James the Brother of Jesus and the Dead Sea Scrolls I (3 page)

To the ideologue, it was simply impossible that Jesus should have had a father or brothers, Gospel notices and references in Paul notwithstanding. Nor could Joseph have had
any
children by Mary. These had to have been by another wife. All such theological considerations will be set aside and all family designations treated naturally. If a person was said to have had a brother, then he was a natural brother, conceived by natural generation, not a half-brother, stepbrother, ‘cousin’, or ‘milk brother’.

The wealth of extra-biblical sources relating to James has already been noted. If we include with these those in the Book of Acts, where not adulterated, and notices in the letters of Paul, then there is a considerable amount of material relating to James. He is also mentioned in the Gospels, but here the material is marred by doctrinal attempts either to defame the family and brothers of Jesus or to disqualify them in some manner.

Though a parallel process is at work in the early chapters of the Book of Acts, as one moves into chapter 12 where James is introduced and beyond, the character of the material changes and quickens. For some reason Acts assumes that we already know who James is, as opposed to another James it calls ‘the brother of John’, whom it conveniently disposes of at the beginning of chapter 12 just before introducing the real James. It is possible to read through this material in Acts to the real history underlying it and the real events it transmogrifies.

The same can be said for Paul’s letters, which provide additional straightforward witness to ‘James the brother of the Lord’ and
know no other James
. The Historical James can also be reconstructed from the underlying circumstances to which remarks in these letters are directed. These, plus a myriad of extra-biblical materials, such as Josephus, apocryphal gospels, non-canonical acts including the ‘Pseudoclementines’, the Gnostic manuscripts from Nag Hammadi in Upper Egypt, and the mass of early Church literature all constitute sources about James. The documentation is that impressive.

The Historical Jesus and the Historical James

It is through documentation of this kind that we can recover the person of Jesus as well. The proposition would run something like this: let us assume that a Messianic leader known as ‘Jesus’ did exist in the early part of the first century in Palestine. Furthermore, let us assume that he had brothers, one of whom was called James.

Who would have known Jesus better? His close relatives, who according to tradition were his legitimate successors in Palestine, and those companions accompanying him in all his activities? Or someone who admits that he never saw Jesus in his lifetime, as Paul does, and that, on the contrary, he was an
enemy
of and persecuted Jesus’ followers, and came to know him only through visionary experiences that allowed him to be in touch with a figure he designates as ‘Christ Jesus’ in Heaven?

The answer of any reasonable observer to this question should be obvious: James and Jesus’ inner circle knew him best. But the answer of all orthodox Church circles has always been that Paul’s understanding of Jesus was superior and that he knew him better than Jesus’ own family or companions. Furthermore, it is claimed that the doctrines represented by James and the members of Jesus’ family generally were defective in their understanding of Paul’s ‘Christ Jesus’ and inferior to boot. Given the fact that the Christianity we are heirs to is largely the legacy of Paul and like-minded persons, this is just what one would have expected.

Moreover, the ‘Pauline’ view of these matters has been confirmed by the picture of Jesus that has come down to us in the Gospels. This is particularly evident in the description of the disciples in the Gospels as ‘weak’ (Mt 14:31 and pars.), a term Paul repeatedly uses in his letters, almost always with derogatory intent, when describing the leaders of the community, particularly in Jerusalem, and their directives (Rom. 14:1–2 and 1 Cor. 8:7–9:22). Occasionally he parodies this, applying the term to himself to gain sympathy, but most often he uses it to attack the leadership, in particular those keeping dietary regulations or relying on Mosaic Law – even those who, as he puts it, ‘only eat vegetables’, like James.

In the Gospels, reflecting Paul, when an Apostle as important as Peter ‘sinks’ into the Sea of Galilee for lack of ‘Faith’ or denies Jesus three times on his death night, the implications are quite clear. They are ‘weak’ in their adherence to the Pauline concept of ‘Faith’, a concept opposed to the more Jamesian one of salvation by ‘works’. In addition, they have a defective understanding of Jesus’ teaching, particularly of that most important of all Pauline doctrines, the
Christ
. This is the situation that has retrospectively been confirmed by eighteen hundred years of subsequent Church history too – however unreasonable or in defiance of real history it might appear.

Here, two aphorisms suggest themselves: ‘Poetry is truer than history’ and ‘It is so, if you think so’. The first has a clear connection to the development of the documents that have come down to us. If the Gospels represent the ‘poetry’, and truly they are perhaps the most successful literary creations ever written both in terms of their artistry and the extent of their influence, then their authors were the poets. It was Plato, who, comprehending the nature of the ancient world better than most, wished to banish the poets from his ideal state – not without cause, because, in his view, it was the poets who created the myths and religious mysteries, by which the less critically-minded lived. For Plato, this was a world of almost total darkness.

Where the second is concerned, one can say with some justice that it does not matter what really happened, only what people
think
happened. In essence, this is the theological approach of our own time, and, in the court of public opinion at least, the decision has long ago been rendered, not only for Christians themselves, but also for the world at large, including Jews and Muslims, because for all these people the Jesus of Scripture is real too.

This is why the study of James is so important, because the situation is for the most part just the opposite of what most people think it is. The reader will, undoubtedly, find this proposition preposterous. How could so many people, including some of the greatest minds of our history, have been wrong? The answer to this question has to do with the
beauty
of the concepts being disseminated, however uncharacteristic of the Palestine of the period they might be, ideas epitomizing the highest ideals of
Hellenistic
Civilization.

Like Plato’s picture of his teacher Socrates, Jesus refused to answer his interlocutors or avoid his fate. At least as far as his chroniclers are concerned, he met an end more terrible even than Socrates’ – but then Socrates was not dealing with the might of Imperial Rome, only of Athens. Of course, the very terribleness of this end is what makes the drama and its symbols so attractive.

It was Plato’s pupil Aristotle who informed us how the most successful tragedy inspires terror and pity. Indeed, much of the legacy of Plato and Socrates is incorporated into the materials about Jesus, including the notions of non-resistance to Evil and a Justice that does not consist of helping your friends and harming your enemies – all doctrines absolutely alien to a Palestinian milieu, such as that, for instance, represented in native Palestinian documents like the Dead Sea Scrolls.

Beauty and artistry are two reasons for the abiding appeal of these documents, but so too, for instance, is the attractiveness of a doctrine such as Grace, not something anyone would have any need or desire to resist. Along with these, however, goes the lack of any real historical understanding of this difficult period, and so oversimplifications, artifice and disinformation are preferred. In turn, these have operated on the level of general culture worldwide in an almost hypnotic fashion. It is this phenomenon that has been generalized to describe religion as ‘the opiate of the people’. This is not true for all religions. Some operate in exactly the opposite manner.

The End Result

It will transpire that the person of James is almost diametrically opposed to the Jesus of Scripture and our ordinary understanding of him. Whereas the Jesus of Scripture is anti-nationalist, cosmopolitan, antinomian – that is, against the direct application of Jewish Law – and accepting of foreigners and other persons of perceived impurities, the Historical James will turn out to be zealous for the Law, and rejecting of foreigners and polluted persons generally.

Strong parallels emerge between these kinds of attitudes and those of the Righteous Teacher in the Dead Sea Scrolls. For instance, attitudes in the Gospels towards many classes of persons – tax collectors, harlots, Sinners, and the like – are diametrically opposed to those delineated in the Dead Sea Scrolls, but in agreement with anti-Semitic diatribes of the time in Greco-Hellenistic environments.

At the centre of the agitation in the Temple in the mid-50s, hostile to Herodians, Romans, and their fellow-travelers, James will emerge as the pivotal figure among the more nationalistic crowd. In his incarnation of ‘the Perfect Righteous’ or ‘Just One’, he will be at the centre of the Opposition Alliance of sects and revolutionary groups opposed to the Pharisaic/Sadducean Establishment pictured in Josephus and the New Testament.

The election of James as leader of the early ‘Church’, missing from Acts, will be shown to be the real event behind the election of Matthias to succeed Judas
Iscariot
in his ‘Office’ (
Episcopate
). James’ death too, in 62 CE, will be shown to be connected in the popular imagination with the fall of Jerusalem in 70 CE in a way that Jesus’ some four decades before could not have been.

Two attacks on James also emerge in our sources – both physical – one paralleling the attack on Stephen in the 40’s related in Acts, and the other in the 60s, described by Josephus and in early Church sources, ending in his death. The stoning of Stephen, like the election of Judas
Iscariot
’s replacement that precedes it in Acts, will turn out to be totally imaginary – or rather dissembling – yet written over very real materials central to the life of James.

The
modus operandi
of New Testament accounts such as those in Acts, some merely refurbishment of known events relating to the life of James, will be illumined. Once the aim and method of these substitutions are correctly appreciated, it will be easy to see that the Hellenized Movement that developed overseas which we now call Christianity, was, in fact, the mirror reversal of what actually took place in Palestine under James. It will be possible to show that what was actually transpiring in Palestine was directly connected with the literature represented by the Dead Sea Scrolls, which in its last stages was either equivalent to or all but indistinguishable from that circulating about and normally associated with James.

Paul, on the other hand, will emerge as a highly compromised individual, deeply involved with Roman officials and Herodian kings – a proposition given added weight by the intriguing allusions to a parallel character in the Dead Sea Scrolls called ‘the Lying Spouter’ or ‘Scoffer’ – even to the extent of actually being a member of the family of King Herod. His contacts will go very high indeed, even into the Emperor Nero’s personal household itself (Phil. 4:22). Appreciating this context will help rescue Jesus’ closest relatives and his religious and political heirs in Palestine from the oblivion into which they have been cast either intentionally or via benign neglect.

This book, which is the first of a two-part series and represents a compression of the earlier
James the Brother of Jesus
(1997-98), is written for both the specialist and the non-specialist alike – particularly the latter where interest is generally even more keen. Readers are encouraged to make judgments for themselves and, where possible, to go to the primary sources directly and not rely on secondhand presentations. Because of this, secondary sources will not prove particularly useful, except in so far as they supply new, previously overlooked, data, because writings or materials later than 500 CE are for the most part derivative. Later writers too – even modern researchers – sometimes forget the motives of their predecessors, adopting the position and point of view of the tradition or theology they are heirs to. In the controversy regarding the Dead Sea Scrolls, a struggle developed with just such an academic and religious élite, not only over the publication of all the documents but even, more importantly, over their interpretation.

I have done my best to make the Dead Sea Scrolls, which have come along as if miraculously to redress the balance or haunt those who would adopt an a historical approach, available across the board to a wider populace. The matters before us are not for those who docilely accept biblical writ or scholarly consensus as the final word. The criticism we are doing is historical and literary criticism, looking at the way a given author actually put his materials together and to what end. It is the weight of the gradual accumulation of detail and textual analyses of this kind that ultimately renders the presentation credible.

To follow the arguments, as well as to make sure the materials are being correctly presented from the sources, the reader is urged to have a copy of the New Testament, the works of Josephus and a translation of principal Dead Sea Scrolls at his or her disposal. Nothing more is really required. Even though all necessary quotations from these sources are provided in the book, it is still very useful to see them in their original context and to follow the sequencing and order surrounding a specific historical or legal point.