James the Brother of Jesus and the Dead Sea Scrolls I (22 page)

Thaddaeus, Judas Thomas, and the Conversion of the Osrhoeans

Eusebius follows his first mention of Jesus’ post-resurrection appearance to James with the conversion of the Edessenes by Judas Thomas and Thaddaeus. This episode, which he claims to have personally ‘taken from the public archives of the city of Edessa’ and translated from the Syriac himself (1.13.5), is usually referred to as the conversion of King Agbar and associated with a Kingdom Eusebius refers to as ‘the Osrhoeans’ – meaning ‘the Assyrians’.

This episode no doubt represents an attempt to account for the growth of Christianity in Northern Syria and Mesopotamia.
1
For Eusebius, ‘Agbarus reigned over the Peoples beyond the Euphrates with great glory’ – note the important usage of the word ‘
Ethne
’ for ‘Peoples’/‘Gentiles’ here, which, of course, is the term Paul uses to designate the recipients of
his missionary activities
. The story has probably even moved on to become associated with the
evangelization of India
, still associated in myth and story with Thomas’s name, though it is doubtful any real-life Thomas ever went that far – whoever this mysterious ‘Thomas’ was. It is also probably associated with another conversion in the East, that of Queen Helen of Adiabene. It is difficult to sort out the various borders and kingdoms in this area and a group of petty kings referred to in Roman jurisprudence as ‘the Kings of the Peoples’.

The story of the conversion of Queen Helen is told by Josephus just prior to the Theudas episode and the notice about the Famine. It is repeated by Eusebius, sometimes under the title of ‘
the Queen of the Osrhoeans
’. The extent of this Adiabene – probably equivalent to today’s Kurdistan along the Tigris in Northern Iraq – and how far it either encroached upon or overlapped Edessa is not something that can readily be determined.

In Syriac sources, Queen Helen is presented as
Abgarus’ wife
.
2
The name ‘
Agbar
’ or ‘
Abgar
’
is somewhat generic, associated with Kings from this area, much the same as ‘Herod’ was in Palestine and ‘Aretas’ in Petra and Transjordan. In the same manner, ‘
Monobazus
’ will run through the male members of Helen’s family. It should be appreciated that ‘Abgar’ had
many
wives and marital alliances and that Josephus, also, considers Helen’s husband Monobazus, whom he says was ‘
surnamed Bazeus
’, to be her brother.
3

Whatever the truth of these assertions, the two conversions – Agbar’s and Helen’s – are amazingly similar and contemporaneous, and these two buffer areas in Northern Syria and Mesopotamia between Rome and the Parthians in Persia are contiguous. The only difference is that, for Josephus, Helen’s conversion is to what he thinks is
Judaism
, not Christianity. The question really is whether at this point there was any perceivable difference.

As Josephus tells the story, two men get in among the women in the harem of a king allied to Queen Helen’s husband. One, Ananias, bears the same name as the individual with whom Paul becomes involved in ‘Damascus’, also in Syria, in the conversion scene in Acts 9:17. He is also the intermediary in the ‘Agbar correspondence’ in Eusebius’ depiction of the conversion of the Edessenes. The second individual is not named, but both appear to teach a doctrine that does not require circumcision for Salvation, because Helen had a horror of circumcision. As Josephus puts the doctrine they are preaching: ‘worship of God … counted more than circumcision’.
4
Does this sound familiar? Once again the issue turns on the need or lack of need for it.

These details in Josephus are, of course, much more precise than in the legend of King Agbar as it has come down to us through Eusebius and Syriac sources. That it is a very old legend is clear from Eusebius’ personal interest in it and he says he got it from ‘the ancients’. We will show that traces of it and the Queen Helen story – which very definitely
is
old – will be discernible in the Book of Acts. Therefore, a version of it that could be parodied in Acts’ own inimitable manner was already circulating at the time of Acts’ composition. As for Eusebius, he correctly identifies Thomas as ‘Judas’, which he did not do previously and which not even the Gospels do, except by implication, thus providing additional testimony to the accuracy and antiquity of his source.

As Eusebius recounts the story, ‘Judas, who is also Thomas, sent out Thaddaeus [to Agbar] as an Apostle being one of the Seventy’. In the Apostle lists of Matthew and Mark, ‘Thaddaeus’ comes directly after ‘James the son of Alphaeus’ and right before ‘Simon the Cananaean’ (‘Simon the Zealot’ in Luke). In some manuscripts of Matthew, he is ‘Lebbaeus surnamed Thaddaeus’. But in the Gospel of Luke, ‘Thaddaeus’ suddenly metamorphoses into ‘Judas the brother
of James
’!
5
The timeframe of the Agbarus affair is ‘after the Ascension’ and the story itself gives the events it is recounting as 29–30 CE according to the Syriac reckoning, which would then put Jesus’ crucifixion somewhat before that.

For his part, Josephus tells his Queen Helen story just prior to his representation of Theudas and relates it to ‘the great Famine that then took hold of Judea’, which he dates some time before the crucifixion of the two sons of Judas the Galilean in 46-48 CE and regarding which he says both Helen and her son sent up Famine relief.
6
Eusebius does likewise, using the ‘
Theudas
’ narrative from Josephus to trigger his own about Helen and the Famine, to which he adds the detail of her family’s marvelous funerary monuments in Jerusalem.
7

Suffice to say that Acts 11:29–30, in its introduction to the beheading of ‘James’, claims that Paul returned to Jerusalem the first time with Barnabas in order to bring the collection that had been done in Antioch
because of the Famine
. Eusebius thinks the two accounts about Famine relief are related and no doubt they are, but he also thinks the Famine is related to the beheading of ‘James the brother of John’ (read ‘Judas the brother of James’). Finally, Acts introduces in relation to the Famine,
a purported ‘prophet’ it calls ‘Agabus’
. Like ‘Thaddaeus’, ‘Judas Barsabas’, and other presumable messengers ‘
from James
’, he ‘came down from Jerusalem to Antioch’ – in this instance,
to predict the Famine
(11:28).

This prophet will reappear again in Acts just before Paul’s final trip to Jerusalem to see James. Here, too, he ‘comes down from Judea’, this time to Caesarea, where he is portrayed as warning Paul against going to Jerusalem and predicting Paul will be sent to Rome in chains (21:10–13). Despite the obfuscation and disinformation going on here, I think we can say that the ‘
Agbarus
’ and Queen Helen legends, however distorted, are making an appearance here in Acts. In the process, we should be able to see that this ‘
Agabus
’ is but a thinly disguised version of Queen Helen’s husband ‘Agbarus’ or ‘Abgarus’.

The second prophecy Acts associates with this ‘prophet named Agabus’ will have its parallels in
two very mysterious oracles
having to do with James in Jerusalem: one the oracle, from Jewish Christian sources, occasioning the flight across Jordan to Pella; the second in Josephus – the mournful prophecy of
Jesus ben Ananias
, who went around Jerusalem for seven-and-a-half years following the death of James predicting its fall before he was finally hit on the head and killed by a Roman projectile.

Be these things as they may, there are some conclusions we can draw from all these overlaps and interplays. Let us assume that the ‘Thomas’ terminology refers, in addition to ‘twinning’, to a
brother of Jesus
. Let us also assume that Judas Thomas, Thaddaeus, and Theudas are identical. From other sources like the Pseudoclementine
Homilies
and
Recognitions
, we shall be able to show how James in his role of leader of the Jerusalem Church does send out Apostles and others on overseas missions. Paul confirms this when he discusses the ‘some from James’ that are sent down to check into affairs in Antioch in Galatians 2:12, but also when he fulminates about his opponents having written recommendations in 2 Corinthians 3:1–8. This is not to mention his parallel reference to ‘
Cephas and the brothers of the Lord’
, who travel with women as he does himself in 1 Corinthians 9:5. These ‘brothers of the Lord’ cannot include James, since James does not appear to do any traveling, but as far as can be determined remains in Jerusalem.

The question of which ‘Antioch’ one is referring to also must be kept in mind. Finally, let us also assume our sources are for the most part garbled, and also anxious to cover over the leadership of James, obliterating the traces of his existence. Then we can picture a scenario in which it is rather
James who sends out Judas
, that is, ‘Judas of James’ or ‘Jude the brother of James’ (even ‘Judas Barsabas’ in Acts)
to Edessa
, which ends among other things in the conversion of the Edessenes, an occurrence reverberating throughout our literature, including Acts.

Other Testimonies to James’ Election or Direct Appointment as Successor

Eusebius also refers to the direct succession of James in several other contexts in his
Ecclesiastical History
, in the process supplying us with valuable information about his character and person. In book 2, chapter 23, he returns to the matter of James’ succession. In his previous discussion, with which Book Two began, it will be recalled that he had put this proposition – in his own words – as follows: ‘This same James, to whom men had accorded the surname of the Just One … was recorded to be the First elected to the Throne of the Bishopric of the Church in Jerusalem’. Now, again in his own words, he puts this: ‘James the brother of the Lord … was
allotted
the
Episcopate
in Jerusalem
by the Apostles’
. Here his use of the term ‘Apostles’ is, once again, plural and not limited to the Central Three.

This latest phrasing may be a rephrasing or conflation of what he said on this subject at the beginning of Book Two, either quoting Clement to the effect that the Central Triad chose James as the Leader of the Church or, that James the Just ‘was elected’ to the Episcopate of the Jerusalem Church – the implication being
by the Assembly
.

In the second version of Clement’s testimony about James’ succession, the implication was that James received his office
directly from Jesus
, and this
after the Resurrection
. This idea is reinforced towards the end of his
History
, in Book Seven, when Eusebius comes to discuss ‘the Throne of James’ in Jerusalem.
8
There he varies this position just slightly, saying: ‘James, who as the Sacred Scriptures show, was generally called
the brother of Christ
, was
the First to receive the Episcopate of Jerusalem from our Saviour himself’
. There is no mention here of ‘after the Resurrection’, though some texts add ‘and [from] the Apostles’. This is the first time we have heard of this
Throne of James
, not Jesus. It was obviously a relic of some kind still extant in Jerusalem in Eusebius’ time, for he also notes both that it ‘has been preserved to this day’ and that ‘The Christians there look after it with such loving care, making clear to all the veneration in which saintly men high in the favour of God were regarded in time past and are regarded to this day’. This testimony would appear to reflect what is to be found in the Apostolic Constitutions, a work probably of Syriac origin from the second or third centuries, in which is found the reference about ‘Judas the Zealot’ taking the Truth to the Edessenes in Northern Syria,
not
Thaddaeus or Judas Thomas.

In the Apostolic Constitutions, the Office of Bishop is much laboured over and there is a notice about the
direct appointment
of James almost exactly like the one at the end of Eusebius above. This is given at the beginning of a long speech attributed to James with instructions for future bishops, and reads, with James speaking in the first person: ‘I, James,
the brother of Christ according to the flesh
, but his Servant regarding the Only Begotten God and one
appointed Bishop of Jerusalem by the Lord himself
and the Apostles, do ordain….’
9

Here, of course, we have both the references to ‘the brother of Christ’ in Eusebius above – and this
in the flesh
– and the appointment ‘by the Lord himself’, the addition of the words ‘and the Apostles’ seeming, once again, as an addendum to Eusebius, to be an afterthought in deference to traditional sensibilities. It would also appear to be the source of a similar rendition from Epiphanius, a half-century after Eusebius.

Here we have two further contradictions in the testimonies from Eusebius to the idea of James being appointed by the Inner Three: the one claiming James to have been ‘elected’ or ‘chosen by the Apostles’; and the other, that he received the Office
directly from Jesus
. Admittedly, all this is confusing, but it reflects some of the confusion in the early Church regarding this succession. What is not in question is that James
did succeed
and
did receive the Office
, the only question being, as far as Eusebius or his sources are concerned,
how he received it
and
at what point
.