James the Brother of Jesus and the Dead Sea Scrolls I (105 page)

In another interesting note in one of these variant manuscripts, following directly upon the one about ‘Lebbaeus surnamed Thaddaeus’ also being called ‘Judas the Zealot’, the claim is made that ‘Simon the Cananaean’, who directly follows ‘James the son of Alphaeus’ and ‘Thaddaeus’ in Matthew and Mark, was ‘
crowned with martyrdom in Judea in the reign of Domitian
’. This is very interesting, because it concurs with suggestions that the executions under Trajan of Simeon bar Cleophas and the grandsons of Jesus’ brother Judas have been transposed in our sources – at least Simeon’s has.

Since there were clearly Messianic troubles under Domitian – which were to be expected under such a Nero-like and seemingly demented Ruler – then the execution of Simeon bar Cleophas could be put under Domitian’s rule not Trajan’s, when it more likely occurred.

This neatly fits in with the possibility of Josephus transposing traditions about the family of Judas the Galilean with those of the family of Jesus in the New Testament or
vice versa
. Who, for instance, were these two ‘
Sons of Thunder
’ who purportedly ‘
drank the Cup’ that Jesus drank
(Mk 3:17 and 10:39)? The first pair of candidates that present themselves are, of course, James the Just ‘the brother of Jesus’ and this other brother, called, according to Luke, ‘Simon the Zealot’, but also possibly Simeon bar Cleophas. The second and even more appropriate possibility would be ‘James and Simon, the two sons of Judas the Galilean’.

For some reason Josephus neglected to mention their crucifixion and Theudas’ beheading preceding them in the
Jewish War
. Why? Nevertheless, in the
Antiquities
twenty years later, he
does
mention their execution, placing it under the Governorship of Tiberius Alexander, Philo’s backsliding nephew, around 48 CE. In fact, he mentions it in the same breath he mentions ‘the Famine’ (
c.
46–48 CE), directly following that of Theudas, whose beheading we have already remarked in connection with Jesus’
third brother
Judas and Acts’ ‘James the brother of John, with the sword’ at about the same time.

As we already saw, too, the first pair of ‘
James and Simon
’s
did
‘
drink the Cup
’
that Jesus drank
, since they really
were crucified
in a preventive execution – also seemingly around Passover time. One can see how excitable the Jewish crowds became at festivals of this kind, not long after under the Roman Governor Cumanus, from Josephus’ account of the riot that ensued at Passover again when a Roman soldier, on the wall or portico of the Temple, exposed himself to the Jewish crowd – resulting in a stampede in which, according to Josephus (perhaps not without a little exaggeration),
‘thousands’ were killed
.

It is not incurious that it is the deletion of the mention of the execution of these two brothers in Acts that causes the anachronism regarding the note about Theudas coming
before
the Census of Cyrenius and the Revolt led by Judas the Galilean – all oddly put in the mouth of the
Pharisee
‘Gamaliel’ as well (5:36–37 – should we rather read here the Pharisee ‘Josephus’ instead?). For Acts, the sequence, as will be recalled, was the deleted reference to the two brothers, ‘James and Simon’, and Theudas following the reference to Judas the Galilean. These proceed into the stoning of Stephen, Philip meeting the Treasurer of the Ethiopian Queen ‘on the way to Gaza’, Peter’s visit to the Roman Legionnaire Cornelius in Caesarea, the ‘prophet’ called ‘Agabus’ coming down from Jerusalem to Antioch to predict the Famine ‘that came to pass under Claudius’, the beheading of ‘James the brother of John’, Peter’s arrest, and finally the introduction of the
real
James.

For Josephus, the order is: the visit of Simon to Agrippa I in Caesarea, the beheading of Theudas, the Famine, followed by the mention of Queen Helen of Adiabene’s Famine-relief efforts (which we shall treat below), the preventive crucifixion of Judas the Galilean’s
two sons
‘James and Simon’, the attack on the Emperor’s messenger Stephen in the midst of problems between Galileans and Samaritans and Greco-Syrian Legionnaires and Jews at Caesarea, and the stoning of James – itself followed by the riot led by one Saulus, a ‘kinsman of Agrippa’, leading up to the War against Rome.

That there are confusions, overlaps, and evasions going on here should be evident, but what precisely is at the root of them is more difficult to discern. Just as Josephus seems to have transposed the riot led by Saulus in the 40’s – as reported in the Pseudoclementines and reflected even in Acts – to the 60s, so Acts has transposed the stoning of James in the 60s,
refurbishing it into the stoning of Stephen
in the 40’s. It is possible (though not very probable) that Josephus somehow transposed the crucifixions of Jesus’ brother Jude’s two grandsons and that of Simeon bar Cleophas either under Domitian or Trajan to an earlier period. It is impossible to say. Simeon bar Cleophas
does seem to have been crucified
, however fabulously Christian tradition seems to have exaggerated his lifespan.

If executions of this kind did take place under Domitian and not Trajan, Josephus would have been alive to see and record them, albeit anachronistically, just as for some reason he omitted the executions of Judas the Galilean’s two sons and of Theudas in his earlier
War
. How could he have failed to record these things then? Is it Agrippa II, residing in Rome, giving Josephus this new information, or is it Tiberius Alexander, Agrippa II’s brother-in-law and, as Titus’ deputy, the destroyer of Jerusalem? However these things may be, this notice about ‘the martyrdom of Simon the Cananaean’ taking place under
the reign of Domitian
from a variant manuscript of the Syriac Apostolic Constitutions has an accuracy and prescience about it that belies mere creative imagination or hearsay.

The execution of Theudas immediately preceding these things is an important event to consider. The two variant notices about ‘Lebbaeus surnamed Thaddaeus’ in the Apostolic Constitutions read: ‘Thaddaeus,
also called Lebbaeus
and who was
surnamed Judas the Zealot, preached the truth to the Edessenes and the people of Mesopotamia
, when Abgarus ruled over Edessa.’

One should note the reversal here of how this reference to ‘Thaddeus’ appears in Matthew and the normative Apostolic Constitutions text. The variant text is more logical, since ‘Thaddaeus’ would appear to be a name, while ‘Lebbaeus’ a title of some kind – possibly a garbling of ‘Alphaeus’, itself a garbling of ‘Cleophas’. Directly following this, the notice also adds the interesting information that ‘he was buried in
Berytus in Phoenicia
’.

We have already remarked the kind of fun and games that went on in this Berytus or Beirut after the destruction of Jerusalem in 70 CE and Titus’ celebration of his brother Domitian’s birthday there, and Berytus does seem to have been a favourite possession of both Agrippa I and II. The information about ‘Thaddaeus’ or ‘Judas the Zealot’ being buried – after perhaps being executed – there is very precise and not found in any other sources. It is stated very matter-of-factly and, to the author’s ears, while admittedly prejudiced, does have the ring of truth.

The point about this putative
third brother
of Jesus – since he is distinctly called ‘Judas (the brother) of James’ in Luke and Acts – like the second brother, ‘Simon the Zealot’, being ‘a
Zealot
’, is extremely interesting. Of course, it accords with the notice in the ‘We Document’ narrative in Acts – James speaking to Paul – about the majority of James’ ‘Jerusalem Church’ supporters being ‘Zealots for the Law’ and we have already heard the same thing about this ‘Judas’ in the
Epistula Apostolorum
. It is, in any event, something we would have expected from previous analyses, even if we had not encountered it so baldly and plainly presented in this variant manuscript of the Apostolic Constitutions.

But what does it mean? First of all it places all these individuals squarely in the ‘Zealot’ tradition. But secondly, it links up with a host of traditions – again mostly based on Syriac sources, but also summarized in Eusebius, writing in Greek and known throughout the Christian world – about one Thomas or, more accurately, ‘Judas
Thomas
’. We have already encountered this Apostle in the Gospel attributed to his name from the so-called ‘Gnostic’ texts at Nag Hammadi. This Gospel begins quite matter-of-factly with the words: ‘These are the
secret words
, which the Living Jesus spoke, and which
Didymus
Judas Thomas wrote down.’ There are also Acts attributed to Thomas extant in Greek and Syriac, probably going back to a Syriac original, in which culture Thomas always bears the name of ‘Judas’ – ‘Judas Thomas who is also called
Didymus
’ – exactly as in the prologue to the Gospel of Thomas (1.1).
3
In fact in these Acts, in which Thomas is always the custodian of the mysterious or esoteric words of Christ, he is not only identified with this brother of Jesus; but, as the Aramaic ‘
Thoma
’ – echoed by the Greek ‘
Didymus
’ – implies, his
twin
brother as well.
4

We can dismiss doubling and overlaps with ‘
Thaddaeus
’, ‘
Lebbaeus
’, and ‘
Judas the brother of James
’ in the Synoptic Gospel lists. We can also dismiss dissembling, as in the Gospel of John’s ‘
Twin Twin
’ equivocations, themselves accompanied by the themes of ‘doubting’ and ‘eating’ with Jesus which overlap Luke’s account about Jesus’ appearance to Cleopas and the unidentified other ‘in the Way’ to Emmaus and to James in the Gospel of the Hebrews.

In fact, the traditional Gospel Apostle lists include few individuals of any real substance, and these lists with their variations have been transmitted into a plethora of other traditions, which occasionally provide additional bits of interesting information. For instance, in the Acts of Thomas, Thomas’ burial scene contains elements of the empty-tomb scenario about Jesus in the Gospels, including the ever-present, tell-tale element of the ‘linen clothes’ again (Acts of Th. 12.168–70).

Of course, Thomas is not only important in Edessa and Mesopotamia in these variant manuscripts of the Apostolic Constitutions, but traditions about his activities go as far east as India, the place of his supposed burial in these apocryphal Acts, even though we have already seen this to have been Berytus in some manuscripts of the Apostolic Constitutions above. This is also the case for the Acts of Thaddaeus. But aside from this kind of cultural imperialism, Thomas is almost always presented in association with ‘
his Disciple’ Thaddaeus
(
thus!
) in connection with traditions about the conversion of someone called ‘
King Abgarus
’ or ‘
Agbarus
’ (possibly a title having something to do with the allusion ‘
Great One
’ in Syriac or Aramaic) of the Edessenes or Osrhoeans – the last, a clear transliteration of
Assyrians
.

The ‘Judas who Preached the Truth to the Edessenes’

This story is known as the conversion of King Agbarus. Actually in most sources he is called Abgarus, which is more correct, but in Latin the letters are often reversed, or replaced, with letters like ‘u’, ‘r’, or ‘c’, and we prefer this other version of the name for reasons that will eventually become clear. This legend is, interestingly enough, first recorded in an actual written document by Eusebius himself, who for a change does not claim to have had it from other writers, but literally to have transcribed and translated it himself from an original Syriac chancellery office document in the Royal Archives of Edessa! At the end Eusebius actually provides a Syriac date to it, approximately 29–30 CE.
5

Whatever the veracity of his claim, the materials do appear very old, that is, before the time of Eusebius (c. 325 CE), who hardly ranks as a creative writer. We shall, in fact, be able to detect their reflection just beneath the surface of Acts. Though some scholars take a dim view of them, trying to accord them a
later
rather than an
earlier
date, they are very widespread in the Syriac sources with so many multiple developments and divergences that it is hard to believe they could all be based on Eusebius’ poor efforts.

In all these sources, ‘
Thomas
’ (i.e., ‘
Judas Thomas
’) sends out ‘
Thaddaeus
’ – here our original conjunction of the two names again – after ‘the Ascension of Jesus’ to evangelize the Edessenes (this is also the point about ‘
Judas the Zealot
’ in the
Apostolic Constitutions
) and after this, joins him there himself, ultimately traveling further into Mesopotamia and then on to India, as in the Acts of Thomas – the source of Indian legends circulating around his name.
6