James the Brother of Jesus and the Dead Sea Scrolls I (7 page)

The
Talmud
does refer to ‘
Zealots
’ as
Kanna’im
(‘
those jealous
’ or ‘
zealous
’), but not really as a group – rather simply as avenging priests in the Temple. This will have relevance to the way James’ death is portrayed in early Church sources.
4
This avenging zeal is not surprising in view of how the ethos of this group is explained in terms of ‘the zeal of Phineas’. 1 Maccabees 2:28, as noted, evokes this slogan in describing how the progenitor of the Maccabean family, Mattathias, acted against those who would abrogate the traditions of the Forefathers and collaborate with foreign rule. He slays them on the altar at Modein, the family place of origin.

One of the problems with Josephus’ picture of the sects is that, since he is covering a chronological time frame of some two hundred and fifty years, one does not really know to which period his points apply. His accounts are usually derivative and accurate only for the period in which he lives. Even here he often dissembles, because of his own embarrassing relations with sectarian groups and his pre-Flavian, revolutionary past. As one can see in his
War
or his
Vita
, he was under tremendous pressure to explain his past and justify actions that enabled him to survive, and he constantly defends himself against attacks on his behaviour
and his loyalty to Rome.

It is quite likely that Josephus fell foul of Titus’ younger brother and successor, Domitian (81–96), who was considered to be as mad, unpredictable, and sadistically violent as Nero had been. Indeed, the mercurial Domitian seems to have executed his secretary, Josephus’ publisher Epaphroditus, who had also been Nero’s secretary and someone
with whom Paul appears to have been extremely intimate.
5
In addition, this
Epaphroditus, as is clear from Josephus’ introductions, encouraged Josephus in all his works, particularly his
Antiquities
, which was published in 94 CE just a little before both disappeared from the scene. Like Epaphroditus, Josephus just drops from sight around this time and may or may not have been executed in the course of Domitian’s often brutal or sadistic reign. Trajan (98–117), whose father had been commander of the Tenth Legion in Palestine under Vespasian and Titus, then proceeded to have his difficulties with Messianic agitation and unrest, particularly in the eastern portions of his empire.

Sectarian terminology thus tends to slide around a good deal, depending on who is doing the observing, what vocabulary he is employing, and what his own misunderstandings or prejudices might be. For instance, in his
Vita
Josephus suddenly tells us about a ‘wilderness’ sojourn he made during a trial he says he was
conducting of all the sects. There he meets a teacher he calls ‘
Banus
’ – not
a name, but a title or cognomen of some kind, probably having something to do with
bathing
– without telling us that this teacher is almost indistinguishable from Jewish Christians or Essenes, the group heading his list of Jewish sects.

There is indeed a bewildering plethora of these groups. This diminishes only when one appreciates the verbal acrobatics involved where subversive or threatening sects or a given writer’s own embarrassing relations with them are concerned. In order to sort these various groups out, it is better simply to group them according to whether they supported the Roman-Herodian Establishment or opposed it. Likewise, it is often more edifying to look at groups in terms of who their common enemies were. Seen in this way, James’ Jerusalem Community, Ebionites, Essenes, Zealots, and the group responsible for the documents found at Qumran all can be thought of as opposed to the reigning Establishment.

The Qumran documents, for example, are not simply a random collection of disparate sectarian writings. The same ideology, nomenclature, and dramatis personae move from document to document regardless of style or authorship. For instance, one never encounters a document approving of the contemporary Establishment, which in the writer’s view must be seen as the Herodian one.

For this reason, it is proper to refer to the authors of these documents as comprising a Movement of some kind which is always, at its core, anti-Establishment. Its precise name for the moment must be left indeterminate, but ‘the Way’, ‘the Sons of Zadok’, ‘the Poor’, ‘the Simple’, ‘the Meek’, ‘the Perfect’, ‘the Sons of Light’, ‘the Holy Ones’ or combinations such as ‘the Zealots for the Day of Vengeance’, ‘the Poor Ones of Piety’, ‘the Zealots for Righteousness’ and ‘Perfect of the Way’ are all terms cropping up in their repertoire as self-designations.

To add to all these groups, one has the bewildering assortment referred to by Church heresiologists of the third to the fifth centuries, like Naassenes, Nazoraeans, Sampsaeans (‘
Sabaeans
’ as we shall see) and Elchasaites, most located on the other side of the Jordan extending on up to Syria and Northern Iraq and holding James’ name in particular reverence – some, like the Ebionites, in absolute awe. Where the relationship of these groups to the Qumran documents, or for that matter to the New Testament, is concerned, their location across the Jordan in that ‘Damascus’ region so important to both is particularly significant. All of these groups too can be considered as allied or related in some way, all being anti-Establishment and having common enemies.

Where the first century CE is concerned, it is also useful to consider the opposition groups in terms of their various degrees of
zeal
, extending from the more pacifist to the more violent. This is how Hippolytus discusses his Essenes, who range by degrees to the most extreme
Sicarii,
namely those Josephus describes as committing suicide on Masada in the last installment of the War against Rome. If one keeps one’s eyes firmly fixed on support of or opposition to the Roman-Herodian Establishment, one will never go far astray. Those supporting this Establishment can be described (echoing language found in the Dead Sea Scrolls) as ‘seeking accommodation with foreigners’, which the Herodians and their Roman overlords were most certainly considered to be.

These are the kinds of distinctions that will prove useful in considering the best-known Establishment Party, the Pharisees, who in their current embodiment of Rabbinic Judaism still constitute the Establishment among Jews today. This is a vivid reminder of just how enduring these traditions can be. Whether in their present-day Orthodox, Conservative, Liberal, or Reform embodiments, all not only claim to be heirs to the Pharisaic legacy but in addition – and, as we shall see, even more astonishing – that the Pharisees were
the popular party of the first
century
CE. For this reason, many Jews, even secular ones, are unable to grasp the true import of their own
Hanukkah
festivities, which are basically a celebration of Maccabean, anti-foreign, non-accommodationist, priestly zeal. This is because this tradition, too, which is diametrically opposed to the inherited one, has been downplayed, trivialized and virtually written out of Talmudic literature, where most references to the Maccabees are negative for the same reason that they are in Christianity.

It is no wonder that many scholars, Christian and Jewish alike, thought that the Maccabeans could have been candidates for ‘the Wicked Priest’ of the Dead Sea Scrolls when these documents appeared. Thus, the view was widely disseminated that the Maccabees had ‘usurped’ the High Priesthood from a previously more legitimate one. This was not only to misunderstand the essence of the Maccabean Uprising, but the Qumran position with regard to such matters.

Zealots, Anti-Nationalist Pharisees, and the Messianic Roots of the Uprising

But the Pharisees were not the popular party of their time and place, despite Josephus’ attempts – and those of Rabbinic Judaism thereafter – to prove otherwise. To clarify and highlight this, I have in my work generally redefined Pharisees as those ‘seeking accommodation with foreigners’. In the Scrolls, these appear as ‘the Seekers after Smooth Things’, clearly a hostile designation. In terms of political attitudes, Pauline Christians are not very different from Pharisees. This puts the proposition in the broad brushstrokes that have meaning for the period before us, dispensing with the kind of legal hair-splitting usually discussed.

The Establishment groups, quite simply put, were the Pharisees, accommodationist Sadducees, and Herodians, the last being those members of the Herodian power structure and their associates not encompassed under the preceding two designations.

Pauline Christianity and Rabbinic Judaism develop in conjunction with each other and both follow an accommodationist policy towards Rome, which is why no doubt both survived. In this context, the main difference is that one is pro-Law and the other against it. But the points of accommodation here are not the minor ones belaboured in Rabbinic tradition, such as those connected with dietary regulations, sexual purification or Sabbath observation, though these played a part. Rather, they are the broad lines of accommodation with foreigners in a political sense.

That the Pharisees are the popular party in this period, which the New Testament too is anxious to promote, is repeatedly and definitively gainsaid by Josephus, despite his attempts, pro-Roman and Pharisee fellow-traveler that he is, to promote it. Over and over again, Josephus presents, often unwittingly, the people as opposing the
anti-nationalist
policies of the Pharisees. Predictably,
the people
, as in most times and places, are predominantly nationalist. They may have been forced to go along with the Pharisees and the Rabbinic Party that succeeded them after the fall of the Temple and the elimination of all serious opposition groups, but before this they most often opposed them.

It is a curious coincidence that Josephus launches into both his descriptions of the Jewish sects in the
War
and the
Antiquities
at just the point he comes to describe the Movement founded by Judas
the Galilean
. This he calls a new ‘philosophy which our people were before unacquainted with’ (
Ant
. 18.10). At present, it is sufficient to point out that this group or movement arises at just the moment one would expect it to, when the previous leadership had been eliminated by Herod and new leadership principles, including the
Messianic
, emerge.

Eleven years after the death of Herod the Romans annexed the country and, in anticipation of direct taxation by governors or procurators, imposed a census. This is the 6–7 CE ‘Census of Quirinius’, by which the Gospel of Luke dates the birth of Jesus (2:1). The Gospel of Matthew, by contrast, has Jesus being born some time before the death of Herod, more than a decade earlier; so that Herod can attempt to chase him down and kill all the Jewish children - as did Pharaoh at the time of
the birth of Moses
. The two accounts are, of course, irreconcilable.

This is ‘the Census’ - essentially a tax assessment - which the Zealots oppose and, against which, Judas the Galilean and
Saddok
preach. It is supported by the Pharisees and, of course, the ‘
Herodian
Sadducees’. This issue is also a burning one in the  Gospel narratives and Jesus’ riposte to ‘the Pharisees and the Herodians’ concerning it (Mt. 22:21), ‘render unto Caesar what is Caesar’s and God what is God’s’, has now become proverbial – strange, because the Gospels picture ‘Jesus’ as adopting
the Pharisee
policy
of ‘paying the tax to Caesar’ here.

There are, in fact, a plethora of revolutionary outbursts even at the time of the death of Herod, with which the unrest begins, by groups Josephus pictures as being
zealous for the Law
– Mosaic not Roman – and as having ‘an inviolable attachment to liberty’. One of these, led by someone he calls Judas Sepphoraeus – probably identical with Judas the Galilean – broke into the arsenal at Sepphoris in 4 BCE, the principal town at that time in Galilee (
War
2.56/
Ant
. 17.271).

There is no doubt about the popularity of the Movement, because Josephus, in his lengthy description of it and the woes the people suffered in consequence of their support for it, admits not only that ‘our young men were zealous for it’ but that ‘the nation was infected by it to an incredible degree’ (
Ant
. 18.6–10).

In addition to Jesus’ birth being presented as coincident with its inception and the fact that its appearance triggers Josephus’ discussion of the sects of his time, there is another interesting aspect to this Movement. At the end of the
Jewish War
, when describing the signs and wonders that presaged the fall of the Temple, of which people as superstitious as the Romans were so enamoured, Josephus finally reveals something that he neglected for some reason to tell us earlier. He claims that ‘the thing that most moved the people to revolt against Rome was an ambiguous prophecy from their Scripture that one from their country
should rule the entire world’
. For Josephus they had only themselves to blame for what ensued, because they interpreted this oracle ‘to suit themselves and went so mad because of it’ (
War
6.312–14).

But this is precisely the Prophecy, ‘
the World Ruler’, ‘Messianic
’, or ‘
the Star Prophecy
’, he has just finished applying to Vespasian – thus saving his own skin – as, one might add, did R. Yohanan and
his ‘Pharisee Party’ along with him and does so again in this passage from the
War
.
In the Scrolls, where it occurs at least three times even in the surviving texts, it receives a wholly other, completely uncompromising, nationalistic and fully ‘Messianic’ interpretation. In addition to remarking earlier how ‘
zealous
’ the young men were for this approach, Josephus notes that ‘the Jews thought this prediction applied only to themselves, and therefore, many of their most learned men had deceived themselves in this determination’.

But this is precisely the Qumran interpretation as well, the representatives of which would never have stooped to the cynical opportunism of applying it to the destroyer of Jerusalem Vespasian, whatever the short-term benefits. In revealing this, Josephus, of course, also reveals that Zealots and other parties displaying the ‘
zeal of Phineas
’ were not simply political, but religious and
Messianic
as well.

This is proof that the Uprising against Rome, aside from being popular – which it was most definitely – was also
Messianic
. What is more, that since the Uprising was Messianic – and ethically and historically this is of the utmost importance – the Jews lost everything not because they
opposed the
Messiah
, as early Church Fathers or the New Testament in their tendentious presentation of Christ’s death and its meaning would have us believe, but, on the contrary, because they
were so uncompromisingly Messianic
. This is no mean proposition and constitutes an important reversal or inversion of historical invective as it has come down to us.

Not only was the Uprising aimed at burning the palaces of the High Priests and the Herodian Kings but the debt records as well, in order, as Josephus makes clear, ‘to turn the Poor against the Rich’ (
War
2.425–9).
Once again, this is the same genre of language evinced in the Letter of James and the Dead Sea Scrolls in their condemnation of ‘the Rich’. It is also the language applied to the Movement led by James, by Paul (Gal. 2:10) and to the later Ebionites, so named because of it, as well as the nomenclature used by the Movement represented by the Scrolls to describe its own rank and file – called there as well ‘the
Ebionim
’ or ‘the Poor’.
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Before leaving this subject of the outbreak of the Uprising in 66 CE, it is important to note that in a final moment of unparalleled candour Josephus tells us that it was ‘the principal Pharisees, the Chief Priests, the men of power [by which he means Herodians], and all those desirous for peace’ who invited the Roman army into Jerusalem ‘to put down the Uprising’. This is what Josephus meant in the Introduction to the
War
about how the Romans were invited into the city by ‘the Jews’ own leaders’ (1.10 & 2.418–19).

Here one comes to an even more startling detail provided by Josephus, if what he seems to be saying can be tied to characters we know in early Christian history. The intermediary in this process of inviting the Roman army into the city was a member of the Herodian family called Saul. He is the one who delivered the message from ‘the peace coalition’ to the Roman army camped outside Jerusalem to enter, and a final report even
to Nero’s headquarters
, then in Corinth in Greece, a favourite haunt too of the religious activities of ‘Paul’.

The anti-national, pro-Roman policy of the Pharisees should by now be clear. This is also the stance of the Pauline Gentile Christians, following the teaching of a person who describes himself as having been trained as a Pharisee and, according to the picture in Acts anyhow, vaunts a Roman citizenship, something not easily acquired in these turbulent times. Nor can the Pharisees in this period by any twist of the imagination be considered ‘the popular party’. If anything, the Zealot and/or Messianic were the popular parties (as nationalist parties predictably are) at least until the fall of the Temple and the re-education policy undertaken by the heirs of the Pharisees under Roman suzerainty thereafter.

The Coming of the Romans and the Herodians

Then what is the key to events, as described in the above analysis? It is the rise of the Herodians and the coming of the Romans. This is the reason for the widespread disaffection being expressed in this period and most of the unrest. After the fall of the Maccabeans, Roman rule was imposed, sometimes through Herodian kings or sometimes more directly through Roman procurators. It is against the backdrop of the fall of the Maccabeans and the ascent of the Herodians in the first century BCE that the rise of various sects or movements, particularly nationalistic or Messianic ones, must be gauged. Again, if one keeps this and the fact of Roman power firmly before one’s eyes, then almost all else follows comparatively easily.

The first appearance of the Romans in the Eastern Mediterranean came just prior to this period in the late stages of the Punic War. They actually made their presence felt in the 60s BCE, when they turned Syria into a Roman province, eliminating the last vestiges of Seleucid rule. Just as Caesar was making his inroads into Transalpine Gaul, the Rhine, Britain, and Spain in the West, Pompey was undertaking the siege of Jerusalem in 63 BCE. He was abetted in this by internal dissensions within the Maccabean family itself, but also by a half-Arab, Hellenized intermediary by the name of Antipater, the father of Herod.