James the Brother of Jesus and the Dead Sea Scrolls II (5 page)

To go back to
Herod the Tetrarch
, to whom this
Manaen
is supposed to have stood in a quasi-fraternal relationship: not only is this
Herod
well known as the eventual husband of the sister of King Agrippa I, Herodias, but he or she would seem to bear much of the responsibility for the death of John the Baptist, whichever presentation of these events one chooses to fo
l
low – either that of the Gospels or of Josephus.
54
It is hardly credible that an individual with such a background and called, therefore, ‘
the foster brother of Herod the Tetrarch
’ could have been reckoned among the founding ‘
Prophets and teachers of the Church at Antioch
’, as Acts would have it, unless the apposition were accidentally or purposefully displaced – which is what we meant by a ‘
shell
-
game
’ in the first place – and it rather applied, not to an insignificant unknown such as ‘
Manaen’
, but rather to Paul himself.

I have expressed the position that Paul was an
Herodian
, one of the proofs of which were his greetings to his ‘
kinsman Herodion
’ (‘
the Littlest Herod
’) at the end of Romans 16:11 – presumably Herod the Sixth, the son of Aristobulus and Sal
o
me, to whose household he appears already to have sent greetings in the previous line (16:10).
55
The
Salome
in question is the very person whose dance is pictured in the Synoptic Gospels as being the cause of John’s demise, a dance never mentioned in Josephus though her marriage to another of her mother’s uncles,
Philip
, is. In the Synoptics, this
Philip
evolves into her mot
h
er’s first husband, an individual Josephus rather identifies as actually having been named
Herod
not
Philip
. In Josephus, it is rather Salome’s husband who is named
Philip
, ‘
who died childless
’.
56

As it turns out, just such a relative of
Herod the Tetrarch
(elsewhere, ‘
Herod Antipas
’) named ‘
Saulos
’ does exist in the Herodian family at this time. Furthermore, as described by Josephus, he is involved in activities not unsimilar, as we shall see, to Paul’s – namely, leading a riot in Jerusalem after the death of James similar to the riot led by Paul described in Acts 8:1–3 directly following
the stoning of Stephen
or the riot which Paul – described as ‘
the Enemy
’ – is pictured as leading in the Pseudoclementine
Recognitions
that ends up in James being thrown ‘
head-long down the Temple steps’
.
57
He is also involved, like his namesake
Paul
, in an appeal to Caesar – in both,
Nero Caesar
– but more about all these things in due course.
58

If Paul and not
Manaen
was ‘
the foster brother of Herod the Tetrarch
’, identical with the individual called ‘
Saulos
’ in Jos
e
phus, it would not be at all surprising if he were also involved earlier in his career in the death of John the Baptist and his flight from Damascus at this time (as
per
the picture in 2 Corinthians 11:32–33 – not the sanitized and refurbished one in Acts 9:23) in order to escape the soldiers of King Aretas related to these circumstances. The circumstances were that this
Paul
or ‘
Saulos
’ was in Damascus – the
real Damascus
and not the more complex one in the Scrolls or the one revised in Acts 9:2–25 – on a mission of some sort in support of his
kinsman
or
foster brother
Herod the Tetrarch, the recently-acquired husband of the despised Herodias, the marriage of whom triggered the death of John. Actually Aretas, the
Arab
King of Petra further South, had just taken military control of Damascus at this time.
59

To put this more succinctly: if we sometimes consider constructs like ‘
the foster brother of Herod the Tetrarch
’ to be la
t
erally displaced, we can arrive with far more sense at the insight that, in the early Christian Community at Antioch (whichever ‘Antioch’ one might ultimately think this to be) ‘
where Christians were first called Christians
’, the individual brought up with Herod the Tetrarch was Paul not ‘
Manaen
’ (the likely original of which was ‘
Ananias
’) – precisely that ‘
Saulos
’ who eight lines further along in Acts 13:7 receives his Greco-Latin name after a far too felicitous exchange with ‘
Sergius Paulos
’ (pictured as the Roman proconsul of
Cyprus
at this time).

Elsewhere
Paul
is pictured as having made the assertion of having persecuted
the followers of
‘
the Way unto death
’ (Acts 22:4 and Galatians 1:13 and 23). This is just the conclusion we would arrive at in our interpretation of the curious double ve
r
sion of Paul’s
descent down the walls of Damascus
‘
in a basket
’ to
escape the representatives of King Aretas trying to arrest him
in 2 Corinthians 11:32–33. Via the miracle of art, Acts 9:23 refurbishes this – while at the same time injecting another fai
r
ly virulent dose of anti-Semitism – into
a descent by Paul down the walls of Damascus in a basket
‘
to escape the Jews
’. It is now ‘
the Jews
’ who are presented as the ones who ‘
want to kill him
’ and not ‘
the Ethnarch of Aretas
’ as in 2 Corinthians 11:32.

In fact, a Monarch by the name of
Aretas
did play a role in the circumstances surrounding John the Baptist’s death, but he was on the same side as John because Herod the Tetrarch had divorced his original wife (
Aretas
’ daughter) to prepare the way for his marriage to Agrippa I’s sister and Salome’s mother, Herodias. As Josephus puts it in the
Antiquities
, the people were glad at Herod’s discomfiture in the subsequent mini-war he fought with Aretas over this affair and took it as a sign of God’s vengeance or displeasure ‘
at what he
(
Herod
)
had done to John’
.
60
In addition, it is apparent that ‘
the Jews
’ in Josephus’ d
i
verging account
were on the same side as John and
not against him
as the Gospels often portray – John being a popular religio-political reformer for the mass of Jews who, according to Josephus, seemed willing to do ‘
anything he should suggest
’ inclu
d
ing Revolution; while, on the other hand, the Herodians were a Greco-Arab alien Dynasty
imposed on them by the Romans
from outside,
most of whom not even considered as Jews
!
61

This is backed up as well by later Syriac/Armenian sources which claim – reliably or not – that their ruler ‘
Abgar
’ (
Abgar the Black
?) helped Aretas in his campaign against Herod Antipas or Herod the Tetrarch,
62
the individual we are supposed to think had a ‘
foster-brother
’ among the earliest ‘
Prophets and teachers
’ of the ‘
Christian
’ Assembly at Antioch. Once again, our suggestion is that the actual
foster brother
of Herod the Tetrarch was not
Manaen
but Paul himself, which makes perfectly good sense in the context. This is particularly true when one considers Paul’s Roman Citizenship (which all Herodians po
s
sessed
63
), his consistently pro-Roman orientation both as pictured in Acts and in his letters, his easy entrée as a young man into Jerusalem upper-class circles, including the letters he gets from the High Priest
to arrest those
‘
of the Way
’
in
‘
Damascus
’ (Acts 9:2) – to say nothing of the ease with which his nephew later (whoever
he
may have been) is able to communicate with the Chief Captain of the Roman Guard in the Temple who is holding Paul in protective custody (Acts 23:19) and, finally, his incarceration in Agrippa II’
s Palace in Caesarea
in what appears rather a loose form of house arrest than an actual incarcer
a
tion in Acts 23:35.

Therefore we have alluded to him as
the
Herodian
Paul
and, therefore too, it is possible to assert that Paul not ‘
Manaen
’ (whoever he might have been) would have more likely been
the one brought up with Herod the Tetrarch
, a fact Acts’ Lukan artificer would have been at pains to obscure. With only a slight lateral displacement – just as with ‘
James his brother
’ meaning ‘
James the brother of John
’ (not ‘
James the brother of Jesus
’) above – this is exactly what one ends up with and this emba
r
rassing fact is easily over-written and erased. These things as they may be, these are the kinds of analyses and insights one is able to achieve and will achieve further below if one pursues this kind of information without preconceptions or prior co
m
mitment and with a modicum of common sense and intelligence.

The Anti-Semitic Peter

Another rewarding avenue of analysis are the speeches attributed to Peter in Acts and the contrast of these with the po
r
trait of Peter in the Pseudoclementines. In Acts, Peter is presented as a mouthpiece for anti-Semitic invective, but this kind of Peter is hardly, if ever, in evidence in the Pseudoclementines, whichever version one consults, the
Homilies
or the
Recognitions
. In our view, the Pseudoclementines do not simply parallel Acts; rather,
they are
based on the same source
as Acts
,
to which they are the more faithful
. This is certainly the case with the
Recognitions
, the First Book of which links up with Acts in an almost point-for-point manner – albeit approaching most issues from a
completely opposite ideological orientation
. In addition there is the common vocabulary not only with Acts, but also documents at Qumran like the Damascus Document.

There are some five or six speeches attributed to Peter in Acts. In almost every one, he is presented as making the same telltale ‘
Blood libel
’ accusation which is never even alluded to in the Pseudoclementine narratives. Rather, in the latter, Peter emerges as a gentle soul, never quick to anger – the archetypical
Essene
as it were – who, like those described in Josephus, ‘
wears threadbare clothes
’
and arises at dawn to greet the sun in prayer
,
following which he always immerses himself
– that is, in the Pseudoclementines
Peter is a Daily Bather
.
64
Finally in the Pseudoclementines, he is the inveterate
Jamesian
, preaching absolute adherence to a more faithful rendition of James’ directives to overseas communities even than those depicted in Acts.
65

It is obviously this sort of portrait that is being deliberately gainsaid in Acts. Not only does Peter receive a ‘
Paulinizing
’ v
i
sion in Jaffa where he learns not to make distinctions between ‘
Holy and profane
’, nor ‘
to call any man profane
’ (Acts 10:14–15 and 28) just in time to greet the representative of the Roman Centurion Cornelius (10:19–22); this vision, of course, makes it possible for him to come and visit Cornelius’ house and keep ‘
table fellowship
’ with him – the prototype for the whole
Ge
n
tile Mission
of Paul and the opposite of the outcome of the confrontations in Antioch in Galatians 2:11–14 after the repr
e
sentatives from James
come down
from Jerusalem. In this last Peter parts company with Paul and together with Barnabas
chooses no longer to keep company with him in either
‘
work or purse
’ (the language of Qumran –
cf
. Acts 15:39 above
66
), in return for which Paul accuses both of them of ‘
hypocrisy
’ (Galatians 2:13).