James the Brother of Jesus and the Dead Sea Scrolls I (55 page)

This is the first appearance of the Younger Ananus on the scene, who was then only Captain of the Temple, and it was as a result of these appeals to Caesar that he and Agrippa II became close friends in Rome – the time approximately 54 CE just before Claudius’ death.
44
Still, for once Acts has the issue right, ‘pollution of the Temple’ (24:6), because Paul is perceived as having introduced Gentiles and, no doubt consequently, their gifts as well into the Temple – which he most certainly did, if not physically, then certainly spiritually. In fact, Caesarea is a favourite centre for Pauline activities, as will become clear in the run-up to Paul’s last confrontation with James in Jerusalem, before the mêlée in the Temple, which occasions Paul’s arrest in Acts and confinement in Agrippa II’s palace in Caesarea.

But, in our view, the real cause of James’ death and the real arguments between the Jews are documented in the very next episodes in
Antiquities
, leading directly to the stoning of James and its aftermath. None of those things is properly documented in Acts. Here, ‘the High Priests and the principal men of the multitude of Jerusalem, each gathering about them
a company of the boldest men and those that
loved Innovation
… and when they fought each other, they hurled reproachful words at each other,
throwing stones as well
.’

This is, of course, the situation in Jerusalem showing serious argument and stone-throwing between two factions, the High Priests and those described as being of the People. It is also the prototype for the situation in the Temple, as described in early Church sources centering around the stoning of James. Not only would these disputes appear to be the immediate historical context of James’ death, but the events that follow them lead directly to the outbreak of the War against Rome – itself provoked by the Caesarean Legionnaires under Fadus (64–66 CE) who succeeds Albinus (62–64) – and the destruction of the Temple. All that is left to do is to place James at the centre of the faction representing the People.

But there is more. It is at this point in the
Antiquities
that Josephus first gives us his description of ‘the impudence and boldness of the High Priests, who actually dared to send their assistants to the threshing floors, to take away those tithes that were due the Priests, with the result that
the Poor among the Priests starved to death
’.
45
It will be recalled that Josephus repeats this description a second time directly after the stoning of James during Albinus’ regime. Josephus ties this ‘robbing sustenance’ or ‘robbing the Poor’, which we shall also see reflected in descriptions of ‘the Last Priests of Jerusalem’ in the Habakkuk
Pesher
, not only to Ananias, but also the other priests, saying, ‘
they took away the tithes that belonged to the Priests and did not refrain from beating such as would not give these tithes to them, so that these Priests, whom of old were supported by these tithes, died for want of food
.’
46

Josephus clearly has mixed emotions here. Sometimes he sympathizes with
the Lower Priests dying for want of sustenance
whom he actually designates as ‘
the Poor
’. He must have understood this situation very well, for this would be the class he came from – therefore his criticism of ‘the Chief Priests’. But, at other times, he catches himself and continues his criticism of ‘the Robbers’ or ‘
Lestai
’, whom, he now says, caused the Uprising against Rome. Sometimes he treats Agrippa II – later his confidant – and Bernice, Agrippa II’s sister, sympathetically, while at other times he is critical.

As a young Priest, Josephus studied with the ‘
Banus
’ described previously, that is, he followed the regime of daily bathing in the wilderness, telling us that ‘
Banus
bathed both night and day
in cold water
to (like James)
preserve his virginity
’, and that for three years he, Josephus, ‘
imitated him in this activity
’. We have suggested that these activities, centering about this contemporary of and ‘double’ for James, comprised something of a training ground for young priests, at least ‘
Rechabite
’-style ones. Josephus has, therefore, conflicting emotional allegiances, mixed with a strong desire to survive. Both are evident in the various contradictory statements he makes.

The next episode he describes exhibits these personal conflicts as well. Here, too, Josephus notes how Festus (60–62 CE), like Felix before him and Albinus to follow, was active in putting down such wilderness ‘sojourners’ or ‘Deceivers’. Acts, too, talks about Festus’ regime in Judea regarding the unjust imprisonment of Paul, who was mistaken for such a ‘Deceiver’.

Here, Josephus tells us that ‘Festus, too, sent armed forces, horsemen and foot soldiers, to fall upon those seduced by a certain Impostor, who had promised them
Salvation
(‘
Yeshu‘a
’ or ‘
Yesha‘
’ in Hebrew) and
freedom
from the troubles they suffered if they would follow him into the wilderness.’
47
Josephus refrains from naming this ‘
Impostor
’, simply stating that the forces Festus dispatched destroyed ‘both the Deceiver himself and those following him’, information even more scanty than that concerning ‘the Egyptian’ preceding it. There can be little doubt that this event is a repeat of the previous one, the only difference being that ‘the Egyptian’ escaped. As in the stone-throwing on the Temple Mount and the ‘Rich’ Priests plundering the Poorer ones, events framed in Josephus by the murder of James, there does seem to be some repetition or telescoping of events, perhaps due to faulty redaction or Josephus’ own dissimulation.

But not a murmur about these sorts of difficulties is ever uttered in Acts’ narrative of parallel events, only that ‘the Jews’ –
all of them
, including what appear to be Nazirite-style ‘
Assassins
’ or ‘
Sicarii
’ – are trying
to kill Paul
, because he has tried, even by Acts’ own rather one-sided presentation of their complaints, to
introduce Gentiles into the Temple
. ‘The Jews’ also make an endless series of complaints against Paul both to Felix and Festus, and Paul himself is finally saved by the sympathetic intervention of these governors, not to mention that of Agrippa II and his two wayward sisters. It is even possible that Felix, with his intimate connections to Nero’s household, actually paves the way for Paul’s trip to Rome a year or two after his own return. In any event, the reader will now come to appreciate that Acts’ account is quite obviously skewed or, at the very least, flawed.

The Temple Wall Affair in 62 CE

This brings us to a closer look at ‘the Temple Wall Affair’. It took place almost simultaneously with Paul’s ‘appeal to Caesar’ in Acts (25:21–25). So important was this confrontation between Temple purists and those supporting the admission of Herodians into the Temple that its upshot involved appeals to Caesar on the part of numerous individuals, two of no less importance than the High Priest appointed by Agrippa II and specifically identified by Josephus as Ishmael b. Phiabi – not ‘Ananias’ as in Acts above – and one ‘Helcias’, the Keeper of the Temple Treasure! In fact, Paul and even Josephus himself may have been involved in the appeals surrounding this incident, which led inexorably to the death of James.

Helcias’ father or grandfather – the genealogical lines are unclear – had been a close associate of Herod. Herod had specifically chosen him to marry his sister Salome after forcing her to divorce an earlier husband, the Idumaean ‘Costobarus’, whom Herod suspected of plotting against him; and ever after, the genealogies of all these lines are very closely intertwined.
48
That the Herodians generally kept a tight grip on money matters through this side of the family is clear. If our contention that Paul was a ‘Herodian’ can be proved, it is this line going back to Costobarus and Herod’s sister Salome to which he belonged.

The second or third ‘Helcias’ in this line, he was a close associate of Herod of Chalcis. His son, Julius Archelaus, whom Josephus also knew in Rome and compliments in the dedication to his
Antiquities
as an avid reader of his works, was married for a time to the Herodian Princess Mariamme III, Agrippa II’s third sister, before she divorced him in favour of, probably, the even ‘Richer’ Alabarch of Alexandria, Demetrius.

It will be recalled that Philo, the Alexandrian Jewish philosopher, and his nephew, Tiberius Alexander, the son of the previous Alabarch, Philo’s brother Alexander, were members of this fabulously wealthy Egyptian Jewish family. Tiberius Alexander, Titus’ military commander at the siege of Jerusalem, presided over the destruction of the Temple, while the family itself seems to have had control of commerce down the Red Sea as far as India and the Malabar coast. It is from this it derived its wealth – ‘Riches’ that, no doubt, played a role in some of the dynastic and political maneuvering going on here.

Ten other unnamed participants in ‘
the Temple Wall Affair
’ were sent to Caesar as well. Since their appeals occur at
exactly the same time
as Paul’s in Acts, it is hard to conceive the situations involved are not connected in some manner. In fact, all do relate in one way or another to
barring Gentiles
or
their gifts from the Temple
–
the issue that starts the War against Rome
. Herodians had been perceived of as foreigners ever since the visit of Simon to Caesarea in the 40’s. ‘The Temple Wall Affair’ is the same genre of episode as this and relates to the wish on the part of this mysterious ‘Simon’ to
bar Agrippa II’s
(even more ‘Pious’)
father from the Temple as a Gentile
.

Here, Josephus again shows why he is in such a quandary, for he is clearly on the side of the ‘Zealot Priests’ in the Temple who build the wall to block Agrippa II’s view of the sacrifices being conducted there. As he describes this affair, which
immediately
precedes the stoning of James, Agrippa II built himself a very large dining room in the royal palace at Jerusalem. This palace appears to have been first erected by the Maccabees, just overlooking the Western Portico of the Temple. Since it was situated on higher ground, it provided an excellent prospect of the sacrifices there. As Josephus describes the scene:

The King was enamoured of this view, and could observe, as he reclined and ate, everything that was done in the Temple. This very much displeased the Chief Men of Jerusalem (whoever these were), for it was contrary to tradition and Law that proceedings in the Temple, particularly the sacrifices, be observed. They, therefore, erected a high wall upon the uppermost portico which belonged to the Inner Court of the Temple towards the West (that is, directly over our present-day ‘Wailing’ or ‘Western Wall’).
49

But though his behaviour was certainly in poor taste, particularly if he was entertaining Gentiles and eating forbidden foods as he reclined and ate, which one imagines he was, it is not specifically against the Laws of the country, at least not as these are preserved in the Pharisaic tradition represented by the
Talmud
.
Mishnah Yoma
2:8, for instance, notes how on the Day of Atonement the people stood in the Court of the Temple, from where they presumably viewed the sacrifices. There is only a prohibition of being in the Temple when the priestly functions
per se
were being performed.

But the problem here is more complicated than this and has to do with the attempt by Simon to have Agrippa I barred from the Temple as a foreigner. By the time that gifts and sacrifices from Gentiles are banned altogether by the ‘Zealot’ Lower Priesthood in 66 CE, Agrippa II himself, together with his sister, the arch-fornicator Bernice, will have been barred from Jerusalem altogether, not to mention that their palaces will be burned in the immediate euphoria of the early days of the Uprising.
50

In fact, this is the position of one document from Qumran, the Temple Scroll. This document as we saw, not only devotes a whole section to this and related issues but, in doing so, uses the language of ‘Bela‘’ or ‘
balla‘
’/‘swallowing’. We have already discussed how this usage has something to do with Herodians, ‘Bela‘’ in the Bible having been not only a ‘Benjaminite’, but also the first
Edomite King
.

In the Temple Scroll, it is explicitly set forth that a high wall or a wide escarpment of some kind be built around the Temple, so that what goes on inside would neither be interrupted nor, it would appear, even ‘seen’ by Gentiles and other classes of unclean persons. The relevant passage reads: ‘And you shall make a great wall measuring a hundred cubits wide in order to
separate
the Holy Temple from the city, and (they?) shall not come (plural, but unspecified)
Bela‘
(or
balla‘
) and
pollute it
, but make My Temple Holy and fear My Temple.’