James the Brother of Jesus and the Dead Sea Scrolls I (96 page)

The writers we are speaking about would also have known many of the works, we have since found in the caves near Qumran –  particularly the Damascus Document but, also, the Community Rule and War Scroll – which they systematically (sometimes seemingly even gleefully) reworked or subverted. In passage after passage, as we have been signaling, they inverted fundamental Qumran imageries and orientations, turning them back upon their initial creators and reversing their import; thereby capitalizing on their obvious weak points from a ‘public relations’ standpoint and ridiculing their inward-looking, intolerant, and idiosyncratic nationalism (sincere as it may have been) with devastating results.

This was a substantial intellectual feat, which could only have been effected by extremely able and well-informed minds – but without the discovery of the Dead Sea Scrolls as we now have them, we could never have understood this – suspected it, yes, but never
known
it – which is why their discovery is of such primary historical importance. Even the Gospel of John, which differs so markedly from its Synoptic counterparts, exhibits a difference, as we noted, only in substance, not in kind. The orientation and playful inversion of Qumran themes are perhaps most glaringly and humorously illustrated by the almost total obfuscation of the report of a first appearance to James in the portrayal there of Jesus’ post-resurrection appearance along the shore of the Sea of Galilee, and his principal Disciples as ‘dragging their nets full of fishes’. Peter even had ‘a hundred and fifty-three’ ‘large fishes’ in his ‘net’, which ‘though there were so many’, yet ‘was it not torn’.

This is particularly true when one is aware of what subsequently happened to the ‘Galilean’ fishermen around the shores of the Sea of Galilee under Titus and his colleague, Agrippa II, when, even as Josephus describes it, ‘the whole sea ran red with their blood’. The old, the infirm, and the young were butchered and the rest given over to this same Agrippa to be sold as slaves. Titus, of course, kept back a few to cover his own expenses. Which returns us to our initial question, who could have written this kind of artful, yet nefarious material in its initial configuration, before it was elaborated upon and developed into a larger literature around the Hellenistic Mediterranean? Who would have had the knowledge to do so?

In the first place, there were quite a few well-educated and intelligent people, many of whom were very good writers, in the above circle of individuals. For instance, in the
Antiquities
Josephus tells us that Agrippa II made over to him some ninety-nine of his letters to help him rewrite his earlier work, the
War
. In addition, he tells us that, not only did this same Epaphroditus – to whom the
Antiquities
was dedicated – sponsor his work, but it was read appreciatively by Julius Archelaus. He may well have been Paul’s nephew, mentioned in Acts 23:16–23’s account of Paul’s marvelous rescue by Roman troops from the furious Jewish mob at the Festival of Pentecost – so critical to Acts’ portrayal of the parameters of the new Pauline Gentile Mission – who wanted to kill him for introducing Gentiles into the Temple. In this regard, it should be observed that this
same
mob was not interested in killing James, though it had ample opportunity to do so. On the contrary, James seems to have been killed by the Establishment precisely
because
he was held in such high regard by the people, in particular, these same ‘Zealots for the Law’.

Paul already refers in the Letter to the Romans to his ‘
kinsman the littlest Herod
’ who, in all probability, was the son of Aristobulus, King of Lesser Armenia, and the Salome who allegedly performed the lascivious dance ending up with the legendary portrait in Gospel tradition of John the Baptist’s head upon the platter – which no one will ever forget. In addition to Josephus himself (who lived well into the 90’s, if not beyond), there were all of Philo of Alexandria’s kinsmen and heirs, thoroughly compromised by contacts with Romans and Herodians, who certainly knew the allegorical approach to Scripture that Philo himself had pioneered.

It would not have been a very great step for any of these or even Paul – who is already doing so in his letters – to apply this approach to the literature and conceptualities found at Qumran. In particular, Philo’s kinsmen included, as we have seen, Tiberius Alexander, mentioned in Acts 4:6 – along with Caiaphas and Ananus the High Priests –
in one of the few honest portrayals of a Roman official
. He was, however,
a Jewish turncoat
, directly responsible for the execution of the two ‘sons’ of the Jewish Revolutionary Leader, Judas the Galilean, c. 47 CE. Later, as Titus’ adjutant (c. 68-70 CE),
this same ‘Tiberius’ personally directed the siege of Jerusalem and the final destruction of the Temple
.

For good measure, the Romans even went on to destroy a sister ‘Temple’, that had been constructed in Heliopolis in Egypt in the Maccabean Period. Someone had to be giving them extremely good intelligence that they should remove
the several root-causes of
so much of this anti-Roman agitation
so decisively. These events in Egypt were followed under Trajan around the time of or after the execution of Simeon bar Cleophas – as pictured in Christian sources – by the actual eradication of the entire Jewish population in Lower Egypt, perhaps numbering a million and a half souls. In addition in Rome, after the fall of Jerusalem, there were other individuals, either retired or there as hostages – all extremely well informed and cultivated – such as Antiochus of Commagene and his son, Epiphanes,
who had led
‘
the Macedonian Legion’ on the Roman side in the recent War
.

Of course, where providing good intelligence was concerned, we have numerous candidates, Josephus himself being a self-admitted informant and interrogator of prisoners. Tiberius Alexander is identified by him as a Jewish backslider – the equivalent of the pot calling the kettle black. Then there are all the Herodians, including Bernice, the mistress of Titus the destroyer of the Temple and Tiberius Alexander’s sister-in-law, from
two
marriages, not to mention the ‘Saulus’ who so mysteriously and ubiquitously keeps popping in and out of Josephus’ picture of the last days of Jerusalem. There was also another ‘Maccabean’ Herodian resident in Rome in these years, Tigranes, who was sent by Nero to be King of Armenia. His father, also Tigranes, had been King of Armenia before him and his son became King of Cilicia. All of these, too, ‘
deserted the Jewish Religion and went over to that of the Greeks
’.
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Nor do we know what other clique might have been operating around the Roman Governor Felix – married to Bernice’s other sister Drusilla – whose brother Pallas was Nero’s favourite and who seems to have been involved in bringing Paul to Rome. Felix certainly seems to have been responsible for bringing Simon
Magus
to Rome (if there was a difference). There is also Gallio, the Roman Governor of Corinth and brother of Nero’s adviser and major-domo, the famous Seneca. Acts revels in presenting this Gallio, a historical figure who can actually be identified as Governor of Corinth in 52 CE, as rescuing Paul from the anger of the Jewish mob and having the Head of the Synagogue there, it calls ‘Sosthenes’, flogged before ‘the Judgement Seat’ (18:17). To be sure, for Paul, significantly in 1 Corinthians 1:1, this same Sosthenes is one of his closest lieutenants ‘and brother to the Church of God in Corinth’. This is to say nothing about Seneca himself, whose anti-Jewish feelings even Augustine feels constrained to remark and to whom a pseudepigraphic correspondence with Paul is attested.
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All of these were
very
literate men. Josephus even identifies his father, the priest ‘Matthias’ (Matthew), as a writer of great repute. Of course, one must always bear in mind that his father might have been the prototype for the renowned ‘Matthew’, to whom the traditions incorporated in the First Gospel are attributed. In Mark 2:14, for some reason, it will be recalled, he is called ‘Levi the son of Alphaeus’, that is, ‘Cleophas’ and another of these alleged ‘tax collectors’!

However this may be, Josephus has very good contacts in Rome indeed. But with all his flaws, he could not have been responsible for the kind of materials upon which the Gospels as we have them were based – except tangentially – nor any other self-professing Jew, turncoat or otherwise. The rhetoric and drumbeat of anti-Semitic polemic are just too strong for that. Besides, Josephus is too inordinately proud of his heritage, as he repeatedly demonstrates in the
Antiquities
, to have done this. But the information he possessed
could
certainly have been used by someone, as could that possessed by Agrippa II and his sister Bernice, both smarting over the loss of their palaces in Jerusalem – not to mention their sister Drusilla married to Felix.

Julius Archelaus, too, who ended up in wealthy retirement reading Josephus’ works in Rome (and who ‘
could vouch
– according to the latter –
for their accuracy
’), had previously been Bernice’s brother-in-law. Julius was the son of the Temple Treasurer Helcias, whose father and grandfather (the genealogies are unclear here) had been Temple Treasurer before him and close associates of the earlier Herod. Another of his ‘
kinsmen
’, ‘
Antipas
’, had been a close associate of the ‘
Saulus
’ mentioned in Josephus. He, too, also became Temple Treasurer before being executed by ‘
the Zealots
’ as a ‘Traitor’ in the midst of the Uprising.

The best candidate among this group for producing or sponsoring the production of materials of this kind – if indeed it is possible to trace such materials to a given source – turning what was basically an aggressively apocalyptic Messianism into a more benign and pacifistic one, would be someone of the experience and talents of an Epaphroditus or, even perhaps, one or another of Paul’s other traveling companions. The ascription of Acts to Luke basically says something of this kind and Luke himself – if, indeed, the author of the Gospel under his name and Acts were the same person – confirms this, telling us how knowledgeable he was in comparing sources. Epaphroditus was certainly very literate and probably more knowledgeable even than Luke. Plus he had all Josephus’ works, which he had commissioned, to guide him. Then too, if he was a traveling companion of Paul, he probably knew Luke as well.

If he is, indeed, the same individual Paul mentions in Philippians (and elsewhere, possibly too, under the name of ‘Erastus’) as his
closest
associate (his ‘Apostle’) and ‘fellow worker and fellow soldier’ – and we can see no good reason for challenging this – then he knew Paul’s mind intimately, better probably than just about anyone else. He would also appear to have been extremely adventurous and personally brave, as Josephus attests as well. In fact, Epaphroditus’ execution by Domitian – to say nothing of Domitian’s own assassination by Flavia Domitilla’s servant ‘Stephen’, obviously in vengeance for something – not to mention Epaphroditus’ involvement in the death of Nero, does raise serious questions as to just what was going on beneath the surface of these events so close to the source of Imperial Power in Rome.

These are some of the things we shall never know but the Gospels as we have them – whoever produced them – at their core are just too anti-Semitic to have been produced by anyone other than Gentiles. The animus against Jews – Jews of all stripes, even those representing the Leadership of the Jerusalem Church (represented as ‘
Pharisees
’ in Acts, probably because of the perception of their legal hair-splitting) – is just too intense and unremitting to be otherwise. It is no wonder that the effects of this continue to be felt today and are grappled with by people who still argue over their cause.

It should not be forgotten, too, that both Philo and Josephus addressed works against Alexandrian anti-Semitic agitators, such as Apion, who himself led a ‘Mission to Gaius’ that apparently nullified the one led by Philo. An Apion-like character also makes an appearance in the Pseudoclementines, where he was an associate of Simon
Magus
! Apion was actually a known historian at the Museum in Alexandria, who invented the ritual murder accusation against Jews. His successor as grammarian there, Chaeremon, like Seneca, was also a tutor of Nero. Both had already completely falsified Jewish Old Testament history – falsifications that sent even Josephus into paroxysms of indignation.
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Paul, too, as we have seen, was a master of such literary invective and allegorization.

This is, in fact, the circle of individuals (themselves having a very substantial knowledge of Josephus’ works) to whom one might attribute the core of material that finally ends up – with numerous variations, expansions, and accretions – in what we call Gospels today, if, in fact, one can attribute such a core to anyone known, as opposed to unknown transmitters. It is certainly the circle that produced Acts. Any of these individuals, or combinations thereof, could have been involved. Though the core of the Gospel materials had to go back to someone very close to or knowledgeable about both the Qumran Community and ‘the Jerusalem Community’ of James, this could have been fleshed out and overwritten – as in Acts – some time after the momentous events of 95–6 CE, in the course of which so many individuals like Epaphroditus, Flavius Clemens, and possibly even Josephus himself, lost their lives. Nor is this to mention the martyrs in Palestine – reportedly under Trajan, but perhaps before – such as Simeon bar Cleophas and the two descendants of Jesus’
third brother
‘Judas’.