James the Brother of Jesus and the Dead Sea Scrolls II (156 page)

The Land of Noah
, the Location of Mt. Ararat,
the Elchasaites
, and Other
Daily Bathers
there

There is another oddity that comes to light in the context of the notices about these
Lands
and the conversions that took place there and that is the location of the fabled Mount Ararat where Noah's ark came to rest, which the perspicacious reader of the Koran will realize is associated in most of these allusions with
Hud
and ‘
Ad
,
Salih
and
Thamud
. Modern hagiography has, of course, placed the ark in Northern Anatolia on the Russian border next to a mountain now called
Mt. Ararat
. This is partly due to the wandering of ‘
Armenia’
northwards (‘
Armenia
’ presumably being the area where Aramaic was originally sp
o
ken), so that the only real Armenia left – particularly after the Turkish devastations – is in Southern Russia. The point is that this ark was always associated in some manner with ‘
Armenia
’ and, as we shall see, this is basically the implication of these n
o
tices in the Koran as well.

But for early historians, such as Josephus or Hippolytus (the manuscript ‘
On Sects
’ attributed to him was found at Mount Athos in Greece at the end of the last Century), the ark came to rest in ‘
the Land of the
Adiabeni
’ – that is,
Adiabene
12
– which turns out to be modern Kurdistan or the area of Northern Iraq, moving up into the mountains of Southern Turkey and
not Northern Turkey
. In fact, one of the best witnesses to this is the Twelfth-Century Jewish traveler Benjamin of Tudela. He a
c
tually visited the mosque on an island in the Tigris dedicated to the place where the ark was supposed to have come to rest and, unless he was dreaming, this is just North of present-day Mosul – in fact, he locates it between Nisibis and Mosul.
13
As he puts it, leaving Haran (the ‘
Carrhae
’ or ‘
Carron
’ of Josephus’ narrative) and passing through Nisibis, he comes to: ‘
an island in the Tigris at the foot of Mount Ararat
,
four miles distant from the spot where the ark of Noah rested
.
Omar ibn al Katab r
e
moved the ark from the summit of the two mountains and made a mosque of it
.’
However mythological this may appear to be, it perfectly accords with what Hippolytus in the Third Century and Josephus in the First are telling us almost a millennium previously. It also accords with Talmudic data connecting the ark to
the Land from which Queen Helen came
– that is,
Adiabene
.’
14
Whether Benjamin of Tudela is accurate in this tradition or not (who can be accurate in any tradition concerning ‘
Noah
'
s ark
’?) is unimportant. The point is that this is where
he
thinks
the ark came to rest, as did a number of his predecessors – some a
l
ready cited. Because of the notices, already alluded to above, connecting ‘
‘Ad
and Thamud
’ with ‘
the Folk of Noah
’ – not to mention to ‘
the People of Abraham
’ – and the place where the ark came to rest, it would appear that the Koran seems to think so as well.
15
Mosul, of course, is connected to ancient Nineveh and both are but a little distant from Arbela, considered by most to have been the capital of Adiabene on the Northern reaches of the Tigris.

But more to the point ‘
Ad
, even if looked at only superficially, is, in fact, linguistically related not only to
Edessa
, but also to the place name
Adiabene
. One can go further than this. In all these stories about conversions in Northern Syria to some form of
Christianity
, retrospectively it is always
orthodox
Christianity
; but, as we have been suggesting, it was most probably heterodox or one of the manifold varieties of what is now sometimes referred to as ‘
Jewish Christianity
’ – and this is also the case with regard to Helen’s or her son Izates’ conversion to what is supposed to be a form of
Judaism
further East connected to these.

‘
Jewish Christianity
’ is poor nomenclature. Even the Arabic ‘
Sabaean’
would be more appropriate. The terms
Ebionites
,
Elchasaites
,
Masbuthaeans
(
Daily Bathers
, from the root in Syriac and/or Aramaic,
S
-
B
-
‘,
to immerse
– therefore its Arabic variation, ‘
Sabaeans
’ or
Subba
‘
),
Mandaeans
and, in Palestine, even
Essenes
, all have a common focus on
bathing
or ‘
ritual i
m
mersion’
. These are the more technical terms – many arising out of the works of early Christian heresiologists of the Second to Fifth Centuries or Josephus. Where the
Talmud
is concerned, it applies the appellatives
Minim
or
Saddukim
to groups of this kind.
16
For example, Epiphanius at the end of the Fourth/the beginning of the Fifth Century refers to an unknown bathing group in Transjordan and beyond, descended from
the Essenes
and
Ebionites
and interchangeable with these
Elchasaites
, that he calls ‘
Sampsaeans’
.
17
He has no idea of the derivation of the term but this last is almost certainly what goes by the name of ‘
Sabaean
’ in Islamic tradition.

It should be appreciated that even Benjamin of Tudela, in his seemingly very-late Twelfth-Century account, identifies one of two synagogues he claims actually to have visited in Mosul, as that of ‘
Nahum the Elchasaite’
,
i
.
e
., ‘
Nahum the
Daily Bat
h
er
’
18
or, in Islamic terms,
al-Mughtasilah
or
al-Hasih
, as the Encyclopaedist of that period known as ‘
The
Fihrist
’
calls the Leader of such
Mughtasilah
(not to be confused with the later philosophical group, known to Maimonides and others as
al-Mu
‘
tazilah
).
19
In fact, it is possible that this term in Arabic may even be a variation of what goes in Hebrew under the design
a
tion ‘
Karaite
’ (though this is probably a stretch), which would make the links between these two groups of Jewish sectarians interesting indeed.

However this may be, this means that even in Benjamin of Tudela's time in the Twelfth Century – unless his manuscript is completely corrupt – there were
Jewish
sectarian
Daily Bathers
living in Mosul or Arbela, that is, the area that was formerly
Adiabene
. Many of these groups move on in the Third and Fourth Centuries into what come to be known as
Manichaeans
– the only real difference being that, whereas
the Elchasaite
,
Ebionite
,
Mughtasilite
, and
Sabaean
groups stressed
Daily Bathing
,
the Manichaeans
abjured it – and from there on into Islam. In fact, Mani, was actually from an
Elchasaite
family in this same Messene area of Southern Iraq.

The point that all these groups actually have in common, including the latter-day Muslims (who like the Manichaeans di
s
carded the ‘
bathing
’ ideology of the earlier though still-extant ‘
Subba
‘
of the Marshes
’ –
The
Fihrist
calls them ‘
the
Mughtasilah
of the Marshes
’) is ‘
the True Prophet
’ ideology. As already underscored, this ideology is very definitely strong at Qumran where the passage underlying it from Deuteronomy 18:18–19 is actually one of the
Messianic
proof-texts cited in 4QTestimonia.
20
It is also definitely alluded to in the Community Rule.
21
Furthermore, it is also strong among
the Ebionites
, important to
the Elchasaites
– allegedly following a
Prophet
the heresiologists are calling
Elchasai
which they claim means ‘
Hidden Power
’ – and strong among followers of Mani. From there it too proceeds into Islam.

This is not the only Dead Sea Scroll/
Jamesian
/Ebionite idea that proceeds into Islam. Two others are the formulation ‘
b
e
lieve and do good works’
, which fairly permeates the capsule descriptions of Islam in the Koran
22
; the second is Islamic dietary regulations, quoted some five times in the Koran and consisting of, among other things, both the
Jamesian
‘
things sacrificed to idols
’ (‘
that immolated to an idol
’ in the Koran) and ‘
carrion’
.
23
The reader will by this time readily recognize these as based on James’ directives to overseas communities.

The Koranic versions as we have them here are probably based on the Pseudoclementine
Homilies
– originally probably a Syriac work and also the source of much deliberation both about the
True Prophet
ideology and ‘
bathing’
. Its translator, Rufinus, took it into Greek at the end of the Fourth Century and its companion volume, the
Recognitions
, went into Latin at approximately the same time. The formulation, ‘
carrion’
, reproduced in these pronouncements in the Koran, is clearly delin
e
ated the
Homilies
in place of the rather abstruse ‘
strangled things
’ in the Greek New Testament – though even the idea of ‘
ca
r
rion
’ can be deduced from this last.
24

The Conversion of
Agbar Uchama
, the Activities of
Hud
,
Salih
,
Addai
, and
Thaddaeus
in
‘Ad
and Thamud
, and
MMT

We are now ready to approach these notices about a conversion that took place in Northern Syria in a place our sources are calling
Edessa
– as we have seen, a late Greco-Syriac/Aramaic name for that city – presumably in the First Century and having to do with a King there known as
Agbar
or
Acbar
(the Latin pronunciation) or
Abgar
(the Semitic). The document E
u
sebius claims to be translating calls him ‘
Abgar Uchama
’ or ‘
Agbar the Black
’ and he is, most probably, to be identified with Abgar V, c. 4
BCE
–50
CE
.
25
The Fifth-Century Armenian historian, Moses of Chorene (some consider this a pseudonym for a later Ninth-Century Armenian historian), is already testifying to the difficulty Westerners are having with names based on S
e
mitic originals
26
and such a reversal of letters, as we have seen, is a common phenomenon for those familiar with the vagaries of translating Middle Eastern nomenclature
.

We have been using the Latin derivative,
Agbar
, because of its clear connections with the garbled name ‘
Agabus
’ in Acts 11:28, the
Prophet
who was supposed to have ‘
come down from Judea to Antioch
’ and predicted the Famine. This idea of a
Famine
will also bear some connection with these Koranic notices about the problems in either ‘
Ad
or
Thamud
.
27
The names ‘
Edessa
’ and even ‘
Adiabene
’ also have, as just pointed out, a clear relationship with the terminology ‘
Ad
and the
Prophet
called in some sources – in particular, the Syriac – ‘
Addai’
.
28