James the Brother of Jesus and the Dead Sea Scrolls I (112 page)

It was at this point that Drusilla was convinced by a ‘
Magician
’ called Simon or ‘
Atomus
’ (this last, as already remarked, clearly reflecting ‘
the Primal Adam
’ ideology attributed to Simon
Magus
in the Pseudoclementines and other early Church heresiologies), ‘
by birth a Cypriot’ (
here, of course, the usual confusion between
‘Cyprus
’ and ‘
Samaria’
– note, too, Paul’s confrontation with the parallel ‘Elymus
Magus
’
on Cyprus
in Acts 13:8) to divorce her husband and marry Felix, a thing that would have infuriated those like the ‘
Zealot
’-style writers at Qumran and, no doubt, this ‘
Galilean
’ Eleazar in Josephus’ story about King Izates’ circumcision.

For her part, Bernice, Drusilla’s sister, after she had been accused of incest with her brother Agrippa II, married Polemo, King of Cilicia (for Acts, anyhow,
Paul’s reputed place of origin
), after he agreed ‘
to be circumcised’
. She did this, as Josephus admits, ‘
to prove the libels – namely the one about her and her brother – false
’. For his part,
Polemo was prevailed upon to circumcise himself ‘chiefly on account of her Riches
’.
26
Bernice, it will be recalled,
had previously been married to
her uncle
, Agrippa I’s brother Herod of Chalcis in contravention, of course, of just about all of CD’s ‘
Three Nets of Belial
’ charges which included: ‘
Riches’, ‘fornication’, ‘niece marriage’, and ‘divorce’
!

Finally Bernice, ‘
giving up all pretences of Judaism, forsook Polemo too
’, that is,
even after he had specifically
circumcised himself
to marry her – ultimately taking up with Titus who burned Jerusalem and the destroyer of the Temple. It is doubtful whether Agrippa II demanded circumcision on behalf of Bernice and Drusilla from their Roman consorts, Titus and Felix, which was, no doubt, the original issue dominating Peter’s confrontation with Simon
Magus
in the first place – at least where Felix was concerned if not Titus.

To return to Izates, he
does finally circumcise himself
, as we have seen, much to the chagrin of his mother – for Jews, the
heroic
Queen Helen of Adiabene. Josephus’ description of this is extremely informative and it appears fairly factual. When the ‘
Galilean
’ teacher Eleazar

entered into (Izates’) palace to pay him his respects and finding him
reading the Law of Moses
, he said: ‘Shouldn’t you consider, O King, that you
unjustly break the principle of these Laws and bring offence to God himself
. For you should,
not only read the Law
, but all the more so
do what they command you to do
. How long will you remain uncircumcised? If you have not read
the Law about circumcision, and do not know the great Impiety you do by neglecting it, then read it now
.

This story will be fleshed out further in Rabbinic sources, which actually give the passage from Genesis 17:9–14 Izates was purportedly reading – importantly one of the chief Commandments ‘
Abraham
’ received from God.

In Josephus’ version of these events, one should note the omnipresent theme of ‘
doing all that the Law commands
’, so much a part of the Jamesian approach and so prevalent at Qumran. Moreover, it will appear in the final admonitions in the correspondence known among scholars as
MMT,
or ‘
Two Letters on the Works that will be Reckoned for you as Righteousness
’, which are also
addressed to a King
and end up by evoking
‘Abraham’
. In fact, one should always note the theme of being ‘
commanded to do
’ so central to ‘Rechabite’ texts above, not to mention this constant thread of the theme of ‘
circumcision
’ running through all the episodes noted above. Obviously this was
the
problem, as it was for Hippolytus’ second group of so-called ‘
Essenes
’, those he calls either ‘
Zealots
’ or ‘
Sicarii
’, whom he even describes as being willing to
forcibly circumcise people
– a practice also carried out in the ‘
Zealot
’ War against Rome as we saw and probably during the Bar Kochba Uprising as well.

Queen Helen’s Naziritism and the Suspected Adulteress in Rabbinic Tradition

This episode has not failed to leave its impression in Rabbinic sources as well, as it has in Acts’ account of the conversion of the
Ethiopian eunuch
, ‘
the Treasurer of
the Ethiopian Queen Kandakes
’ (
thus
). Let us look at the former first. In Rabbinic sources, Helen’s conversion is to Judaism and she is praised for her generosity. She is credited with giving
the golden candelabra to the Temple which stood its entrance
; and her son, Monobazus,
the golden handles for the vessels used on the Day of Atonement
– always an important ritual when discussing James’ role as ‘Opposition High Priest’.
27

These sources specifically recount that she
donated a golden tablet to the Temple
, too, with the passage from Numbers 5:11–31 about ‘
the suspected adulteress
’ inscribed on it.
28
This is a startling point and one has to ask why because this passage is, not only coupled with the one about the ‘
Nazirite
’ oath for both men or women which follows it in Numbers 6:1–21, but Helen’s own ‘
Naziritism
’ is also made much of in these same sources – that is, Helen
was very much concerned about accusations such as adultery
or
fornication
and, in addition, cared about
Naziritism
and obviously
the Temple
generally. This is in marked contrast to the endless series of adulteries and like-minded legal infractions reported of Herodian Princesses above, who hardly seem to have evinced any embarrassment over these offences at all.

It is possible to conceive that Helen may have been accused of similar offences and, therefore,
the penances imposed upon her described in Rabbinic sources under the heading of
‘
Naziritism
’; but the implication is that, aside from undertaking a series of these penances,
she also challenged these accusations
. It is a not incurious coincidence that ‘Simon
Magus
’ – implicated in this matter of the ‘fornication’ or adulteries of Herodian Princesses above – also appears to travel at this time with
another ‘Helen’
, whom he represented as a ‘
Queen
’ of some kind and with whom he seems ultimately to have appeared in Rome. As far as early Christian sources are concerned,
he picked her up
‘
in a brothel in Sidon
’ – certainly a malicious sort of characterization and meaning, at least, that she was
no better than a
prostitute
.

Where Helen is concerned, there may have been some questions about her marriage and, if this marriage was to ‘Agbarus’ as it seems, there was also the additional issue of the nature of their relationship. For his part, as we saw, Josephus represents it as
being between a brother and sister
and we have also noted how Genesis pictures ‘Abraham’ – from a similar venue – as being in a similar relationship with his ‘sister’ - in this instance Sarah.

According to Rabbinic sources, Helen took a ‘
temporary Nazirite oath
’ – similar, as it were, to the picture in Acts of
the penance James requires of Paul at Pentecost in the Temple
. In Rabbinic practice, this is normally taken for a periods of a month but, in  Helen’s case, this is stated
as being for seven years
, after which, she is supposed to have
gone on pilgrimage to Jerusalem
.
29
At this point, these same Rabbinic sources claim that the hero of many of their accounts, Hillel,
imposed another ‘seven years’ on her
– this in spite of the fact that, by this time, the Hillel (who appears to have been Herod’s favorite rabbi and Sandhedrin Chief,
was long since dead
!

These sources are quick to claim credit for Queen Helen, too, even though her sons or their descendants
participated
in the War against Rome and, even, may have been among its chief instigators while the archetypical founder of Rabbinic Judaism, Yohanan ben Zacchai, did not. Rather, in an act of astonishing cynicism, he applied ‘
the Messianic Prophecy’
– that a ‘
World Ruler
’ would come out of Palestine – to the
Roman Emperor-to-be
Vespasian, the destroyer of Jerusalem and the Temple. In so doing, R. Yohanan won for himself and his followers, according to Talmudic sources, the Academy at Yavneh where Rabbinic Judaism was born.

The reason given for the extraordinary back-to-back penances is supposed to be that Hillel did not consider residence outside the Land of Israel applicable for such ‘Nazirite’-oath procedures because
such residence rendered one
ritually unclean
. Not only is this a quite incredible explanation but, according to these samesources, after the second penance a
third
seven-year period was prescribed for her – this time, purportedly because she
had contracted some additional impurity by approaching a dead body
(
thus
– Izates’ perhaps?). On the other hand, one can also imagine additional financial motivations having to do with her legendary philanthropy for extending these ‘
penances
’ (and, in our view, if Helen was following the form of Judaism as that at Qumran, then the installation situated there, too, might have benefited substantially from her largesse not to mention that of her sons).

More to the point however, for our purposes, these claims are so extraordinary because these are
exactly the procedures that Acts 21 climactically pictures James as demanding from Paul
and
to
pay the expenses,
associated with Nazirite oath-type procedures in the Temple
of four others
too – also, supposedly,
for
various infractions overseas
. In Paul’s case, as we have seen, these had to do with
his laxness in ‘regularly observing the Law
’ and, as it transpires in the riot in the Temple that follows,
teaching ‘Jews in Asia’ to break the Law and ‘not to circumcise their children’, nor any longer ‘to walk in the Ways’ of their Ancestors
, not to mention ‘
polluting the Temple’ by introducing ‘Greeks’ into it
(Acts 21:20–29)!

Acts’ account here – as we have repeatedly noted and clearly more historical than usual – even emphasizes
that James’ followers were
‘
zealous for the Law
’, a denotation
Josephus twice uses
in explaining
why Izates’ subjects would not submit to a man ‘who was zealous
(
zelotes
)
for foreign practices
’ and which the teacher Eleazar ‘
from Galilee
’,
who demanded Izates circumcise himself
, most certainly was.
30
As usual, Josephus is always a
little more precise
and more fully-developed than the Rabbinic sources.

It is also interesting here that – according to these last – following the fall of the Temple, the Rabbis try to discourage those taking such ‘
Nazirite oaths
’ not to ‘
eat or drink
’ again. According to these, so distraught was the surviving population over what had transpired, that large numbers – this in a Rabbinic text – ‘
vowed not to eat meat or drink wine
’ and ‘
became ascetics until they should see the Temple rebuilt
’!
31
As we have alluded to, according to Benjamin of Tudela, ‘
Rechabite
’-
style ascetics
, living in lean-tos and caves, were still taking such oaths over a thousand years later in the Northern Arabian Desert out of ‘
mourning for Zion
’ and ‘
mourning for the Temple’
.