James the Brother of Jesus and the Dead Sea Scrolls I: The Historical James, Paul the Enemy, and Jesus' Brothers as Apostles by Eisenman Robert

Author:Eisenman, Robert [Eisenman, Robert]
Language: eng
Format: mobi
Publisher: Grave Distractions Publications
Published: 2012-05-14T16:00:00+00:00

Chapter 17

The Truth About the Death of James

The Blasphemy Charge Against James

We now turn to the Fourth-Century theologian Jerome, who in a few allusions finally gives us the key to sort out all these overlaps, transpositions, and non sequiturs in the various stories about the attack on and death of James. Though Jerome presents the data about James’ death in just a few sentences, several points emerge from his version which overlap the presentation of the attack on James in the Temple by ‘the Enemy’ Paul in the 40’s not the 60’s in the Pseudoclementine Recognitions. Can it be possible that Paul did this – can Recognitions be true? Not only is it possible and it did probably happen, but there is more – much more.

When one reads Jerome carefully, one can see he knows many of the things we know today about biblical research. For instance, he is aware that not all the letters of Paul may have been written by Paul, that Hebrews might have been written by Barnabas, that Jude is the brother of James, and that there is a question about the authenticity of the Letter attributed to James because of its excellent Greek – all points still discussed by biblical scholars today. Nevertheless one must approach his work with caution, for in it there is still an orthodox theological orientation, coupled with a desire to protect the Church at all costs which must be reckoned with.

When Jerome comes to present the death of James, he prefaces this with the usual – probably direct – quotation from Hegesippus, describing James’ Naziritism, which is worth repeating: ‘He alone enjoyed the privilege of entering the Holy of Holies since, indeed, he did not wear woollen, but only linen clothes, and went into the Temple alone and prayed on behalf of the People, so that his knees were reputed to have acquired the calluses of a camel’s knees.’ This could be nothing other than an account of a Yom Kippur atonement.

Like Eusebius, Jerome also claims to be quoting Hegesippus directly but makes no bones about the fact that it was the Holy of Holies into which James went. For Jerome, this atonement was a function of James’ ‘Priestly’ activities and, therefore, his functioning as a kind of ‘Opposition High Priest’ – not so much of his ‘bathing’ ones or the other aspects of his ‘Piety’ or life-long Nazitism or ‘Holiness’, which were more in the manner of those Josephus is calling ‘Essenes’ or parallel ‘Sabaean’, ‘Elchasaite’, or ‘Mandaean’ practices of Northern Syria and Southern Iraq.

Then Jerome, combining what he claims to be the accounts of both Clement and Josephus, provides the following description:

On the death of Festus who governed Judea, Albinus was sent by Nero as his successor. Before he had reached his province, Ananias the High Priest (thus), the youngest son of Ananus of the class of Priests, taking advantage of the state of anarchy, assembled a Sanhedrin and publicly tried to force James to recant that Christ was the Son of God.

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