James the Brother of Jesus and the Dead Sea Scrolls I (75 page)

With this, he cannot refrain from making one final defiant, if obsequious, boast: ‘
For in nothing was I behind these
Apostles of the Highest Degree
as well, if
nothing I am
’ (12:11). In referring once more to these ‘
Highest Apostles
’ in this manner he makes it unmistakably clear that they are the very same ‘
Hebrews
’, to whom he referred so venomously as being ‘
Pseudo-Apostles
’ and ‘
Servants of Satan’
– not to mention his aspersion on ‘
those reckoned as important’
or
the ‘Pillars’ whose ‘importance nothing conferred
’ in Galatians 2:6–9. In regard to this last, one should note the repetition of the word ‘
nothing
’ here in 2 Corinthians too, now applied to ‘
the Apostles of the Highest Degree
’.

Where Paul’s use of this non-specific title ‘
Apostle
’ is concerned, it is noteworthy that he, not only applies it ‘to those who were Apostles before me’ (including James) in Jerusalem in Galatians 1:17, but also to Gentiles he is intimate friends with in Asia, Greece, and Rome. We already saw how in Philippians he calls Epaphroditus (‘
his brother, fellow worker, and comrade in arms
’) an ‘
Apostle
’ as well (2:25). This allusion to Epaphroditus is directly followed by the greeting ‘to every Holy One (‘Saint’) in Christ Jesus’ and ‘
especially those in the household of Caesar
’ (4:18–22), a reference that would have made the inhabitants at Qumran blanch. As we saw, Epaphroditus was in all likelihood identical with Nero’s secretary by the same name, ultimately involved in some peculiar way in the latter’s murder or, at least, helping him commit suicide.

It will be recalled that Paul also uses this ‘household’ language in similar and related salutations at the end of Romans. In one of these, he refers to such persons as ‘noted among the Apostles, who were in Christ before me’ (16:7). Among these is one ‘
Junias
’, to whom Paul refers as well as his ‘
kinsman
’ – symbolic or real. This may well have been the ‘nephew’ Acts 23:16 refers to,
the son of Paul’s sister with a house in Jerusalem
whom, we have identified as ‘
Julius Archelaus’
. There is no doubt that this individual whose father was ‘Helcias’, the Temple Treasurer,
ended up living in Rome too, where Josephus alludes to him as an avid reader of his works
.
3

There is also a greeting at the end of Romans to one ‘Rufus’, whom Paul also describes as ‘the chosen of the Lord’, and whose mother, in some kind of adoptionist manner – like ‘Jesus’ on the cross to ‘the beloved Disciple’ – Paul calls his own (16:13). This recalls the individual the Gospel of Mark calls ‘Simon of Cyrene’, ‘the father of Alexander and Rufus’, who, ‘coming from a field, carried the cross of Jesus’ (15:21). The way Mark refers to ‘Alexander and Rufus’, they are known in some Gentile Christian Community – presumably Rome, where Mark is thought to have been written.

In Josephus, coincidental or otherwise, there is another ‘Rufus’, a Roman soldier again, who at the end of the
War
does somewhat parallel things. What he does is
make a daring foray, again across Jordan near Machaeros, where John the Baptist met his end, and ‘carry off’ one of the local Jewish partisans
. This man is then crucified before his own town and, because of his pitiful cries, many surrendered. Those who did not were butchered and the women and children enslaved – this, the ‘
carrying off
’ and ‘
cross
’ themes associated with the ‘
Rufus
’ in Josephus.
4

A second ‘
Rufus
’, Josephus speaks of, is
the Roman Commander, left in control of Jerusalem after Titus went to Rome for his victory celebrations
who, as Josephus himself opines,
turned Jerusalem into a ploughfield
. One hopes this was not what, using the phraseology of Paul’s greeting here in Romans, he was ‘chosen
by God
’ to do. All these parallels may simply be coincidental, but they are nevertheless illustrative of the atmosphere of the times and what intercourse with individuals called ‘Rufus’
in Rome
might really have meant.

Coincidentally, this last-named ‘Rufus’ is also associated with one ‘Simon’. But this Simon is now ‘Simon Bar Giora’, a leader of the Revolutionaries. Josephus dwells on his capture in detail, revelling in telling us how through Rufus’ determination, ‘God brought this man to be punished’. As with Niger previously, after Jerusalem fell, Simon was apparently at first taken for dead by his partisans. But, like Niger too, staying ‘three days’ underground, to their amazement, he suddenly reappeared to his followers, who then ‘took him for an apparition’. Again, all these common themes might be sheer coincidence, but Josephus concludes this episode with the pronouncement: ‘His wicked actions did not escape the Divine Anger, nor is Justice too weak to punish offenders, but in time overtakes those who break its Laws and inflicts its punishments upon the Evil in a manner even much more severe, inasmuch as they expected to escape it on account of their not being punished immediately.’
5
This Simon was kept by Titus to be featured in his victory parade in Rome, at the end of which he was beheaded.

Again for his part, Josephus follows his account of Simon’s capture by Rufus with his descriptions of Titus celebrating his brother Domitian’s ‘birthday party’ in Caesarea on his way to Rome, in which some
twenty-five hundred prisoners
were killed by burning, being eaten alive by animals, and in gladiatorial contests. These were followed by similar festivities in continuation of these ‘birthday celebrations’ in Beirut, where like numbers of prisoners were killed in even more impressive ceremonies.

The Testimony in Paul to James as Apostle and Brother of the Lord

Aside from referring to himself repeatedly as ‘Apostle’, Paul also makes it clear that James was
an Apostle
. All the other early Church accounts we have been considering present James as an Apostle as well. For example, to use the words Eusebius conserves from Hegesippus: ‘
this Apostle was Holy from his mother’s womb
’. It will be recalled that analogously, Paul also makes the same claim for himself, that God
chose him from his ‘mother’s womb
’ and called him ‘
by His Grace to reveal his son in’ him
(Gal. 1:15–16).

Paul confirms James’ Apostleship in his first reference to him in Galatians 1:19: ‘
Of the other Apostles
, I saw none, except
James the brother of the Lord.
’ This statement is in itself significant. Not only does he not even mention any other Apostle called ‘James’ at this point (who would have still been alive at this time), but Paul evinces no embarrassment whatsoever about James being ‘
the brother of the Lord
’. He does not qualify it, as later theologians do sometimes tortuously, nor try to explain it away by making excuses about it – for instance, that he was the son of a different mother or the son of a different father or the like. Nor does he treat it symbolically, which given his tendency to allegorize he might have done. He just states it as a known fact.

In the second place, as we saw, it contradicts Acts’ presentation of events and their sequence. In Galatians, Paul is answering the accusation that he ‘seeks to please men’ not God (1:10). This accusation echoes the charge found in the Letter of James, whoever makes himself a ‘friend of the world, turns himself into an Enemy of God’ (Jas. 4:3). This last is the key epithet applied to Paul in all Judeo-Christian sources.

In Galatians, too, in describing how he ‘ravaged the Assembly of God’, Paul tells of how ‘zealous for the Traditions of his Fathers’, beyond many of his contemporaries of his ‘own race’, he was – thereby effectively calling himself ‘a Zealot’ (1:14). In the process, he assures everyone he ‘does not lie’ (1:20). This ‘not Lying’ contention is particularly relevant not only to the claim of having private ‘revelations’, but also to how, in undertaking to teach his version of the Good News ‘among the Gentiles’, he did not stop to discuss it with ‘any flesh and blood, nor go up to Jerusalem (to consult) with those that
were Apostles before me
’ (1:16). Notice here, again, he does not precisely specify the number of these ‘Apostles’.

The import of this is obvious. One should also note his emphasis here on his idea of ‘flesh-and-blood’ Apostles, which emphasis for him is, of course, inferior to ‘spiritual’ ones. This accords with the fact that his appointment was ‘not from men’ and he was not interested in
written credentials
– neither letters written in ink nor upon stone – from such persons either, which bring, as he so graphically puts it, only ‘death’ (2 Cor. 3:6–7).

This also relates to the accusation reflected here of ‘
trying to please men
’, thereby turning himself ‘
into the Enemy of God
’ – this, because he was not properly
credentialed
by men
, either the Jerusalem Assembly, the Twelve, or the Inner Three. James, on the other hand, as per the Letter attributed to his name and in the manner of Abraham, because
he (like Abraham) was perfectly ‘Righteous’, was the true ‘Friend’ or ‘Beloved of God’
, as presumably all the ‘
Righteous Ones
’ were.

It is at this point in Galatians that Paul claims he ‘
went away into Arabia and again returned to Damascus
’ – whatever might be meant by ‘
Arabia
’ and ‘
Damascus
’ here – and did not go up to Jerusalem for
another
three years
(1:17–18). It is legitimate to inquire, in regard to this ‘
return to Damascus
’, whether it had anything to do with a first visit there at the time of the confrontation between Aretas and Herod Antipas, reflected in 2 Corinthians 11:32 also in conjunction with the affirmation of ‘
not Lying
’.

The Letter of James at this point is attacking the ‘Empty Man’, who is teaching that Abraham ‘
was not justified by works’ but Faith
, which is, of course, what Paul is doing in Romans 4:2–5 and Galatians 3:5–10. Paul, on the other hand, likes to turn the epithet ‘
Empty
’ or ‘
Vain
’ – notations also found in the key Habakkuk
Pesher
passages describing
the ‘Mission’
or
‘Service’ of ‘the Liar’
– against his adversaries by claiming that their endless nit-picking and debates over the Law of Moses are ‘Empty’ or ‘Vain’.

For Acts 9:22–23, after Paul ‘
confounded the Jews who dwelt in Damascus’ by the way he proved that Jesus was ‘the Christ
’ (the same thing James is supposed to have been proving in early Church accounts of the events leading to the riot on the Temple Mount), ‘
the Jews
plotted to kill him’. Paul then escapes in the ‘basket’ episode – not from Aretas but from ‘the Jews’, who were ‘
watching the gates night and day in order to kill him
’ (Acts 9:24). However preposterous, it should be recalled that this 2 Corinthians notice comes in the midst of Paul’s attack on the ‘Apostles of Surpassing Degree’ as ‘Pseudo-Apostles’ and ‘Servants of Satan’ amid his bragging about his endless ‘toil and service’ and protestations about ‘not Lying’.

When Paul gets to Jerusalem, he tries to ‘
join himself to the Disciples
’ who are, not surprisingly, all afraid of him and ‘
don’t believe he is a Disciple
’ (Acts 9:26). Barnabas then brings him ‘to the Apostles’, where he explains how Paul
‘saw the Lord in the Way
,
speaking to him, and he had spoken boldly in Damascus in the Name of Jesus
’ (Acts 9:27). Barnabas’ description ‘to the Apostles’ of Paul’s vision of the resurrected Jesus, which differs markedly from the way in which Acts earlier described it, is similar to the way Jesus appeared to one ‘Cleopas’ (Cleophas) and another unnamed person ‘along the Way’ in the Gospel of Luke and to James in the Gospel of the Hebrews.

Be this as it may, Acts now records that Paul was with the Apostles ‘in their comings and goings in Jerusalem, speaking boldly in the Name of the Lord Jesus’. This is paralleled in Galatians – or rather not paralleled – as follows (Paul speaking in the first person):

Afterwards I came into the regions of Syria and Cilicia, but
I was not known by face to the Churches
(
Assemblies
)
in Christ in Judea
, who had only heard that
he, who had formerly persecuted them, was now announcing the Gospel (and) the Faith he had once ravaged
, and they were
glorifying God in me
(now,
‘God’ in him
, not ‘
his Son in’ him
as earlier – Gal. 1:21–24)