James the Brother of Jesus and the Dead Sea Scrolls II (105 page)

Not only is
Jesus ben Ananias
’
prophecy of the imminent destruction of Jerusalem related to the
prophecies
ascribed to Jesus in
‘
the Little Apocalypse
’
and right before in the ‘
throwing down
’ of the Temple’s
‘
stones
’
in the Synoptics (this should be fairly clear since both sets of oracles relate, in some manner,
to the destruction of the Temple
), but his
Prophecy
must be seen as being both triggered by James’ death in 62 C.E. and evincing Jesus’ reaction to it, namely, that without the presence of
the
Zaddik
,
Jerusalem was doomed and could no longer remain in existence
.

Jesus ben Ananias and
the Signs
Prefiguring the Fall of the Temple

Though Josephus does not specifically connect the death of James with the appearance of Jesus ben Ananias, chronolog
i
cally speaking, we are justified in doing so because he dates the appearance of this Jesus seven and a half years before the fall of the Temple in 70
CE
and specifically notes his arrest and re-arrest by the Governor of that time, Albinus.

Even though Josephus declines to mention this Jesus in the
Antiquities
and one has to go to the
Jewish War
to discover him, it is noteworthy how precise Josephus is with regard to his chronology and events surrounding his activities. Thus, he a
p
peared during
‘
the Feast of Tabernacles
’,
that is, at approximately the end of September or the beginning of October of 62
CE
which may, in fact, have been the date of James’ stoning –
that is, just following
Yom Kippur
, 62
CE
, a possible date too of the atonement James is pictured as making
‘
in the Holy of Holies in the Temple
’
in most early Church sources.
Jesus ben Ananias
died in March, 70
CE
, ‘
seven and a half years later
’,
just five months prior to the fall of the City and destruction of the Temple
.

Significantly, Josephus tells the full story of his appearance and death at the end of the
Jewish War
, where he sets out
‘
the signs and portents
’
prefiguring the fall of Jerusalem, discussed above.
These are all particularly illustrative of Josephus’ frame-of-mind, as they are that of his Roman audience. To these, Josephus appends the following account which, by its length and detail, he obviously considered perhaps even more important:

“
But what was even more alarming
…
four years before the War began
,
there came to the Feast
,
at which it is the cu
s
tom for everyone to erect Tabernacles to God
,
one Jesus ben Ananias
,
a rude peasant standing in the Temple
.
And su
d
denly he began to cry out
, ‘
A Voice from the East
,
a Voice from the West
,
a Voice from the four winds
,
a Voice against Jerusalem and the Temple
,
a Voice against the bridegrooms and the brides
,
and a Voice against the whole People
.’
Day and night he went about all the streets of the city with this cry on his lips
.
”
33

In this testimony it is easy to see some of the
leitmotif
s of the story of Jesus as it has come down to us in Scripture, not the least being the note about ‘
the bridegrooms and brides
’, a favorite theme of many of the parables attributed to him in the Gospels.
34

But the parallel with Jesus does not stop here. It also continues with Josephus discussing the details of
Jesus ben Ananias
’ arrest and interrogation:

“
Some of the Leading Men of the city
,
incensed at these ominous words
,
arrested him
,
and had him severely flogged
,
yet did he not utter one word in his own defence or in private to those who beat him
,
only continuing to cry out as before
.
Thereupon
,
our Leading Men
,
supposing him under some Divine possession
,
as the case indeed proved to be
,
brought him before the Roman Procurator
.
There
,
scourged till his bones were laid bare
,
he neither pleaded for mercy or cried out
,
but rather in the most mournful tone of voice
,
responded to each stroke with
‘
Woe! Woe to Jerusalem
!’
When Albinus
,
the Governor
,
asked him who he was and from where he came and why he uttered such words
,
he said nothing
,
but u
n
ceasingly repeated his heart-rending refrain
. T
aking him for a lunatic
,
Albinus dismissed him
(here, yet again, the picture of the sympathetic, lenient Roman Governor).
”
35

This dismissal also parallels the many other dismissals by Roman Governors of early Christian Leaders already encou
n
tered above, not the least of which being the picture of the dismissal of Jesus himself by Pontius Pilate in the Gospels, before the Jewish crowd forces him to reverse himself. In fact, in the version of these events called
‘
The
Slavonic Josephus
’ (real or forged),
Pilate does at first dismiss Jesus before ultimately having him re-arrested again and flogged later on
.
36

Josephus continues:

“
During the whole of the period till the outbreak of the War
,
he
(
Jesus ben Ananias
)
neither spoke to anyone
,
nor was seen to speak
,
but daily repeated his foreboding dirge
, ‘
Woe! Woe to Jerusalem!
’
Nor did he curse those who repeatedly beat him
,
nor thank those who gave him food
....
His cry was loudest at Festivals. So for seven years and five months he continued this wail
,
his voice never flagging nor his strength exhausting
,
until during the siege
,
seeing his Prophecy fu
l
filled
,
he ceased
.
For
,
when making his round of the walls
,
shouting in the most piercing voice
, ‘
Woe once more to the City and to the People and to the Holy House
,’
and just as he added the last words
, ‘
and woe to me also
’,
a stone hurled from one of the
(
Roman
)
siege engines struck and killed him on the spot and
,
as he was adding these very prophecies
,
he passed away
.
”

Hyperbole or poetic licence aside, we have rendered the entire passage to show how true-to-life it is, not to mention its i
n
tensity and the meaning it obviously had for the eyewitnesses who survived these horrific events. At the same time however, it is typical of Josephus’ sometimes macabre sense-of-humor. Nevertheless, the cynical parallel to this in the picture of Jesus in the Gospels, predicting the destruction of the Temple
‘
stone upon stone
’
and his
‘
woes
’
upon ‘
the Scribes and Pharisees
’, is unmistakable.

Setting aside its ‘
Messianic
’ implications, which we have already dwelled upon sufficiently above, if one views this ‘
oracle
’ in relation to the
‘
Pella flight
’
oracles we have been discussing, and the strong ‘Christian’ tradition associating the destruction of Jerusalem generally with the death of James, it is possible to see that this prophecy has perhaps even more importance than that attributed to it by Josephus. In the light of these early Christian traditions about
an oracle immediately following the death of James
warning his followers to flee Jerusalem
, I think that we can state with some assurance that, in this context, this is pr
e
cisely what is occurring here and that, therefore even if unwittingly (perhaps even not so unwittingly),
Josephus has provided us with this oracle as well
. Put in another way, we have before us, in this pathetic cry of ‘
Jesus Ben Ananias
’,
the very oracle
– make of it what one will.

Another Oracle by ‘
Agabus
’ and the
Pella Flight
Tradition

But it is possible to go further than this. Reviewing these kinds of oracles before us in this period, one comes to the s
e
cond of the two oracles attributed to the
Prophet
designated in Acts by the nonsense name of
‘
Agabus
’.
It will be recalled that this time ‘
Agabus
’ supposedly ‘
comes down
to Caesarea
’
right before Paul’s last trip up to Jerusalem for his final confrontation with James.

Here Acts appropriates (or misappropriates) the
oracle
of
Jesus ben Ananias
about
the coming destruction of Jerusalem
, and the
oracle
warning James
’
followers to flee Jerusalem
, and turns them into an
oracle
warning Paul ‘
not to go up to Jerus
a
lem
’ because he would be arrested there – which is, of course, precisely what happens.

We have already shown how the first of these oracles by this
Prophet
Acts calls ‘
Agabus
’ at the time of ‘
the Great Famine
’ in the reign of Claudius in the mid-Forties, in conjunction with which so much else of consequence was transpiring, was a counterfeit. There, it will be recalled, it was an overwrite of and disguised the legend of the conversion of
‘
King Agbarus
’
or ‘
Abgarus
’,
‘
the Great King of the Peoples beyond the Euphrates
’, reprised in Eusebius but missing from Acts’ tendentious story-telling.

This fractured nonsense material in Acts also covered over much important material associated with the conversion of Queen Helen of Adiabene and her sons – also missing from Acts’ narrative but, as we have shown,
not really
– to a more ‘
militant
’ or ‘
Zealot
’ form of Judaism taught by a
‘
Galilean
’ teacher named ‘
Eleazar
’, who insisted on
circumcision
as a fund
a
mental precondition of conversion (parodied in Acts 8:27’s presentation of
‘
the Ethiopian Queen
’
s eunuch
’
37
) – the key co
n
necting link here being the legendary generosity of Helen and her son Izates in providing
famine relief
to the population of Jerusalem, to say nothing of her possible marital relationship with ‘
King Agbarus
’. Josephus calls this
King
‘
Bazeus
’, while at the same time averring, as we saw, that
she was his sister
.
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