James the Brother of Jesus and the Dead Sea Scrolls II (157 page)

When the name ‘
Edessa
’ gained currency is not clear at all but, before it was called
Edessa
it was apparently called
Antiochia Orrhoe
or
Antioch-by-Callirhoe
. The fact that Antioch Orrhoe or by-Callirhoe was on the upper reaches of the E
u
phrates, not far from Abraham’s place of origin, had a not inconsiderable bearing on not only Early Christian and Jewish sources but also quite clearly the Koran itself. We have already made it clear as well that, in our view, the Antioch intended in these several notices in Acts about individuals such as this ‘
Agabus’
, ‘
some
insisting on circumcision
’ (the ‘
some
from James
’ in Galatians 2:12), and ‘
Judas Barsabas
’ who brought down
the Letter
James wrote in Acts 15:23–30, was not Antioch-on-the-Orontes near the Mediterranean Coast, but rather the one in Northern Syria, connected to this name ‘
‘Ad
’, where these le
g
endary conversions took place (and neither coincidentally nor insignificantly, from where the celebrated ‘
Holy Shroud
’ was ultimately alleged to have come
29
).

These notices, also reflecting Galatians and Paul's confrontations at Antioch with the ‘
some from James
’ of ‘
the Party of the Circumcision’
, are about individuals like
Agabus
,
Judas Barsabas
, and the ‘
some insisting that
,
unless you are circumcised you cannot be saved
’ who trigger the equally celebrated
Jerusalem Council
. Furthermore, they contain the note that it was ‘
in
Antioch
that the Disciples were first called Christians
’ (11:26 –
thus
!). As already made clear, in our view there was nothing of note really happening at this time in
Antioch-on-the-Orontes
and the only reason we think there was – as the authors of Acts have made us do – is because of our and their respective ignorance (or purposeful dissimulation). What
was
happening was happening here in Northern Syria with these legendary conversions in ‘
the Land of the Edessenes
’ or
Osrhoeans
/
Assyrians
–
the
Lands
of ‘
the Great King of the Peoples beyond the Euphrates
’. In our sources these ‘
Lands’
are also being called ‘
Arab
’. It turns out that the intermediary in this correspondence between this ‘
Great King
’ and Jerusalem in the Syriac source that Eus
e
bius claims to have found and translated was, yet again, this same ‘
Ananias
’ – a not unnoteworthy coincidence.

The story, as Eusebius presents it, concerns two characters he calls ‘
Judas Thomas
’ and ‘
Thaddaeus
’, neither of whom are really properly identified in any other
Christian
source. In the Gospel of John, for instance,
Thomas
is called ‘
Didymus Tho
m
as’
, literally ‘
Twin Twin’
. In the newly-recovered Gospel of Thomas found at Nag Hammadi, he is ‘
Didymus Judas Thomas’
, combining the two sorts of appellations but, once more, manifestly unaware of the inherent redundancy of referring to both
Didymus
and
Thomas
.
30
All Gospel presentations, too, of
a Disciple
or
Apostle
called ‘
Thomas
’ must be seen as either su
s
pect, uninformed, or dissimulating as well. Even in John 20:24, when he appears as the ‘
missing
’ Apostle,
he sometimes ove
r
laps Judas Iscariot
in the Synoptics
. Nor does
Thomas
seem to be mentioned in the
Gospel of Judas
, which doesn’t seem to make it clear if its ‘
Judas
’ is surnamed ‘
the
Iscariot
’ or distinguish him from the ‘
brothers
’ or
Thomas
.

It is, however, only in the Syriac sources – and we would include in these the source Eusebius is working from to produce his narrative about the correspondence with King Agbarus – that this appellative ‘
Judas
’ is always and probably accurately joined to his other title.
31
That in some sense this ‘
twin
’ theme has to do with the ‘
brother
’ theme in sources about James and the other ‘
brothers
’ is also, probably, not to be gainsaid. Moreover, that all have in some sense to do with one ‘
Judas’
, in some manner related either to Jesus or James, should also be clear. The attaching of ‘
Judas
’ to
Thomas
’ name in Eusebius’ source but not Eusebius’ own actual narrative also bears out its authenticity, though not necessarily its accuracy in terms of
dramatis personae
– that is, the source is not necessarily reliable in terms of characters and subject matter, only that something of this kind appears to have happened and it does, at least, have some idea of the true names.
32

Where
Thaddaeus
is concerned, once again, in the Apostle lists in Matthew and Mark, he parallels the
Apostle
Luke 6:16 is calling ‘
Judas of James
’. For some recensions of Matthew and in Syriac documents such as the Apostolic Constitutions, he bears the additional surname of ‘
Lebbaeus’
, perhaps – as we have already suggested – a distortion of ‘
Alphaeus’
, as in ‘
James the son of Alphaeus
’ in the Synoptics (Matthew 10:3 and
pars
.); or of ‘
Cleophas’
, the name of Mary's other husband (‘
Clopas
’ in John 19:25) and the seeming father of these ‘
brothers
’
33
; or a garbling of James’ mysterious cognomen in Hegisippus also
via
Eusebius above –
Oblias
, meaning in this pivotal source, ‘
Protection of the People’
.
34
Eusebius, for example, doesn't even know whether
Thaddaeus
is an
Apostle
or a
Disciple
(if there is any difference) and what finally emerges in all these sources is that these two individuals ‘
Thaddaeus
’ and ‘
Thomas
’ are for the most part all but indistinguishable.
35

For the two Apocalypses of James from Nag Hammadi,
Addai
and someone actually referred to as ‘
Theudas
’ (probably
Thaddaeus
) are also parallel figures.
36
Finally, in Syriac texts
Thaddaeus
is none other than
Addai
himself – as should have been suspected all along – the eponymous figure associated with all these stories and traditions centering around
Edessa
and the conversion of ‘
the Great King of the Peoples beyond the Euphrates
’ to what is pictured, at this point anyhow, as
Christ
i
anity
).
37
As opposed to this, however, it should be appreciated that there is another Divine figure called ‘
Ad
or
Addai
associa
t
ed with this region from remotest antiquity.
38

As we saw, Eusebius claims to have personally found the report of this conversion in the Chancellery Office of Edessa and, much as Rufinus did in the next generation the Pseudoclementine
Homilies
(probably also stemming from Syriac records), translated it himself into Greek. The reader should recall that, in this story, first there is a correspondence between this ind
i
vidual,
Agbar
, described as ‘
the Great King of the Peoples beyond the Euphrates
’ – phraseology which certainly has interesting overtones with Paul’s
Mission
to these same ‘
Peoples
’ and
Jesus
, the courier in this correspondence being
Ananias
. Furthe
r
more, a
portrait
of sorts is exchanged (the origin of the legend of
the Holy Shroud
?).

Then after Jesus’ death, ‘
Judas known as Thomas
’ sends
Thaddaeus
down from Jerusalem to continue the evangelization of the Edessenes and, in due course, follows up this mission with one of his own. In the two accounts Eusebius provides – his own and the Chancellery Office one from the
official
records of Edessa – it is not clear whether
Thomas
sends out
Thaddaeus
before the death of Jesus
or
afterwards
. However this may be, one can dismiss any report of a correspondence (including the report of an exchange of portraits!) between
Jesus
and ‘
the Great King of the Peoples beyond the Euphrates
’ with the omn
i
present
Ananias
as courier as retrospective. Rather – if it is to be entertained at all and the writer thinks to a certain degree it can (at least where James is concerned) – it should be put under the stewardship of James, who also sent Letter(s) and messe
n
gers ‘
down to Antioch
’ (
i
.
e
.,
Edessa
) and who, even Acts concedes, was pre-eminent from around the time of the Famine (45–48
CE
) until 62
CE
. For Eusebius, following Hegesippus (2nd c. Palestinian) and Clement (3rd c. Alexandrian), James was ‘
Leader
’ or ‘
Ruler
’ of the early Church in Palestine even earlier than this – after
the Assumption
when he ‘
was elected’
.
39

The reason, therefore, why this exchange of communications should rather be attributed to James is quite simple: even in Acts’ evasive, achronological, and somewhat refurbished account,
an actual correspondence of James to Antioch carried by one ‘
Judas
’ is definitively described
– and this in the more reliable ‘
We Document
’ of the latter part of Acts. Acts even knows the subject matter of this correspondence, as we have been accentuating:
things sacrificed to idols
,
carrion
,
fornication
, and
blood
– and which, as we just saw, any perspicacious observer will immediately recognize as the
basis of Islamic dietary law to this day
.

I have already traced the relationship of these notices to a
Letter
or
Letters
called
MMT
from the
Daily-Bathing
Comm
u
nity at Qumran (which some call ‘
Essene’
, some ‘
Ebionite’
, some ‘
Zadokite’
, etc.) – the
only
Letter
(s) found among the man
i
fold remains of that corpus –
addressed to a
Pious
King
of some kind, somewhere (location unspecified, though obviously not in Jerusalem
40
), and
also
dealing with matters such as
things sacrificed to idols
,
the ban on Gentile gifts to the Temple
,
fornication
, and even, somewhat esoterically,
carrion
– though in far more detail such that the one recorded in Acts above appears a simplified epit
o
me of the other.