James the Brother of Jesus and the Dead Sea Scrolls II (160 page)

The first ‘
Party
’ of Essenes, Hippolytus
cum
Josephus identifies, is the familiar one, we know from descriptions in the r
e
ceived Josephus – which also seems to have found its way into depictions of the New Testament’s Jesus – that is, that ‘
they will not handle a current coin of the country
’ because ‘
they ought not to carry
,
look upon
,
or fashion a graven image’
. Here we have the actual Scriptural warrant for the ban – only hinted at in Gospel portraiture.
55
The implication, too, is of ‘
land
’ or ‘
countries
’ in general, not a particular
Nation
or
Country
, since it is immediately followed up by another familiar attribute: that they will not enter into a city ‘
under a gate containing statues as this too they regard as a violation of Law to pass beneath
(
such
)
images
’ – yet again, a variation on the
Mosaic
ban on
graven images
, but this one having particular relevance regarding the unrest we have already chronicled where First-Century Palestinian history is concerned.
56

The second Group of Essenes is even more striking and gives us the distinct impression that those Josephus pejoratively refers to (again in the First Century) as ‘
Sicarii
’ – and not until 68
CE
onwards as ‘
Zealots
’ – grew out of
the Essene Movement
and not as some might have thought from a too-credulous reading of normative Josephus,
the Pharisees
– a point the present writer has always taken as self-evident.
57
As Hippolytus puts this:

“
But the adherents of another Party
(the second),
if they happen to hear anyone maintaining a discussion concerning God and His Laws and
,
supposing such a one to be uncircumcised
,
they will closely watch him
(cf. Galatians 2:4–8’s ‘
false brothers stealing in by stealth and spying on the freedom
’ Paul enjoys ‘
in Christ Jesus
’)
and when they meet a person of this description in any place alone
,
they will threaten to slay him if he refuses to undergo the rite of circumcision
. N
ow if the latter kind of person does not wish to comply with this request
(a member of this Party of
Essenes
)
will not spare
(
him
),
but proceeds to kill
.
And it is from this behaviour that they have received their appellation being called
(
by some
) ‘
Zealots
’
but
,
by others
,
Sicarii
.
”
57

Not only does this resemble something of what happens to Paul in Acts 21:38 where
Sicarii
are for the only time specif
i
cally alluded to and others take a
Nazirite
-style oath ‘
not to eat or drink until
(
they
)
have killed Paul
’ ( 23:12–21), but it is n
o
where to be found in the extant Greek version of Josephus’
Jewish War
. Nor is it something Hippolytus was likely to have made up on his own, but it is so striking in its originality as to fairly take the reader’s breath away. Whoever was writing it, even if it was not Josephus (the writer thinks that it was Josephus – a Josephus who, for some reason, was willing to be more forthcoming), certainly knew something about this period beyond the usual superficialities. In particular, it also helps explain certain puzzling aspects of the notations ‘
Zealot
’ and/or ‘
Sicarii
’.

Nor could these individuals be considered ‘
Peace-loving
’ Essenes. On the contrary, they are quite violent or at least e
x
tremely ‘
steadfast
’ in their ‘
dedication to the
Torah
’
, exhibiting something of the ethos the writer contends one encounters in the Scrolls, which is why, early on, scholars such as G. R. Driver and Cecil Roth were inclined to identify the Qumran Group as ‘
Zealots’
.
58
Nor can anyone who reads the Scrolls fail to be impressed by the extreme ‘
Zealotry’
, as we have been highligh
t
ing, of the larger part of its attitudes, particularly where
the Last Days
,
the
Torah
of Moses
,
Backsliders
, and
the New Covenant
were concerned.
59

Actually, we have already suggested in
James the Brother of Jesus
that the term
Sicarios
might be an anagram for ‘
Christian
’ or the latter, at least, a homophonic play on the former. This is certainly the case where
Judas the Iscariot
(the ‘
son
’ or ‘
brother of Simon
[
the
]
Iscariot
’) is concerned, as all that has occurred is that a
theta
has been substituted for a
sigma
and the first two le
t
ters have been reversed.
60
But if we abandon the term ‘
Christian
’ for ‘
Messianist
’ – as we would most certainly have to do in the
Palestine
of this Period – then
Judas
becomes the archetypical
Violent
or
aggressive
Essene
and/or
Messianist
,
just the kind of person the New Testament is trying to distance itself from
or distance the person of the ‘Jesus’ it is portraying from.

This is perhaps the most subtle reversal of all and, at the same time, one of the most insidious ironies, to have turned the person who was perhaps the epitome of
the Messianic Movement
in Palestine – and probably the third
brother
of James if not of Jesus (
i
.
e
., in Lukan
Apostle
lists, ‘
Judas of James
’; in Syriac texts, ‘
Judas the Zealot
’
61
– just as the putative second brother of James, ‘
Simon
’ or ‘
Simeon’
, is designated in these same lists as ‘
Simon
the Zealot
’) – into the actual
Betrayer
or, what in the Scrolls would be termed, a
Traitor
to the kind of
Movement
Jesus is supposed to represent
.

What adds to the impression of the truth of this proposition is the fact that Josephus vividly documents how
the
Sicarii
did not all die on Masada; but some – for whom he himself is either mistaken or identified with – fled to Egypt, causing the R
o
mans to likewise destroy the Temple that had also been constructed there,
62
and even carried on the agitation in Cyrenaica (modern-day Libya) in North Africa, which was eventually severely repressed in Josephus’ own lifetime even there.
63
So to e
s
cape such stigmatization, ‘
Christian
’ might have been a very useful reformulation or even a term in Greek that might have been used to deride or ridicule – or,
vice versa
, ‘
Christians
’ demanding
circumcision
, as we shall see, might have been called ‘
Sicarii
’ (just as Hippolytus’
Essenes
are here), again meant to caricaturize or to mimic but always – as in Acts – disparagingly.

To summarize: three things immediately emerge from this new material attributed to
Hippolytus
, perhaps drawn from suppressed information previously extant in the various versions of these matters in Josephus: 1) that ‘
the Zealots
’ or
Sicarii
were known for
their insistence on circumcision
– a new point we never heard before but which might have been surmised; 2) that according to their view, one first had to come in under ‘
the Law
’ as delineated by ‘
the
Torah
of Moses
’ before one could either even discuss God or the subject of the Law (something Paul would have found extremely prohibitive, given his
modus operandi
and intellectual point-of-view); 3) it was permissible to forcibly circumcise individuals on pain of death or to offer persons interested in such subjects – much as in Islam –
the choice of circumcision or death
.

Put in another way, like Paul (we shall reserve judgement about James),
Essenes
of this kind were also interested in non-Jewish converts, but for them
circumcision
was a
sine qua non
not only for conversion, but
even to discuss questions appertai
n
ing to Mosaic Law
– meaning,
you first had to come in under the Law before you could discuss it
. No wonder certain
Zea
l
ots
/
Sicarii
/or
Nazirites
(in particular those designated as the greater part of James’
Jerusalem Church
adherents in Acts 21:20) wished to ‘
kill Paul
’ (Acts 23:12). Anyone carefully reading Galatians would have to acknowledge that
circumcision
was a subject utterly obsessing Paul
.
64
In addition, however, if one has carefully read it together with Acts 15:1–5’s prelude to ‘
the Jerusalem Council
’ – tendentious or otherwise – asserting that it was triggered by ‘
some who came down from Judea
’ who ‘
were teaching the brothers that
,
unless you were circumcised
,
you could not be saved
’; then one will realize that what one has before us in Hippolytus’ version of Josephus’ description of
the Essenes
is a ‘
Party of the Circumcision
’
par excellence
– in fact, those Paul is calling in Galatians 2:12 either the ‘
some from James
’ or ‘
of the circumcision’
.

Hippolytus’
Sicarii
Essenes

Hippolytus rounds out his description of the
Four Groups of Essenes
, corresponding to the
four grades of Essenes
in J
o
sephus, with a Third ‘
Party’
. These, he claims, would ‘
call no man Lord except God even though one should torture or even kill them
,’ which not only overlaps Josephus’ testimony about the Essene refusal ‘
to eat forbidden foods
’ or ‘
blaspheme the Law-Giver
’ (meaning Moses) in the
Jewish War
,
65
but even more closely, ‘
the
Fourth Sect
of Jewish Philosop
hy’
founded by
Judas the Galilean
Josephus describes in the
Antiquities
.
66
In other words, there is a slight shift even in received Josephus in the two accounts in the
War
and the
Antiquities
from
Essenes
to ‘
Fourth Philosophy’
. Actually what Josephus, in effect, seems to have done is cut a piece from his description of
the Essenes
in the former and added it to his description of
Judas the Galilean
’s ‘
Fourth Philo
s
ophy
’ in the latter.
67