James the Brother of Jesus and the Dead Sea Scrolls I Read Online Free PDF Page B

3:5).
    This form of Judaism must be distinguished from the more variegated tapestry that characterized Jewish religious expression in Jesus’ and James’ lifetimes. This consisted of quite a number of groups before the fall of the Temple, some of which were quite militant and aggressive, even apocalyptic, that is, having a concern for a highly emotive style of expression regarding ‘the End Time’. Most of these apocalyptic groups focused in one way or another on the Temple. They were written out of Judaism in the same manner that James and Jesus’ other brothers were written out of Christianity.
    ‘Christianity’, as we know it, developed in the West in contradistinction to the more variegated landscape that continued to characterize the East. It would be more proper to refer to Western Christianity at this point as ‘Pauline’ or ‘Gentile Christian’. It came to be seen as orthodox largely as a result of the efforts of Eusebius and like-minded persons, who put the reorganization programme ascribed to Constantine into effect. It can also be usefully referred to as ‘Overseas’ or ‘Hellenistic Christianity’ as opposed to ‘Palestinian Christianity’.
    Its documents and credos were collected and imposed on what is now known as the Christian world at the Council of Nicaea in 325 CE and others that followed in the fourth century and beyond. These formally asserted the divinity of Jesus and made it orthodox. Eusebius, Constantine’s bishop and personal confidant, had a major role in the organization and guidance of the Council of Nicaea. The development of this genre of Overseas Christianity was actually concurrent and parallel to the development of Rabbinic Judaism. Both were, not only willing to live with Roman power, they owed their continued existence to its sponsorship.
    To put this proposition somewhat differently: it was the fact of the power and brutality of Rome was operating in both traditions to drive out and declare heretical what many now refer to as ‘Jewish Christianity’ – ‘ Ebionitism ’ would perhaps be a better description of it in Palestine. In Judaism, what was left was a legalistic shadow of former glories, bereft of apocalyptic and Messianic tendencies; in Christianity, a largely Hellenized, otherworldly mystery cult, the real religious legacy of three hundred years of Roman religious genius and assimilation. This surgery was necessary if Christianity in the form we know it was to survive, since certain doctrines represented by James were distinctly opposed to those ultimately considered to be Christian .
    James the Real Successor to Jesus, not Peter
    In the literature, James’ place as successor to and inheritor of the mantle of his brother was largely taken over by the individual known, in the West, as ‘Peter’. This was a logical end of the legitimization of certain claims advanced by the now Hellenized and largely non-Jewish, Gentile Church at Rome following the destruction of the Jerusalem centre in the wake of the Uprising against Rome. It is an interesting coincidence that ‘the Jerusalem Community’ of James the Just and the Community at Qumran disappeared at about the same time – though perhaps this is not so coincidental as it may seem.
    The ‘Rock’ terminology reflected in Peter’s name and the imagery related to it were actually in use contemporaneously in Palestine in both the literature at Qumran and in what were probably the documents of the Jerusalem Church. 4 In the latter, a version of it was applied to James, as well probably to his successor - a man identified in the tradition as Jesus’ (and therefore James’) first ‘cousin’ , Simeon bar Cleophas. We shall see that Simeon bar Cleophas is very likely the second brother of Jesus , an individual called ‘ Simon ’ (and sometimes even ‘Simon the Zealot ’/’ Zealotes ’) as presented in Gospel Apostle lists - Christianity in Palestine developing in something of the manner of an Islamic