James the Brother of Jesus and the Dead Sea Scrolls II (158 page)

We have already discussed the geographic relationship of the two place-names Antioch and
Edessa
. At Qumran, as well, there are further references to a ‘
New Covenant in the Land of Damascus’
, a
Diaspora
Community of ‘
Camps
’ in the ‘
Wilde
r
ness of the Peoples’
, and a
King
in ‘
the Land of the North’
, ‘
beyond Damascus
’
, where ‘
the Tabernacle of David which was fal
l
en
’ was to be ‘
re-erected’
, as well as a paradigmatic
circumcision
of Abraham (Genesis 17:9–14) as a
sine qua non
for conve
r
sion.
41

In putting all these notices together, it is possible to come out with the following conclusions: 1)
Addai
,
Thaddaeus
,
Theudas
, and
Thomas
are really the same person – one ‘
Judas’
. In some Syriac texts he is actually also called ‘
Judas the Zealot
’ (just as in Luke’s Apostle lists, ‘
Simon the Cananaean
’ is less covertly revealed to be ‘
Simon the Zealot
’) – terminology little different from ‘
Judas Iscariot’
, it being appreciated, as we have already to some extent signaled and shall explain further below, that
Sicarios
carries with it the secondary meaning of ‘
Circumciser’
.

2) It is
James
who sends
his brother
Judas
‘
down to Edessa
’ with the
Epistle
containing his directives – as we have stressed, it is important to keep one’s eye on the ‘
brother
’ theme in all these overlapping accounts – or possibly even further East to Adiabene, itself probably one of the provinces owing allegiance to this ‘
Great King of the Peoples beyond the Euphrates’
. It is this
Letter
which in other parlance goes by the designation
MMT
or the
Letter
from Qumran on ‘
Works Reckoned as Righ
t
eousness
’ or ‘
Things we Reckon as Justifying you’
.

3) Finally, the ‘Antioch’ in the interconnected notices in Acts and Paul’s Galatians is really
Edessa
or these provinces fu
r
ther East, all having to do with the underlying notation ‘
‘Ad
’ – and, in some sense, ‘
Addai
’ as well – so important to these r
e
gions. This ‘
Judas
’ too has to do with ‘
Thomas
’ or, as the Koran would so typically deform it, ‘
Thamud’
.

4) It is important to repeat that the ‘
Prophet called
Agabus
’ who predicts the
Famine
in Acts really has to do with this
King
Agbarus
story and the related one of the conversion of Queen Helen – probably one of his many wives and his half-sister, as Aramo-Syriac texts aver
42
– further East and her legendary
famine-relief
activities, as well as those of her son Izates. Furthe
r
more, in this earlier context anyhow, he is probably none other than that
Ananias
who constantly reappears in the stories of Paul’s conversion
in ‘Damascus’
, Josephus’ story of King Izates’ conversion, and, of course, Eusebius’ curious account of the conversion of ‘
King Agbarus’
. The
Letter
in question is the one comprising James’ directives to overseas communities – the
m
selves ultimately re-emerging in Koranic dietary regulations.

5) All these episodes, including the associated references in the Scrolls and the Koran, not to mention Paul’s allusions to ‘
the Faith of Abraham
’ and James, to Abraham as the ‘
Friend of God
’ (turns-of-phrase found in both the Koran and the Scrolls as well) and how he was ‘
tested
’ by his willingness to sacrifice Isaac, have to do with
the importance of Abraham for these Northern Syrian locales
– where holy sites are still dedicated to his name – in particular Haran, Abraham’s place-of-origin in Northern Syria near Edessa and, apparently, the Kingdom bestowed upon Izates by his father (
Bazeus
/
Monobazus
/or
Agbarus
), a
Kingdom
Josephus calls ‘
Carron’
,
i
.
e
., probably ‘
Carrhae
’ or ancient ‘
Haran’
.

The conversion story of Izates and his mother Queen Helen also involves the participation of the same
Ananias
of Acts and Eusebius’ story of
Agbarus
’ conversion and takes place both in Southern and Northern Iraq. It is found in both Josephus and Talmudic sources.
43
Three of its principal fixtures are the location of the landing place of Noah’s ark ‘
in their realm
’, the three-year Famine and their munificence in relieving it in Jerusalem, and a focus on Abraham, whose paradigmatic act of ci
r
cumcising both himself and all those traveling with him is evoked in the story of Izates’ conversion both in Josephus and the
Talmud
. We have sufficiently explained how this
circumcision
and conversion is parodied by another episode in Acts – chro
n
ologically commensurate with that of
Agabus
’ first
Prophecy
(though not the obviously equally-spurious story of his second) and Paul’s activities in ‘
Damascus
’ and, after that,
in ‘Arabia
’ – having to do with the conversion of the Treasurer of the Eth
i
opian Queen on his way home ‘
from Jerusalem to Gaza
’ and characterized in Acts 8:27 as ‘
a eunuch
’!

There are several parodies here – none of which without malice. One, as already explained, is of Izates’ circumcision. It is important to note that the
Roman
‘
Lex Cornelia de Sicarius et veneficis
’ (c. 95–136
CE
, which we shall discuss further below) viewed
circumcision
as a form of bodily mutilation – in this, too, the connection of the terminology
Sicarios
(
Iscariot
) with the act or idea of
circumcision
is a fundamental one – it is also a good
terminus a quo
for Acts as a whole. Another is the perceived
Racial identity
of these new ‘
Arab
’ converts, that is, in Greco-Roman eyes they were
black
, a matter
Agbar
Uchama
’s cognomen, ‘
the Black’
, further concretizes. The last is of the mix-up we have highlighted, known as well in the Koran, between
Saba
’ (with an
alif
)/Southern Arabia/Ethiopia (‘
Sheba
’ in the Bible) and
Saba
‘
(with an
ayin
)/
Bather
– again implying that the conversion of this ‘
Ethiopian
’ Queen did involve ‘
bathing
’ and/or ‘
Bathers’
, namely, Eusebius’
Masbuthaeans
or those Islam knows as
Mughtasilah
or
Sabaeans
.

Furthermore, it should be appreciated that there was no
Ethiopian Queen
at this time, who sent her ‘
eunuch
’s to Jerus
a
lem with all her
treasure
. What there was, was Queen Helen of Adiabene, who sent ‘
her Treasury agents
’ (possibly including even ‘
Saul and Barnabas
’) to Egypt and Cyprus to buy grain for Palestine – therefore, the ‘
Gaza
’ allusion, ‘
Gaza
’ being the gateway to Egypt from Palestine. Finally, as we have stressed, the whole episode parodies the presentation in Josephus and the
Talmud
, where Izates is studying Genesis 17:10–14 about Abraham’s
circumcision
(also evoked in CD XVI.5–7) when he is asked by the unknown
Zealot
teacher
Eleazar from Galilee
if he understands the meaning of what he is reading; whereupon Izates and his brother both immediately circumcise themselves. In Acts 8:32–33, the Queen’s
eunuch
is reading Isaiah 53:7–8, when he is asked
the same question
by ‘
Philip
’ whereupon he, too, immediately descends from his chariot and is ‘
baptized’
.

The Koran Takes over

If we now look at the Koranic reflections in the allusions to ‘
Hud and Salih
’/‘
‘Ad
and Thamud
’ of these really pivotal conversions in Northern Syria and Iraq, these occur primarily in
Surah
s
7:65–84, 11:50–68, 14:9–17, 26:123–144, 29:38, 46:21–35 (mentioning ‘
the brother of
‘Ad
’) and 54:18–32. In almost every instance, they are immediately preceded by reference to ‘
the Folk of Noah
’ and the story of Noah (7:69, 11:32ff., 14:9, 25:37, 51:46, 54:9,
etc
.), with particular reference to the matter of the ark, which we have already shown to be
related to this area of Adiabene
between the Euphrates and the Tigris – the area too of Eusebius’ ‘
the Peoples beyond the Euphrates
’ – where almost all these so-called ‘
Peoples
’ considered the ark to have come to rest.

They are also often accompanied by allusion to ‘
the People of Abraham
’ and Abraham’s trial and suffering, in particular, the ‘
testing
’ exemplified in the proposed sacrifice of his son. In the Letter of James and that to the Hebrews, this ‘
testing
’ r
e
lates to the sacrifice of Isaac which would have had particular importance to someone like King Izates – in our view, the put
a
tive respondent for the Letter or Letter(s) known as
MMT
– who had already demonstrated his interest in
Abraham
’s soteri
o
logical state by recognizing
circumcision
as a
sine qua non
for conversion.

Though Muslims generally tie this reference to the sacrifice of Ishmael rather than Isaac, it should be appreciated that Ishmael is not mentioned in these contexts even in the Koran, only Isaac (11:50–84 and 37:101–14). It is important to note as well that Agbar VII (c. 109–117) was also known as ‘
Abgar
bar Ezad
’ (‘
Abgar the son of Ezad
’ ) – nominally ‘
Izates’
, whom Josephus at one point too even calls ‘
Izas
’
. The point is that one of ‘
Izates
’’ sons does nominally seem to have been called ‘
Agbar
’ or ‘
Abgar’
,
45
thus tying these two families as close as Syro-Armenian tradition seems to think they are and, in effect, merging them, making the conversion episodes involving all these persons more or less part of a single complex.

Several other themes also tie these notices in the Koran to the themes of the conversion stories from Eusebius, Josephus, and the
Talmud
and traditions swirling about the persons of James and ‘
Judas Barsabas’
. In the first place, there is the matter of the
drought
, always associated with allusions to
‘Ad
and
Hud
and the suggestion, connected with the
warning
Hud delivers, that
he too was a
Rainmaker
– a drought that, for some reason, Muslim tradition considers to have lasted
for three years
.
46
This is the same timeframe of ‘
the Great Famine
’ in Josephus and Acts’ ‘
Agabus-as-Prophet
’ notices (45–48
CE
) and a collateral a
s
pect of the stories of the conversions of King Agbarus and Queen Helen. Connected to this is the sub-theme of ‘
whirlwind
’ or ‘
rainmaking
’ (
Surah
s
11:52, 46:24,
etc
.) – a theme extremely strong in the newly-reconstructed First Column of the Nahum
Pesher
, and strong too in traditions about James and his reputed
rainmaking
, as well as Onias
the Just
or Honi
the Circle-Drawer
.