James the Brother of Jesus and the Dead Sea Scrolls I (50 page)

Theoretically, the ‘Herod’ who interviews Jesus is the same
Herod the Tetrarch
(Herod Antipas) who condemned John the Baptist in a similar scenario because he, also, had administrative jursidiction across Jordan in Perea on the Eastern side of the Dead Sea. There now follows the material in Matthew 27:19–24 about Pilate wishing ‘nothing to do with’ or being ‘guiltless of the blood of this Righteous One’, which, again, has more to do with the nomenclature of the James story than that of ‘Jesus’. This episode culminates in that terrible cry in Matthew 27:25 that has haunted Western Civilization ever since: ‘
His blood
be upon us
and on our children
’.

But the ultimate reason behind all these feints and sleights-of-hand is simple. Josephus straightforwardly presents it when he states in his Preface to the
Jewish War
(to repeat):

The War of the Jews against the Romans was the greatest of our time, greater too, perhaps than any recorded struggle whether between cities or nations. Yet persons with
no first-hand knowledge
, accepting baseless and inconsistent stories on hearsay, have written garbled accounts of it; while those of
eyewitnesses have been falsified either to flatter the Romans
or
to vilify the Jews
– eulogy or abuse being substituted for accurate historical record.

One could not wish for a more prescient comment historically-speaking and it essentially sums up the situation regarding historical writing in this period – this in a Preface, in which Josephus otherwise claims that: ‘The Romans
unwillingly set fire to the Temple
… as Titus Caesar,
the Temple’s destroyer
has testified. For throughout the war, he (Titus)
pitied the common people
,
who were helpless against the Revolutionaries
…
And for our misfortunes we have only ourselves to blame
.’

Josephus’ picture of the Romans ‘
unwillingly setting fire to the Temple
’ matches the Gospel picture of Roman Governors and their Herodian minions
unwillingly condemning Christian Leaders to death
. To make the parallel even more immediate, one has only to remember that, in the Gospels, ‘
Jesus
’
is the Temple
!
34

These are the kinds of insights that can emerge from looking at the parallels in a seemingly inconsequential story like that of the ‘
headlong fall
’ Judas
Iscariot
supposedly takes and how his stomach ‘
burst open
’ and comparing it with that of the story of the ‘
headlong fall
’ James takes in early Church sources either from the Pinnacle of the Temple or its steps.

The reason we opt for the historicity of the James materials (with reservations) over the Gospels is that they are more consistent and
make more sense in their historical context
. It is that simple –
historical sense can be made out of them
, which is more than can be said for the story of ‘Judas
Iscariot
’s stomach bursting open’ or, for that matter, the story of Jesus being condemned by the High Priest for ‘blasphemy’ and taken for ‘a Righteous One’ – first by Pontius Pilate’s wife and then by Pilate himself.

This is the same Pilate, whom Philo of Alexandria records in his Mission to Gaius (37 CE), was the most blood-thirsty among the Governors in Palestine. This is quite bizarre since Pilate was removed on this account in disgrace by – of all people – the equally blood-thirsty and insane Caligula. The testimony about the attack on James in the Temple and James’ ‘
fall
’ is extremely important and
makes sense
, that is, elements from it can be fitted into the historical background of Palestine and what we know from other sources from this period and they mesh. Before going on to resolve those elements which do not make sense and which are either overwrites, garbled tradition, or out-and-out fraud, it is important to remark that these stories about ‘Judas
lscariot
’, ‘Stephen’, ‘Mary the mother of John Mark’, ‘John the brother of James’ – often even ‘Jesus’ himself – make the material relating to James’ death, his being buried on the spot where he ‘fell’ (connecting with ‘the Potters Field’/‘Field of Blood’ above story about ‘Judas’), very old indeed.

If we accept the basic core of historicity in them – and there is a lot to accept in Hegesippus’ materials paralleled by those in the Pseudoclementine
Recognitions
and what remains of the lost
Anabathmoi Jacobou
from Epiphanius’ excerpts, regardless of how these have been transmogrified or garbled in the accounts by Clement of Alexandria, Origen, Eusebius, Jerome, and the two Apocalypses of James from Nag Hammadi – then we have to accept a central core of material about James, together with its tell-tale notices about a ‘
fall
’ of some kind, his proclamation of ‘
the Son of Man coming on the clouds of Heaven
’ in the Temple at Passover, the charge of ‘
blasphemy
’, his ‘
stoning
’, and the various allusions to ‘
the Righteous One’
, ‘
his knees
’, the ‘
efficaciousness of his prayer’
, and his ‘
falling to his knees and praying
’, at least as old as the earliest redactions of Gospel accounts and the Book of Acts. These latter contain the same or parallel materials about their heroes or, sometimes, their enemies.

The traditions about James, therefore, were known and had already begun to be overwritten at least by the time of the
earliest appearance of parallel materials
now in the New Testament documents we are so familiar with and which have become cornerstones of Western culture. When was this? Dare we say probably before 100 CE? Justin Martyr, for instance, who was born in Samaria but afterwards lived in Asia Minor, by the 130’s appears to know many Gospel traditions and stories, particularly those of Matthew and Luke – which he calls ‘the Memoirs of the Apostles’, but not exactly in the form we have them. However, he shows little, if any, knowledge of the Book of Acts. Nor does he mention Paul’s name at all, though he does have a quasi-parallel theology. Justin, for instance, knows Isaiah 3:10 in the
Septuagint
version above, ‘
Let us bind the Just One, for he is abhorrent to us
’; but, interestingly enough, he is already applying it to ‘
Jesus’
’ death not
James
’.
35

Chapter 15

The Death of James in Its Historical Setting

The Stoning of James in Other Early Church Sources

Eusebius goes on to present the passages from Josephus relating to James’ trial and execution, as well as those which connect the fate of Jerusalem to his execution. These materials for the most part do exist in the Josephus we have and, if authentic – which they appear to be – really do give proof of the impact James was having in the Jerusalem of his day and, it seems, thereafter, till the time of Josephus’ writing at the beginning of the 90s.

Before going on to examine additional material Eusebius provides, we should compare the Hegesippus passages in Eusebius to parallel notices in Clement, Epiphanius, the two Apocalypses of James from Nag Hammadi, and Jerome. Eusebius more or less sums up what Clement of Alexandria in the latter part of the Second Century knows about the traditions regarding James’ death as follows: ‘But as to the manner of James’ death … in the words of Clement, “He was cast (
beblesthai
) from the Pinnacle and beaten to death with a club.”’ This doesn’t differ from Hegesippus, who wrote some twenty or more years earlier.

Epiphanius does not add much more. He corrects Eusebius’ version of James’ activities in the Temple, making it clear he went into ‘the Holy of Holies’, as he puts it, ‘once a year’, where he prayed on his knees till they became ‘hard as camel’s hide from his continued kneeling before God out of his excessive Piety’ – an obvious description of a ‘
Yom Kippur
’ atonement. Epiphanius is obsessed with James’ age: ‘he also died a virgin at the age of ninety-six’,
1
which, as in the case of the age of Simeon Bar Cleophas succeeding him – ‘one hundred and twenty years’, according to Hegesippus – can be viewed as simply recapitulating Josephus’ contention about how ‘long-lived’ those he is calling ‘Essenes’ were. For Epiphanius, James reigned in Jerusalem for ‘twenty-four years after the Assumption of Jesus’, which, if Josephus’ dating of James’ death is correct, would place ‘Jesus’’ crucifixion in 38 CE, approximately the year Josephus assigns to the execution of
John the Baptist
.

When it comes to James’ death, Epiphanius basically repeats Eusebius’ presentation, though the language is even more that of the attack on James by Paul in the 40’s, as per the Pseudoclementine
Recognitions
:

A certain fuller beat his head in with a club,
after he had been thrown headlong from the Pinnacle of the Temple
and
cast down
. But having done no wrong at all,
he fell to his knees
and
prayed for those who had thrown him down
, entreating God with the words, ‘Forgive them, for they know not what they do.’

Not only do we have the ‘casting down’ language again here (repeated three times), but the reiteration of the ‘being thrown headlong’, seemingly from the Pseudoclementine
Recognitions
’ account of Paul’s attack on James on ‘the steps of the Temple’ in the 40’s. The ‘
falling to his knees and praying
’ is, of course, part and parcel of Acts’ presentation of Stephen and his prayer.

But Epiphanius adds new material: ‘Thus, even Simeon bar Cleophas, his cousin, who was
standing
not far away, said, “Stop, why are you stoning the Just One? Behold, he is praying the most wonderful prayers for you.”’
2

Aside from another of these tell-tale allusions to ‘
standing
’, again one has here ‘
the Just One
’ epithet used in place of James’ name and the crucial emphasis on ‘praying’. But now, in place of Eusebius’ ‘
one of the Priests of the Sons of Rechab
’, one has the startling reference to James’ ‘
cousin
’, Simeon bar Cleophas.

Should we credit this tradition? It is extremely original and there is nothing to counter-indicate it. Nor does it create a wrench in the historical processes as we have been documenting them. But where did such a tradition come from and why isn’t it in Eusebius? There is no way of knowing, except that Epiphanius’ information in general is richer and fuller than Eusebius’, even though he is not quite so meticulous in quotation and/or citing of his sources.

Like his contemporary Jerome who, not surprisingly, dislikes him personally, Epiphanius is prepared to conflate various sources. But he does give more accurate information than Eusebius about James
actually entering the Holy of Holies to make an atonement
and a wealth of additional material about James’ ‘Naziritism’, vegetarianism, sexual abstinence, and the like. He also has vastly superior material about the sectarian situation in Palestine generally and the ‘
Primal Adam
’ ideology, in particular. For instance, under his description of the Ebionites, he says:

For some of them say
Christ is Adam
,
the First created
…
a Spirit higher than the Angels and Lord of all
… He comes here when he chooses,
as when he came in Adam
…
He came also in the Last Days, put on Adam’s body, appeared to men, was crucified, resurrected, and ascended
… but also, they say …
the Spirit which is Christ came into him
and put on the Man who is called ‘Jesus’.
3

This doctrine seems more and more accurately to describe the incarnationism of this period.

Suppose we were to say that, by ‘Rechabite’, Eusebius was trying to say something similar to ‘Essene’, ‘Nazirite’, or ‘Ebionite’; then out of this band of ‘Essene’ or ‘Ebionite Priests’, one, James’ ‘cousin’ and successor, Simeon bar Cleophas, emerged as the next ‘
Bishop of the Jerusalem Community
’ (only, after the fall of the Temple and Jerusalem, there clearly was no longer any  ‘
Jerusalem Community
’ to speak of in Palestine).

Suppose too that, instead of any of these vocabularies, we were to use one more familiar to modern ears – especially since the discoveries of the Dead Sea Scrolls – the Qumran ‘Priests’ or ‘
Sons of Zadok
’. For Epiphanius, James is a ‘
Nazirite
’ Priest with an obviously even greater concern for purity matters than usual. Now our sources begin to
mesh absolutely
. We shall have more to say about Simeon bar Cleophas when we treat the subject of ‘Jesus’ Brothers as Apostles’ below, but for the time being it might be well to entertain the implications of both accounts, that the witness to this stoning was
both ‘a Rechabite Priest’ and James’ ‘cousin’
without attempting to determine where the material came from (probably Hegesippus).