Robert Eisenman, James the
Brother of Jesus: The Key to Unlocking the Secrets of Early Christianity
and the
Dead Sea
Scrolls.
Viking Penguin, 1997.
Reviewed by Robert M. Price
In
his recent publications The Dead Sea Scrolls Uncovered (with Michael
Wise) and The Dead Sea Scrolls and the First Christians Robert Eisenman
of the Institute for the Study of Judeo-Christian Origins and the
Institute for Higher Critical Studies has been threatening/promising to
redraw the map of Christian origins and now, by God, he has done it. The
breadth and detail of Eisenman's investigation are breathtaking, as are
its implications. In James the Brother of Jesus he tells the long-lost
tale of formative "prehistoric" Christianity as it emerged from the
crucible of revolutionary Palestine and from the internecine hostilities
between Pauline and Ebionite Christianities. I call it "prehistoric"
because Eisenman reconstructs the events lying before and beneath our
canonical histories of early Christianity. His enterprise is in this
sense akin to that of Burton Mack, that other great delver into the
subterrene depths of religious pre-history. Like Mack, Eisenman
discovers a "Christianity" (or perhaps a proto-Christianity, or even a
pre-Christianity) for which Jesus had not yet attained centrality. Only
whereas Mack sees the initial germ of the new religion as a variant of
Cynicism, Eisenman rejuvenates, even vindicates, Renan's old claim that
Christianity began as "an Essenism."
To
anticipate the thrust of the book as a whole, let it be said that
Eisenman first draws a portrait of the early community of James as a
nationalistic, messianic, priestly, and xenophobic sect of ultra-legal
pietism, something most of us would deem fanaticism. Eisenman shows how
"Jewish Christianity" was part and parcel of the sectarian milieu which
included Essenes, Zealots, Nazoreans, Nazirites, Ebionites, Elchasites,
Sabeans, Mandaeans, etc., and that these categories were no more than
ideal types, by no means actually segregated one from the other like
exotic beasts in adjacent, well-marked cages in the theological zoo.
Over against this sort of "Lubavitcher Christianity," Eisenman depicts
Pauline Christianity (plus its Hellenistic cousins Johannine, Markan,
Lukan, etc., Christianities) as being root and branch a compromising,
assimilating, Herodianizing apostasy from Judaism. Greek Christianity
gives the Torah, and Jewish identity, the bum's rush. The Pauline
Christ, a spiritual redeemer with an invisible kingdom, is of a piece
with the christening of Vespasian as the messiah by Josephus.
Of
course, these ideas are by no means new. Eisenman is simply filling out
the picture in an exhaustive manner undreamt of by S.G.F. Brandon,
Robert Eisler, and his successors. The picture of Jesus in the Greek
gospels, eating with tax-collectors, lampooning the traditions of his
people, welcoming sinners and ridiculing Torah piety are all expressions
of Gentile anti-Judaism. Only Gentiles utterly without sympathy to
Judaism could profess to see such a Jesus as a noble pioneer of a
"higher righteousness." In the same way, the New Testament notion that
Jerusalem fell because her people had rejected the messiah, when in fact
they were fighting a messianic war against the Roman antichrist, must be
judged a piece of cynical Hellenistic Jew-bashing. Christianity as it
emerges in the Gentile mission is a product of cultural accomodationism,
pro-Roman Quislingism, and intentional assimilation. It is a kind of
paganized, syncretic, diluted Judaism not unlike the Sabazius cult.
Armed
with a hermeneutic of suspicion, Eisenman shows us how to crack the
codes of theological disinformation, to listen to the long-faded echoes,
to find handholds up what had seemed an insurmountable climb to a peak
from which to view the hitherto unseen landscape of early Christianity.
What are his climbing tools?
First,
Eisenman considers a much wider range of historical sources than most
think they need to. He plumbs, as we have come to expect, the Dead Sea
Scrolls, as well as the Clementine Recognitions and Homilies, the
Apostolic Constitutions, Eusebius, the two James Apocalypses from Nag
Hammadi, even the Western Text of Acts and the Slavonic Josephus. And
Eisenman takes Josephus much more seriously as a source for Luke's Acts
than anyone ever has before. All these our author carefully sifts,
taking nothing uncritically. Where he differs from most previous
scholars is in taking these materials seriously at all as new sources of
information, the odd clue here or there, about James and Paul.
Second,
Eisenman has developed a keen sense for the "name game" played in the
sources. Most of us have sometime scratched our heads over the
tantalizing confusions latent in the strange redundancy of similar names
in the New Testament accounts. How can Mary have had a sister named
Mary? Is there a difference between Joseph Barsabbas Justus, Judas
Barsabbas Justus, and James the Just? Whence all the Jameses and
Judases? Who are Simon the Zealot and Judas the Zealot (who appears in
some NT manuscripts and other early Christian documents)? Is Clopas the
same as Cleophas? What's going on with Jesus ben-Ananias, Jesus
Barabbas, Elymas bar-Jesus, and Jesus Justus? What does Boanerges really
mean? Is Nathaniel a nickname for someone else we know of? And so on,
and so on. Most of us puzzle over these oddities for a moment--and then
move on. After all, how important can they be, anyway? Eisenman does not
move on till he has figured it out.
His
working hypothesis is that the confusions, alterations, and obfuscations
stem from an interest in covering over the importance, and therefore the
identity, of the Desposyni, the Heirs of Jesus who had apparently
functioned at least for Palestinian Christianity as a dynastic Caliphate
similar to the Alid succession of Shi'ite Islam or the succession of
Hasmonean brothers. It is a commonplace that the gospel texts treating
Jesus' mother, brothers and sisters either severely (Mark and John) or
delicately (Luke, c.f., the Gospel according to the Hebrews) are
functions of ecclesiastical polemics over their leadership claims as
opposed to Peter and the Twelve (analogous to the Companions of the
Prophet in Sunni Islam) or to outsiders like Paul. It is equally well
known that the Synoptic apostle lists differ between themselves and
between manuscripts of each gospel. Why? Eisenman connects these
phenomena with another, the confusion arising among early theologians
over the siblings of Jesus as the doctrine of Mary's perpetual virginity
became widespread. They had to be harmonized with the dogma, so brothers
and sisters became cousins, step-siblings, etc. And characters became
sundered. Mary suddenly had a sister named Mary because the mother of
James, Joses, Simon, and Judas could no longer also be the mother of
Jesus. And so on.
The
gospels give prominence to an inner circle of three: Peter, John son of
Zebedee and John's brother James. And Galatians has the Three Pillars in
Jerusalem: Peter, John son of Zebedee, and Jesus' brother James. What
happened here? Surely the inner group of three is intended as
preparatory for the Pillars, to provide a life-of-Jesus pedigree for the
Pillars. But then why are there two different Jameses? Mustn't they
originally have been the same? Eisenman says they were, but certain
factions who wanted to play up the authority of the shadowy college of
the Twelve against the earlier authority of the Heirs found it politic
to drive a wedge between James the brother of Jesus and the Twelve, so
James becomes James the Just on the one hand and James the brother of
John on the other.
Another
attempt to distance James the Just from the Companions of Jesus would
have been the cloning of James the Just as James the son of "Alphaeus,"
which name Papias says is interchangeable with "Cleophas," who happens
to be the father of Simeon, James' successor as bishop of Jerusalem and
his brother as well. And eventually James the son of Alphaeus and James
son of Zebedee both replace James the Just in the circle of disciples.
Meanwhile, Thomas has similarly undergone mitosis into Judas of James,
Thaddaeus, Lebbaeus, and Judas Iscariot. Simon the Zealot is Simon bar
Cleophas, another brother of Jesus, the successor of James as the leader
of the Jerusalem Christians after James' martyrdom. He has been confused
with the similar-sounding Simeon Cephas (Simon Peter) as well. Eisenman
has worked out a complex and coherent grammar of these processes.
Third,
Eisenman brings to bear on the narratives of Acts the model of a "mix
and match" redactional technique whereby Luke is seen to have composed
his stories by recombining the salient features of very different
stories from his sources. When Luke finishes, only bits of either the
paradigmatic or syntagmic composition of the originals are left, but
there is enough to recognize the one as the mutation of the other. This
is the procedure used recently to great effect by a number of scholars,
not least John Dominic Crossan (who shows the Passion Narrative to be
built up from various Old Testament proof texts), Randel Helms (who in
Gospel Fictions shows case after case of a gospel story's
derivation from a similar Septuagint story), and Thomas L. Brodie (who
unscrambles numerous Lukan tales into their original Deuteronomic
components). Eisenman's originality at this point lies not in the
technique but rather in his willingness to take seriously Luke's use of
Josephus as a source. (Again, this is something no one who wants an
early date for Luke or a historical basis for Acts is likely to consider
seriously, but then we have a case of apologetics masquerading as
criticism.) And Eisenman's redactional analyses of Luke on Josephus is
unly one of the major advances of James the Brother of Jesus. It seems
not too much to say that the book ushers in a new era in the study of
Acts.
This is
not to say, however, that Eisenman limits his use of the technique to
Luke's use of Josephus. Far from it: he is able to distil traditions
from various sources and to identify them in their new guises in
Luke-Acts and elsewhere in the New Testament. I propose now to provide
summaries of a few of Eisenman's reconstructions, showing in broad
outline what he sees Luke (or others) having made of originally quite
different traditions.
Various
early Christian sources have James being elected by the apostles as
bishop of Jerusalem at the behest of Jesus (as in the Gospel of Thomas,
logion 12). Luke's Hellenizing agenda has led him to retell this story
not as the replacement of Jesus by James the Just, but rather the
replacement of the villain Judas Iscariot by the non-entity "Matthias."
James the Just has shrunk so small as to hide behind the runner-up for
the position, "Joseph Barsabbas called Justus." The name Matthias was
suggested, via simple word association, by Mattathias the father of
another Judas, Judas Maccabeus. Thus when later we meet James the Just
as the head of the Jerusalem Church we are expected to know who he is,
though Luke has eliminated what would have been our introduction to him!
A tell-tale sign of the story's originally having dealt with James'
election is the proof-text, "his bishopric let another man take."
As
Hans-Joachim Schoeps had already surmised, the stoning of Stephen has in
precisely the same way supplanted the stoning of James (actually a
conflation of James' ultimate stoning at the command of Annanus and an
earlier assault by Saul on the temple steps preserved as a separate
incident in the Recognitions). The name Stephen has been borrowed from a
Roman official beaten by Jewish insurgents whom Josephus depicts
ambushing him outside the city walls. Why this name? Because of a pun:
Stephen means "crown" and was suggested both by the long hair of the
Nazirite (which James was, according to early church writers) and by the
crown of martyrdom. To Stephen has been transferred James' declaration
of the Son of Man at the right hand of God in heaven, as well as James'
"Christlike" prayer for his persecutors. We read that a young man named
Saul was playing coat check for the executioners of Stephen and, his
taste for blood whetted, immediately began to foment persecution in
Jerusalem and Damascus. This has been drawn, again from the lore of
James as well as Josephus. The clothing motif was suggested by the final
blow to James' head with a fuller's club, while just after his own
account of James' death, Josephus tells of the rioting started by a
Herodian named Saulus in Jerusalem!
Eisenman
sees various Jamesian themes floating around to link up in entirely
different forms elsewhere in Christian scripture. For instance, the
Transfiguration has Jesus glimpsed in heavenly glory as Stephen saw him
and James proclaimed him. And of course "James" is there on the scene.
The "fuller" element is repeated in the form of Jesus' shining clothes,
whiter than any fuller on earth could have bleached them. Again, in the
Recognitions, Saul is pursuing James and the Jerusalem saints out to
Jericho (the vicinity of the Qumran "Damascus"), and somehow they are
protected by the spectacle of two martyrs' tombs which miraculously
whiten every year. There is the whitening element linked with Saul's
persecution. Again, at the empty tomb (recalling those martyrs' tombs),
we meet a "young man" (the epithet applied to Saul in Acts' stoning of
Stephen) who is dressed in white and sitting at the right, this time, of
Jesus' resting place.
Peter's
visit to Cornelius almost qualifies as a parody of Josephus' story of
one Simon, a pious leader of his own "assembly" in Jerusalem who wanted
to bar Herod Agrippa I from the temple on account of his Gentile
pollutions, whereupon Agrippa invited him to inspect his home at
Caesarea and then sent him away with gifts. Luke borrowed the name
Cornelius from elsewhere in Josephus where Cornelius is a name of two
Roman soldiers, one involved in the siege of the Temple under Pompey,
the other in the siege of Jerusalem under Titus. The Roman cohort at
Caesarea, where Luke stations his pious Cornelius, were among the most
violence-prone in Palestine. The element of conflict between Herod
Agrippa I and Simon Peter, of course, has been transferred over to Acts
12, where Herod arrests Peter but Peter escapes, the same basic outcome,
but with heightened drama.
What
about the always fascinating character Simon Magus? Eisenman indentifies
him with a magician named Simon of whom Josephus recounts that he helped
Bernice convince her sister Drusilla to dump her husband King Azizus of
Emesa, who had gotten circumcized to marry her, so she could take up wth
the uncircumcized Felix instead. Josephus’ magician Simon is a Cypriot,
while Acts’ Simon Magus is said by later writers to hale from Gitta in
Samaria, but this actually strengthens the connection, since it was
natural to confuse “Gitta” with the “Kittim,” or Sea Peoples of Cyprus.
Not only so, but Eisenman notes that some manuscripts of Josephus name
the magician “Atomus,” which Eisenman connects with the Primal Adam
doctrine he sees implied in Simon’s claim to have been the Standing One
reincarnated many times. But there is a closer link still, that Eisenman
chanced not to note. Anyone can see that Luke has created the episode of
Saul/Paul squaring off against Elymas the sorcerer (Acts 13:8 ff) as a
Pauline counterpart to Peter’s contest with Simon Magus in Acts 8:9ff
(in fact, Elymas’ patronymic “bar-Jesus” as likely as not reflects the
claim Simon made to have recently appeared in Judea as Jesus). So Elymas
is simply Simon Magus. And, what do you know?, the Western Text of Acts
gives the name as Etoimas or Etomas instead of Elymas! Thus, Simon Magus
= Elymas = Etomas = Atomus = Josephus’ Simon = Simon Magus.
Where
did Luke find his raw material for the prophecy of Agabus of a great
famine to transpire in Claudius' reign, of Paul's trip from Antioch to
deliver famine relief funds to Jerusalem, and for the earlier tale of
Philip and the Ethiopian eunuch? Again, from Josephus (though perhaps
also from other cognate sources of information). It all stems, by hook
and by crook, from the story of Helen, Queen of Adiabene, a realm
contiguous and/or overlapping with Edessa, whose king Agbar/Abgarus some
sources make Helen's husband. Helen and her son Izates converted to
Judaism, though initially Izates refrained from circumcision on the
counsel of a Jewish teacher who assured him the worship of God was more
important than circumcision. His mother, too, advised against it, since
his subjects might resent his embracing of such alien customs. But soon
a stricter Jewish teacher from Jerusalem, one Eliezer, visited Izates,
finding him poring over the Genesis passage on the Abrahamic covenant of
circumcision. Eliezer asked if Izates understood the implications of
what he was reading. If he did, then why did he not see the importance
of being circumcised? And this the prince then agreed to do. Helen and
Izates proved the sincerity of their conversion by, among other
philanthropies, sending agents to Egypt and Cyrene to buy grain during
the Claudius famine and to distribute it to the poor in Jerusalem.
These
events have left their mark in the New Testament as follows. Eisenman
notes (as of course all commentators do) that there is no room for the
famine relief visit in Galatians' itinerary of Paul's visits to
Jerusalem, but he ventures to place the event during Paul's sojourn in
"Arabia," which in the parlance of the time could include Edessa/Adiabene.
Acts knows two Antiochs, those in Pisidia and Syria, but there were
others, including Edessa! Eisenman identifies Paul as the first Jewish
teacher who tells Izates he need not be circumcised if he has faith in
God. (This episode also lies at the basis of the Antioch episode
recounted in Galatians, when certain men from James arrived in Antioch
to tell Paul's converts they must be circumcised after all.) Paul is one
of Helen's agents to bring famine relief to Jerusalem, which he is said
to do "from Antioch," in Acts 11.
But we
pick up the Helen story again back in chapter 8, with Philip substituted
for Paul, where Philip accosts the financial officer of a foreign queen
going from Jerusalem down through Egypt by way of Gaza. This is of
course the Ethiopian eunuch. Why has Luke transformed Helen the Queen of
Adiabene into Candace the Queen of Ethiopia? He has reverted to an Old
Testament prototype, making Helen, a convert to Judaism, into a New
Testament Queen of Sheba, having come to Jerusalem to hear the wisdom of
Solomon. There is also a pun on the root saba, denoting baptism, a la
the Essenes, Sampsaeans, Sabeans, Masbutheans, and Mandaeans, the type
of Judaism Helen would have converted to (given the later Zealot
involvements of her sons and her own reputed 21 years of Nazirite
asceticism). Henry Cadbury pointed out long ago that Luke has fallen
into the same trap as a number of literary contemporaries by taking as a
personal name, Candace, the title of all the old Ethiopian queens,
kandake, but Eisenman sees also a pun on the name of Helen's son
Kenedaeos, who gave his life for his adopted people in the Roman War. In
any case, there were no Ethiopian queens at this time.
When the
prophet Agabus predicts the famine, Luke has derived his name from that
of Helen's husband Agbarus. When the eunuch invites Philip to step up
into his chariot, we have an echo of Jehu welcoming Jonadab into his
chariot. When Philip asks the Ethiopian if he understands what he reads,
Luke has borrowed this from the story of Izates and Eliezer, where the
question also presages a ritual conversion, only this time the text is
Isaiah's prophecy of Jesus, and the ritual is baptism. The original
circumcision survives in the form of crude parody (recalling Galatians
5:12) with the Ethiopian having been fully castrated. Even the location
of the Acts episode is dictated by the Helen story, as the Ethiopian
travels into Egypt via Gaza as Helen's agents must have in order to buy
the grain. Luke's substituted motivation for the trip, by contrast, is
absurd: a eunuch could not have gone to Jerusalem to worship since
eunuchs were barred from the Temple!
The
suicide of Judas Iscariot (originally "the Sicarius") represents a
mixing of elements that make more sense in their presumably earlier
setting in the life of James and Jude. The suicide element (as well as
the drawing of lots in the adjacent context in Acts 1) comes from the
drawing of lots to begin the suicides of the Sicarii at Masada. The
falling headlong comes from James' being pushed from the pinnacle of the
temple, while the gushing out of his bowels reflects the dashing out of
James' brains by the evil launderer. Like James, Acts' Judas is buried
where he fell.
Eisenman
sees James as integrally involved in some of the episodes Josephus
recounts from the same period, such as the building of a wall to cut off
Herod Agrippa's dining room view overlooking the sacrificial altar of
the Temple, which happened just before James' martyrdom, and the
prophecy of Jesus ben-Ananias of Jerusalem's eventual doom that happened
just afterward. James had been the bulwark holding off the judgment of
God, and with him out of the way, the city's doom was sealed. (Origen
had read a version of Josephus in which he said the people ascribed the
fall of the city to punishment for the death of James the Just.) James
had been executed for blasphemy on account of his functioning (as early
church writers tell us) as an opposition High Priest entering the Inner
Sanctum on the Day of Atonement. As an Essene (as shown by his ascetic
practices, his linen dress, etc.) he would have celebrated Yom Kippur on
a different day, which is how he could not collide with Ananus doing the
same thing, and why he would have been executed for ritual irregularity
as the Mishnah required for such an infraction.
Eisenman
shows himself willing to take seriously the Ebionite charge that Paul
was never a real Jew to begin with. Eisenman adduces the evidence of
Paul's Herodian background, something we really do not have to read too
far between the lines to see, given his Roman citizenship, his kinship
to one Herodion and to the household of Aristobulus. If this is what the
Ebionites meant, that Paul was as little a Jew as Herod the Great
despite his pretense, then we have a scenario more natural than that
which the Ebionite charge might otherwise imply: the idea of Paul as
some sort of Greek pagan entering Judaism superficially and from
without. As Eisenman notes, Paul protests that he is a Hebrew, an
Israelite, even a Benjaminite, but he avoids calling himself a Jew! And
Eisenman suggests that, given the strange fact that "Bela" appears both
as a chief clan of Benjamin and as the first Edomite king, "Benjaminite"
may have been a kind of Herodian euphemism for their oblique relation to
Judaism.
Eisenman
cites the Talmud’s notice that the Rechabites (=Nazirites) used to marry
the daughters of the High Priests. Though he does not make the
particular connection I am about to make, this Talmudic note suggests to
me a new and more natural way of understanding the Ebionite slur that
Paul had converted to Judaism only because he was smitten by the High
Priest’s daughter and wanted to curry favor with her father to win her
hand. Now think of Acts’ account of Paul’s unsuccessful ruse, feigning
Nazirite allegiance by paying for the purification of four of James’
zealots (Acts 21:23-26), which backfired on him and led to rioting by
(as F.C. Baur recognized) James’ “zealots for the Torah” (not some
vacationing Jews from Asia Minor, as Luke would have it) over Paul’s
attempt to profane the Temple (vv 27-30). As this use of money to
underwrite the four men’s purification rite seems to be a variant
version of the presentation, and rejection, of the Collection (Romans
15:31), we may suspect that this final rebuff of Paul as a would-be
Nazirite, this decisive rejection of Paul’s attempt to curry favor with
the party of James, has been figuratively rendered in later Jamesian
(i.e., Ebionite) propaganda as Paul’s frustrated attempt to do what
Nazirites did, to “marry the daughter of the High Priest”! Why choose
this particular metaphor for Paul as a false prophet? Because of the
resonances of “the suitor” as a seducer (of Israel), a deceiver and
false prophet (cf., 2 Cor 11:1-5, where Paul turns precisely the same
charge back on the Jerusalem “super-apostles.”).
Whether
one finds Eisenman’s portrait of James the Just convincing as a whole or
not, one must be grateful for the flood of new light he sheds on many
matters including the sources of Acts and their method of redaction.