James the Brother of Jesus and the Dead Sea Scrolls II (100 page)

One should remark the ongoing venom of these accusations which is also typical of writers like Eusebius and Jerome. While at first glance, like much else in Epiphanius, the testimony might strike the reader as patently untrue (and it certainly is bizarre), on deeper reflection, there
is
a way of making sense of or understanding it.

We have already alluded to Paul’s putative ‘
Herodian
’ background. That he has connections in such circles is undeniable. Not only were the Herodians making inroads into Northern Syria and Southern Asia Minor, even into ‘
Armenia
’ where two Herodians with Judaizing pretensions became Kings,
52
but actual marriages of various kinds were being arranged further east in Commagene bordering on ‘
the Land of the Osrhoeans
’ and
Adiabene
and west in Cappadocia and Cilicia, the area most usually claim for Paul’s origins.
In fact, a number of these Rulers were specifically
circumcising themselves
in the manner this passage claims Paul did in order to contract marriages with Herodians, particularly the female line descended from Herod’s sole Maccabean wife
Mariamme
.

But Acts 23:16–22 also makes clear that Paul has important family connections in Jerusalem, where it would appear a si
s
ter or, at least, a nephew with entree into Roman/Herodian military and/or administrative circles resides. One possible ident
i
fication of this
nephew
, regarding whom Acts appears to exercise even more than its usual reticence, is ‘
Julius Archelaus
’.
53
He is an individual Josephus mentions in his
Vita
as having been interested enough in his
works to purchase a copy in Rome after the fall of Jerusalem!
Julius is the son of an individual mentioned fairly frequently in Josephus, one ‘
Alexas
’ or ‘
Helcias
’, the Temple Treasurer, and he may even be mentioned in the cluster of
Herodian
references at the end of Romans, including the individual Paul refers to as his ‘
kinsman
’, ‘
the Littlest Herod
’, and ‘
Junias
’ another of his ‘
kinsmen
’ – read ‘
Julius
’ (16:7–11).

Julius Archelaus originally married the first of Agrippa I’s daughters, also called
Mariamme
, after her grandmother. But even this marriage does not seem to have been good enough for this Princess, because she divorced him to make what was obviously an even
Richer
marriage to one ‘
Demetrius the Alabarch of Alexandria
’, whom Josephus calls ‘
the first in birth and wealth among the Jews of Alexandria
’. Julius Archelaus may have been the younger brother of another individual Josephus associates
with the ‘
Saulos
’ in his narrative who so much resembles Paul – one ‘
Antipas
’ of the same general family line, whom Josephus also identifies as
Temple Treasurer
. In fact,
Antipas
was executed in somewhat desperate circumstances, when ‘the Zealots’ took control of the Revolution, around the same time as James’ executioner Ananus, the ‘
Rich
’ collaborator ‘
Zachar
i
ah ben Bareis
’/‘
Bariscaeus
’, and another backsliding former Revolutionary, ‘
Niger of Perea
’.
54

This last individual, as we have already suggested, may have been the model in Acts 13:1 for Paul’s erstwhile colleague in
Antioch
, ‘Simeon Niger’, and the details of his execution may also have gone into the picture of Jesus’ in the Gospels.
55
Act
u
ally this ‘
Zachariah
’ –
also executed by
‘
the Zealots
’
as a collaborator
and
whose body was also
‘
cast down
’
into the valley b
e
low
– may have been the model too for the ‘
Zachariah the son of Barachias
’ allegedly murdered in Matthew 23:35 and Luke 11:51 ‘
between Temple and the Altar
’ – here another ‘
blood libel
’ accusation, followed of course by the refrain, ‘
O Jerusalem
,
Jerusalem
,
who kill all the Prophets and stone those who have been sent to her
’,
the implied meaning once again being, to be sure, ‘
your blood be upon your own heads
’.

As already explained, there certainly were
Herodians
in
the Antioch Community
, one specifically called ‘
the foster brother of Herod the Tetrarch
’, namely our
Herod Antipas
again. Furthermore, the two brothers ‘
Costobarus and Saulos
’, whom J
o
sephus depicts as ‘
collecting a band of Violent ruffians
’ and
causing mayhem in Jerusalem in the aftermath of the stoning of James
,
56
and this youngest
Antipas
, together with his putative
brother
or
nephew
, Julius Archelaus, were all the descendants of interrelated septs descending both from Herod’s sister
Salome
and one of his (Herod’s) daughters named
Cypros
.

If Julius Archelaus was ‘
Paul
’
s nephew
’, referred to in Acts 23:16, then his mother too (Paul’s
putative sister
) was probably the descendant of Herod’s sister, the first ‘
Salome
’ in this family. This is because, after executing Salome’s first husband
Joseph
–
allegedly on a charge of adultery with his own first wife named
Mariamme
(Herod had two, this being
the Maccabean one
) – and before finally marrying her to his close friend (and presumable relative),
Alexas
or
Helcias
the Temple Treasurer, Herod had previously married her to yet another close associate and probable relative, the original ‘
Costobarus
’, himself definitively identified as an ‘
Idumaean
’ in Josephus, from whom the ‘
Costobarus
’ in Paul’s generation evidently descended and derived his name.
57

Costobarus
, ‘
Plundering’, and Herodian Family Interests

Antipater, Herod’s father – whether
Idumaean Arab
,
Greek
, or a mixture of the two – had married a high-born
Arab
woman from Petra named Cypros. Herod’s sister Salome had two sons (the genealogies are, chronologically speaking, a little unclear here), the individual Josephus calls ‘
Saulos
’ and another called ‘
Costobarus
’. It is to these two that Josephus attributes
the riot in Jerusalem
following the death of James
, which very much resembles
the riot led by Paul in Acts after the stoning of ‘Stephen’.
58
Nor is this to mention the riot in the Pseudoclementine
Recognitions
, which ends up in Paul ‘
casting
’
James
‘
head-long
’
down the Temple steps
and
James breaking at least one if not both his legs
.
59

Josephus describes
Saulos and Costobaru
s (aside from noting their ‘
kinship
’ to Agrippa I or II) as willing to ‘
use violence with the People and plunder those weaker than themselves
’ – this
in the aftermath of the stoning of James
and the very acc
u
sations leveled against the Establishment Priesthood and their ‘
Violent
’ associates
in the aftermath of the destruction of the Righteous Teacher
in the Dead Sea Scrolls.
60
The Habakkuk
Pesher
in particular – but also the Damascus Document – uses this language of ‘
plundering
’ and ‘
Violence
’ in relation to the ‘
amassing
’ or ‘
collecting
’
activities of
‘
the Peoples
’ – in our view,
Herodians
and their hangers-on.

This kind of ‘
plundering
’ or ‘
amassing
’ is then connected to the ‘
profiteering
’ activities of the individual called in the Ha
b
akkuk
Pesher
‘
the Wicked Priest
’, as well as ‘
the Last Priests of Jerusalem
’ generally.
61
To come full circle again, this, in turn, can be connected to ‘
profiteering
’
from the contributions
or
gifts to the Temple
made by individuals involved in just these kinds of ‘
Violent
’ attacks, namely
Saulos and Costobarus
and their
Violent
associates (at Qumran, in our view, probably referred to as ‘
the
‘
A
rizei-Go
’
im
’ – ‘
the Violent Ones of the Gentiles
’ or ‘
Peoples
’).
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Regarding these kinds of activities, one should also keep in mind Paul’s own admissions in 1 Corinthians 15:9 and Galatians 1:13 to ‘
persecuting the Assembly of God unto death
’.

The two riots we have just referred to, led by someone called ‘
Saulos
’ in both Acts and Josephus, are in themselves inte
r
esting. Although the twenty-year discrepancy in their dating will never be reconciled, the sequencing is the same: the stoning of ‘Stephen’ followed by the mayhem reported in Acts 8:3, where ‘
Saulos
(as Paul was still being referred to even at this point)
ravaged the Assembly,
entering house-by-house and dragging out men and women
,
delivering
(
them
)
up to prison
’; and the stoning of James, followed by the brutal rioting led by ‘
Costobarus and Saul
’ – unless ‘
Saulos
’
really did lead two riots
, or Jos
e
phus and/or Acts have confused things, which would not be at all surprising. Josephus, it will be recalled, is writing these things in the
Antiquities
(which he neglected to mention in the
War
) in the early Nineties, thirty years after they occurred. He may have his sequencing wrong or he may simply have misunderstood things, deliberately or otherwise.

That having been said, it seems fairly plain that what Acts is really talking about in its picture of
the attack on Stephen in the Temple
is
the riot in the Temple led by Paul
in the Pseudoclementines that ended up in James only ‘
breaking his leg
’,
not the stoning of Stephen
. In fact, there may have been another riot directly after the stoning of James, just as Josephus describes, and ‘
Paul
’ or ‘
Saulos
’ – as the case may be – may have been involved in this too. This depends on what happened to Paul after his voyage to Rome and his alleged ‘
appeal to Caesar
’ in 60
CE
(Acts 25:11–28:31).

However this may be, just as Paul in Acts, Josephus’ ‘
Saulos
’ makes an appeal to Caesar, but this one apparently not until 66
CE
although there may have been an earlier one in the previous decade as well when, like Josephus thereafter, he seems to have made the contacts necessary to enter Roman service. In any event, what
Saulos
does in 66
CE
– after having been the intermediary between ‘
the Peace Party
’ made up of ‘
Herodians
,
Sadducees
,
and the Chief Men of the Pharisees
’ in Jerusalem and the Roman army outside of the city
63
– is, as Paul in Acts and as already alluded to,
appeal to Caesar
presumably with his putative ‘
kinsman
’ Agrippa II’s help (a decade earlier, in Acts 23:35 Paul stays in this same Agrippa’s Palace in Caesarea as
Saulos
seemingly does in Jerusalem). It is to Nero that
Saulos
then goes, apparently at that time in Corinth as already indicated, to report on the situation in Palestine generally and, along seemingly with
Philip
, Agrippa II’s military Commander in Caesarea, to justify his own conduct in the matter of the destruction of the Roman garrison in Jerusalem – a report that seems to have triggered the bringing in of the Romans’ best general, Vespasian, all the way from Britain to quell the unrest in Palestine.
64