Transcription
Apocryphal gospels, apocalypses, acts, and anti-acts: in these kinds of documents too, we have important sources for the life, teaching, and person of James.
In the gospels, primarily the Synoptics, we have the testimony to and the enumeration of the brothers of Jesus. However downplayed these may be, no embarrassment is evinced about the fact of these brothers, nor is there any indication that they may be half-brothers, brothers by a different mother, or any other such designation aimed at reducing their importance and minimizing their relationship to Jesus.
In these reports, Jesus’ mother and brothers come to him to talk to or question him. They are four in number: James, Simon, Jude, and Joses. One or more sisters are also mentioned, one specifically named Solom (Mark 15:40). Other than some sayings that imply a disparaging attitude towards those close to Jesus and his immediate family, and additional material in apostolic lists, there is little else in the gospels relating to them.
This attitude of disparagement directed against what can only be called the Jewish apostles, in effect comprising the nucleus of what is called the Jerusalem Church, is a retrospective one and part of the anti-family and anti-Jewish rhetoric of Pauline or overseas Christianity, not a historical one.
The fact of these brothers, particularly James but others as well, also emerges in what are referred to as apocryphal gospels—those works in the gospel genre which for one reason or another did not get into the canon that finally emerged in Christianity after Constantine. Principal among these are gospels that are known only through secondhand accounts from church fathers, notably Origen, Epiphanius, and Jerome. These include, in particular, the Gospel of the Hebrews, the Gospel of the Nazoreans, and the Gospel of the Hibonites.
None of these gospels, which were all said to have been based on the Gospel of Matthew, has survived, nor is it clear that they were ever really separate gospels at all and not simply variations of each other. They do, however, exist in an independent manner in reports about them, and there are actually quotations from them extant from those claiming to have seen them.
In several of these notices, James plays a significant role, particularly in the post-resurrection appearances of Jesus. In addition, James plays an important and prominent role in the Gnostic Gospel of Thomas, recently discovered at Nag Hammadi. Unlike most other gospels, the Gospel of Thomas abjures narrative in favor simply of presenting a list of sayings, all ascribed to Jesus.
There are also other materials from Nag Hammadi which further reinforce the importance James was accorded in the early centuries of Christianity, particularly in the East. There can be no doubt that this is the James of this book and that he was viewed in the manner almost of a supernatural Redeemer figure, superseded in importance only by Jesus himself. This is both curious and interesting, and once again confirms that James' role in the East was one of overarching importance.
It will be the view of this book that this status was only a little exaggerated beyond his true role in the Palestine of his day. Among these documents from Nag Hammadi presenting James as being of such commanding stature are the two apocalypses ascribed to or written in his name, now known as the First and Second Apocalypses of James.
Additionally, among known apocryphal gospels that feature the name of James is the largely fictional Protoevangelium of James, which claims to be an account of the infancy of Jesus told from the point of view of James, his closest living relative. Regardless of the credibility of this gospel, we have the doctrine of the Perpetual Virginity of Mary, and the importance of James is again highlighted, this time in his role of unimpeachable witness.
Where books of Acts are concerned, there are other lost materials, like the documents referred to by scholars as the Kerygma of Peter, the Teaching of Peter, or another lost work, the Travels of Peter. These are difficult to reconstruct with any certainty but are thought to have been incorporated in some manner into the cluster of documents known as the Pseudo-Clementines.
It is difficult to overestimate the importance of these documents for a consideration of the person of James. Apart from doctrinal considerations—which are important for later 2nd to 3rd century groups known in the field as Jewish Christians or Ebionites—there are materials particularly in the first book of the Recognitions that are important as a kind of anti-Acts.
They present a picture of the early days of the church in Jerusalem from the point of view not of Luke or Paul, but of a writer sympathetic to the views and person of James and, with him, the whole of the Jerusalem Church establishment, including the Jewish apostles.
It can be objected that the Pseudo-Clementines are not history but fiction, hence the epithet "pseudo," but this is what we are dealing with in regard to most documents from this period, except those with outright historical intent like Josephus. On this basis, the Pseudo-Clementines do not differ appreciably from more familiar documents like the gospels or the Book of Acts.
Particularly the first 10 or 15 chapters of Acts are so imaginary as to contain almost no overtly historical material that one can entertain with any degree of certitude; the Pseudo-Clementines are no more counterfeit than these. But that is just the point—all such documents must be treated equally according to the same parameters.
So difficult to credit are these early chapters of Acts in their present form that many specialists simply jettison them altogether. This is not the position of the present writer. In fact, using the Pseudo-Clementine Recognitions for control, it is possible to make some sense out of these early and highly mythologized chapters of the Book of Acts.
Nor are the Pseudo-Clementines to be regarded simply as pure fiction, though they are framed in the guise of Hellenistic romance. So is Acts. That they are much longer than Acts should not present too much of an obstacle. The point is that there is occasionally reliable material in these accounts, particularly in the first book of the Recognitions.
Here, one might wish to apply the doctrine of incongruity: that is, when a fact is considered well documented for some reason or flies in the face of obviously orthodox materials, this is sometimes good grounds not for dismissing it but for taking it more seriously than one might otherwise have done.
The actual physical attack by Paul on James described in the Recognitions is just such a piece of astonishing material; it will overlay less authentic and clearly counterfeit materials in the Book of Acts, for instance about someone called Stephen, so well that it will be all but impossible to discard.
The Pseudo-Clementines give a picture of the early Church in Palestine at odds with the one presented in Acts, yet meshing with it at key points. Though they have come down in several recensions, a case can be made for their being based on the same source as Acts. That is, the Pseudo-Clementines and Acts connect in a series of recognizable common points, but the material is being treated differently in one narrative than in the other.
Though the Pseudo-Clementines are more voluminous, it can be shown that the same source underlies both. It matters not that the Pseudo-Clementines are considered by some to be 3rd or 4th century documents, nor that our perspective is not the standard one.
It is not the documents comprising the Pseudo-Clementines in their present form that matter; what matters is the source underlying them, at least where the beginning of the Recognitions is concerned. This can be shown to be the same as the one underlying the more fantastic and less historical first half of the Book of Acts before the "we" document intrudes in the second half.
In fact, both Acts and the Pseudo-Clementines are "we" documents. Moreover, the Pseudo-Clementines are more faithful to the sense of this source and a more faithful representation of it than Acts. Nor is it important that Acts, in the form we have it, is a 2nd-century document.
There is no final proof of this proposition, and even if there were, it would not matter. The Book of Acts, at least in the early chapters before the intrusion of the "we" document, has been extensively reworked. Some might contend so have the first and second books of the Pseudo-Clementine Recognitions, though this proposition is not proven.
The point is that both are using sources. For the most part, the Pseudo-Clementines are concerned with confrontations between Peter and Simon Magus in Caesarea, where both Origen and Eusebius saw copies of the works of Josephus, ascribing the fall of Jerusalem to the death of James and not Jesus.
Acts is also concerned with this confrontation, but whereas it passes over it in a few sentences, the Pseudo-Clementines linger over its various metamorphoses ad nauseum. However these things may be, the basic treatment of the confrontation between Simon Peter and Simon Magus in Caesarea, where the Pseudo-Clementines correctly located it, can be shown to be more historical than the patently more fantastical presentation of it in the Book of Acts.
The Recognitions also clear up Acts' lack of precision about Simon Magus' place of origin, which is identified as Gaita in Samaria; this is also confirmed in Eusebius. This is just one example of the superiority of the novelizing of the Pseudo-Clementines over the novelizing of the Book of Acts.
All references to "pseudo" in these matters are relative because of its confusion over this; Acts places Peter's confrontation with Simon Magus in Samaria instead of, as in the Pseudo-Clementine means, in Caesarea, where it properly belongs. When this confrontation is joined with Josephus' picture of Simon as the head of an assembly (ecclesia) of his own or church in Jerusalem in the Antiquities, who also comes to Caesarea to inspect the living arrangements in Agrippa I's Palace there around 44 CE, then we shall be able to make some final sense about all these overlapping and sometimes contradictory notices.
Preface to the second cluster of Pseudo-Clementine materials: these are two letters, like those one finds in the New Testament. However, these are not primarily from Paul, as in the latter, but rather letters purporting to be from Peter to James and Clement to James.
Putting aside the question of their authenticity for the moment, and the fact that they parallel letters in the New Testament, their pointedly addressed letters to James as Bishop of Bishops or Archbishop show that their authors had little doubt that James was the leader of the whole of Christianity in his time, and that apostles like Peter and Paul were subordinate to him.
In addition, these letters contain several points of importance for our consideration. For instance, all overseers or teachers required letters of introduction or certification from James and were required to send him back periodic reports of their activities—an assertion that makes sense. This is the thrust, too, of the "we" aspect of these narratives, and that of Acts, which makes more sense because of these letters.
The "we" document is one of these reports. We would have had little trouble deducing this in any case from reading between the lines of Paul's shrill protests concerning his lack of such certification in the more familiar documents that have come down to us.
But the fact of this requirement actually being present in these apocryphal letters, introducing a narrative that has all the earmarks of an anti-Acts, is impressive; it is like finding a missing link. Had it not been present, we would have had to deduce it.
To sum up, it is our position that Acts and the Pseudo-Clementines are neither independent of nor dependent on each other, but rather parallel accounts going back to the same source. That is, the first and second books of the Pseudo-Clementine Recognitions do not go back to Acts but to a common source both were using.
The Acts we have may have appeared at some indeterminate amount of time before the appearance of the Recognitions. If it did, this does not alter the relationship between the two. Additionally, one can insist—however startling this may at first appear—that the Recognitions are more faithful to this underlying source where points common to both are concerned than Acts.
The points of contact between the two are clearly discernible. For instance, there is the persistent note of confrontations on the Temple Mount culminating in an attack led by Paul on someone. But so is the fact that Acts is changing the source on which both are based in a consistent and clearly discernable manner.
At times, this borders on what in the jargon of today might be called disinformation. These confrontations on the Temple Mount would also appear to be the subject matter of another lost work about James, from which Epiphanius quotes several passages. Epiphanius calls this work, which we have mentioned above, the Anavia Aovo—the Asense of Jacob—a title that sets up interesting resonances with the Jewish underground mystical tradition known as Kabbalah.
This work appears to relate to the discourses James gave in the temple while standing on the temple steps; hence the title also relates to the picture in the early part of Acts of the Apostles going every day to the temple as a group and there either talking to the Jewish crowd or arguing with the temple authorities. This picture is also represented in the Recognitions of Clement, and some have theorized that materials from the Anavia have ended up in the Pseudo-Clementines.
The materials that Epiphanius does excerpt are interesting in themselves and fill in some missing points about Paul's biography as seen through the eyes of his opponents, not his supporters, and place James at the center of agitation in the temple in the years leading up to the uprising.
Not only will this last assertion be shown to bear on how temple service was being carried out by Herodian high priests, but also to the rejection of gifts and sacrifices from Gentiles in the temple by those Josephus calls either Sicarii or Zealots three and a half years after the death of James, triggering the revolt against Rome.
Both will also be seen reflected in the Dead Sea Scrolls.