The Dead Sea Scrolls Deception

missionary work. As Acts 15 explains, certain representatives of the leadership in Jerusalem arrive in Antioch, perhaps, Eisenman suggests, with the specific purpose of checking on Paul’s activities.⁷ They stress the importance of strict adherence to the Law and accuse Paul of laxity. He and his companion, Barnabas, are summarily ordered back to Jerusalem for personal consultation with the leadership. From this point on, a schism will open and widen between Paul and James; and the author of Acts, so far as the dispute is concerned, becomes Paul’s apologist.

In all the vicissitudes that follow, it must be emphasised that Paul is, in effect, the first ‘Christian’ heretic, and that his teachings — which become the foundation of later Christianity — are a flagrant deviation from the ‘original’ or ‘pure’ form extolled by the leadership. Whether James, ‘the Lord’s brother’, was literally Jesus’ blood kin or not (and everything suggests he was), it is clear that he knew Jesus, or the figure subsequently remembered as Jesus, personally. So did most of the other members of the community, or ‘early Church’, in Jerusalem — including, of course, Peter. When they spoke, they did so with first-hand authority. Paul had never had such personal acquaintance with the figure he’d begun to regard as his ‘Saviour’. He had only his quasi-mystical experience in the desert and the sound of a disembodied voice. For him to arrogate authority to himself on this basis is, to say the least, presumptuous. It also leads him to distort Jesus’ teachings beyond all recognition — to formulate, in fact, his own highly individual and idiosyncratic theology, and then to legitimise it by spuriously ascribing it to Jesus. For Jesus, adhering rigorously to Judaic Law, it would have been the most extreme blasphemy to advocate worship of any mortal figure, including himself. He makes this clear in the Gospels, urging his disciples, followers and listeners to acknowledge only God. In John 10:33-5, for example, Jesus is accused of the blasphemy of claiming to be God. He replies, citing Psalm 82, ‘Is it not written in your Law, I [meaning God in the psalm] said, you are Gods? So the Law uses the word gods of those to whom the word of God was addressed.’

Paul, in effect, shunts God aside and establishes, for the first time, worship of Jesus — Jesus as a kind of equivalent of Adonis, of Tammuz, of Attis, or of any one of the other dying and reviving gods who populated the Middle East at the time. In order to compete with these divine rivals, Jesus had to match them point for point, miracle for miracle. It is at this stage that many of the miraculous elements become associated with Jesus’ biography, including, in all probability, his supposed birth of a virgin and his resurrection from the dead. They are essentially Pauline inventions, often wildly at odds with the ‘pure’ doctrine promulgated by James and the rest of the community in Jerusalem. It is hardly surprising, therefore, that James and his entourage should be disturbed by what Paul is doing.

Yet Paul knows full well what he is doing. He understands, with a surprisingly modern sophistication, the techniques of religious propaganda;⁸ he understands what is necessary to turn a man into a god, and he goes about it more astutely than the Romans did with their emperors. As he himself pointedly acknowledges, he does not pretend to be purveying the historical Jesus, the individual whom James and Peter and Simeon knew personally. On the contrary, he acknowledges, in 2 Corinthians 11:3-4, that the community in Jerusalem are promulgating ‘another Jesus’. Their representatives, he says, call themselves ‘servants of righteousness’ — a characteristic Qumranic usage. They are now, to all intents and purposes, Paul’s adversaries.

In accordance with instructions issued to him, Paul returns from Antioch to Jerusalem — around ad 48-9, it is generally believed — and meets with the community’s leadership. Not surprisingly, another dispute ensues. If Acts is to be believed, James, for the sake of peace, agrees to compromise, thereby making it easier for ‘pagans’ to join the congregation. Somewhat improbably, he consents to relax certain aspects of the Law, while remaining adamant on others.

Paul pays lip service to the leadership. He still, at this point, needs their endorsement — not to legitimise his teachings, but to legitimise, and ensure the survival of, the communities he has founded abroad. He is already, however, bent on going his own way. He embarks on another mission of travel and preaching, punctuated (Acts 18:21) by another visit to Jerusalem. Most of his letters date from this period, between ad 50 and 58. It is clear from his letters that he has, by that time, become almost completely estranged from the leadership in Jerusalem and from their adherence to the Law.⁹ In his missive to the Galatians (c. ad 57), he alludes scathingly to ‘these people who are acknowledged leaders — not that their importance matters to me’ (Gal. 2:6). His theological position has also deviated irreparably from those who adhere rigorously to the Law. In the same letter to the Galatians (2:16), he states that ‘faith in Christ rather than fidelity to the Law is what justifies us, and… no one can be justified by keeping the Law’. Writing to the Philippians (3:9), he states: ‘I am no longer trying for perfection by my own efforts, the perfection that comes from the Law…’ These are the provocative and challenging statements of a self-proclaimed renegade. ‘Christianity’, as it will subsequently evolve from Paul, has by now severed virtually all connection with its roots, and can no longer be said to have anything to do with Jesus, only with Paul’s image of Jesus.

By ad 58, Paul is again back in Jerusalem — despite pleas from his supporters who, obviously fearing trouble with the hierarchy, have begged him not to go. Again, he meets with James and the leadership of the Jerusalem community. Employing the now familiar Qumranic formulation, they express the worry they share with other ‘zealots of the Law’ — that Paul, in his preaching to Jews living abroad, is encouraging them to forsake the Law of Moses.¹⁰ It is, of course, a justified accusation, as Paul has made clear in his letters. Acts does not record his response to it. The impression conveyed is that he lies, perjures himself and denies the charges against him. When asked to purify himself for seven days — thereby demonstrating the unjustness of the allegations and his continued adherence to the Law — he readily consents to do so.

A few days later, however, he again runs foul of those ‘zealous for the Law’, who are rather less temperate than James. On being seen at the Temple, he is attacked by a crowd of the pious. ‘This’, they claim in their anger, ‘is the man who preaches to everyone everywhere… against the Law’ (Acts 21:28ff). A riot ensues, and Paul is dragged out of the Temple, his life in danger. In the nick of time, he is rescued by a Roman officer who, having been told of the disturbance, appears with an entourage of soldiers. Paul is arrested and put in chains — on the initial assumption, apparently, that he is a leader of the Sicarii, the Zealot terrorist cadre.

At this point, the narrative becomes increasingly confused, and one can only suspect that parts of it have been altered or expurgated. According to the existing text, Paul, before the Romans can trundle him off, protests that he is a Jew of Tarsus and asks permission to address the crowd who had just been trying to lynch him. Weirdly enough, the Romans allow him to do so. Paul then expatiates on his Pharisaic training under Gamaliel (a famous teacher of the time), on his initial hostility towards the ‘early Church’, on his role in the death of Stephen, on his subsequent conversion. All of this — or perhaps only a part of it, though one cannot be certain which part — provokes the crowd to new ire. ‘Rid the earth of this man!’ they cry. ‘He is not fit to live!’ (Acts 22:22)

Ignoring these appeals, the Romans carry Paul off to ‘the fortress’ — presumably the Antonia fortress, the Roman military and administrative headquarters. Here, they intend to interrogate him under torture. Interrogate him for what? To determine why he provokes such hostility, according to Acts. Yet Paul has already made his position clear in public — unless there are elements of his speech that, in a fashion not made clear by the text, the Romans deemed dangerous or subversive. In any case, torture, by Roman law, could not be exercised on any individual possessing full and official Roman citizenship — which Paul, having been born of a wealthy family in Tarsus, conveniently does. Invoking this immunity, he escapes torture, but remains incarcerated.

In the meantime, a group of angry Jews, forty or more in number, meet in secret. They vow not to eat or drink until they have brought about Paul’s death. The sheer intensity and ferocity of this antipathy is worth noting. One does not expect such animosity — not to say such a preparedness for violence — from ‘ordinary’ Pharisees and Sadducees. Those who display it are obviously ‘zealous for the Law’. But the only such passionate adherents of the Law in Palestine at the time were those whose sacred texts came subsequently to light at Qumran. Thus, for example, Eisenman calls attention to a pivotal passage in the ‘Damascus Document’ which declares of a man that ‘if he transgresses after swearing to return to the Law of Moses with a whole heart and soul, then retribution shall be exacted from him’.¹¹

How can the violent action contemplated against Paul be reconciled with the later popular image, put forward by the consensus, of placid, ascetic, quietist Essenes? The clandestine conclave, the fervent vow to eradicate Paul — these are more characteristic of the militant Zealots and their special assassination units, the dreaded Sicarii. Here again there is an insistent suggestion that the Zealots on the one hand, and the ‘zealous for the Law’ at Qumran on the other, were one and the same.

Whoever they are, the would-be assassins, according to Acts, are thwarted by the sudden and opportune appearance of Paul’s hitherto unmentioned nephew, who somehow learns of their plot. This relative, of whom we