James the Brother of Jesus and the Dead Sea Scrolls I (90 page)

Also part of ‘these things’, referred to in Mark before the appearance to ‘the two as they walked along the Way’, are the experiences of ‘Mary the mother of James and Salome’ – obviously meant to be the mother of Jesus – who with Mary Magdalene witnesses the crucifixion and enters the empty tomb (Mk 15:40–16:8). Matthew simply calls her ‘the other Mary’, though five lines earlier, as a witness to the Crucifixion, he referred to her as ‘Mary the mother of James and Joses and the mother of the sons of Zebedee’ (Mt 27:56–61). For Luke, Mary is simply and, perhaps most tellingly, ‘
Mary the mother of James
’ (24:10).

In Luke and Matthew, these women are not, strictly speaking, recipients of a post-resurrection appearance by Jesus at all. Rather they are only the
witnesses to the empty tomb
and the
bearers of the rumour of his resurrection
. References to any unnamed or partially named ‘two’ in these accounts should also always be remarked; for instance in Luke, the two unnamed ‘men in brilliant white clothing’, who suddenly ‘stood beside’ Mary Magdalene, Joanna, and Mary
the mother of James
in the empty tomb (24:4 – note the allusion to ‘standing’ again here, as we will also encounter it repeatedly in John). In Matthew and Mark the two become one – in Matthew, an ‘Angel of the Lord’; in Mark, ‘a young man’.

There are also the ‘two’, chosen at the beginning of Acts ‘to become a
witness of his resurrection
’ to fill Judas
Iscariot
’s ‘Office’ – ‘from which he fell away’ – the first supposedly called Barsabas, also ‘surnamed Justus’ (Acts 1:21–26 – one should keep an eye, too, on the use of the word ‘witness’ here). We have repeatedly encountered another of these Barsabases, but there he was ‘Judas Barsabas’. One should also always remark, as in all these Gospel portrayals, the castigation of these central figures for their lack of ‘Belief’ or of the key Pauline requirement of ‘Faith’.

In Matthew and Mark, the appearance of the single individual sitting in the tomb or on a rock outside it – as in the scene of Jesus’ Transfiguration before the Central Three ‘on the mountain’ – ‘was as
lightning
and his clothing was
white as snow
’ (Mt 28:3). In Matthew’s description of Jesus’ Transfiguration before Moses and Elijah, it was Jesus’ ‘face, which
shone as the sun
and his clothing was
white as the light
(17:2). We have already connected these kinds of miraculous ‘whitening’ notices to the description in
Recognitions
of ‘the tombs of the two brothers that
whitened of themselves
every year’ following the escape of James’ Community to Jericho.

One should remark the tell-tale number ‘two’ again in this seemingly innocuous sidelight, when the Community visits these tombs outside Jericho and thus escaped Paul pursuing Peter as far as Damascus. In
Recognitions
, the ‘
tombs of the two brothers whitened of themselves every year
’, paralleling Luke’s version of the empty tomb, which had, it will be recalled, the three women and ‘some (others)’ surprised by the appearance in the tomb of ‘
two men standing beside them in brilliantly shining clothing
’ (Luke 23:1–4).

To carry this line of thinking a little further, in the very next sentence in
Recognitions
, where James sends out Peter on his first missionary journey to confront Simon in Caesarea (Ps.
Rec
. 1.71), Simon is identified as ‘a
Samaritan
magician’ – the accuracy of the Pseudoclementine description of Simon’s geographical origins, as compared to the patent imprecision of Acts should always be remarked – who, to repeat:
‘led Many
of our people
astray
(the typical language applied to the adversary at Qumran, who ‘rejected the Law’, and false teachers generally), by asserting that he was ‘the Standing One’, that is in other words, ‘the Christ’ and ‘the Great Power of the High God’, which is superior to the Creator of the world’ (Ps. Rec. 1.72).

Not only do we have in these lines from the
Recognitions
an almost perfect description of the relationship of the ‘Primal Adam’ ideology to ‘the Christ’, but here the word ‘standing’ is applied in an ideological manner to Jesus and not simply as a narrative detail as in the Gospels.
24
That this series of allusions to ‘whitening’, the ‘two’, and ‘the Standing One’ in the Pseudoclementine
Recognitions
relates intrinsically and not just accidentally to these
empty tomb
scenarios in the Gospels should be growing more and more apparent.

At this point in Mark, for instance, it is the ‘young man,
sitting on the right side clothed with a white robe
’ (16:5) – in Matthew 28:2–3, it was ‘an Angel of the Lord come down from Heaven’, whose ‘f
ace was as lightning and his clothing white as snow
’
, sitting on a stone
. Earlier in Mark on the mountain when Jesus transfigured himself, Jesus’ ‘
clothes became brilliant, exceedingly white as snow, such as no fuller on earth would be able to whiten
’ (9:3).

We have already seen this last echoed in the language of the ‘fuller’ beating out ‘the Just One’s’ brains with ‘the club that he used to beat out clothes’ in parallel early Church accounts based on second-century sources, such as Clement and Hegesippus, of James’ demise. But not only was the ‘fuller’ language from these early accounts of the death of James present in this description in Mark of Jesus’ clothes on the Mount of his Transfiguration, but incredibly, so too, as we also saw, was this ‘whitening’ language from the Pseudoclementine description of James’ Community’s escape outside Jericho to view the tombs of the
two brothers
after the attack on James by Paul!

Once again, however hard at first to conceptualize, in our view this
proves
that the Gospel accounts are
later
than either of these, or at least the sources upon which they are based. The Gospels are certainly every bit as and even more fantastic. For its part, Acts 1:10, in its account of Jesus’ Ascension forty days after his resurrection, now has the ‘two men standing
beside them
in white clothes’ – ‘them’ being now ‘the Apostles’. Again there is the reprise of the ‘standing’ motif here – not to mention the number ‘two’ – followed in the very next line by the reference to the Apostles, now addressed as ‘Men! Galileans!’, also described as ‘standing’ once again and ‘looking up at the Heavens’ watching him go.

The picture of these ‘two men’ in white clothes in Acts repeats Luke’s earlier picture of the ‘two men standing
beside them
’ – the ‘them’ now being the women and the ubiquitous ‘some’ again – and Gospel pictures generally of the ‘resplendent white clothing’ of these individuals, as it does the earlier words used in the Synoptics to describe Jesus’ clothing, ‘effulgent, exceedingly white as snow’, on the mountain of his Transfiguration (Mk 9:3 and pars.).

For its part, the Gospel of John repeats Luke’s scenario of ‘two men’ in ‘star-like’ clothing in the empty tomb, but these, incorporating a part of the motif in Matthew, are now simply ‘two Angels in white’. Here, only Mary Magdalene sees them, no others, and this not till
after she
returns to the tomb a
second time
(Jn 20:12). Earlier in John, it was
she alone
who originally ‘came to the tomb, while it was still dark and saw the stone taken away’, but without any explanation of by whom or why (Jn 20:1).

At first she does not appear to enter the tomb. Rather she runs then to tell ‘the Disciple Jesus loved’ and Peter, who themselves run back and enter the tomb – first Peter, then the Disciple Jesus loved (Jn 20:2–6). For John, it is they who enter the tomb, not Mary Magdalene, Mary
the mother of James
and Joanna as in Luke. But instead of seeing the one or two men or Angels in the ‘white’ and ‘brilliantly shining clothes standing there’, as in Luke and the others, Peter and the Disciple Jesus loved only see ‘the linen clothes lying there’ with a ‘napkin that had been about his head
neatly folded to one side
’ (Jn 20:5–8)!

A separate episode then ensues in John after Peter and the Beloved Disciple go off, where Jesus then
actually
appears ‘standing’ behind Mary Magdalene alone (Jn 20:14), also reflected in the added material in Mark above. For John, this involves Mary Magdalene ‘peeking into the tomb’
a second time
after Peter and the Beloved Disciple ‘went on their way home again’ (Jn 20:10–11). Several lines before, it had been ‘the Disciple Jesus loved’ who ‘peeked’ into the tomb, first seeing ‘the
linen clothes lying there
, yet not going in’ till Peter did (Jn 20:5).

It is during this second visit to the empty tomb in John, where it is now Mary Magdalene ‘
standing
at the tomb weeping outside’ (20:11), that she sees ‘the two Angels in white’ – now ‘sitting one at the head and one at the feet of where the body of Jesus was laid’ (20:12) – replicating the ‘two men
standing
beside them in brilliant white clothes’ that the three women had seen in their first visit to the empty tomb in Luke. It is at this moment, ‘turning around, she saw Jesus
standing there
, but she did not know it was Jesus’ (Jn 20:14). Here, of course, it is Mary Magdalene seeing Jesus as ‘the Standing One’. No wonder she could not recognize him!

This point about ‘not recognizing’ Jesus is common to several of these accounts as we have explained, usually accompanied by the ‘standing’ language. This is always the case in John. Here, however, it is Jesus himself who is described as ‘standing’ before her when she turned around, not the ‘two men in brilliant white clothes’, twice described earlier in Luke and in Acts as ‘standing beside them’. A few lines earlier, it will be recalled, it was Mary herself. All of these allusions, even in the orthodox Gospels as we have them, should be seen as reflections of the Ebionite/Sabaean ‘Standing One’ ideology
par excellence
.

What the transmission mechanism could have been for combining these various concepts into a single narrative or narratives with slightly altered or trivialized signification is impossible to say. What is clear is that there were
earlier
traditions, which not only preceded the Gospels, as we now have them, but read
quite differently
– perhaps even like those underlying the parallel materials about ‘tomb’, ‘servants’, ‘clothing’, and ‘whitening’ in the First Book of the Pseudoclementine
Recognitions
or the tradition about the first appearance to James preserved in Jerome’s ‘Gospel according to the Hebrews’.

The note about the ‘linen clothes’ in the Gospel of John – now meant to be the graveclothes of Jesus – is also very important. Now those who see ‘the linen clothes lying there’ in John are not the two Marys and Luke’s Joanna, or even Peter alone as in Luke, but now, first Peter and then ‘the Disciple Jesus loved’ (Jn 20:5–7). Even more to the point – and perhaps more accurately – they are
the ‘clothes’ Jesus is pictured as giving to ‘the Servant of the
(
High
)
Priest’
in Jerome’s Gospel of the Hebrews.

If ‘the Disciple Jesus loved’ in John, who with Peter first sees these ‘linen clothes lying’ there, has any connection with James, then here again we have additional material bearing on post-resurrection appearances possibly involving family members of Jesus. These also must be seen as not unconnected with the theme of ‘linen clothes’ – bathing or otherwise – repeatedly encountered in descriptions about ‘Essene’/‘Sabaean’ ritual bathing practices. These are the several permutations of the circle of materials we are dealing with here.

The theme of these ‘linen clothes’ also reappears in the note about ‘the clothes the witnesses laid at’ Paul’s feet in Acts’ account of the Jewish mob stoning Stephen. But here the material probably owes as much to the stoning of James in all early Church sources and Josephus, ‘the clothes’ – again probably ‘white linen’ – of course, having been
James
’ clothes which, as in all such stonings, were removed,
not the witnesses
’! In fact, here too, the stoning of James and the special ‘linen clothes’ he wore may have been the original core giving rise to these other variations.

Preceding his account of a
first
appearance to what appear to be members of Jesus’ family on the Emmaus Road outside Jerusalem, Luke also refers to these ‘linen clothes lying by themselves’. This small addendum, not paralleled at all in Matthew and Mark, has Peter ‘running to the tomb’
alone
– not as in John
with
‘the Disciple Jesus loved’ – after the report by the three women ‘to the Eleven and all the rest’ (repeated in the next line as ‘to the Apostles’ – Lk 24:9–10), which they took to be ‘idle talk’. Then Peter, ‘having risen up’, ran to the tomb, because the other Apostles ‘didn’t believe them’ (the ‘not believing’ theme in Mk 16:11 again). Now he, not Mary Magdalene, ‘stoops down and seeing the
linen clothes lying alone
, went home wondering at what had happened’ (Lk 24:11–12).