James the Brother of Jesus and the Dead Sea Scrolls II (104 page)

There is also the similar flight of the ‘
Sicarii
’ to Masada after their leader
Menachem
– either the son or grandson of
Judas the Galilean
– put on the royal purple of the king at the very beginning of the Uprising in 66
CE
.
20
This ultimately ends up in the celebrated suicide of these same
Sicarii
together with all their dependents in 73
CE
.
21

Finally, we have already mentioned the flight of the Mandaean partisans of John the Baptist to Northern Syria and b
e
yond, after he too was killed in what has to be regarded as partisan internecine strife.

For the sectaries represented by the Qumran materials,
the reunion of
‘
the Wilderness Camps
’
to rededicate themselves to ‘
the
Torah
’ or ‘
Covenant
’ – that is, ‘
the New Covenant in the Land of Damascus
’ – was
to take place every year at Pentecost
.
22
In Judaism ‘
Pentecost
’
or ‘
Shavu
‘
ot
’, it should be remarked, comes fifty days after Passover and is the time, if one can put it like this, of ‘
the descent of the
Torah
’ to Moses at Sinai. This is the festival which Acts 20:16 pictures Paul as hurrying to Jerusalem with his contributions to attend before
his final confrontation with James
. It is clear that
Pentecost
was also the time of the annual reunion of
‘
the Assemblies
’
or ‘
Churches
’
portrayed in Acts as well.

We have already seen how many of the successor groups to
the Jerusalem Community
of James, such as the
‘
Ebionites
’, ‘
Nazoraeans
’,
and
‘
Sampsaeans
’
, developed in these areas
across the Dead Sea
and
‘
beyond the Jordan
’
in Perea, Bashan, Batanea – what at Qumran might be called ‘
the Land of Damascus
’ – and Northern Syria and beyond. There can be little doubt that there was a lively
Diaspora
dwelling in these areas. The
‘
Mandaeans
’
– the remnants of ‘
the Sabaeans
’ in Southern Iraq – still preserve traditions that the followers of John the Baptist (themselves included) fled after he was executed by ‘
Herod the Tetrarch
’, emigrating to Northern Syria.
23
Therefore, one should pay some attention to the persistent note of this kind of
‘
flight
’
or
‘
emigrant
’
activity to all these regions.

John the Baptist, in particular – especially in the Gospel of John 1:28, 3:26, and 10:40 – is portrayed as carrying on most of his activities ‘
across the Jordan
’. Certainly his arrest there by Herod Antipas and execution at the Maccabean/Herodian Fo
r
tress of Machaeros, directly across the Dead Sea virtually due east from Qumran, would imply that the activities for which he was imprisoned had transpired in that region.
The authority of the
‘
Herod the Tetrarch
’
who executed him only extended from Galilee into Perea, but not
the Judean side of the Jordan
– at this time still under the control of the Roman
Prefect
or
Gove
r
nor
in Jerusalem and Caesarea.
24

So there is much to support such a
‘
flight
’
tradition, despite the fact of its somewhat fantastic packaging.
I
t is doubtful if we can really speak of
an actual
‘
flight
’
to the town of Pella itself
which at the beginning of the War, as Josephus recounts, was actually the scene of a good deal of partisan fighting between Jews and more Hellenized native populaces.
25
For awhile Jewish partisans held the upper hand, but ultimately the Jewish populations were for the most part wiped out by the pro-Roman, anti-Jewish, Greek-speaking population in these areas across the Jordan, then known as
‘
the Decapolis
’.
26

But a reasonable and viable alternative to an actual
‘
flight to Pella
’
would be to consider Pella as a gateway to these other areas ‘
beyond Jordan
’
and further North in the Damascus
region and beyond
, as implied by such terms as
‘
the Wilderness
’
or
‘
Desert of the Peoples
’
in the War Scroll and/or ‘
the Land of Damascus
’ in the Damascus Document. This is what is implied, too, in the plethora of notices from writers like Hippolytus, Eusebius, and Epiphanius about the presence of derivative groups like
‘
Naassenes
’
or
‘
Essenes
’, ‘
Nazoraeans
’, ‘
Ebionites
’, ‘
Elchasaites
’, ‘
Sampsaeans
’,
and
‘
Masbuthaeans
’
in regions such as th
e
se.

The totality of the claim, compressed into the idea of a single
‘
flight to Pella
’,
can probably be dated to the fact of the r
e
turn of a small Gentilized Community to Roman-controlled Jerusalem,
‘
Aelia Capitolina
’,
to set up as a more orthodox
‘
Chri
s
tian
’ Church there – subsequently referred to as ‘
the See of James
’ – following the failure of the Bar Kochba Revolt in 132–36
CE
.

But what of the mysterious
‘
oracle
’
that was supposed to have triggered this
‘
flight
’
? About this perhaps one can be more precise. Certainly it relates to the fact of the removal of ‘
the Protection of the People
’ James, without whose presence Jerus
a
lem could no longer remain in existence or was doomed according to
‘
the
Zaddik
-the-Pillar-of-the-World
’
ideology of Pro
v
erbs.
27
This is strengthened by all the
early Church
testimonies from Hegesippus to Clement to Origen, Eusebius, Jerome, and Epiphanius (Josephus’ testimony notwithstanding), insisting that
following the death of James
,
the Roman armies immediately appeared
.
28

It is in fact actually possible to identify both the mysterious oracle that gave rise to this alleged
flight
– regardless of the fact of whether it really took place as claimed or not – and its historical provenance, in the ‘
oracle
’ Josephus attributes to the mysterious
Prophet
he designates as ‘
Jesus ben Ananias
’.
29

This ‘
Prophet
’ too seems to have appeared around
Succot
, 62
CE
. We can determine this on the basis of Josephus’ own testimony. He, not only tells us about the existence of this later Jesus, but how he continued prophesying ceaselessly for ‘
seven and a half years
’
from the time of his first appearance until he was killed by a Roman projectile during the siege of Jerusalem just prior to its fall
. This means that he started
‘
prophesying
’
in the Autumn of 62
CE
, that is,
exactly in the aftermath
of James’ death as well
.
30

But this
‘
prophecy
’
of the destruction of Jerusalem that
‘
continued for seven and a half years
’
not only related in some manner to James’ death, but also to similar oracles or predictions ascribed to
Jesus
in
the ‘Little Apocalypse
’.
It also relates to the proclamation in Revelation, ‘
Babylon is fallen
,
Babylon is fallen
’, a proclamation echoing Isaiah 21:9 but, as so often o
c
curs, reversed – Jesus ben Ananias’ mournful cry,
relating to the coming fall of Jerusalem
; Revelation’s, as normally interpre
t
ed,
relating to the fall of Rome
.

Jesus ben Ananias
and
Agabus
’ Prophecy

It is also possible to identify Josephus’ ‘
Jesus ben Ananias
’ and his
Prophecy
in two patently fictionalized refurbishments of the life-story of Paul, as
presented in Acts, centering about another equally mysterious
Prophet
whom Acts calls
‘
Agabus
’
. In the first in Acts 11:27–30,
Agabus
is the stand-in for Queen Helen’s putative consort in Armenian and Syriac sources – her
‘
brother
’
if we take Josephus for our guide or, if a title, also the name of her son by this King
31
–
‘
Agbarus
’
or
‘
Abgarus
’.
32

His second materialization occurs in Acts 21:10–14 just prior to Paul’s last trip to Jerusalem and final confrontation with James. In it, the pretense is that another of these curious ‘
certain one
’s (now definitively denoted as ‘
a Prophet named Agabus
’) ‘
came down from Judea
’, this time not ‘
to Antioch
’ but ‘
to Caesarea
’ (21:10 – in 11:27 earlier, it will be recalled, the first materialization of this ‘
Prophet
’ was expressed a little more floridly as, ‘
and in these days prophets came down from Jer
u
salem to Antioch
’, ‘
one among whom was named Agabus
’).

It is at this point in Acts 21:11–12 that this ‘
Prophet named Agabus
’ is pictured, rather comically, as ‘
taking hold of Paul
’
s girdle
’ and
warning Paul
, ‘
not to go up to Jerusalem
’ – which, in effect, is the reversal of the ‘
Pella flight
’
oracle – not ‘
not to go up to Jerusalem
’ but ‘
to
leave
Jerusalem
’. It is a not incurious fact too that in tying this oracle to ‘
a Prophet called Agabus
’, as Acts does in its own peculiar way, it closes the triangle of these three ‘
prophecies
’, tying the ‘
Pella flight
’
oracle
even closer to the mournful cry of the
Prophet
whom Josephus designates as ‘
Jesus ben Ananias
’ just
after the death of James
.

It would be well to repeat the first notice in Acts 11:27–28 about this ‘
Agabus
’ in its entirety: ‘
And in these days
(c. 45–46
CE
)
prophets came down from Jerusalem to Antioch and Agabus
,
rising up from among them
,
evoked via the Spirit the Great Famine that was about to engulf the whole habitable world
,
which actually came to pass under Claudius Caesar
.’
In both the first appearance of this
Prophet
Acts uses to introduce ‘
the Great Famine
’
and Paul and Barnabas’
famine relief
operations associated with it, and the second – just prior to Paul’s own arrest and ultimately James’ disappearance from the scene –
‘
Agabus
’
is the stand-in and mirror replacement for or inversion of this other character in Josephus ‘
Jesus ben Ananias
’, who
really was
‘
a Prophet
’
at this time
.