ or ‘
some
’ – almost always an expre
s
sion, whether in Acts or Paul’s Letters, involving either disparagement or an unwillingness to be straightforward or forthco
m
ing
34
– and ‘
the prophets and teachers of the Assembly at Antioch
’ in Acts 13:1, is ‘
Niger
’. A parallel ‘
Niger
’ in Josephus – possibly another coincidence but also possibly not – is a pro-Revolutionary turncoat Herodian ‘
Man-of-War
’ who participated in the first battles of the War. Later he is military chieftain of the unruly
Idumaeans
on the other side of the Jordan in Perea (whoever these might be considered as being – as we shall see as we progress, possibly ‘
the Violent Ones of the Gentiles
’ me
n
tioned in the Habakkuk and Psalm 37
Pesher
s
as responsible for the destruction of the Wicked Priest, ‘
paying him the Reward with which he rewarded
’
the Teacher of Righteousness
and
his followers among
‘
the Poor
’, that is, ‘
destroying them
’, and in the second-named as ‘
taking vengeance upon him for what he had done to the Righteous Teacher’
35
).

It should be appreciated, too, that the national affiliation ‘
Idumaeans
’ (Biblically-speaking,
the Edomites
, a euphemism as well in the
Talmud
for both Romans and Herodians) further solidifies an
Herodian
connection for these ‘
Violent Ones of the Gentiles
’ (as they are called in the Dead Sea Scrolls) or ‘
Men-of-War
’, despite their pro-Revolutionary orientation – Herod’s mother having been of either
Idumaean
or
Arab
extraction and Herodians generally, therefore, being popularly known as
Idumaeans
.
36
In Josephus,
Niger
suffers a terrible fate at the hands of his erstwhile comrades, who do not seem to have co
n
sidered him either loyal or revolutionary enough; and the agonizing portrait of his death carrying his own cross out of the city is, in the author’s view, seemingly
the template for the picture of Jesus
’
last moments in the Gospels
– itself possibly even penned by one of this ‘
Niger’
’s disillusioned followers.
37

Another of these ‘
certain ones
’ at Antioch is a sometime traveling companion of Paul, called in Paul’s Letters and here in Acts, ‘
Barnabas’
. However, in Acts 4:36 he was called a ‘
Cypriot Levite named Joses’
. Not only is there once again the issue here of what actually is intended by the designation ‘
Cypriot
’, but also the interesting coincidence that ‘
Joses
’ is the name in the Synoptic Gospels of Jesus’ fourth
brother
. Nor is this to say anything about the basic overlap or resemblance of names like ‘
Barnabas
’, ‘
Barsabas
’, and ‘
Barabbas
’, their signification, or the connection of, at least, some, such as ‘
Joseph Barsabas
’ and ‘
Jesus Barabbas
’, with similar sounding names among the members of Jesus’ family generally.
38
Further penetration of these tantalizing connections, however, is perhaps not possible.

Be these things as they may, a third of these so-called ‘
prophets and teachers
’ of ‘
the Church at Antioch
’ in Acts 13:1 (equivalent to ‘
the Hellenists
’ above in Acts 11:20’?) is ‘
Saulos
’ or Paul himself.
39
It should be appreciated that
Ecclesia
in Greek (‘
Church
’ in English) is ‘
Edah
in Hebrew, itself an extremely important usage across the board in Qumran documents usually translated in English as ‘
Congregation
.’ (We use the word
Qumran
, the Arabic denotation for the location where the Scrolls were found, interchangeably with the Scrolls themselves and their content, a practice in wide use in the field.) ‘
Assembly
’ – called ‘
the Jerusalem Assembly
’ by some; ‘
the Jerusalem Church
’ by others – is also an important usage for all descriptions of James and the Council of Elders (‘
Presbyters
’ in Acts 15:2–4, 22, 21:18,
etc
.), he headed, not only in Acts but in the Pseudoclementines as well.
40

The fourth of these five ‘
prophets and teachers
’ in Acts 13:1 is ‘
Loukios
the Cyrenian
’, most probably an approximation for the alleged author of Acts and the Gospel under his name, and, like Barnabas, a seeming traveling companion of Paul. Here ‘
Cyrenian
’ probably does represent the area of Cyrenaica (presentday Libya) next to Hellenistic Egypt, from where ‘
Lukas
’ pr
e
sumably came, and a wide area of revolutionary ‘
Sicarii
’ activity even after the Temple fell in 70 CE,
41
though this is probably not the case for someone like ‘
Simon the Cyrenean
’ in the Gospels, portrayed as
carrying the cross for Jesus
in Mark 15:21 and Luke 23:26 and who apparently resides in Jerusalem.

Together with appellatives like ‘
Barnabas
’, ‘
Lebbaeus
’, and ‘
Barsabas
’, it is a cognomen of some kind, but so in reality too is ‘
Niger
’, the reference to whom actually reads, ‘
Simeon who was called Niger’
. In Greek ‘
Niger
’ means ‘
Black
’, in which case it could have overtones with another interesting character in the contemporary ‘
Antioch- by-Callirhoe
’: ‘
Abgar the Black
’ or ‘
Agbar
Uchama
’ in Eusebius’ fabulous correspondence.
42
In Semitic languages generally it can, it would appear, also carry the connotation, ‘
shoemaker
’, whatever one wishes to make of that in the context we are discussing above – if anything.