James the Brother of Jesus and the Dead Sea Scrolls II (8 page)

In the Damascus Document the parallel position runs as follows:
‘Hear now all you who know Righteousness and consi
d
er the works of God…
.
Hear now
,
all you who enter the Covenant and I will unstop your ears
…’
etc
.
88

And later: ‘
And God shall heed their words and will hear and a Book of Remembrance shall be written out before Him for God-Fearers and those considering His Name
,
until God shall reveal Salvation
(
Yesha
‘
)
and Righteousness to those fearing His Name
.’
89
In the last line, as we shall have cause to repeatedly point out as we progress too, the reference will actually be to ‘
seeing
Jesus
’ (
Yeshu‘a
) or
‘
seeing His Salvation
’: ‘
And their hearts will be strengthened and they shall be victorious
…
and they shall see His Salvation
(
Yeshu‘ato
),
because they took refuge in His Holy Name
’.
90

The Attack by Paul on James on the Temple Steps

Perhaps the most astonishing notice in all extra-Biblical literature is the one found in the Pseudoclementine
Recognitions
d
e
scribing
an actual physical assault by Paul on James on the Temple steps in Jerusalem
. Nor should one fail to remark the a
b
sence of this attack from the parallel account known as the Pseudoclementine
Homilies
, which appears to refashion its narrative of early Christian history to expressly avoid mentioning it.
9
1
The same is true, of course, of Acts where the assault on the a
r
chetypical Gentile Christian believer ‘
Stephen’
, which introduces Paul and which Paul ‘
entirely approved of
’ (8:1), replaces it.

As Acts 8:3 describes these things,
Saul
(or ‘
Paul
’) then proceeds to ‘
ravage the Assembly in Jerusalem, entering their hou
s
es one by one, dragging out men and women to be delivered up into prison’
. This mayhem continues into the next chapter with the picture of Paul ‘
breathing threats and murder
(even in Acts, Paul is extremely violent)
against the Disciples of the Lord
’, obtaining letters from the High Priest ‘
to Damascus, to the synagogues
’, advising that, ‘
if he found any who were of the Way
,
whether man or woman, he should bring them bound to Jerusalem
’ (Acts 9:1–2).

For its part the
Recognitions
starts off with the parallel picture of
debates on the Temple steps
, the most important speakers in which are Peter and James. In Acts’ picture, of course, James is totally missing or deleted from such activities while in the
Recognitions
it is John who plays almost no role. In the midst of these debates, a man identified only as the ‘
Enemy
’ (in margin notes, he is identified as Paul) bursts upon the scene and leads a riot of killing and mayhem on the Temple Mount, paralleling that in Acts above, in the course of which he actually takes a club from the pile of faggots next to the altar and assaults James, ‘
casting him headlong
’
down the Temple steps
where he leaves him for dead.
No wonder this assault is nowhere to be found in more orthodox accounts; nor, for that matter, in the
Homilies
.

The ‘
headlong
’ phraseology in
Recognitions
is important as it links up with testimony in Jerome about James’ death and what seems to be yet another variant – Acts 1:18’s obscure picture of the ‘
headlong
’ fall Judas
Iscariot
takes ‘
as a Reward for U
n
righteousness
’
in a Field
‘
of Blood
’. Since the ‘
Enemy
’ then obtains letters from the High Priest and pursues the early Christian Community down to Jericho on his way to Damascus, the relationship of said events with the activities of Paul in Acts 9:1–25 is for all intents and purposes confirmed. In the author’s view, this is
real
‘
Essene
’ history not that of what we call ‘
Christian
i
ty
’.

‘
Christianity
’ is to be found in the refurbished portraits one finds in the Gospels and Acts. We have to see the Pseudoclementines – romantic history or literary romance perhaps, but so is Acts – as
history
from the inside
, from the perspe
c
tive of persons or personages in ‘
the Essene Movement
’ as it were. Identities which are only hinted at through circumlocutions and tantalizing
nom-de-guerre
s in the Dead Sea Scrolls, in the Pseudoclementines are spoken of overtly and by name. Through them we get, perhaps, a clearer picture of the divisions of ‘
Early Christianity
’ in Palestine in the First Century and a handle on persons only vaguely hinted at in the Scrolls or totally obliterated in Acts.

As in Hegesippus, Jerome, the
Recognitions
, and Acts, we must carefully consider all these episodes involving the usages ‘
throwing down
’, ‘
casting down
’, ‘
headlong
’, or ‘
causing to stumble’
.
92
In the Habakkuk
Pesher
, for example, this last is exactly what is said to happen to the followers of
the Righteous Teacher
– there called, as already alluded to, ‘
the Poor
’ or ‘
the Perfect of the Way
’ (compare this with ‘
those of the Way
’ in Acts 9:22 whom Paul ‘
confounds
’) – when the Wicked Priest ‘
appeared to them at the completion of the Festival of their Rest
’ (thus –
Yom Kippur
).
93
Not only is
the Wicked Priest
in this episode d
e
scribed as ‘
not circumcising the foreskin of his heart
’ and ‘
swallowing them’
, but also ‘
causing them to stumble
’ or, quite lite
r
ally, ‘
casting them down’
. According to the Habakkuk
Pesher
, he does this in the process of ‘
conspiring to destroy the Poor’
, the last being coeval with those ‘
Torah
-Doers
’ referred to as ‘
the Simple of Judah doing
Torah
’ in both Habakkuk and Psalm 37
Pesher
s
and to whom, Habakkuk 2:4’s ‘
the Righteous shall live by his Faith
’ is rightfully considered to apply.
94

Unlike Peter in Acts 10:15, these ‘
Simple
’
Torah
-
Doers
have not yet learned ‘
not to call any thing
’ or ‘
any man profane or unclean
’; but rather, in the manner of Josephus’ ‘
Zealots
’ and/or ‘
Essenes
’, they refuse ‘
to call any man Lord
’ or ‘
eat forbidden things
’. In the version of this testimony preserved in the Third-Century heresiology attributed in Rome to Hippolytus, this last becomes more specifically – and probably more accurately – ‘
things sacrificed to idols’
, a prohibition intrinsic not only to James’ directives to overseas communities in Acts but the document scholars call
MMT
.
95

For Hippolytus, said ‘
Essenes
’ (actually he calls them ‘
Zealot Essenes
’ or ‘
Sicarii
Essenes
’) are prepared to undergo any sort of bodily torture, even death, rather than ‘
eat things sacrificed to idols
’ or ‘
blaspheme the Law-giver
’ (meaning Moses).
96
They are also, as the Scrolls make plain, ‘
the Ebionites
’ or
Ebionim
(
the Poor
),
in all early Church heresiologies the direct successors of ‘
the Essenes
’ and virtually indistinguishable from what these same heresiologists are calling
Elchasaites
,
Masbuthaeans
,
Sampsaeans
, or
Sabaeans
– the last-mentioned, in later Islamic lore, doubtlessly indicating ‘
Daily Bathers
’. We shall have more to say about all these terminologies presently when discussing the ‘
Nazoraean
’ or
life-long
‘
Nazirite
’ language of ‘
abstention
’ or ‘
keeping away from
(
lehinnazer
)
things sacrificed to idols
’ or ‘
the pollutions of the idols
’ one finds both in the Scrolls and in Acts.
These ‘
Ebionites
’ are also the followers of James
par excellence
, himself considered (even in early Christian accounts) to be the Leader of ‘
the Poor
’ or these selfsame ‘
Ebionites’
.
97

To go back to the attack by Paul on James: as already signaled, James did not die in this attack. He was only left for dead,
breaking
, as the Pseudoclementines and later Jerome make clear,
one or both his legs
.
98
James does not die for another twenty years, the two episodes being neatly telescoped or conflated into one in both the description of
Stephen
’s stoning in Acts and early Church accounts of James’ death. James, rather, is carried out of the Temple to a house – not the
house
of ‘
the Disciple Jesus loved
’ as in the Gospel of John (19:26) but, rather, a house James possesses in Jerusalem. This is also the gist of Acts 12:12 when Peter, after his escape from prison, goes to the house of ‘
Mary the mother of John Mark
’ – another character ne
v
er heard of before or since (more Gentile Christian dissimulation?). No,
Mary the mother of James
! There he, quite properly, leaves a message for ‘
James and the brothers
’
that he is going abroad
. This constitutes the introduction of the real James in Acts, the other James having conveniently been removed just ten lines earlier in Acts 12:2.

The next morning, the Disciples numbering some
five thousand
, carry James’ inert body down to Jericho. In the meantime the ‘
Enemy
’ (Paul) gets letters from the High Priest – in passing, it should be remarked that these ‘
letters
’ are the only ones Paul ever receives. They are not from James, the proper appointment procedure as set forth in the Pseudoclementine
Homilies
and endlessly and sarcastically belittled, as we shall delineate, in 2 Corinthians 3:1–16, 5:12, 9:1–3, 10:8–18,
etc
.
99

Paul pursues the members of the Early Christian Community (should we rather at this point be saying ‘
Essenes
’?) through Jericho on the way to Damascus where he misses them because, in the meantime, James together with all his followers have gone
outside of Jericho
(Qumran?) to visit the tomb of two of the brothers ‘
who had fallen asleep
’ (
n.b
., the parallel language in Acts 7:60 above). The detail and geographical precision here, as in the matter of the assault in the Temple preceding it, is i
m
pressively convincing. The tombs of these brothers
miraculously
‘
whitened of themselves every year
because of which miracle the fury of the Many against us was restrained
,
because they perceived that our brothers were held in
Remembrance before God
’
.