James the Brother of Jesus and the Dead Sea Scrolls I (118 page)

Indeed, in all materials associated with James and the Scrolls’ Righteous Teacher, we inevitably hear about this antagonism to ‘the Rich’ and not making economic distinctions between men – therefore, the injunction given to Paul, not to forget to ‘remember the Poor’ in Galatians 2:10. This Paul claims he was ‘most anxious to do’, but whether he did or not is an open question. He certainly always made sure that, when he came to Jerusalem, he came with sufficient funds, which is why, no doubt, James says these things and, according to Acts, set him the penance of a Nazirite oath – usually thirty days, but in Acts 21:27, seven – and paying the expenses of four others under similar vow. At this point Paul is mobbed in the Temple, yet James, not surprisingly, is not!

Helen – someone with whom Paul was possibly connected – did show, according to all sources, her anxiety to
remember the Poor
, as did her sons, Izates and Monobazus. She did so at the sacrifice of a considerable amount of personal wealth, for which, says the
Talmud
, she won for herself and her sons a great name for ever more. Josephus says Izates too ‘sent great sums of money to the leaders in Jerusalem’, which was ‘distributed among the Poor’ delivering Many, and one wonders just which ‘Jerusalem leadership’ this could have been. It is also the kind of thing being played off, not a little disingenuously, in Acts’ picture of the complaints brought by ‘the Hellenists’ against ‘the Hebrews’ regarding the ‘daily distribution’, leading up to the stoning of Stephen (6:1).

Helen and Izates’ sons or kinsmen were clearly part of the ‘Zealot’ orientation, which, in our view, is indistinguishable at this point from the ‘Messianic’ one. They give themselves valiantly for the cause against Rome, even though they are only recent converts. This is mocked in Acts’ presentation of the
Ethiopian
‘eunuch’ (that is, someone who is
castrated
), who ‘oversees the Treasure of the
Ethiopian Queen
Kandakes’ and learns ‘the Gospel of Jesus’ from one ‘Philip’, thereafter wishing immediately to be
baptized not circumcised
– the ‘Gospel’, that is – among other things – clearly that of
peace with the Romans
.

Ben Kalba Sabu‘a and the Nicodemus who Prepared the Body of Jesus

The
Talmud
also knows these problems of conversion either via baptism or circumcision and the issue still remains in Judaism today. For it, one Eliezer ben Hyrcanus – the Rabbi to whom Jacob of Kfar Sechania expounded Jesus the Nazorean’s point about ‘the High Priest’s outhouse’, considers that ‘circumcision is the
sine qua non
of conversion’. Another rabbi, called Rabbi Joshua, is generally presented as holding the view that only baptism was necessary, though in some versions of his discussion with R. Eliezer on the subject, he is rather quoted as having the view that,
in addition
to circumcision
also
baptism was required.
13
This is all very interesting in view of the problems surrounding the conversion of Helen’s sons and the character called ‘Eleazar’ in Josephus.

In fact the
Talmud
knows another character, one ‘
Ben Kalba
Sabu‘a’
, who was also known for his generosity, fabulous wealth, and never turning away ‘the Poor’ from his home hungry. During the Roman siege of Jerusalem, he supposedly promised – along with two other colleagues (one called ‘
the Treasurer
’) – to supply Jerusalem with food ‘
for
twenty-one years
’.
14
Not only are we getting here clear reflections of the details of the stories about Queen Helen’s conversion, Famine-relief, and possible ‘
twenty-one year
’
Nazirite
oath; but this name ‘
Sabu‘a
’ in Hebrew conserves a clear echo of the term ‘
Sabaean
’ in other Semitic languages like Aramaic and Arabic – ‘
Sobiai
’ in the Greek of Hippolytus. There is, also, just the slightest hint in all of these of the noun ‘
Sheba
’ in Hebrew here (though the root is slightly different) and, in this regard, one should note the confusion in Luke’s Acts of ‘
Ethiopian
’ (in Hebrew, ‘
Sheba
’) with ‘
Sabaean
’ (in the sense of ‘
Daily-Bather’
) or ‘
Edessene
’ when the matter of ‘
famine relief’
is at issue.

The link-ups, too, with Luke’s ‘Treasury agent’ story are obvious and one should remark that Josephus himself conserves a note about the fabulous palace of Queen Helen, not to mention those of her descendants, who stayed in Jerusalem during the War against Rome and did not leave it (which the Revolutionaries spared and did not burn).
15
In fact, ‘
Ben Kalba Sabu‘a
’’s name is traditionally associated in Jewish sources with the tomb built by Queen Helen’s son Monobazus for her and his brother Izates in Jerusalem (called in these sources, ‘
Kalba Sabu‘a
’s cave’). It can actually be translated – with a little creative ingenuity – to read, ‘the son of the
Sabaean
Bitch’, ‘
Kalbah
’ bearing the meaning ‘
female dog
’ in Hebrew (even if one does not allow this female sense for ‘
Kalba
’ in Aramaic – it still translates as ‘the son of the Sabaean dog’ and where the confusion with ‘Ethiopian’ came from should be clear).

Not only did the daughter of this ‘Ben Kalba Sabu‘a’ (who would then be a caricature of Izates or Monobazus, or their relatives) supposedly marry the ‘Zealot’ Rabbi of the next generation, Akiba (also executed by Rome for sedition or Insurrection), one of whose most ardent students was named ‘Monabaz’; but Ben Kalba Sabu‘a supposedly bequeathed to this ‘Poor’ Akiba half his wealth, when he finally came to marry his daughter with a huge following of twelve thousand Disciples!
16
All of this is admittedly extremely abstruse, but Talmudic materials very often are.

Aside from an individual called in these sources ‘
Ben Zizit
’ – like ‘
Ben Kalba Sabu‘a
’ surely another pseudonym of some kind – and often associated with him, Ben Kalba Sabu‘a has another friend called ‘Nakdimon ben Gurion’. He, too, is considered to be fabulously wealthy and is also credited with the scheme to supply the city with grain for
twenty-one years
! It is these stores which the
Talmud
claims ‘the Zealots’ either burned or despoiled by
mixing them with mud
!

One should note the curious conjunction of ‘twenty-one years’ with either the period of time between Theudas’ revolutionary attempt at a reverse Exodus and the Famine in 45 to the outbreak of the Uprising in 66 and the ‘twenty-one years’ involved in Helen’s repeated Nazirite oaths. These notices also add to the suspicion of a role of these agents of Helen or Izates in encouraging this war. As the
Talmud
presents it, at one point this friend of Ben Kalba Sabu‘a, Nakdimon ben Gurion, after promising to pay twelve talents of silver to fill the water cisterns of the Temple,
prays for rain
and performs a ‘rain-making’ miracle equivalent to James’.
17

Whatever one may think of these stories, Nakdimon does seem to reappear in the Gospel of John as Nicodemus, who
prepares the body of Jesus for burial
– again, in the tomb of the ‘
Rich
’
merchant
‘Joseph of Arimathaea’. The connection with the above tradition about ‘Kalba Sabu‘a’ should be clear. He also would seem to appear in Josephus, who apparently reverses his name into ‘Gurion the son of Nicomedes’ (thus). In this episode, ‘Nicomedes’ is one of those attempting to save the Roman garrison in the Citadel, which wishes to surrender at the beginning of the Uprising and whose commander, it will be recalled, later
circumcised himself
. His associate in this attempt is, again, one ‘
Ananias
the son of Zadok’.
18

We associate Saulus, Philip, and Antipas (whom Josephus not only identifies as the son of a Temple Treasurer and ultimately even, Treasurer himself) with this attempt to save the Roman garrison. In the later stages of the Uprising, when the Zealots take control and slaughter High Priests like James’ executioner Ananus, this namesake of Nicodemus is executed as a collaborator along with Niger – as is Saulus’ apparent cousin Antipas and another Rich collaborator, Zachariah. It is very likely this Zachariah’s ‘blood’ that the Gospels of Matthew and Luke are accusing the Jews of shedding ‘between the Temple and the altar’, not the original Prophet Zechariah’s.
19

Not only does Josephus describe how the Zealots trumped up a Sanhedrin trial, summoning ‘the Seventy’ to try this ‘Zachariah the son of Bareis’ or ‘Bariscaeus’ (in the New Testament this is ‘Barachias’) on a charge ‘of betraying the state to the Romans and holding treasonable communications with Vespasian’; but also how they ‘slew him in the midst of the Temple’, ‘
casting
him out of the Temple into the ravine below’) which is the probable source of the legend about the Tomb of Zachariah next to the Tomb of St James in the Kedron Valley beneath the Temple Pinnacle. In this story, too, we probably have the contrapositive (and likely as not the source) of the story of James being ‘cast down’ from the Temple Pinnacle – reflected too in the tomb attached to his name in this Valley.

In John 7:50, Nicodemus, like Gamaliel in the Pseudoclementine
Recognitions
and Acts, is a
secret believer
who comes to Jesus ‘in the night’ (Jn 3:1–21). It is he who brings the ointments to anoint the body of Jesus in the tomb provided by the Rich Joseph of Arimathaea (19:38–42). We have come full circle and back to the stories about Queen Helen’s wealth – to say nothing of her tomb. Not only are these stories related to the activities of Helen’s Treasury agents in Palestine, but also possibly to James.

Queen Helen and her sons cannot really be conceived of as converts to Pharisaic or Rabbinic Judaism as such. Nor can we really say that Helen and her sons were converted to Christianity as we know it – at least not the Pauline variety. More probably they were converted to
Jamesian Christianity
or the kind of Zealotism evinced in the Scrolls or the Judaism of extreme Naziritism.

To show that the Messianic activity identified with her and her family continued down to the next century and the Bar Kochba affair, we have only to search through Talmudic records. Not only did the famous Rabbi Akiba – who would not preach
compromise with Rome
and for his pains was ultimately reputed to have been drawn and quartered by the Romans – have one of Helen’s descendants called ‘
Monabaz
’ as his student, but he was also married to
the daughter of Ben Kalba Sabu‘a
, half of whose wealth he supposedly inherited! I think this is sufficient to bring Rabbi Akiba into some sort of association with this family as well.

It is worth noting that, at first, Akiba supported the Second Jewish Uprising against Rome, the one of ‘Simeon bar Kosiba’ or ‘Simon Bar Kochba’, that is, ‘
the Son of the Star
’ – in fact, designating him as ‘
the Messiah
’, for which he was laughed at by his Rabbinic confrères.
20
This Uprising was every bit as fierce as the earlier one but there was no Josephus around to document it. It resulted in the Jews being finally barred from Jerusalem altogether, even from viewing it from a distance except once a year – the legendary ‘
9th of the Month of Ab
’, the traditional date for the fall of the Temple.

It is these sorts of ‘revolutionary’ things that, in our view, ‘Judas
the Zealot
’ or ‘
Judas the brother of James taught the Edessenes
’. In Syriac sources, this ‘
Judas’
is connected to one ‘
Addai
’ – in the Koran, as we have seen, ‘
’Ad
’ – just as in the Gospels and Papias he is indistinguishable from ‘
Thaddaeus
’. He is also, as we have shown, virtually indistinguishable from
Judas
Thomas
. Our identification of him with the ‘Theudas’ in Josephus, whose ‘imposture’ precedes the note about Helen’s ‘Famine Relief’, brings us full circle. It eliminates the problem of the ‘beheading’ of
another brother named ‘James’,
as it does that of the competitive Leadership Triad of John and James the two sons of Zebedee and Peter and is finally verified in the two ‘Apocalypses of James’ from Nag Hammadi.

It is also possibly verified elsewhere – in the Jewish catacombs of Rome where, not only is ‘Justus’ a name being used for ‘Zadok’, which has important ramifications for tying James to the individual referred to in this manner at Qumran, but mix-ups and overlaps of various letters and misspellings are commonplace. For instance,
alpha
is confused with
lambda
, which may account for some of our Cleophas/Alphaeus/Lebbaeus mix-ups, and
chi
is regularly interchanged with
kappa
as in ‘
Sicarii
’, which again may bear on the transposition of ‘
Christian
’ with ‘
Sicarios
’. Where Judas/Theudas is concerned, the
Y
or
I
in ‘Yehuda’ or ‘Judas’ is often confused with
T
, which can move into
Th
as in ‘Theodore’ or, as it were, ‘Theudas’.
21
The point is that these kinds of confusions in transliterations of phonemes are widespread.