James the Brother of Jesus and the Dead Sea Scrolls I (63 page)

Of course, the intervening interview with ‘Herod’ in Luke is nothing but a refurbishment of this more substantial one in Acts. The dramatis personae, Agrippa II and Bernice are, therefore, correctly identified, because, although undergoing a certain amount of enhancement, the episode is not a
complete
historical rewrite or completely counterfeit. The real fate of people who incurred the displeasure of Herodian Rulers or Roman Governors is described in Josephus’ presentation of the followers of ‘the Egyptian’, whom Felix mercilessly butchers, or the two sons of Judas the Galilean, reportedly crucified during the Governorship of Tiberius Alexander, and others.

Folkloric presentations, as in the case of the Gospels on John the Baptist’s being considered by ‘King Herod’ a ‘Holy and Righteous Man’ (Mk 6:14 and 20), or Pilate’s wife considering Jesus a ‘Righteous One’, or here, ‘Herod, rejoicing greatly when he saw Jesus because for a long time he had
desired to see him do some miracle
’ (Lk 23:8), are simply the stuff of bedtime stories. But here, even worse, they have the additional intent of ‘flattering the Romans and vilifying the Jews’ (as Josephus himself put it). For Luke 23:47, to add insult to injury, it is another of these ubiquitous Roman Centurions, who, upon viewing Jesus’ death on the cross, after which ‘darkness came over the land’ for three hours, concludes ‘surely this was a
Righteous One
’!

Time and time again, elements integral to the story of James, such as his being called ‘
by all
a Righteous One’ or being brought before the Sanhedrin on a charge of blasphemy, appear to be retrospectively assimilated into the details of Jesus’ end.

The
Blasphemy
Charge and James’
Yom Kippur
Atonement

So one is left with the conundrum, what was the basis of the blasphemy charge against James. There are two principal death penalties in Jewish practice of this period, as reflected and sometimes even refracted in the
Talmud
. The first is for subversive or insurrectionary behaviour – beheading, and the list of the various beheadings in this period is worth cataloguing.

Beheading was also known to the Romans, but their preferred means of exemplary punishment for low-caste malefactors was crucifixion, at least this was so since the Spartacus Uprising in the early First Century BCE, in the aftermath of which the road from Rome to Naples was filled with crosses.
6
This was not the case for patrician malefactors and other
citizens
, who were usually banished or offered the choice of committing suicide.

The second Jewish death penalty is stoning. The examples of these are straightforward: Honi the Circle-Drawer (Onias the Just), Stephen, and James the Just. Though there are a few other, even more lurid, punishments described in
Talmud Sanhedrin
(one, for instance, paralleling the picture of dropping a stone on someone’s heart in the Apocalypse of James’ depiction of James’ death),
7
blasphemy, for which stoning was clearly the prescribed punishment, is quite specifically related to taking the Lord’s Name in vain, in particular, pronouncing the forbidden Name of God.
8

This does not seem to have specifically included claiming to be ‘the Son of God’. In any event, there is no evidence of it in any source, that is, outside the New Testament. In Jewish literature from this period, all ‘the Righteous Ones’ were considered to be ‘Sons of God’, as several texts attest.
9
That this idea was an issue, either in the execution of Jesus or the execution of James, is most likely a retrospective imposition of later differences between Christians and Jews. This is because the specific doctrine of Jesus’ Divinity itself had probably not even developed by this time. In any event, ‘Divine Sonship’, at least in its esoteric sense, was not really an issue in this period.

The other concern in these texts, the idea that
Jesus was the Christ
, again seems to have been an ideology with more meaning overseas in the Hellenistic world than Jewish Palestine, since the term does not seem to have any currency in this period in Palestine as far as one can tell. Even the author of Acts admits that ‘Christians’ were first so called in Antioch in Syria – if indeed it is this ‘Antioch’ Acts has in mind – some time around the 50s.

There is no evidence of such a concept in the Scrolls, though there is evidence of the ‘Primal Adam’ ideology related in some manner to it. In addition, there is the idea of a Supernatural ‘Messiah’ in the War Scroll, related to notions of Divine Sonship, ‘the Christ’, and ‘the Primal’ or ‘Second Adam’ ideology, who comes on the clouds of Heaven with the Heavenly Host to ‘shed Judgement like rain on all that grows on earth’. In it, too, the Archangel Michael is in some manner associated with this process, but this is about as ‘supernatural’ as the Dead Sea Scrolls and probably James ever get.

Nor do either of these two concepts form part of any blasphemy proceedings against James or Jesus, despite New Testament and early Church claims to the contrary, though Jerome does include it as one of the charges against James. But, aside from assuming that one or another of these ideas did upset the Jerusalem Authorities in some undocumented way, one can make sense of the blasphemy charge, where James is concerned, in a way one cannot with Jesus. James’ stoning certainly implies such a blasphemy charge was made against him, anyhow, if not against Jesus. The solution, therefore, has to do with James’ ‘Nazirite’ Priestly activities – in particular, his wearing the High Priestly diadem with the words ‘Holy to God’ emblazoned on it and entering the Holy of Holies at least once. It involves all the supplicating before God for ‘forgiveness for the People’, presumably as part of an atonement he did there in the manner of an ‘Opposition High Priest’ of some kind, so that his ‘knees became as callused as a camel’s’.

These activities are
actually
documented on the part of James and render the blasphemy charge sensible where he is concerned, in a way that it is not regarding Jesus. True, the Gospels do show Jesus at one point taking over the Temple and interrupting commerce, as well as exhibiting other intemperate forms of behaviour there,
10
but nothing in the picture of Jesus, as we have it, suggests ‘blasphemy’. Insurrection and subversion yes; blasphemy no – unless, of course, he too
went into the Holy of Holies
. But James did. All the sources are unanimous on this point, and, astonishing or otherwise, we must consider it sensible. It was the practice of the Jewish High Priest to go into the Holy of Holies to seek forgiveness on behalf of the people for communal sins and/or sins of omission, if not commission, once a year on
Yom Kippur
, the Jewish Festival of Atonement. The point is that it was forbidden to pronounce the sacred Hebrew Name for God represented by the four letters
YHWH
, except in this way by the High Priest on
Yom Kippur
, God’s Divine Name being considered so Holy it was not to be uttered. According to tradition, only Moses and a few Patriarchs before him had been taught it and uttered it.
11

This is why the details that these early Christian sources describe regarding James most certainly do seem like a
Yom Kippur
atonement. For, if James went into the Holy of Holies once a year alone, by himself, praying ‘on his knees for forgiveness of the people’ so that they grew ‘callused like a camel’s’ and if he did wear the mitre and linen of the High Priest as they attest; then this was what he was doing. However intriguing, it is useless to ask how or why he did this or had this right. This is what our sources are telling us, even perhaps without realizing it.

For this reason, James has been described by more contemporary, hostile ‘Christian’ reactions as ‘
the Pope of Ebionite fantasy
’.
12
This is a matter of opinion. Surely what he is pictured as doing here is less fantastic than some of the things we are asked to believe about Jesus in the Gospels and many of the Apostles in the Book of Acts, things these same critics hardly blanch to credit.

How James as Opposition High Priest Could Have Made Such an Atonement

But, regardless of such ideas, there are two ways of understanding this testimony. The first is from the ‘Zealot’ perspective. From the beginning of this ‘Movement’ – actually as far back as the days of Judas Maccabee and his father Mattathias – the ‘Zealots’ did not fail to
make the claim for a High Priest of greater purity and higher Piety
.
13

This finally plays out in the butchering of all the High Priests appointed by the Romans and Herodians and the burning of their palaces by ‘Zealots’ as the Uprising became more extremist from 68 CE onwards. These Zealots or extreme
Sicarii
elect as High Priest a Poor ‘Stone-Cutter’ by the name of ‘Phannius’ (Phineas), against whom Josephus rails as if he was ‘no Priest’ at all (note the ‘Rechabite’ theme of being
an artisan
again here).

The second concerns the Dead Sea Scrolls. These postulate a new Priesthood, ‘
the Sons of Zadok’
. Though the latter may have a genealogical dimension, this is nowhere stated as such. Rather it has a qualitative or eschatological one, that is, these ‘Priests’ are primarily described as ‘
keeping the Covenant
’. In addition, there is definitely an esoteric play in this terminology on the idea of ‘Righteousness’ (‘
Zedek
’ in Hebrew) as we have seen and, in the only other real definition we have of these in the Dead Sea Scrolls, ‘the Sons of Zadok’ are definitely spoken of in terms of ‘
Justifying the Righteous (that is, ‘making the Righteous Righteous’) and condemning the Wicked
’.
14

It is also said that
the period of their rule is preordained
and
they are ‘the Elect of Israel who will stand at the End of Days’
. None of these appositives is genealogical;
all are qualitative and even eschatological
, meaning they have to do with the ‘Last Things’ or ‘the Last Times’ – things like, ‘the Day of Judgement’, expressly evoked as well in the Habakkuk
Pesher
. In fact in the Habakkuk
Pesher
, ‘the Elect of Israel’ are described in just this manner, that is, like Jesus’ favourite Apostles in the New Testament they participate in the Last Judgement or, as it is expressed there, ‘
God’s Judgement before many Peoples
’.
15
Therefore, it is fair to say, there is even
a ‘Supernatural’ component to these definitions of ‘the Sons of Zadok’ at Qumran
.

In the ‘Three Nets of Belial’ section of the Damascus Document, these new ‘Zadokite’ Priests are clearly opposed to the reigning Establishment or Priestly Hierarchy of the day. Therefore we have described them as an ‘Opposition High Priesthood’. In it, ‘Priests’ are matter-of-factly defined as ‘
the Penitents of Israel who departed from the Land of Judah to dwell
’ or ‘
sojourn in the Land of Damascus
’ and, aside from the numerous esoteric implications of this, note the play on the ‘Rechabite’ ideal of ‘sojourning’.
16

There is even an individual described in the literature at Qumran as ‘the
Mebakker
’ or ‘
Overseer’ of the wilderness camps
. He would definitely appear to be paralleled by someone called ‘the High Priest commanding the camps’, and he acts in all things like a ‘Bishop’ (Gr.
episkopos
– lit. ‘Overseer’) in early Christianity.
17

If we put James – whose followers in Acts are identified as ‘Zealots for the Law’ – into either of these scenarios, we are close to achieving a perfect match. At the very least, we have the wherewithal for understanding not only how this presentation of James as a kind of ‘Opposition High Priest’ arose, but also how at least once, in or before 62 CE, he could have been allowed into the Holy of Holies of the Temple and stayed there ‘on his knees’ importuning God to forgive them – themes that are constant in all the traditions relating to him.

The Habakkuk
Pesher
delineates the argument between ‘the
Zaddik
’ or ‘Teacher of Righteousness’ – also called ‘the High Priest’ there and in parallel materials in the Psalm 37
Pesher
– and ‘the Man of Lying’
, who ‘rejected the Law in the midst of their whole Assembly
’. It also delineates a dispute with ‘the Wicked Priest’, clearly the Establishment High Priest eventually responsible for the death of or destruction of ‘the Righteous Teacher’. It even tells us in its somewhat obscure manner of those events leading up to the destruction of the Teacher of Righteousness and difficulties on
Yom Kippur
between this Priest and the Teacher’s followers, known as ‘the Poor’.

The signification of these events is not easily clarified because of the obscurity of some of the language being used, but we unravel it further in the follow-up to this book (Volume II), mentioned above. At the very least, these events
involving the Teacher and ‘the Poor’
do tell us about
confrontations between them and the Establishment High Priest – ‘the Wicked Priest’ – on Yom Kippur
, which seems to have been celebrated on different days because of calendrical differences between those depicted in the Qumran texts and the Establishment.