James the Brother of Jesus and the Dead Sea Scrolls I (92 page)

We have also already remarked how this allusion to Jesus ‘giving his
grave clothes
to the Servant of the (High) Priest’ is refracted in Acts’ account of the stoning of Stephen. Its presence here in the Gospel of the Hebrews not only inextricably links this account to those in John and Luke of the linen clothes ‘lying by themselves’ or ‘piled neatly to one side’ in the empty tomb – but to all these various accounts involving
linen clothing
of one kind or another, indirectly implying that Jesus too wore such garb.

There is another parallel in this testimony in the Gospel of the Hebrews, which once again bears on the subject of ‘not
eating or drinking
’ and Christ ‘being raised
the third day
according to the Scriptures’ in 1 Corinthians 15:4. That is the point about ‘James
swearing not to eat bread
from that hour in which he had
drunk the Cup of the Lord
(nothing here about any blood) until he should see him risen from among those that sleep’ and Acts’ competitive picture of Paul’s vision ‘along the Way’ to Damascus. One should also keep in mind with regard to the former the Rabbinic attempts after the fall of the Temple to discourage those taking like-minded oaths ‘not to eat or drink’ either mourning for Zion or till they should see the Temple rebuilt.
29

In Acts, after ‘hearing the voice but seeing no one’, Paul’s travelling companions bring him to Damascus. Then Paul’s eyes were ‘opened’, but it is now
he
who ‘sees no one’ (basically, the inability to recognize Jesus again, but also note the repetition of the word ‘see’) and ‘he was
three days there not seeing
and
did not eat or drink
’. The language overlaps with what amounts, in effect, to James’ swearing
not to eat or drink
for three days – not to mention some of these other groups and with much more historical veracity – should be clear.

For Paul in 1 Corinthians 11:25–27, it will be recalled, ‘the Cup of blessing, which we bless, is Communion with the blood of Christ’ or ‘the Cup of the New Covenant in (his) blood’; and the bread, ‘Communion with the body of Christ’. In the Gospel of the Hebrews, this ‘Cup’ is simply ‘the Cup of the Lord’, which Paul also refers to in 10:21 and 11:27. But, as per his wont, Paul turns somewhat aggressive on this point, linking ‘
eating and drinking
the Cup of the Lord unworthily’ to being ‘guilty of the
body and blood of the Lord
’ – notice the word ‘Lord’ here, as in the Gospel of the Hebrews, instead of the word ‘Christ’.

He does the same two lines later, but in this instance he specifically defines ‘eating and drinking unworthily’, as ‘
not seeing through to the body of the Lord
’ (11:29). For him, the person who does this then ‘drinks Judgement unto himself’. Again, the implication of these two maledictions is that Paul is actually calling down the blood-libel accusation of being ‘guilty of the blood’ of Christ on his opponents, seemingly those within the Movement or ‘Church’ itself, even the very Leadership itself, including James, who do not interpret ‘the Cup of the Lord’ or ‘see through to the body of the Lord’ in the spiritualized manner he does. Again, note that repetition of the word ‘seeing’ occurs in all these accounts, even in the finale of the Damascus Document on ‘seeing His
Yeshu‘a
’ or ‘His Salvation’.

In the light of such an attitude, the blood libel in the Gospels against a whole people, most of whom actually opposed the very same rulers and foreign powers Jesus and his followers seem to have done, is not surprising. These died in the hundreds of thousands seemingly for the very same reasons, but Paul’s belligerence in these passages – for example, as regards ‘circumcision’ – fairly takes one’s breath away, the command ‘to love one’s enemies’, except perhaps Romans, for him seemingly having long since gone by the boards.

This is the perspective one encounters at Qumran, as well, which also employs the imagery of ‘the Cup of the Lord’ Paul alludes to here and part of the language of James’ last encounter with Jesus on earth – however curtailed the account of it we get in Jerome’s fragment from the Gospel of the Hebrews. Notwithstanding, at Qumran, Habakkuk 2:16: ‘the Cup of the right hand of the Lord’, is very definitely a ‘Cup of Vengeance’ or ‘the Cup of the Wrath of God’ – again inverted from the general presentation of Paul and the Gospels. In the Habakkuk
Pesher
, for instance, it is directed against ‘Covenant-Breakers’ and backsliders generally – in particular, ‘the Wicked Priest’ described as not ‘circumcising the foreskin of his heart’ – not in support of those setting aside the Law, as it would appear to be in the Gospels and here in Paul.

As the Habakkuk
Pesher
expresses this, the Wicked Priest, who himself ‘swallowed’ ‘God’s Elect’ – the Righteous Teacher and his followers, ‘the
Ebionim
’ or ‘Poor’ again – would himself be ‘swallowed’ or ‘consumed’ by ‘the Cup of the Lord’s Divine Vengeance’, which ‘he would drink to the dregs’ or from which ‘he would drink his fill’. As he tendered them this ‘cup’, so too would God tender him ‘the Cup’ of His Divine Wrath and ‘he would be
paid the reward he paid the Poor
’.
30

This symbolism, which is basically that of ‘the Cup of wine’ or ‘the wine Cup of God’s Fury’, is omnipresent at Qumran, as it is in Revelation. In both, it is not ‘the body and blood of Christ’ being consumed in some symbolical or esoteric manner, but rather ‘the wine of the Cup of the Wrath of God’ consuming God’s enemies. This, too, may be something of the implied meaning of this ‘Cup of the Lord’, which James drinks in this last encounter with Jesus here in the Gospel of the Hebrews.

The belligerence we have just seen, with regard to ‘drinking Judgement to oneself’ and ‘guilt for the blood of the Lord’ in Paul, is also refracted to a certain degree in the Habakkuk
Pesher
’s fulsome condemnation of ‘the Spouter of Lying’ – characterized, it will be remembered, as ‘building a Worthless City on blood and erecting an Assembly (or ‘Church’) upon Lying’. This takes the form of expressing the wish that he would be ‘subjected to the same Judgements of Fire, with which
he vilified and blasphemed the Elect of God
’.
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To return to the narrative in Luke: at this point either ‘the Eleven and those assembled with them’ or ‘they’ say, ‘
the Lord has indeed risen and appeared to Simon
’ (24:34), and ‘he was known to them in the breaking of the bread’ (24:35). Here the text does not allow us to know whether ‘the Jerusalem Assembly’ – this implied by those ‘assembled with them’ – is doing the speaking or Cleopas and the unnamed other Disciple. Even more to the point, it is not even clear whether the reference is to ‘Simon Peter’ here or to some other ‘Simon’ – possibly even a ‘Simeon’. Origen is so sure that the second unnamed person is ‘Simon’ that he even quotes this passage from Luke to this effect, but, even he does not tell us which ‘Simon’ this might be – Simeon bar Cleophas or Simon Peter. Again the words spoken, however, are a variation of the words Jesus is portrayed as speaking to James in the Hebrew Gospel, ‘Eat your bread, my brother, for the Son of Man has indeed risen from among those that sleep.’

Of course, it has always been taken for granted in all orthodox circles without the slightest proof – the contrary as we have just seen – that the reference here in Luke to ‘Simon’, as the one to whom Jesus first appeared, is ‘Simon Peter’. But at least in the logic of the narrative of Luke as we have just described it, it would make more sense if the reference here were to ‘Simeon’ or ‘Simeon bar Cleophas’. At least, then, the garbled allusion to ‘Cleopas’ would be comprehensible.

The problem is that, as in the instance of the orthodox part of Paul’s presentation of an appearance to ‘Cephas’, there is no reported instance of an appearance to Peter alone at all, to say nothing of ‘the Twelve’, not even in the Lukan episode preceding this of Peter running back to the empty tomb but seeing ‘only the linen clothes’.

Even this appearance in Luke to ‘the Eleven and those assembled with them’ – not ‘to the Twelve’ – when Jesus himself suddenly ‘stands in their midst’, does not occur until after ‘the two’ report his appearance to them on the Emmaus Road and the Community praising ‘the Lord’ for his having ‘appeared to Simon’.

Therefore, a way out of the conundrum is to look at the report that follows the appearance to the two on the Road to Emmaus, of an ‘appearance to Simon’, in a different way. If we take the reference to ‘Simon’ rather to refer to the sighting which has just occurred ‘in the Way’ to ‘Cleopas’ and another, then this ‘Cleopas’ – certainly meant to represent Jesus’ ‘uncle’ but, as usual, not so stated in Luke – can with even more sense be seen as the son of this ‘uncle’, ‘Simeon
bar Cleophas
’, Jesus’ ‘cousin’ and second successor in Palestine, and, according to Epiphanius,
the witness to the stoning of James
.

The second companion then, the unnamed other, who with ‘Cleopas’
sits down and breaks bread with Jesus
, and then either
recognizes him
or
is recognized by him
, would or could be James, his ‘cousin’ and neatly rubbed out here in Luke. At the very least, it must be acknowledged that it is a
first appearance to family members
. Paul himself attests James was the recipient of a postresurrection appearance by Jesus – perhaps even the
first to whom Jesus appeared
. Not only is such an appearance to James the Just also pictured here in Jerome’s almost word-for-word copy of this appearance to ‘the two along the Way’ in this tiny fragment from the Gospel of the Hebrews; this episode would then, in effect, comprise the residue of
the native Palestinian appointment tradition
, confirming Jesus’ two family members as his real successors in Palestine – not the clearly illusory overseas appointment episodes we get in the Gospels as we have them.

This is how we would interpret this curious
non sequitur
in the report of ‘the two’ to ‘the assembled Eleven’ in Jerusalem about an appearance to ‘Simon’ and the whole episode about Jesus’ appearance to ‘the two’ – one of whom definitely his relation – ‘along the Way’ to Emmaus that precedes this in the Gospel of Luke. Interpreting these notices in this manner and linking them to the report in the Gospel of the Hebrews of a
first appearance to James
allows us, at least, to
begin
to approach convergence regarding many of these interlocking themes and the reality behind some of these very real Palestinian traditions.

Chapter 22

Jesus’ Brothers as Apostles

Cleopas, Cephas, and Clopas the Husband of Mary’s Sister Mary

Who then is this mysterious ‘Cleopas’ who appears without introduction in the crucial Emmaus-road sighting episode in Luke? Not only do we have in Jesus’ appearance to two seeming unknowns in the environs of Jerusalem the wherewithal to attach a tradition of this kind to the person of James – thus, bearing out the second part of Paul’s 1 Corinthians 15:6–7 enumeration of Jesus’ post-resurrection appearances: ‘he appeared to James, then to all the Apostles, and last of all, he also appeared to me’ – but also, even perhaps the wherewithal to attach it to the ‘Cephas’ who appears in the first part.

Admittedly, the appearances ‘to the Twelve’ and the ‘over five hundred
brothers
at the same time’ cannot be borne out. This is to say nothing of the contradiction represented by the mention of the two separate and successive appearances to the Apostles – the first, ‘then to the Twelve’, and the second, ‘then to all the Apostles’.

There is a reference to this ‘Clopas’ (
thus
) in John – not in John’s version of the post-resurrection appearances, but in his presentation of the witnesses to Jesus’ crucifixion preceding these (Jn 19:25). For John all these are called ‘Mary’: ‘his mother, and his mother’s sister, Mary the wife of Clopas, and Mary Magdalene’, so instead of one Mary, we now have three! Aside from this ephemeral ‘Mary Magdalene’ – out of whom Jesus cast ‘seven demons’ – probably another of these fictional overwrites over something – one can imagine the contortions indulged in by theologians and apologists over the millennia to reconcile Mary having as her sister
another Mary
– and this, even more germane, the wife of that Clopas clearly meant to be the same individual as that ‘Cleopas’ or ‘Cleophas’ again!

For some, ‘Mary
the wife of Clopas
’ is Mary’s half-sister; for Jerome,
her niece
. But there is really no way out of the conundrum presented by such evasions. Mary patently
did not
have a ‘sister Mary’. There is a difference between historical truth and literature. The Gospels, like the Pseudoclementines, are
literature
. There may be a kernel of truth lurking here and there like a pebble beneath the surface of a stream, which it is the task of the historian to discover and decipher.

For a start, let us reiterate that the initial stories about the brothers of Jesus in the Gospels show no embarrassment whatsoever about the reality of the ‘brother’ relationship, that is, whatever and whoever Jesus was
he had brothers
. That he also had a mother should be self-evident. He also seems to have had a sister or sisters. The Gospel of John, for instance, after the Prologue and the choosing of three of his Disciples, speaks about how ‘his mother and his brothers’ joined him along with other Disciples at Capernaum very early in his Galilean career (2:12).