James the Brother of Jesus and the Dead Sea Scrolls I (12 page)

Since they have been found in single copies only, they would appear to represent the latest literature of the Community, literature that did not have time to go into wide circulation or be reproduced in multiple copies. In addition, they are extremely personalized or idiosyncratic, filled with the ethos of events transpiring in the cataclysmic ‘End Time’ or ‘Last Days’ spoken of in Daniel and the New Testament.

It is also primarily in these
pesharim
that one comes upon all the dramatis personae of the Community and its history. For instance, in addition to the terms cited above, ‘the Simple of Judah doing
Torah
’, ‘the Violent Ones of the Gentiles’, ‘the
Kittim
’, ‘the Additional Ones of the Peoples’, ‘the city built upon blood’, ‘the Poor’, ‘the Meek’, and so on. These allusions are tied in an apocalyptic manner to prized biblical texts, the reason for whose choice becomes clear once one examines the vocabulary involved. The authors of these commentaries definitely felt they were living in some cataclysmic ‘
End Time
’ and all the imagery, everything about their ethos, including the repetitive vocabulary they employ, points to the Roman Period – in fact, to be
precise, to the Period of Imperial Rome.

We shall be able to link allusions – particularly from the
Pesharim
, but also from the Damascus Document, Community Rule, and War Scroll – to events of James’ life. Not only this, but an additional effect will develop. When the events of James’ life are superimposed on materials from Qumran, particularly those having to do with the destruction of the Righteous Teacher by the Wicked Priest, additional data can be elicited from them that one would not otherwise have known or suspected. Seeming
non sequiturs
or obscure readings are cleared up, and additional data thus elicited from the texts.

No other character from any time or place during the two or three centuries of Palestinian history we are studying produces anything like the same match one gets when one views James in relation to the Scroll documents. Reigning theories of Qumran origins generally evade this issue and often do not even attempt to develop the internal evidence involved. This is the safer way, but in these materials we have to do with a
major
movement
within Judaism and dramatis personae of no slight importance. It is impossible that these people should have failed to make an impression on their time and place, nor appear in the wealth of sources we have available to us for this period.

There are other considerations, too, that need to be analysed. Here we have two communities: ‘the Jerusalem Community’ led by a teacher called, in tradition, James ‘the Just’ – or, to follow the sense of the original Hebrew, James ‘the Righteous One’ – and the Community at Qumran led by an unknown teacher called ‘the Righteous Teacher’ or ‘the Teacher of Righteousness’. Like James, he too appears to come to an unhappy end.

Whenever the details relating to the Qumran Teacher’s life, teaching, and demise are being developed in a
pesher
, the allusion played on in the underlying biblical text is invariably ‘the
Zaddik
’ or ‘
Righteous One
’. This is so common that almost every available ‘
Zaddik
’ text from the Bible is subjected to exegesis in some manner in the extant materials from Qumran.
This amounts almost to a rule of thumb. Significantly, one will find the same or similar texts being applied to James’ demise in early Christian writings.

It has been contended that the Scroll Community is at Qumran while the Jerusalem Community is in Jerusalem. Therefore, they are not identical however parallel their teachings. This might appear on the surface to be a fair statement except for the fact that a careful analysis of the Qumran texts often places the Righteous Teacher and his followers in Jerusalem.
Par contra
, materials in the Jamesian corpus definitively place James and all his Community following their flight from Jerusalem in the region of Jericho near the location of Qumran.
9

With regard to the actual physical site at Qumran and the fortress-like settlement located there, references to the wilderness ‘camps’ in the Qumran documents are invariably in the plural. On the basis of internal data there is no indication whatsoever where these ‘camps’ might have been located, except for two references in the War Scroll to, firstly, ‘
the wilderness of the Peoples
’ and, secondly, ‘
the wilderness of Judea
’. The former is probably synonymous with what goes by the name of ‘
the Land of Damascus
’ or just plain ‘
Damascus
’ in the Document deriving its name from that designation. And in this document, the figure known as ‘the
Mebakker
’ or ‘
Overseer
’ or ‘
Bishop
’, who is either synonymous with or parallels another known as ‘
the High Priest Commanding the Camps
’, bears an uncanny resemblance to James and his role in the early Church.
10

PART II

The Historical James

Chapter 6

The First Appearance of James in Acts

The Book of Acts as History

Historically speaking James first appears in a really tangible way in the Book of Acts. But the presentation is not a straightforward one. There are,
as usual, puzzling lacunae. Materials known from other sources are left out
and things that should logically have been covered are missing. To the perspicacious observer, however, the traces of these other data are still there, to be filled in by inference from what is said elsewhere or the underlying implications of the text itself. To the neophyte, this can be unsettling, but once he or she has grasped what is really occurring, it can be uplifting, approaching the joy of a discovery or enlightenment.

First, the reader should realize that the Book of Acts cannot be considered a historical presentation. There is too much mythologizing, too much that is out-and-out fiction, too much fantasizing. Important materials are left out, yet, underlying the presentation, the broad lines of a certain kind of history can be discerned.

For instance, how was the succession to Jesus managed? We hear about an ‘election’ of sorts, but then this turns out not to have been the election of Jesus’ successor, which would have been the logical expectation at this point in a narrative purporting to cover the beginnings of the early Church, but rather clearly obscurantist material about the election of a Twelfth
Apostle to succeed not Jesus but, of all people, ‘Judas’ his alleged ‘betrayer’.
This is the first bit of sleight-of-hand in Acts, and this election, as we shall see, will dovetail nicely with notices in early Church literature about a first election of James as
Bishop
or
Bishop of Bishops
of the early Church.

Questions like why there had to be ‘Twelve Apostles’ in the first place, or who – aside from the election of this inconsequential successor to Judas
named Matthias – succeeded Jesus are passed by in silence. Then there are
the questions about the identity of the majority of the Apostles or what a ‘Bishop’ or an ‘Archbishop’ actually was, not to mention how James came to be found in this position in the first place. Acts is normally thought of as being ‘the acts’ of the Apostles in general, that is, ‘the Twelve’, who are variously listed according to which account one is following, and yet the author clearly knows almost nothing about the majority of these Apostles.

At a very early stage the narrative moves over to the story of Paul – who is not really even an ‘Apostle’ at all – at least not one of the original ones (7:58) and, except as he comes in contact with one or another of these, the narrative completely loses interest in them. For instance, we know next to nothing about Peter after he conveniently leaves just in time to make way for the introduction of James in chapter 12. We are told nothing about his travels or experiences, and nothing about his death. Why not? We are not told about any of the other significant members of ‘the Twelve’ either, except James, and yet James is not supposed to be a member of ‘the Twelve’ or an Apostle.

But even when it focuses on Paul, the text tells us nothing about his early career. Again, we can learn more by looking at the first chapter of Galatians. We would have expected to have been informed of these things. All the text does is bring us to Rome with Paul. Then it leaves us. We do not know what happened to Paul
in the end any more than we do Peter – or James for that matter.
Acts is not history. It is not even particularly good narrative, romance, or fiction.

Nor does the text tell us about James’ death, which, following even Acts’ somewhat questionable time format, also occurred at exactly the point Acts ends about two years after Paul’s arrival in Rome.
A lacuna of this magnitude is inexplicable, until one realizes Acts tells us about few, if any, of ‘the other Apostles’ except Paul. Of these presumed ‘Twelve Apostles’, Acts mentions John, but in little or no detail, and has one small more or less fictional episode about a ‘Philip’. Peter is discarded almost completely after Paul makes his appearance. The first James – ‘James
the brother of John
’ – is eliminated from the scene at this point as well, just in time for the sudden eruption of the second James (James
the brother of Jesus
) into the narrative.

In fact, just about all the other Apostles that Acts so carefully lists at the beginning of its narrative are simply shadowy figures to flesh out the twelve-man Apostle scheme it is so intent on presenting. They are really only paper figures and the author of Acts really knows next to nothing about them or, if he does, he is not very forthcoming concerning them.

Indeed, it would be more accurate to say that Acts is really a narrative about the ‘acts’ of the Holy Spirit, not the early Church or Apostles at all. It traces the acts of the Holy Spirit in their various manifestations, and true history goes by the board almost from the beginning. When Paul argues with the Jerusalem Leadership of the Church – which he does – it is the Holy Spirit that in his view gives him equal status, even superior ‘Knowledge’ to them (Gal. 2:2). It is the Holy Spirit that not only certifies his credentials as an Apostle, but also his Mission generally. Not unmindful of this fact, the religio-historical narrative of Acts is careful to present the accoutrements of the descent of the Holy Spirit, such as
speaking
in tongues
and
miracles
, raisings, curings, and the like (2:4).

James the Brother of Jesus
and James the Brother of John

The first reference to James in Acts comes in a request by Peter to the servants at ‘Mary the mother of John Mark’s house’ – whoever these may have been – after his escape from prison and before his departure to points unknown. It reads: ‘Report these things to James and
the brothers
’ (12:17).

Before proceeding to the problems presented by it, we must first distinguish this James from several other Jameses, particularly the more familiar Great James or ‘
James the brother of John the son of Zebedee
’. This James, as opposed presumably to ‘
James the Less
’ (Mark 15:40 – our
James
) and another ‘
Justus
’ who appears in Acts 1:23, is the James who occasionally appears along with James the Just, the brother of Jesus in the Gospels. He is the familiar James among the Apostles and the James most people think they are talking about when they speak of James. Few, if any, realize there was a second one even greater, and that the first is in all probability, if not merely a minor character, simply an overlay or gloss.
The authors of Acts know nothing substantial about him and conveniently remove him at the beginning of chapter 12 just before the James we are speaking of appears. For his part, Paul never mentions a ‘James
the brother of John
’ and none of the Church Fathers knows anything else about him except apocryphally. Yet his existence is confidently asserted by almost all who talk with knowledge about Scripture. Such is the power of the written word. The same is true for his purported father ‘Zebedee’, another character again hardly more than simple fiction. For the present writer characters of this kind are simply meant as dissimulation to confuse the unsuspecting reader.

It is the ‘
brother
’ theme, however, that will allow us to place in clear focus who this second James may have been, once we have dismissed the nomenclature ‘Zebedee’ as fiction. We will encounter several others of this kind, so by the end of the book the
modus
operandi
behind such overwrites should become plain.

James – the real James – is never introduced or identified in Acts. He just appears. Actually he does not really appear here; this appearance is saved for chapter 15. He is alluded to parenthetically in Peter’s request, ‘tell these things [that is, Peter’s miraculous escape and departure] to James and the brothers’ after the alleged
other
‘James’ has already disappeared from the narrative; but from what is said there, it is implied that our James – James the Just – was either mentioned earlier or we should know who he is. But how should we know who he is if in the present version of the document he was not mentioned previously or he was never introduced to us? Even this oblique mention of James, after the only other James we have ever heard of has been decapitated, does not tell us who he is.