James the Brother of Jesus and the Dead Sea Scrolls II (155 page)

Northern Syrian Conversion Stories:
‘Ad
and Thamud
, and
Hud and Salih

Despite a certain amount of repetition – which in circumstances as recondite and complex as these is probably unavoid
a
ble – it would be worth recapitulating some of the key issues addressed in this book. Before doing so, however, one should look more closely at the stories in the Koran about ‘‘
Ad
and Thamud’
and ‘
Hud and Salih’
. These have always been thought of as showing Muhammad’s acquaintance with unknown cities and
Prophets
in the
Arabian
cultural sphere. The normal unde
r
standing is that these stories have to do with little remembered
Arab
Holy Men, functioning in some quasi-identifiable locale in the Arabian Peninsula at some time in the primordial past before the coming of Islam. The usual explanations are replete with forced connections and nonsensical rationalizations. All is hazy or unknown and nothing of any certainty emerges.

A typical commentary or explanation runs something like this: ‘
‘Ad
was the name of a tribe who lived in the remote past in Arabia. At one time they ruled over most of the fertile parts of greater Arabia
,
particularly Yemen
,
Syria
,
and Mesopotamia
(
i
.
e
., just about everywhere).
They were the first people to exercise dominion over practically the whole of Arabia.’
1
(
This is from an ‘
Ahmadiyya
’ commentary, but almost all present the same or similar insights.)
Another runs: ‘
The Thamud People were the successors to the culture and civilization of the
‘Ad
People’
.
2
Almost all connect these persons or peoples in some manner with Abraham because, in the Koran, all such references are almost always followed up by
evocation of
Abraham
. In the context of our previous points about the importance of Abraham, this connection is probably true but in a different manner than most might think. Nor, probably, have they anything to do with a genealogical connection with either
Abraham
or
Noah
, another individual mentioned prominently in these traditions.

Here is a third: ‘
The Thamud Tribe lived in the western parts of Arabia
,
having spread from Aden northward to Syria
.
They lived shortly before the time of Ishmael
.
Their territory was adjacent to that of
‘Ad
,
but they lived mostly in the hills….
T
he Prophet Salih lived after Hud and was probably a contemporary of Abraham’
;
3
and a fourth: ‘
The Thamud People were the successors to the culture and civilization of the
‘Ad
People
.... T
hey were cousins to the
‘Ad
,
apparently a younger branch of the same race
.
Their story also belongs to Arabian tradition
,
according to which their eponymous ancestor
,
Thamud
,
was a son of
‘A
bir
(
brother of Aram
)
the son of Sam
(
Shem
),
the son of Noah
(
thus
!
).’
Most of these comments are drawn from real or imagined references in the Koran and on the whole represent a total garbling of only dimly-recalled and little-understood oral tradition. What we would now like to show is that they come from traditions which Muhammad or his voices (Angelic or real) derived from either Northern Syria or Southern Iraq – probably the latter.

We have already remarked the general connection of many of Muhammad’s ideas with sectarian movements in Southern Iraq such as the Mandaeans and Manichaeans and, if the additional relationships we shall now illustrate are true, then they considerably reinforce the connections of traditions of this sort with the kind of visits Muhammad was reputed to have made to Southern Iraq and even, perhaps, Northern Syria – and to the caravan trade, which could have easily carried him, or those he came in contact with, to such locales. However, of perhaps even more significance, what we shall attempt to demonstrate is that these notices in fact have to do with cities,
Peoples
, or
Prophets
/
Warners
(as the Koran would put it
4
) or
Messengers
within the
Arabian
culture sphere. Furthermore, what is not generally appreciated, the allusion ‘
Arab
’ had a much wider co
n
notation in the Greco-Roman Period than is normally considered nowadays to apply. As a result, these stories had, geograp
h
ically-speaking, a much wider transmission framework and actually reflect Northern Syrian conversion stories of the kind we have been highlighting in this work – themselves very important to both
Jewish
and
Christian
history in this region and, as we have been suggesting throughout this work, the Dead Sea Scrolls and, along with them, the person of James.

Having said this, the key connections are ‘
‘Ad
’ with
Addai
,
Edessa
and
Adiabene
;
Thamud
with
Thomas
;
Hud
with the characters we have otherwise been calling ‘
Judas Thomas
’ (as we have seen, the other or real name of
Thomas
), also equivalent to
Thaddaeus
,
Judas Barsabas
,
Judas the Zealot
, and, in this sense,
Judas Iscariot
– in fact, just about all the ‘
Judas
’es) in this Period; and
Salih
(the Arabic for
Righteousness
or
Righteous One
), of course, with
James the Just
, the ‘
brother
’ either of Jesus or this ‘
Hud’
. Even Muslim sources and commentators have garnered this conclusion, no doubt based on his name, apprecia
t
ing that ‘
Salih
’ was ‘
a Just and Righteous Man
’.
4

The reason these stories are so important, too, is because they unify the several conversion stories we have been following in both Early Christian and Jewish sources (and now probably also those at Qumran) relating to this region. As already made clear, in our view these stories have to do with the conversion of
the ‘King of Edessa’
, known in early Christian and Greco-Latin sources as
Abgarus
or
Agbarus
, called in Christian sources ‘
the Great King of the Peoples beyond the Euphrates’
. Fu
r
thermore, they have to do with the Kings and Queen of the Royal House of Adiabene – according to Syriac and Armenian sources, the consort of this
Agbarus
5
– contiguous to
Edessa
and a little further East ‘
beyond the Euphrates’
. They also have a direct link to the development of the tradition that ‘
James the Righteous One
’ sent down one ‘
Judas Barsabas
’ (among others – supposedly ‘
Silas
,
Barnabas
,
and Paul
’) in Acts 15:22–32 to regulate matters having to do with this evangelization in a place it knows as Antioch but, as we have been trying to demonstrate, probably also
Edessa
and, in any event, a
Northern Syrian
l
o
cale.

These
Northern Syrian
conversion stories are also important because they throw light on the puzzling terminology ‘
Sabaean
’ in the Koran (and elsewhere), which in Islamic sources – as well, as it turns out, as
Christian
6
– is often confused with ‘
Saba
’’ or ‘
Sheba
’ in Southern Arabia or Ethiopia.

Let us take these matters one at a time. In the first place it is rarely, if ever, realized that the word ‘
Arab
’ or ‘
Arabia
’ was being used, as just indicated, in Roman times to encompass a much wider expanse both of territory and personalities. Roman historians such as Tacitus routinely use the term ‘
Arab
’ to refer to Northern Syrian personages and Kings – as, in fact, persons still do today.
7
For Tacitus,
King Acbar
or
Abgar
is ‘
King of the Arabs’
.
8
Other sources, in fact, also refer to him as ‘
the Black
,’ a sobriquet which will have more than the normal significance.
9

Furthermore, this greater expanse of land going by the designation ‘
Arabia
’ extended up into Mesopotamia as far as Ede
s
sa and Adiabene in Northern Syria and modern Iraq. Petra, across the Jordan River and on the other side of the
‘
A
ravah
, is a locale whose Kings were definitely being referred to as ‘
Arab’
. We have already made it clear that this would make Herod – whose mother was from an aristocratic family in Petra, not improbably, related to its King – what would loosely be called an ‘
Arab’
. Modern scholars, following one or two leads in Josephus, are fond of referring to this culture as ‘
Nabataean
’ after
Nabaioth
, one of Ishmael’s sons in Genesis 25:13
10
; but it is doubtful whether these Peoples really ever referred to themselves in such a manner or, for that matter, anything other than
Arab
which had wide currency in the Roman First–Second Centuries. It is this state of affairs that Muhammad seems unwittingly to be echoing in his general references to these legendary Peoples of ‘
‘Ad
and Thamud’
.

Such a broader definition also imparts an entirely new dimension to Paul’s notice in Galatians 1:16 about how, after r
e
ceiving his ‘
version of the Good News as he taught it among the Gentiles
’, he did not return to Jerusalem or ‘
discuss it with any living being
’ or, for that matter, ‘
those who were Apostles before
(
him
’). On the contrary, he ‘
went straightway
into Arabia
’ and, only thereafter, ‘
again returned to Damascus
’ (1:17). The question is, precisely what did he mean by this reference here to ‘
Arabia
’?

Normally it is only thought of as having to do with Arabian
Petra
or some such locale – even a Qumran or an
Essene
-style novitiate of some kind in the Judean or Transjordanian Desert (
the ‘Land of Damascus
’?). But this broader definition allows us to consider that it meant as far north as ‘
the Land of the Edessenes
’ or even
Adiabene
neighboring
Edessa
some hundred miles or so further East, or as far South as
Messene
(Mani’s birthplace) or
Antiochia Charax
(present-day Basrah), the area where Josephus first traces Izates’ contact with the merchant he is calling ‘
Ananias
’ who, as we saw – together with another teacher unnamed in Josephus’ account – teaches a sort of conversion to what is supposed to be Judaism which
does not require
circumcision
11
!

This would mean that what Paul is alluding to by ‘
into Arabia
’ could be much further afield than is generally appreciated, even as far North and East as
Antioch-by-Callirhoe
or
Antioch Orrhoe
and/or
Adiabene
– today’s Kurdistan – in Northern Mesopotamia. This is before his return to ‘
Damascus’
, from where he later – or perhaps earlier, depending on how one eval
u
ates his own account in 2 Corinthians 11:32 – seems to have escaped from representatives of the
Arab
King Aretas of Petra. One must appreciate that Acts 9:25’s tendentious account of these same events is secondary. As already underscored as well, all these episodes also involve the contact with the mysterious and unidentified personage named ‘
Ananias
’ – as we saw, the same
Ananias
who (as Eusebius reports it) will reappear in the Syriac accounts of
King Agbar
or
Abgar
’s conversion.