Rechabites and James the Just

Discussion about the Hebrew Bible, Septuagint, pseudepigrapha, Philo, Josephus, Talmud, Dead Sea Scrolls, archaeology, etc.
Post Reply
User avatar
DCHindley
Posts: 3411
Joined: Mon Oct 07, 2013 9:53 am
Location: Ohio, USA

Rechabites and James the Just

Post by DCHindley »

This thread is an off-shoot of a conversation I was having with John2 elsewhere.

http://www.earlywritings.com/forum/view ... 805#p86805

Here are the dictionary entries for Rechab and Rechabites contributed by Edward Hayes Plumptre, in William Smith's Dictionary of the Bible, (rev. ed. 1881). It may not be exactly the same as the source sited by an author I quoted, Arthur Cushman McGiffert's 1890 translation of Eusebius' "Church History," in Nicene & Post Nicene Fathers (NPNF) series 2 vol 1, footnote 509, who refered readers to Smith's Bib. Dict, but is probably very similar:
RECHAB [... = horseman, from ..., râcab, "to ride". ... Rechab]. Three persons bearing this name are mentioned in the O.T.
1. ... The father or ancestor of Jehonadab (2 K. x. 15, 23; 1 Chr. ii. 55; Jer. xxxv. 6-19), identified by some writers. But conjecturally only, with Hobab (Arias Montanus on Judg. i.; Sanctius, quoted by Calmet, Diss. sur les Rechabites). [RECHABITES]
2. One of the two "captains of bands" (..., principes latronum), whom Ish-bosheth took into his service, and who, when his cause was failing, conspired to murder him (2 Sam. iv. 2). Josephus (Ant. vii. 2, § 1) calls him Thannos. [BAANAH; ISH-BOSHETH, vol. ii. p. 1168.]
3. The father of Malchiah, ruler of part of Beth-haceeram (Nell. iii. 14), named as repairing the Dung Gate in the fortifications of Jerusalem under Nehemiah. E. H. P.

RECHABITES [horsemen] The tribe thus named appears before us in one memorable scene. Their history before and after it lies in some obscurity. We are left to search out and combine some scattered notices, and to get from them what light we can.

(I.) In 1 Chr. ii. 55, the house of Rechab is identified with a section of the Kenites, who came into Canaan with the Israelites and retained their nomadic habits, and the name of Hammath is mentioned as the patriarch of the whole tribe. ... It has been inferred from this passage that the descendants of Rechab belonged to a branch of the Kenites settled from the first at Jabez in Judah. ... The fact, however, that Jehonadab took an active part in the revolution which placed .Jehu on the throne, seems to indicate that he and his tribe belonged to Israel rather than to Judah, and the late date of 1 Chr., taken together with other facts {infra), makes it more probable that this passage refers to the locality occupied by the Rechaliites after their return from the Captivity.a Of Rechab himself nothing is known, lie may have been the father, he may have been the remote ancestor of Jehonadab. The meaning of the word makes it probable enough that it was an epithet passing into a proper name. It may have pointed, as in the robber-chief of 2 Sam. iv. 2, to a conspicuous form of the wild Bedouin life, and Jehonadab, the son of the Rider, may have been, in part at least, for that reason, the companion and friend of the fierce captain of Israel who drives as with the fury of madness (2 K, ix. 20).

Another conjecture as to the meaning of the name is ingenious enough to merit a disinterment from the forgotten learning of the sixteenth century. Bouldue (De Eccles. ante Leg. iii. 10) infers from 2 K. ii. 12, xiii. 14, that the two great prophets EIijah and Elisha were known, each of them in his time, as the chariot (... Recheb) of Israel, i.e. its strength and protection. He infers from this that the special disciples of the prophets, who followed them in all their austerity, were known as the "sons of the chariot," B'nê Receb, and that afterwards, when the original meaning had been lost sight of, this was taken as a patronymic, and referred to an unknown Rechab. At present, of course, the different vowel points of the two words are sufficiently distinctive; but the strange reading of the LXX. in Judg. i. 19 (... where the A. V. has "because they had chariots of iron") shows that the word might easily enough be taken for the other. Apart from the evidence of the name, and the obvious probability of the fact, we have the statement ... of John of Jerusalem that Jehonadab was a disciple of Elisha (De Instit. Monach. c. 25).

(II.) The personal history of JEHONADAB has been dealt with elsewhere. Here we have to notice the new character which he impressed on the tribe, of which he was the head. As his name, his descent, and the part which he played indicate, he and his people had all along been worshippers of Jehovah, circumcised, and so within the covenant of Abraham, though not reckoned as belonging to Israel, and probably therefore not considering them- selves bound by the Mosaic law and ritual. The worship of Baal introduced by Jezebel and Ahab was accordingly not less offensive to them than to the Israelites. The luxury and license of Phoenician cities threatened the destruction of the simplicity of their nomadic life (Amos ii. 7, 8, vi. 3-6). A protest was needed against both evils, and as in the case of Elijah, and of the Nazarites of Amos ii. 11, it took the form of asceticism. There was to be a more rigid adherence than ever to the old Arab life. What had been a traditional habit, was enforced by a solemn command from the sheikh and prophet of the tribe, the destroyer of idolatry, which no one dared to transgress. They were to drink no wine, nor build house, nor sow seed, nor plant vineyard, nor have any. All their days they were to dwell in tents, as remembering that they were strangers in the land (Jer. xxxv. 6, 7). This was to be the condition of their retaining a distinct tribal existence. For two centuries and a half they adhered faithfully to this rule; but we have no record of any part taken by them in the history of the period. We may think of them as presenting the same picture which other tribes, uniting the nomad life with religious austerity, have presented in later periods.

The Nabathaeans, of whom Diodorus Siculus speaks (xix. 94) as neither sowing seed, nor planting fruit tree, nor using nor building house, and enforcing these transmitted customs under pain of death, give us one striking instance.a Another is found in the prohibition of wine by Mohammed (Sale's Koran, Prelim. Diss.. § 5). A yet more interesting parallel is found in the rapid growth of the sect of the Wahabys during the last and present centuries. Abd-ul-Wahab, from whom the sect takes its name, reproduces the old type of character in all its completeness. Anxious to protect his countrymen from the revolting vices of the Turks, as Jehonadab had been to protect the Kenites from the like vices of the Phoenicians, the Bedouin reformer felt the necessity of returning to the old austerity of Arab life. What wine had been to the earlier preacher of righteousness, the outward sign and incentive of a fatal corruption, opium and tobacco were to the later prophet, and, as such, were rigidly proscribed. The rapidity with which the Wahabys became a formidable party, the Puritans of Islam, presents a striking analogy to the strong political influence of Jehonadab in 2 K. x. 15, 23 (comp . Burckhardt, Bedouins and Wahabys, p. 283, &c.).

a The fact that the Nabatheans habitually drank "wild honey" ... mixed with water (Diod. Sic. xix. 94), and that the Bedouins as habitually still make locusts an article of food (Burckhardt, Bedouins, p. 270), shows very strongly that the Baptist's life was fashioned after the Rechabite as well as the Nazarite type.

(III.) The invasion of Judah by Nebuchadnezzar in b.c. 607, drove the Rechabites from their tents. Possibly some of the previous periods of danger may have led to their settling within the limits of the territory of Judah. Some inferences may be safely drawn from the facts of Jer. xxxv. The names of the Rechabites show that they continued to be worshippers of Jehovah. They are already known to the prophet. One of them (ver. 3) bears the same name. Their rigid Nazarite life gained (or them admission into the house of the Lord, into one of the chambers assigned to priests and Levites, within its precincts. They were received by the sons or followers of a "man of God," a prophet or devotee of special sanctity (ver. 4). Here they are tempted and are proof against the temptation, and their steadfastness is turned into a reproof for the unfaithfulness of Judah and Jerusalem. ... The history of this trial ends with a special blessing, the full import of which has, for the most part, not been adequately apprehended: "Jonadab, the son of Rechab, shall not want a man to stand before me forever" (ver. 19). Whether we look on this as the utterance of a true prophet, or as a vaticinium ex eventu, we should hardly expect at this precise point to lose sight altogether of those of whom they were spoken, even if the words pointed only to the perpetuation of the name and tribe. They have however, a higher meaning. The words "to stand before me" ... are essentially liturgical. The tribe of Levi is chosen to "stand before" the Lord (Deut. x. 8, xvii. 5, 7). In Gen. xviii. 22; Judg. xx. 28; Ps. cxxxiv. 1 ; Jer. XV. 19, the liturgical meaning is equally prominent and unmistakable (comp. Gesen. Thes. s v.; Grotius in loc.). The fact that this meaning is given ("ministering before me") in the Targum of Jonathan, is evidence (1) as to the received meaning of the phrase: (2) that this rendering did not shock the feelings of studious and devout Rabbis in our Lord's time; (3) that it was at least probable that there existed representatives of the Rechabites connected with the Temple services in the time of Jonathan. This then, was the extent of the new blessing. The Rechabites were solemnly adopted into the families of Israel, and were recognized as incorporated into the tribe of Levi.b Their purity, their faithfulness, their consecrated life gained for them, as it gained for other Nazarites, that honor ... In Lam. iv. 7, we may perhaps trace a reference to the Rechabites, who had been the most conspicuous examples of the Naazarite life in the prophet's time, and most the object of his admiration.

b. It may be worth while to refer to a few authorities agreeing in the general interpretation here given, though differing as to details. Vatablus (Crit. Sac. in Ioc.) mentions a Jewish tradition (R. Judah, as edited ay Kimeht , comp. Scaliger, Elench. Trihaeres. Serrar. p 26) that the daughters of the Rechabites married Levites, and that thus their children came to minister in the Temple. Clarius (ibid.) conjectures that the Rechabites themselves were chosen to sit in the great Council. Sanetius and Calmet suppose them to have ministered in the same way as the Nethinim (Calmet Diss. sur tes Rechab. in Com. vi. p. xviii. 1726. Serrarius (Trihaeres.) identities them with the Essenes; Scalinger (l.c.) with the Chasidim, in whose name the priests offered special daily sacrifices, and who, in this way, were "standing before the Lord" continually.

(IV.) It remains for us to see whether there are any traces of their after-history in the Biblical or later writers. It is believed that there are such traces, and that they confirm the statements made in the previous paragraph.

(1.) We have the singular heading of the Ps. Ixxi. in the LXX. version ..., evidence, of course, of a corresponding Hebrew title in the 3d century b.c., and indicating that the "sons of Jonadab " shared the captivity of Israel, and took their place among the Levite psalmists who gave expression to the sorrows of the people.a

a. Neither Ewald nor Hengstenberg nor De Wette notices this inscription. Ewald, however, refers the Psalm to the time of the Captivity. Hengstenberg, who asserts its Davidic authorship, indicates an alphabetic relation between it and Ps. Ixx., which is at least presumptive evidence of a later origin, and points, with some fair probability, to Jeremiah as the writer. ... It is noticed, however, by Augustine (Enarr. in Ps. Ixx. § 2). and is referred by him to the Rechabites of Jer. xxxv.

(2.) There is the significant mention of a son of Rechab in Neh. iii. 14, as cooperating with the; priests, Levites and princes in the restoration of the wall of Jerusalem.

(3.) The mention of the house of Rechab in 1 Chr. ii. 55, though not without difficulty, points, there can be little doubt, to the same conclusion. The Rechabites have become scribes ... They give themselves to a calling which, at the time of the return from Babylon, was chiefly if not exclusively in the hands of Levites. The other names (Tirathites, Shimeathites, and Suchathites in A. V.) seem to add nothing to our knowledge. The Vulg. rendering, however (evidence of a traditional Jewish interpretation in the time of Jerome) gives a translation based on etymologies, more or less accurate, of the proper names, which strikingly confirms the view now taken. "Cognationes quoque Scribarum habitantium in Jabes, canentes atque resonantes, et in tabernaculis commorantes."b Thus interpreted, the passage points to a resumption of the outward form of their old life and its union with their new functions. It deserves notice also that while in 1 Chr. ii. 54, 55, the Rechabites and Netophathites are mentioned in close connection, the "sons of the singers " in Neh. xii. 28 appear as coming in large numbers from the villages of the same Netophathites. The close juxtaposition of the Rechabites with the descendants of David in 1 Chr. iii. 1 shows also in how honorable an esteem they were held at the time when that book was compiled.

b The etymologies on which this version rests are, it must be confessed, somewhat doubtful. Scaliger (Elench. Trihaer. Serrar. c. 23) rejects them with scorn. Pellican and Calmet, on the other band, defend the Vulg. rendering, and Gill (in loc.) does not dispute it. Most modern interpreters follow the A. V in taking the words as proper names.

(4.) The account of the martyrdom of James the Just, given by Hegesippus (Eus. H.E. ii. 23), brings the name of the Rechabites once more before us, and in a very strange connection. While the Scribes and Pharisees were stoning him, "one of the priests of the sons of Rachab, the son of Rechabim, who are mentioned by Jeremiah the prophet," cried out, protesting against the crime. Dr. Stanley (Sermons and Essays on the Apostolic Age, p. 333), struck with the seeming anomaly of a priest " not only not of Levitical, but not even of Jewish descent," supposes the name to have been used loosely as indicating the abstemious life of James and other Nazarites, and points to the fact that Epiphanius (Haer. Ixxviii. 14) ascribes to Symeon the brother of James the words which Hegesippus puts into the mouth of the Rechabite, as a proof that it denoted merely the Nazarite form of life. Calmet (Diss. sur les Rechab. l. c.) supposes the man to have been one of the Rechabite Nethinim, whom the informant of Hegesippus took, in his ignorance, for a priest. The view which has been here taken presents, it is believed, a more satisfactory solution. It was hardly possible that a writer like Hegesippus, living at a time when the details of the Temple-services were fresh in the memories of men, should have thus spoken of the Rechabim unless there had been a body of men to whom the name was commonly applied. He uses it as a man would do to whom it was familiar, without being struck by any apparent or real anomaly. The Targum of Jonathan on Jer. xxxv. 19 indicates, as has been noticed, the same fact. We may accept Hegesippus therefore as an additional witness to the existence of the Rechabites as a recognized body up to the destruction of Jerusalem, sharing in the ritual of the Temple, partly descended from the old "sons of Jonadab," partly recruited by the incorporation into their ranks of men devoting themselves, as did James and Symeon, to the same consecrated life. The form of austere holiness presented in the life of Jonadab, and the blessing pronounced on his descendants, found their highest representatives in the two Brothers of The Lord.

(5.) Some later notices are not without interest. Benjamin of Tudela, in the 12th century (Edit. Asher, 1840, i. 112-114), mentions that near El-Jubar (== Pumbenitha) he found Jews who were named Rechabites. They tilled the ground, kept flocks and herds, abstained from wine and flesh, and gave tithes to teachers who devoted themselves to studying the Law, and weeping for Jerusalem. They were 100,000 in number, and were governed by a prince, Salomon han-Nasi, who traced his genealogy up to the house of David, and ruled over the city of Thema and Telmas. A later traveller, Dr. Wolff, gives a yet stranger and more detailed report. The Jews of Jerusalem and Yemen told him that he would find the Rechabites of Jer. xxxv. living near Mecca (Journal, 1829, ii. 334). When he came near Senaa he came in contact with a tribe, the Beni-Khabr, who identified themselves with the sons of Jonadab. With one of them, Mousa, Wolff conversed, and reports the dialogue as follows: "I asked him, 'Whose descendants are you?' Mousa answered, 'Come, and I will show you.' and read from an Arabic Bible the words of Jer. xxxv. 5-11. He then went on. 'Come, and you will find us 60,000 in number. You see the words of the Prophet have been fulfilled, Jonadab the son of Rechab shall not want a man to stand before me forever'" (ibid. p. 335). In a later Journal (Journ. 1839, p. 389) he mentions a second interview with Mousa, describes them as keeping strictly to the old rule, calls them now by the name of the B'nê-Arhab, and says that B'ne Israel of the tribe of Dan live with them." E. H. P.
More to come ...

DCH
Last edited by DCHindley on Sat May 19, 2018 4:12 am, edited 2 times in total.
User avatar
DCHindley
Posts: 3411
Joined: Mon Oct 07, 2013 9:53 am
Location: Ohio, USA

G R S Mead, 'On the Tracks of the Earliest Christians'

Post by DCHindley »

G R S Mead, although dated (turn of 19th century CE), has always been a thought provoking-author.

In chapter 17 of in his Did Jesus Live 100 years BC?, about 17 pages of text in MS Word. I'll post it here in 4 or 5 page chunks. Be aware that this was long before the discovery of the Nag Hammadi Gnostic codices in Egypt, so some of his speculations were proved incorrect, but a lot was confirmed as well.

Enjoy:
G R S Mead, 'On the Tracks of the Earliest Christians', (Did Jesus Live 100 years BC, 1903, pp. 324-353) 1 of 4:

[324] XVII. ON THE TRACKS OF THE EARLIEST CHRISTIANS.

The Origin of the name Christian: IT is very certain that the name "Christiani" was not a title given by the early followers of Jesus to themselves. Indeed, we find it still unused by a series of Christian writers of the first half of the second century at a time when it was employed, though perhaps not invariably in its subsequently restricted sense, by Pliny the Younger in 112 A.D., by Tacitus 116- 117 A.D., and by Suetonius in 120 A.D. These Christian writers were content to designate the early communities of their co-believers by such expressions as: "brethren," "saints," "elect," "called," "they that believed," "faithful," "disciples," "they that are in Christ," "they that are in the Lord," and "of the way." 1

1 See Schmiedel's article "Christian, Name of," in the " Encyclopaedia Biblica."

Its Use in the Acts: Even in the New Covenant writings which subsequently became canonical, we meet with the designation only three times, and always in a connection which suggests that it was a name given from without, and not as yet adopted from within. The redactor of the Acts (xi. 29) believed - c. 130-150 A.D. - that "the disciples" were first called "Christiani" at Antioch, at [325] the time of the ministry of Paul and Barnabas in that city, that is, as he supposed, at the time of the founding of the first Gentile church there.

In the same document (xxvi. 28) we also meet with the curious remark attributed to Herod Agrippa, which is translated in the A.V. as "Almost thou persuadest me to be a Christian," but the imperfect original of which is untranslateable 1; where it is to be remarked that although Agrippa was not a pure Jew, it is hardly to be supposed he would have used such a term.

1 See Westcott and Hort's Introduction (Cambridge and London; 1881), p. 100.

In I. Peter: While in the earlier pseudepigraph I. Peter (iv. 16), we read: "But if [any man suffer] as a Christianus, let him not be ashamed, but let him give glory to God in this name," it is not clear what precise meaning should be given to the words "in this name"; but certainly the gloss of the A.V. "in this behalf" is not satisfactory. The followers of Jesus had apparently hitherto been "ashamed" of being called "Christiani"; for the meaning can hardly be that the condemned should give thanks because he suffers as a Christian in the later honourable sense of the term, but rather suggests some such idea as: We are accused of being "Messianists," and therefore revolutionaries against the Roman authority, but in reality it is we who are the true observers of the moral law; our revolution is in morals and not in politics, and therefore let us give thanks to God as His "Anointed" or the "followers of His Anointed," who are unjustly accused.

A Pagan Designation: In any case it is evident that the title "those of the Messiah" was not given to the followers of Jesus by [326] the Jews, for this would have been to admit what they so strenuously denied concerning the founder of the new faith. It is, therefore, highly probable that the name Christiani was first used by the Pagans to signify Messianists of all kinds, and was only finally adopted by the followers of Jesus in their public dealings with the Pagans, presumably first in apologetic literature, where we find it of frequent occurrence from about the second quarter of the second century.

Date of Origin: As for the time when the Pagan term "Christiani" arose, it is to be presumed that it came into use with the ever more and more desperate attempts of the Jews to shake off the Roman yoke, that is to say, subsequently to the downfall of Jerusalem, which is generally dated 70 A.D., but which some Jewish authorities give as 68 A.D. Schmiedel is of opinion that the date of origin of its use cannot with any assurance be placed earlier than 79 A.D., that is presumably the first year of Titus.

An answer to this most obscure question can only be found from a critical examination of the history of "Christian" persecutions; but even so, we are still left without any certainty. After a searching examination of the confused data, and a brilliant criticism of the conservative position of Mommsen, Sybel, Neumann and Ramsay, Schmiedel can arrive at no positive conclusion, and finally writes: "On the question as to the date at which Christianity first began to be recognized as a distinct religion, we must confess ourselves completely at a loss. Only this much is certain, that it had come about before the time of Pliny's governorship."

The Notzrim: But if the Jews did not know the followers of Jesus [327] as Christiani, by what name did they know them? To the Jews the Christians, when not classed under the general term Minim or heretics, were and are Notzrim. The writer of the Acts is aware of this when he makes a Jew accuse Paul of being " a ringleader of the sect of the Nazarenes" (A.V.) that is, of the "haeresis of the Nazoraei"; and that this was the general designation of the Christians by the Jews is testified to by Tertullian 1 at the end of the second century, and by Jerome at the end of the fourth. 2 While Justin (c. 145-150 A.D.) tells us that the Jews in their synagogues publicly cursed the "Christians," Epiphanius (c. 375 A.D.) says that this curse was directed against the "Nazoraei." Jerome, on the contrary, will have it that the curse was pronounced against the Minaei 3; whereas, as we have frequently remarked before, Minim is not to be taken as identical with Notzrim. Minim is a general term for heretics, not only in a bad but even in a good sense, and Notzrim would therefore come under the term but not be identical with it.

1 "Adv. Marc.," 48.
2 Hier., in Jes. ch. v. 18 f.; xlix. 7; lii. 5.
3 Hieron., "Epist. ad August.": "There is to-day among the Jews throughout all the synagogues of the East a heresy which is called [the heresy] of the Minaei, and is even until this day cursed by the Pharisees; these Minaeans are commonly called Nazoraeans, and they believe in Christ, the Son of God. . . . But while they will be both Jews and Christians, they are neither Jews nor Christians."


It is therefore of interest to try to discover, if it be possible, the meaning of this term Notzrim, and to find out why it was that Jesus is generally distinguished among the Jews from others of the same name as Jeschu ha-Notzri.

[328]
The Meaning of Nazareth: The accepted Christian tradition, it need hardly be said, is that Jesus Nazoraeus means simply Jesus of Nazareth, his place of origin. It is, however, well known to all scholars that very great difficulties are presented by the contradictory statements of the canonical accounts, and that so far no generally accepted ground of reconciliation between the rival claims of the traditional Nazareth and the prophetically necessitated Bethlehem has been found. There is, however, one hypothesis whereby much of the pressure may be relieved, and which is therefore deserving of our closest attention. In the first place it is to be noticed that even in the canonical account there is still preserved the very interesting trace that Nazareth was regarded by some as the "native country" πατρίδα [Mat. 15:34/Mark 6:1] not town [πόλις, Matt. 2:23 etc.], of Jesus; and in the second it has lately been argued, not only that Nazareth (or, perhaps, more correctly Nazara) was not a town or village, but a district or country, but, further, most probably this district was Galilee. 1

1 See Cheyne's article, "Nazareth," in the " Enc. Bib., " which elaborates the theory first mooted by the great Jewish authority Grätz.

Bethlehem-Nazereth: It is therefore suggested that perhaps in the earliest form of the evangelical tradition the term Bethlehem- Nazareth that is, Bethlehem of (or in) Galilee was found, and that this being misunderstood, especially by Gentile converts, in course of time some said that Jesus was born at Bethlehem, others at Nazareth. We thus find in the more developed forms of the tradition some incidents woven round Bethlehem, others round Nazareth, and scriptural authority was sought to authenticate either view.

[329]May it not, however, be that the whole idea of Bethlehem owed its origin to the "proof from scripture"? Bethlehem was necessitated by "prophecy"; 1 it must have been the place of birth, for in those days, if history did not fit with prophecy it had to go to the wall. Although, then, the prophecy-fulfilling writer of the first gospel could not have dreamed of giving up the prophetical Bethlehem, nevertheless he inconsistently supports the presumably simple historical Nazareth tradition by further prophecy when saying (ii. 23): "He came and dwelt in a city called Nazareth, that it might be fulfilled which was spoken by the prophets, he shall be called a Nazarene (Nazorseus)." This passage, as is well known, has given rise to endless discussion, for no such prophecy is to be found in the Old Testament. Some earlier commentators, it is true, were of opinion that it refers to the prophetical "shoot" (netzer) which should arise out of Jesse (Isaiah xi. 1); and that this was the explanation put forward by Jewish Christians of the early centuries may be seen from the Talmud passage concerning the five disciples. It must, however, be confessed that a so far-fetched derivation of the name appears little short of fantastic to the modern mind, and quite beneath the dignity of Scripture.2

1 "Micah," v. 2: " But thou, Bethlehem Ephratah, though thou be little among the thousands of Judah, yet out of thee there shall come forth unto me that is to be ruler in Israel."
2 Krauss (pp. 253-255) suggests the derivation of Nazareth from a word meaning "splinter" or "chip," and in this, apparently, would find a reason for the use of the term Jeachu ha-Notzri among the Jews, it being a play on the word "carpenter". See also Cheyne s art. "Joseph" (sect. 9) in "Enc. Bib."


Nazareth = Galilee: The whole of this apparently hopeless tangle, however, [330] begins to unravel itself if we can be persuaded that the simple historical fact was that Jesus was a Galilean; whether so-called because he was actually born in Galilee, or because the chief scene of his public ministry was among that very mixed population, and many of his earliest followers were Galileans, 1 here matters little. We know further from several sources that the Christians were originally called Galileans, 2 and it is said that Julian the Emperor (360- 363 A.D.) desired to have them so called again, and in his own writings he invariably refers to them under this designation.

1 See Acts i. 11 and ii. 7. Justin Martyr ("Dial. c. Tryph.," lxxx.), moreover, knows of a pre-Christian sect called Galileans, which, however, most scholars identify with the followers of the Zealot Judas the Galilean, who led a revolt in 6 or 7 A.D.
2 For instance, Epictetus, who died about 117 A.D., calls the Christians Galileans (" Dissertatt.," iv. 7); Mani, in the third century, calls the general Christians Galileans (Fabricius, "Bib. Greec.," v. 285); Suidas (s.v. " Christiani ") says that the Christians were first called Nazarenes or Galileans.


The Galileans: Does, then, the general term Notzrim used by the Jews for the Christians mean simply Galileans, and did Jeschu ha-Notzri originally signify simply Jesus of Galilee?

The "Nazoraeans or Christians.": In any case we see that, according to the writer of the Acts, the Christians of Paul's time were called Nazoraei (Notzrim) by the Jews, and we have also the emphatic declaration of Epiphanius that the earliest followers of Jesus were so designated. In his encyclopaedic "Panarium," in which he most vigorously attacks all heresies, that is, every form of religious belief, or even philosophy, but what he held to be the true teaching of Christianity, the Bishop of Constantia (the ancient Salamis) in Cyprus heads the concluding paragraph [331] of his first volume, "Concerning the Nazoraeans or Christians" ("Haer.," xx. 4).

It is somewhat difficult to make out the precise sense of this paragraph; for Epiphanius first of all again identifies the Nazoraeans and Christians, and then goes on to speak of "that which was for a short time called Christianism by the Jews, and by the Apostles themselves, when Peter says Jesus Nazoraeus, etc." (quoting from Acts ii. 22), where we should expect to read, instead of "Christianism," "Nazoraeanism," for he continues: "but was first called Christianism at Antioch." This was the true religion, but under an improper name, for "there is properly a heresy of the Nazoraei," about which he promises to tell us in its right place in the sequel.

The Jessaeans: When, however, he comes to deal with these heretical Nazoraeans ("Haer.," xxix. 1), he confesses that he does not really know exactly where to place them, whether before, or contemporary with, or later than some early schools of the end of the first century which he has just been attacking; he says they were all of about the same date and held the same views. They do not call themselves after the name Christus or Jesus, but simply Nazoraei, and, he adds, "all Christians were at that time in like fashion called Nazoraei." For a short time, however, the Christians also called themselves Jessaeans (Iessaei). Whence this name was derived, whether from Jesse, the father of David, or from the name Jesus, which, Epiphanius says, signifies in Hebrew the same as the Greek "Therapeutes," or "healer" or "saviour," he is not sure, but he is very certain they were so called ("Haer.," xxix. 4).

[332] Whether or not in this, as in much else of his vast heresiological undertaking, the Bishop of Constantia is giving us the speculations of his own "pure phantasy," based on vague hearsay, as Lipsius supposes,1 or that more credit is to be given to his confusing indications, as Hilgenfeld seems to admit,2 has not yet been definitely decided by modern scholarship. We are, therefore, at liberty to enquire for ourselves, not with any hope of deciding the question, for any attempt to do so would require a huge volume even for preliminaries, but with the sole purpose of directing the reader's attention to some points of special interest in the confused Refutation of the over-zealous Church Father.

1 Lipsius (R. A.), "Zur Quellenkritik des Epiphanies" (Wien; 1865), pp. 122-151.
2 Hilgenfeld (A.), " Die Ketzergeschichte des Urchristenthums " (Leipzig; 1884), index, s. vocc. Jessaei, Osseni, Nazoraei, etc.


Value of Epiphanius: Epiphanius is a curious writer, who deserves more attention than has so far been bestowed upon him, and it is somewhat a reproach to scholarship that as yet he has never been translated into any modern tongue. He attacks indiscriminately, and often misrepresents, every school of thought and belief of which he has read or heard; yet here and there, in spite of himself, he lets drop a valuable scrap of information which none of his predecessors in heresy-hunting have handed on to us. We should remember that this " antidote " to the "poison of the hydra-headed serpents of error," as he is never tired of calling the objects of his onslaught, was composed from 374 to 376 or 377 A.D., that is to say, just half a century after the initial triumph of Nicene Christianity, and as far as Epiphanius was concerned, he was [333] determined that no mercy should be shown to any dissenter, even though his dissent may have been absolutely unconscious, seeing that most of Epiphanius dissenters" had lived and thought at a date when Nicene Christianity was either inchoate, or even nonexistent. The rush of Epiphanius is so furious that we find him not unfrequently over-reaching himself; he sometimes even blindly blunders into his own friends and disarrays their ranks. The "mistakes" of Epiphanius are accordingly nearly always of deep psychological interest directly, and indirectly are sometimes of great historical value.

The Therapeuts: Thus there is much to interest us in what is generally considered to be his Issaean blunder. Epiphanius identifies his Issaeans with the Essenes, and of this there can be no doubt, for he tells the "studious reader" ("Haer.," xxix. 5), that if he would know more about them, he will find it in the memoirs of Philo, and especially in the book which that famous Alexandrian had entitled "Concerning the Issaei"; after which Epiphanius proceeds to give the main outlines of this treatise in such a way as to leave no doubt that he is quoting from Philo's famous tractate, "On the Contemplative Life." In this treatise it is true that Philo calls the very interesting community which had its monasteria on the southern shore of Lake Mareotis, south of Alexandria, as well as all their allied communities in Egypt and elsewhere, Therapeuts; but in his opening words he distinctly informs us that he had already, presumably in another tractate now lost,1 treated of [334] the "Essaei who followed the practical life," the communities in Palestine and Arabia, who in Philo's opinion did not soar to such a lofty height of philosophic and mystic endeavour as the members of the community near Alexandria with which he was specially acquainted, and which he characterized as "those of the Essaei who devote themselves to the life of contemplation."1

333-1 For what he tells us of them in his tract, "Quod Oinuis Probus Liber," one of his earlier works, most probably written before 20 A.D., can be regarded only as a summary from some lost treatise.
334-1 See my "Fragments of a Faith Forgotten" (London; 1900), pp. 66-86, where a translation is given from the critical text published by Conybeare in 1895.


The Name Essene: It is, therefore, held that Epiphanius has simply read Essaei as Issaei, and that this explains the whole difficulty. Now it is well known that the name Essene is one of the greatest puzzles of scholarship; upwards of twenty derivations have been given by ancient and modern writers, and the riddle still remains unsolved. The greatest difficulty is that we cannot find any general term, or even special term, in use in Hebrew or Aramaic for those whom such Hellenized Jews as Philo and Josephus call Essenes. Philo calls them "Essaei." Pliny the Elder (died 79 A.D.) speaks of them as "Hessenes," while Josephus (75-100 A.D.) gives the name as "Esseni."2 Philo, in "Q. O. P. L.," thinks that the name Essaioi is simply a (? Jewish) corruption of the Greek 'Osioi, the saints, while in "D. V. C." he makes it equivalent to Therapeuts, that is, Healers, or Servants (of God).

2 For the most objective article on the general subject, see Conybeare's article in Hastings "Dictionary of the Bible 3; (Edinburgh; 1898).
more to come ...

DCH
Last edited by DCHindley on Fri May 18, 2018 12:49 pm, edited 2 times in total.
User avatar
DCHindley
Posts: 3411
Joined: Mon Oct 07, 2013 9:53 am
Location: Ohio, USA

Re: Rechabites and James the Just

Post by DCHindley »

G R S Mead, 'On the Tracks of the Earliest Christians', (Did Jesus Live 100 years BC, 1903, pp. 324-353) 2 of 4:

[335] The Mind of Epiphanius: Epiphanius, as we have already seen, follows Philo and adopts the latter derivation, but why he has changed Essaei into Issaei is the puzzle. The Bishop of Salamis knew some Hebrew; was it, then, because he thought that Issaei was the preferable transliteration of the Hebrew original, if, indeed, there was a Hebrew original? Or was it that, having claimed these Essaeans as the first Christians, as he emphatically does ("Haer.," xxix. 5), he found himself in great difficulty to account for the name, as it evidently, on the face of it, had nothing to do with Jesus, or Christus, or Nazareth, seeing that he knew its variant was Esseni, which he plainly gives elsewhere ("Haer.," viii. 9)? Or can it be that a light had seemed to have come to him to illuminate the dim and puzzling records of the past, and that it had suddenly occurred to the worthy Bishop: Of course! Essaei is a mistake of Philo s for Jessaei, the followers of Jesus! Or was it finally that Epiphanius knew of an ancient tradition which declared that the Christians originally derived from the Essenes, that Jesus himself had been an Essene, and that the Church Father wished to safeguard the doctrinal tradition now stereotyped by the ecumenical decisions at Nicaea, by working into his treatise an argument against this "heretical" tradition, should it ever have the hardihood to raise its head again. This supposition may seem to some to cast a slur on the bona fides of our stalwart defender of orthodoxy; but Epiphanius is in all things a theologian and not a historian, and the canons of evidence for these two very different classes of mind are generally poles asunder. Moreover, we shall have to show that in several other instances Epiphanius has [336] for similar reasons dextrously woven into his expositions material of a very different pattern from that of the Catholic tradition, and even with regard to the name Issaei it may be that it hides an ancient trace of deep interest, as we shall see later on in another connection.

The Issaei of Nilus: Apart from this, however, it is by no means improbable that the name Issaei was not original with Epiphanius, for Abbot Nilus, the renowned ascetic of Sinai, who had previously enjoyed a high reputation at Constantinople, and retired to one of the famous monasteries of the mysterious region of Sinai and Serbal in 390, and died in 430, speaks of the Issaei and says that they were the Jewish philosophers and ascetics who were originally followers of the Rechabite Jonadab.1

1 "Tractatus de Monastica Exercitatione," c. iii.; "S. P. N. Nili Abbatis Opera quae supersunt," in Migne's " Patrologiae Cursus Completus, Patrol, graec.," tom lxxix. (Paris; 1860), vol. i. col. 722.

Did, then, Nilus get this form of the name from Epiphanius, or did Epiphanius obtain it from the same source as Nilus? It is not improbable that among such monastic communities as those on Sinai and Serbal, and others with which Epiphanius had come into contact during his travels in Egypt, such a name-theory had been canvassed, may even have been a tradition necessitated in the first place by the same difficulties which Epiphanius had to face.

The "Therapeut = Christian" Controversy: It must also be remembered that the Bishop of Constantia was not the first to claim the Essene-Therapeuts of Philo as the earliest Christians. Already, some fifty years previously, we find Eusebius in his "Church History" boldly declaring that these Therapeuts south of Alexandria were the first Christian Church in Egypt, [337] which Photius asserts later was founded by Mark. We have no space to trace the history of the fierce battle between Catholic and Protestant which has raged round this famous tract of Philo s because of this claim made by the Father of Church History, and the Philologus, or studious reader, as Epiphanius calls him, must be referred to Conybeare's magnificent and exhaustive work on the subject 1; I can only repeat what I have already written in my "Fragments" (pp. 64, 65), after reviewing the whole matter.

1 Conybeare (F. C.), "Philo about the Contemplative Life, or the Fourth Book of the Treatise concerning the Virtues," critically edited, with a Defence of its Genuineness (Oxford; 1895).

It is convincingly established against the "Pseudo-Philo" speculation of Grätz, Nicolas and Lucius, that the "De Vita Contemplativa" is a genuine Philonean tract. As to its date, we are confronted with some difficulties; but the expert opinion of Conybeare assures us that "every reperusal of the works of Philo confirms my feeling that the D. V. C. is one of his earliest works " (op. cit. p. 276). Now as Philo was born about the year 30 B.C., the date of the treatise may be roughly ascribed to the first quarter of the first century; Conybeare puts it conservatively "about the year 22 or 23" (op. cit., p. 290).

The Therapeut Dilemma: The question, then, naturally arises: At such a date can the Therapeuts of Philo be identified with the earliest Christian Church at Alexandria? If the accepted dates of the origins are correct, the answer must be emphatically, No. If, on the contrary, the accepted dates are incorrect, and Philo's Therapeuts were "Christians," then we shall be compelled to change the values of many things.

[338] But apart from the question of date, the contents of the "D. V. C." are of immense importance and interest as affording us a glimpse into those mysterious com munities in which Christians for so many centuries recognized not only their forerunners, but themselves. The Therapeuts, however, were clearly not Christians in any sense in which the term has been used by dogmatic Christianity; Philo knows absolutely nothing of Christianity in any sense in which the word is used to-day. Who, then, were those Christian non-Christian Essene Therapeuts? The answer to this question demands, in our opinion, an entire reformulation of the accepted history of the origins.

The dilemma is one that cannot be avoided. It is chief of all problems which confront the student of Christian origins. The Therapeuts have been recognized throughout the centuries as identical with the earliest Christian Church of Egypt. They were known to Philo at the very latest as early as 25 A.D., and they must have existed long before. If the canonical dates are correct, they could not have been Christians, in the sense of being followers of Jesus; and yet they were so like the Christians, that the Church Fathers regarded them as the model of a Christian Church. We are, therefore, confronted with this dilemma; either Christianity existed before Christ, or the canonical dates are wrong. From this dilemma there seems to me to be no escape.

The Name-Juggling of Epiphanius: Having, then, claimed the Essaeans of Philo as early Christians, and having, as most assume, though perhaps erroneously, changed their name to Jessaeans apparently to clinch the matter, Epiphanius finds himself [339] involved in a very great difficulty. What Philo tells us of the contemplative Essaeans or Therapeuts is so similar to what the Christians conceived their earliest communities to have been, that the identification of the one with the other amounted for them to a certainty. On the other hand, Epiphanius knows from Philo and other sources that there were many things in which the Essaei differed from not only the Nicene Christianity of his day, but from any type of Christianity in canonical tradition. Moreover, the Essaeans were still in existence, and had their own traditions, as we shall see later on, and Epiphanius knows something of the various "heresies" which still represented some of their teachings. The difficulty, therefore, which faced him was that these Essaeans were not Christians in any Nicene sense.

Knowing, then, that Josephus, as we have seen, gives (perhaps erroneously) Esseni as a variant of Essaei, Epiphanius hit upon the idea that the Esseni were different from the Essaei, and as he had converted Essaei into the orthodox Issaei, so he changed Esseni into Osseni, and kept this form for all characteristics of the Essenes which he held to be pre-Christian or heretical. Even so Epiphanius cannot straighten out the matter, for in his Introduction ("Haer.," viii. 9) he tells us that the "Esseni" were the first heresy of the Samaritans, this being the only passage in which he uses the Josephean form of the name; he, however, says nothing further of these Esseni. It must, moreover, be confessed that our Cyprian Bishop is great on this device of name change, for he has used it in other matters.

The Osseni: It therefore becomes of great interest to learn what [340] Epiphanius has to tell us of his Osseni. In his "Contra Ossenos" ("Haer.," xix. 1-5), he informs us that this heresy was interwoven with the heresies of the Nazaraei (not Nazōraei) - of whom more anon - of the Daily Baptists1 and of the Pharisees, thus classifying them among pre-Christian sects. The Osseni, he tells us, were, like these other schools,2 Jews; but, according to the tradition which had come to him, they did not originate in Judaea itself, but came from the regions to the east, south-east and south of the Dead Sea, mostly from Moab and Nabathaea; they were largely of Arabian origin. Are we, then, possibly to seek for the origin of the name Essene in old Arabic?

1 Called Masbotheans by Hegesippus (Mazbutlia = Baptism). See Bousset, "Die Religion des Judentums," p. 437 n.
2 The Pharisees, however, were not a school or a sect, but rather the national religious party among the Jews.


These Osseni, moreover, Epiphanius tells us, among other things used especially a certain scripture called the Book or Apocalypse of Elxai, which he elsewhere ("Haer.," liii. et al.) asserts to have been held in high esteem by the Ebionaeans and Nazoraeans, and especially by the Sampsaeans, who, he says, are neither Christians, nor Jews, nor Greeks, but as they are midway between all of these, they are nothing. Here Epiphanius makes his Osseni heretical Christians or even still non-Christians. It, therefore, becomes of importance to learn what were the leading ideas of this Elxai scripture, but to this interesting subject we must devote a separate chapter.

The Nazoraei: We will next pass to what Epiphanius has to tell us of the Nazoraei (" Haer.," xxix. 1-9). After declaring that [341] in the early days the Christians were all called Nazoraeans, although for a short time they also bore the name Jessaeans, Epiphanius enters into a very curious and deeply interesting digression on the Davidic descent of Jesus, which we shall treat in detail later on, and he then proceeds to tell us that Paul himself was accused of being a Nazoraean and acknowledged the title, confessing, moreover, that in the eyes of the Jews he was a heretic (Min); in all of which Epiphanius is, of course, only repeating the words of the writer of the Acts (xxiv. 5, 12-14).

According to Epiphanius, the Nazoraeans were practically Jewish Christians, that is to say, Christians who still observed the Jewish Law; he is, however, not certain what their views were as to Jesus, whether they took the miraculous view of his birth and worshipped him as God, or regarded him as a simple man who became a prophet. It was against these Nazoraeans, that is to say, the Christians who remained on the ground of Judaism, he tells us, that the Jews in their synagogues used to pronounce the curse to which reference has already been made, and which his contemporary Jerome assures us was directed against the Minaei (Minim).

The Flight to Pella: These Nazoraeans, even in Epiphanius time, were numerous, and were scattered throughout Coele-Syria, Decapolis, Pella, the region beyond Jordan, and extended even as far east as Mesopotamia. And in this connection, he declares that the sect of the Nazoraeans took its rise in and about Pella in Peraea after the fall of Jerusalem, for he will have it that the disciples, in reliance on a prophecy of Jesus, had fled thither to avoid the siege; this is, of course, the Eusebian account as well, [342] but neither of these Fathers seem to have considered that it says little for the courage or patriotism of the disciples that they fled; nor does Epiphanius explain why, if the "heresy" of the Nazoraeans began only subsequently to 70 A.D., Paul was called a Nazoraean a generation earlier.
more to come ...

DCH
Last edited by DCHindley on Fri May 18, 2018 11:58 am, edited 2 times in total.
User avatar
DCHindley
Posts: 3411
Joined: Mon Oct 07, 2013 9:53 am
Location: Ohio, USA

Re: Rechabites and James the Just

Post by DCHindley »

G R S Mead, 'On the Tracks of the Earliest Christians', (Did Jesus Live 100 years BC, 1903, pp. 324-353) 3 of 4:

Towards the Facts of the Case: But indeed our heresiologist is ever involving himself in serious contradictions concerning these Nazoraei, for while on the one hand he makes them out to differ from the Catholic Christians only in their continued adherence to the Jewish Law, he elsewhere says that they in many things hold the same views as the Cerinthians, Ebionites, Sampsaeans and Elkesaeans, all of whom he most bitterly attacks because they did not acknowledge Jesus as God, but said that he was either simply a good man, or a man filled with the Holy Spirit of God, or that the Christ was the Great Power, or Great King; in brief they taught the natural birth of Jesus and the doctrine of the mystic Christ, and not the later historicized dogma finally made absolute by the Council of Nicaea.

The historical fact underlying all this contradiction seems to be simply that "Nazoraei" was a general name for many schools possessing many views differing from that view which subsequently became orthodox. Most of them still remained more or less on the ground of Judaism, but what is of the greatest importance is that they were the direct followers of those earliest Nazoraei of which, according to the tradition of the Acts, Paul was accused of being a leader.

That the tradition (or rather traditions, for they were many and various) of the Nazoraei differed very widely [343] from any form of Christianity known to canonical tradition, may be seen even in our own day from the complex scripture of their still existent descendants in the marshes of Southern Babylonia, the so-called Mandaites, from whose Codex Nasarseus we have already quoted a few pregnant sentences; but the Genzā, is a vast store house of mixed traditions of all kinds, to which, unfortunately, we have no space to refer in our present undertaking.

Nazoraean Scriptures: Epiphanius, as we have seen, is greatly put to it to extricate himself from the many difficulties which have puzzled many far wiser heads than his own. He feels compelled, on evidence which was doubtless far fuller in his day than it is in ours, to hold to the Nazoraeans as the first Christians, and will have it that they used both the Old and New Testament (xxix. 7), though how the earliest Christians could have used the New Testament, when it was not yet in existence, he does not explain; they differed from the Catholic Christians only in so far that they observed the Jewish Law, the Sabbath and circumcision, the rite of the Covenant; but if so, it is strange that Epiphanius could be so careless as to say they used the New Testament, when so much of it is occupied with the Letters of Paul, who so strenuously withstood circumcision and the "letter (or Law) which killeth."

The Hebrew Gospel: These Nazoraei, Epiphanius tells us, were exceedingly learned in Hebrew, and all their writings apparently were in Hebrew (or Aramaic). But when he leaves the vague ground of the "New Testament" and comes to documents, he can only name one Gospel which he claims to have been the Hebrew original of the Gospel [344] according to Matthew, a book which was known to his contemporary Jerome, and a copy of which was in the Library founded by Pamphilus at Caesarea.

It is impossible here to enter into the history of the puzzling controversy concerning this "Gospel of the Nazoraeans," or to determine whether the Hebrew (or Aramaic) Gospel according to Matthew, which is referred to by Epiphanius and Jerome, and which the latter translated into Greek and Latin, but kept back because its striking divergences from canonical Matthew were not profitable to disclose, was different from the "Gospel according to the Hebrews," of which a Greek translation is known to have existed in the early years of the second century. Hilgenfeld holds that the Nazoraean Gospel (according to the Hebrews) was different from the Hebrew Gospel according to Matthew 1; while Lipsius, on the contrary, maintains that the two titles refer to one and the same document.2

1 Hilgenfeld (A.), " Evangeliorum secundum Hebrseos et cet. quae supersunt; Librorum Deperditorum Fragmenta " (Leipzig; 1884, 2nd ed.), pp. 15 ff., 33 ff.
2 See his article, "Gospels, Apocryphal " (The Gospel of the Hebrews) in Smith and Wace's "Dictionary of Christian Biography" (London; 1880).


Ancient Readings: The criticism of the question introduces us to a complicated problem of recensions, translations and retranslations, but in any case we are face to face with such readings as "Joseph begat Jesus," and the positive command, " Call me not 'Good' " both of which infer a gospel-form which rejected the physical virgin birth an the equation of Jesus with God. It is not, however, to be supposed that the literature of the Nazoraei, even on the ground of the New Covenant, was [345] confined to this Gospel and the "Book of Elxai"; on the contrary there must have been many books used by them, gospels and apocalypses of all kinds, both ancient and more recent.

The Naziraei: Moreover, in following up the Nazoraei, Epiphanius gets involved in yet another chronological difficulty, which he attempts to solve in the same fashion as that in which he dealt with the Essene problem, namely, by a distinction in names. The Nazoraei about whom he has been telling us, are not, he says, to be confused with the Naziraei, a term meaning the "Sanctified" or "Consecrated" ("Haer.," xxix. 5); of whom Samson was one, and many after him, and among them John the Baptist.

There was, he says, a sect of the Nasaraei before Christ ("Haer.," xxix. 6); these he has already described ("Haer.," xviii. 1-3). calling them, however, Nazaraei. He treats of these in connection with the Daily Baptists, who, like the Essenes and allied communities, baptized or washed themselves in water every day; they were Jews, and lived in the same districts as the Essenes. They observed the law of circumcision, the Sabbath and the appointed feasts, and especially reverenced the ancient patriarchs and sages of Israel, including Moses; they however, rejected the canonical Pentateuch, and said that the real Law was different from the one in public circulation. They apparently also rejected all the prophets after Moses. Moreover, they refused to have anything to do with the blood sacrifices of the Temple and abstained from eating flesh. They contended that the books which laid down the rules of these sacrifices were inventions of later times, and that their true [346] ancestors from Adam to Moses did not perform such bloody rites; all the accounts of such sacrifice in the popular scripture were later inventions of scribes who were ignorant of the true doctrine. These Nazars, then, were an extreme school of those dissentient mystics whose sayings had from about 150 B.C. crept into the books which subsequently became canonical, such sayings as: "The sacrifices of God are a broken spirit"; "Sacrifices and offering Thou didst not desire."

This spiritual protest against the grossness of blood-offerings was also a characteristic of the Essenes; and there can be little doubt but that there must have been a very close connection between the ideals of these pre-Christian schools of mystic and humanitarian Judaism and the earliest Christians.

The Nazirs: The bringing of the names Nazoraei and Nazaraei (and its variants) into such close connection, however, is puzzling. The Old Testament Nazirs were those "consecrated "to Yahweh by a vow, and their origin goes back to very early times in Jewish tradition. Now it is to be remarked that in Numbers vi. the word nezer is applied to the taking of the Nazirite vow of separation or consecration.1 Knowing as we do how fond the Hebrews, and, for a matter of that, all the ancients, were of word-play, for philology proper was as yet undreamed of, and finding as we do that the name netzer ("branch") is given to one of the disciples of Jesus in the Talmud,2 and in one of the Toldoth [347] recensions to Jeschu himself, and that commentators are agreed that this is a play on notzri, the Hebrew for "Nazarene" (or Galilean, if our previous argument holds good); knowing further that some of the earliest followers of Jesus were Galileans, and that the Jews despised all Galileans in general as ignorant people, can it not be possible that some other of the earliest disciples of Jesus were Nazirs, in the later sense of the term, for the Talmud and Toldoth acknowledge that some of the disciples were learned men? It is, we admit, impossible at this late date to throw any certain light on this chaos of conflation of names, but it is not illegitimate to have asked the question.

1 See Cheyne's (Robertson Smith's) article "Nazarite "in the "Enc. Bib."
2 "Bab. Sanhedrin,"43a.


The Neo-Nazirs: It may of course be doubted whether there was an order of Nazarites contemporary with Jesus; nevertheless Epiphanius distinctly tells us that the mystics and ascetics of whom he is speaking, went back to pre-Christian times, and rejected the sacrificial and priestly views of the Ezra-Nehemiah redaction of the Torah. They are thus apparently to be associated with those who sought to revive the ancient "schools of the prophets," and who did revive them in a very remarkable fashion, as we know from the apocalyptic literature of the period. Such men would naturally have looked back to the Nazirs of old as an ideal, for "from allusions in Amos (ii. 11 ff.) we are led to suppose that at one time they (the Nazirs) had an importance perhaps even an organization parallel to that of the prophets." 1

1 See Cheyne s article, sup. cit.

The Rechabites: These Nazarites of Amos have also a parallel with the ancient Rechabites, a name which in later times [348] became synonymous with ascetic,1 and the early writer Hegesippus tells us expressly (ap. Euseb., "H. E.,"; ii. 23), that "one of the priests of the Sons of Rechab, the son of Rechabim, who are mentioned by Jeremiah the prophet," protested against the murder of James the Just, the "brother of the Lord."

1 See Bennett's article "Rechab, Rechabites" in Hastings "Dict. of the Bible."

We have already also seen that Nilus asserts that the Issaei derived their descent from Jonadab the Rechabite, and though we have not space here to go into the matter as thoroughly as we could wish, we can at least see that all these scattered indications hang together, and point to the existence of numerous pre-Christian ascetic communities, who were closely inter woven with the origins of Christianity.

The Sampsaeans: Moreover, the great mythic hero of the Nazirs was Sampson (LXX.) or Samson, a name derived from SMS (Heb. Shemesh, Chald. Samas), or the Sun.2 This at once brings us back to Epiphanius and his Sampsaeans. We have already seen that the Bishop of Constantia, in speaking of the Naziraei ("Haer./ xxix. 5), knew that Samson was the great hero of these Nazirs, and yet he fails entirely to understand the significance of the hero's name. And this is strange, for after telling us ("Haer.," liii. 1-2) that the Sampsaeans are to be found in the same regions as the Essenes and Nazoraeans, and that they were also called Elkesaei, of whom we shall treat later on, he goes on to say that Sampsaei means Heliaci, that is to say Solares (Children or Worshippers [349] of the Sun). The Osseni, Ebionaei and Nazoraei, he repeats, all use the "Book of Elxai," and especially the Sampsaeans, or as we should prefer to take it, one of the books they all used was this apocalypse.

2 See Budde's article "Samson " in Hastings " Dict. of the Bible."

Sun-worshippers: They were sun-worshippers; not, however, in the gross sense in which Epiphanius would have us understand the term, but presumably in the same sense as the Therapeuts were sun-worshippers, who, as Philo tells us, "twice a day, at dawn and even, are accustomed to offer up prayers; as the sun rises praying for the sun shine, the real sunshine, that their minds may be filled with heavenly light, and as it sets praying that their soul, completely lightened of the lust of the senses and sensations, may withdraw to its own congregation and council-chamber, there to track out truth."1

1 Phil. " D. V. C.," P. 893, M. 475.

Their teacher was not, as Epiphanius would have it, a man called Elxaios, but some Great Power, as we shall see later on, and those who were illumined were said to be "kin to Him" and born of the "blessed seed." This reminds us forcibly of the Mind or Shepherd of Men in the Trismegistic treatises, and of much else. This "Mind of all-mastership," was the Father of the children or disciples in whom the Logos had come to birth; in other words, who had become "Christs." And Epiphanius tells us that the Sampsaeans and the rest would gladly lay down their lives for any of this "race of Elxai"; moreover, those of this race were believed to have the power of miraculous healing.

Their Mystic Doctrine: Epiphanius further informs us that the Sampsaeans would not receive the prophets and apostles (presumably of Petrine and Pauline Christianity), and that they [350] used the term Christus with a signification at variance with that of the later Nicene belief. Epiphanius can not understand the symbolism of these Children of the Sun, and makes a great hash of it; but it seems to have been simple enough. The positive and negative aspects of the Divine Logos were symbolized by the Sun (or Fire) and Water, the Light and Life. The Christ and his sister, or spouse, the Holy Spirit or the Sophia (Wisdom), were the dual Son of God, the true Man. Those who had reached the consciousness of their atonement with this sexless Man, were Christs or Anointed. The true spiritual body of the Christ they termed the "Body of Adam," the garment which was left behind in Paradise, when the soul descended, and which it will put on again when it returns triumphant as the Victor; of all of which in this and every other connection Epiphanius appears not to have had the least notion, for he can only ridicule or denounce it.

The Ebionites: We next pass on to the Ebionaeans or Ebionites, whom we find in Epiphanius inextricably interwoven with the Nazoraeans and allied sects. The Bishop of Constantia apostrophizes with great vigour a certain Ebion, whom he imagines, as did his predecessors in heresiology, to have been the founder of this widespread heresy. He proceeds to confute this "serpent" at great length by the very simple process of quoting from the canonical books of the New Testament, which of course the good Father held to constitute an infallible historical record, against which there was no appeal. Epiphanius, like his patristic predecessors, has, of course, not the slightest appreciation of the position of these early "heretics," and begs the whole question with that superb confidence [351] which has ever characterized the defenders of Catholicism. The position of the followers of these early schools, however, was precisely that they depended upon a tradition which they claimed to be earlier than that of the canonical view; it was an appeal to history, and history has so far never answered the appeal, history s voice has been drowned by the passionate rhetoric of theologians.

The "Poor.": The name Ebionaei (Heb. Ebionim) meant simply "Poor," and did not derive from an imaginary eponymous Ebion, as has been now for many years admitted by scholars of every school. Ebion is a myth begotten of the rhetoric of patristic polemics. So much is certain; but who the "Poor" originally were, and why they were so called, is one of the innumerable conundrums with which the sphinx of the Christian origins confronts the critical Oedipus.

The Riddle of the Name: Already we find Paul in his Letter to the Galatians (ii. 10) referring to the "poor" in such a way that Hilgenfeld takes the term as a general designation of the early Christian communities and not simply the poor of the church of the "pillars" at Jerusalem. 1 We also find the writer of the third Gospel using among his "sources" a form of the Sayings which are held to be of a distinctly "Ebionite" character, that is to say, containing such unqualified declarations as "Blessed are ye poor, for yours is the kingdom of God " (Luke vi. 20), a dark saying, not only for us, but also for the writer of the first Gospel, or his Logia "source," which gives it as "Blessed are the poor in spirit" (Matt. v. 3), where τῷ πνεύματι has all the appearance [352] of being a gloss, unless we accept Jerome's interpretation (in loc.), "those who on account of the Holy Spirit are voluntarily poor"; in which case it might be regarded as the original form of the Saying, and hence as addressed to the members of an already formed community; for the usual interpretation of the Catholic Fathers, that the phrase is a periphrasis for "humble," would be a brusque departure from the simple wording of the rest of the Sayings of the same category.

1 Hilgenfeld, "Ketzergeschichte," p. 422.

But even so, if the more elaborate form is the original, it is difficult to explain why the writer of the third Gospel should have dropped the qualifying τῷ πνεύματι, a phrase by no means easy of translation, unless it be the literal rendering of some Hebrew or Aramaic idiom.

If, on the contrary, the simple "poor" is the original form, the idea of a community of Poor cannot be entertained, and we must rather attribute it to some dark saying of the Master preserved by those who falsely imagined that He was preaching some social revolution of poor against rich, for a Master of Wisdom could certainly not have preached that the mere fact of poverty was a virtue, and the mere fact of riches a condemnation. In our present lack of reliable data it is, then, useless to speculate as to the origin of the name Ebionite; this much we know, that later on those who were so called were not necessarily poor, though some of them were voluntarily Poor; "naked they sought the Naked," as the Gymnosophist of Upper Egypt is reported to have told Apollonius in the first century.1

1 See my "Apollonius of Tyana, the Philosopher-Reformer of the First Century" (London; 1902), p. 100.

The Twofold Ebionism Hypothesis: The point, however, which has proved of greatest [353] difficulty in all research into this puzzling question of the Ebionaeans, is that while Irenaeus, about 180 A.D., knows only of one kind of Ebionites ("Ref.," i. 22), those who assert that Jesus was born a man as all men, and who reject Paul; on the contrary Origen ("C. Cels.," v. 61.), towards the middle of the third century, speaks of two kinds of Ebionites, both those who say that Jesus was a man, and those who believe in the virgin-birth, as also does Eusebius at the beginning of the fourth century ("H. E.," iii. 27). Accordingly innumerable hypotheses have been put forward, and attempts made to divide and subdivide the Ebionites, ever since the "Tübingen school" maintained that in them we had the remnants of original Apostolic Christianity; there is, however, no agreement among the authorities.

Perhaps of all the distinctions drawn between the Ebionites, the attempt to separate them by a supposed chronological canon, and to speak of "Ebionism proper" and "Gnostic Ebionism,"1 is the most misleading, for, as is invariably the case, the comparative lateness of "Gnosticism " is assumed as a firmly-established fact for all questions of Church History. But the fond presumption of the later Church Fathers that the Church remained a "pure virgin" uncontaminated by "heresy" until the reign of Trajan, is no longer to be maintained in face of the testimony of Paul, our earliest witness to the existence of the Faith.

1 See Fuller s article " Ebionism " in S. and W.'s"Dict. of Christ. Biog."
Finally, the last of the things to come ...

DCH
Last edited by DCHindley on Fri May 18, 2018 11:58 am, edited 2 times in total.
User avatar
DCHindley
Posts: 3411
Joined: Mon Oct 07, 2013 9:53 am
Location: Ohio, USA

Re: Rechabites and James the Just

Post by DCHindley »

G R S Mead, 'On the Tracks of the Earliest Christians', (Did Jesus Live 100 years BC, 1903, pp. 324-353) 4 of 4:

The Early Date of Gnosticism: As I have already stated elsewhere,2 Gnosticism, is [354] not to be confined to the second and part of the third century; it was flourishing in the first century as well: indeed, Christianity seems to have been in contact with communities of a Gnostic character from its very beginnings. Setting aside the hotly-debated point whether Jesus himself was a member of one of the Essene communities, there is very little doubt that Paul, whose authentic Letters are the earliest historic records of Christendom, was in some sort of contact with "Gnostic" ideas. It is generally believed that the Apostle to the Gentiles was in irreconcilable conflict with every sort of Gnosticism, because of his phrase, "Gnosis falsely so called"; but if so, it is an extraordinary fact that some of his Letters are filled with technical terms of the Gnosis, terms which receive ample, elaborate, and repeated explanation in Gnostic tradition, but which remain as everyday words deprived of all technical context in Catholic hands.

2 See "Some Notes on the Gnostics" in "The Nineteenth Century" (Nov. 1902), pp. 822-835.

Paul and the Gnosis: To take one instance out of many one, however, which, to the writer's knowledge, has not been noticed before. The Authorized Version renders I. Corinthians xv. 8 in the famous and familiar words: "And last of all he was seen of me also, as of one born out of due time." What is the meaning of the graphic but puzzling "born out of due time," which so many accept because of its familiar sound without further question? "And last of all, ὡσπερεὶ τῷ ἐκτρώματι ["as to the abortion"], he appeared to me also." [>] "And last of all, as to the ἔκτρωμα [abortion], he appeared to me also." [>] "And last of all as to the abortion, he appeared to me also." Notice [355] "as to the abortion," not "as to an abortion." 1 [underlining mine - dch]

1 The reading has never been questioned; but even if it were questioned, the canon that "the more difficult reading is to be preferred to the easier" would decide for the retention of the article.

Now "the abortion" is a technical and oft-repeated term of one of the great systems of the Gnosis, a term which enters into the main fabric of the Sophia mythus.

The "Abortion": In the mystic cosmogony of these Gnostic circles, "the abortion" was the crude matter cast out of the Pleroma or world of perfection. This crude and chaotic matter was in the cosmogonical process shaped into a perfect "aeon by the World-Christ; that is to say, was made into a world-system by the ordering or cosmic power of the Logos."The abortion" was the unshaped and unordered chaotic matter which had to be separated out, ordered and perfected, in the macrocosmic task of the "enformation according to substance," while this again was to be completed on the soteriological side by the microcosmic process of the "enformation according to gnosis" or spiritual consciousness. As the world-soul was perfected by the World-Christ, so was the individual soul to be perfected and redeemed by the individual Christ.

Paul thus becomes comprehensible; he here speaks the language of the Gnosis, and in this instance at least it is possible to draw the deduction that the Gnosis in this connection could not, in his opinion, have been "falsely so called." Paul is speaking to communities who are familiar with such language "He appeared to me just as it were to that well-known imperfect plasm [356] which we call the abortion," he says; "I use a figure familiar to all of you."

The Puzzle of the Pauline Communities: If, then, we accept the main Pauline Letters as genuine, the problem we have to face is this, that we are in them presented with a picture of communities which had plainly existed before Paul s propaganda, not only in Palestine but also among the Diaspora, and that at least some of these communities were familiar with Gnostic nomenclature. Paul uses language which convinces us that the communities which devoted themselves to the cultivation of "the gifts of the spirit" were not originally founded by himself, but that they had been long established, for he does not speak of these things as new, but as very familiar, not as taught by himself, but rather as to be modified by his own more common-sense teaching. These communities were not only familiar with Gnostic nomenclature, but also with some sort of undisciplined "prophesying"; whence did they have such things? It is not sufficient impatiently to set these facts on one side, for it is just such facts which are the fundamental data in any attempt to solve the mystery of Christian origins. It is, therefore, somewhat beside the point to assume that "Gnostic Ebionism" must have necessarily been later than "Ebionism proper," especially as it is just this "Ebionism proper" about which we should like to inform ourselves.

Ebionite Christology: The main charge against the Ebionites, as Hippolytus tells us ("Philos.," vii. 34), is that they, like all the earliest "heretics," denied the later doctrine of the miraculous physical virgin-birth of Jesus. They lived according to the Jewish customs, claiming that they were justified [357] "according to the Law." They further declared, so says Hippolytus, that Jesus had been so justified by his practice of the Law; it was for this cause that they called him "the anointed (Christ) of God and Jesus;1 for none of the other (? prophets) had fulfilled the Law." They further declared "that they themselves could by doing the same become Christs; for, they said, that he (Jesus) was a man like all men."

1 Why they called him "Jesus," Hippolytus unfortunately does not tell us; but we may perhaps get on the track of the reason in the next chapter.

We know also that other of the early schools went still further and claimed that members of their communities had already reached this high stage of justification and illumination, as high as Paul or even Jesus himself, and that this could even be transcended a vain and empty boast, you will say, but then we have no record of their lives, but only the bitter denunciations of the Church Fathers.

The Doctrine of Election: Apparently the earliest form of mystic Ebionite Christology was that of "election." Thus we find Justin Martyr (c. 145-150 A.D.), in his "Dialogue with Trypho" (xlix.), putting the following argument into the mouth of his Jewish opponent: "Those who affirm him to have been a man, and to have been anointed by election, and then to have become a Christ (Anointed), appear to me to speak more plausibly than you," that is Justin, who maintains the physical virgin birth dogma, and who in the previous chapter had said to Trypho: "Even if I cannot demonstrate so much as this [namely, that Jesus was God incarnate in the Virgin's womb], you will at least admit that Jesus is the [358] Messiah (Anointed) of God, in case he can be shown to have been born as a man of men, and be proved to have been raised by election to the dignity of messiahship. For there are . . . some of our persuasion (lit. race) who admit that he is the Messiah, but declare him to have been a man of men."

The "Shepherd of Hermas" on Election: In the "Shepherd of Hermas," which in the part from which we quote ("Sim." v. 5) is distinctly older than Justin, this doctrine of election or adoption is set forth as follows:

"God made His Holy Spirit, which pre-existed and created all creation, to enter and dwell in the flesh (i.e., human body) which He approved. This flesh, therefore, in which the Holy Spirit took up its dwelling, served the Spirit well in holiness and purity, having never in any way polluted the Spirit. Therefore, because it had lived well and purely, and had laboured with the Spirit and worked therewith in every matter, conversing bravely and manfully, God chose it to be participator along with the Holy Spirit. For the flesh walked as pleased God, because it was not polluted upon earth, having the Holy Spirit. God, therefore, took into counsel the Son and the angels in their glory, to the end that this flesh, having blamelessly served the Spirit, might furnish, as it were, a place of tabernacling (for the Spirit), and might not seem to have lost the reward of its service. For all flesh shall receive the reward which shall be found without stain or spot, and in it the Holy Spirit shall make its home." 1

1 Conybeare's translation, op. sub. cit., pp. lxxxix., xc.

The Heresy of all Heresies: This election was said to be consummated at [359] "baptism," nay, it was the true Baptism of the Holy Spirit. As we shall see in the next chapter, the Holy Spirit or Wisdom was the spouse of the Son or Great King. When this universal mystic teaching became historicized and connected with an actual physical baptism by John the Baptist it is impossible to say, but it is very certain that the "heresy" of "election," and the claim of the early mystics that all men who lived the life of true holiness could become Christs, was the unforgiveable sin of the subsequently orthodox Fathers, and that this teaching has been relentlessly crushed out by the Catholic Church wherever found throughout the centuries.1

1 See Conybeare (F. C.) " The Key of Truth, a Manual of the Paulician Church of Armenia" (Oxford; 1898); index, s.vv. "Election" and "Elect," e.g., "Elect regarded as Christs," etc.

Necessity for a New Definition of Ebionitism: But indeed the question of Ebionism is of a so vast and complicated nature that it would require a whole volume in itself to exhaust the contradictory indications of the Church Fathers and analyse the "Clementine" Literature. There seems to have been every shade of "Ebionism," and if on the one hand the Church Fathers tell us that the Ebionaeans accepted the whole of the Old Testament, on the other we are informed that they submitted its documents to a most drastic criticism, some of them rejecting not only all the Prophets, but even much of the Pentateuch. Like so many of the Gnostics they had a subjective canon whereby they sorted out the inspiration of the Old Testament as pure, mixed and evil.

This much only is certain, that we are no longer able to assign a precise meaning to the terribly abused [360] term "Ebionism"; it is as vague as, nay vaguer than, "Gnosticism," for in the latter at any rate there must be a mystic element, whereas with "Ebionism proper" it is mostly confounded with materialistic and limited views, though, as we have seen, erroneously.

The Samaritans: We have already seen that these mystic and more liberal ideas flourished especially in districts where the people were of non-Jewish extraction; we are, therefore, not surprised to find that Samaria also, whose inhabitants were almost purely of non-Jewish descent, was a hot-bed of "heresies" of all kinds. For the Jew, then, "Samaritan" stood for a heretic par excellence, and we are therefore not astonished to find that one of the epithets applied by the Rabbis to Jesus was that of Samaritan.

Samaritan Sects: In this connection it is of interest to note that Epiphanius ("Haer.," ix.) tells us that the four principal sects of the Samaritans were (i) the Esseni, (ii) the Gortheni, (iii) the Sebuaeans, and (iv) the Dositheans.

It is very strange to find the Essenes heading the list, for no other writer calls the members of this interesting brotherhood Samaritans. It may be that the Bishop of Constantia does so, because he found that schools closely allied to them rejected all other of the Jewish scriptures except the Pentateuch. It may, however, be that as a matter of history the Essenes themselves also rejected much which subsequently became the orthodoxy of Mishnaic Rabbinism, and they may very well have had many adherents in Samaria.

As to the Gortheni, who are also mentioned by Hegesippus (op. Euseb., "H. E.," iv. 22), who flourished in the latter half of the second century, Epiphanius calls [361] them also Gortheoni ("Ancorat.," 12) and also Gorotheni ("Haer." i. 12), but tells us nothing about them. Theodoret, however, says ("Haer. Fab." i. 1) that they derived their doctrines from Simon Magus, that is to say, they held the same views as did the mystics associated later on with this semi-mythical "founder" of Christian heresy, according to the Church Fathers.

As to the Sebuaeans, Epiphanius alone mentions them, but tells us nothing about them except that they held certain Feasts on days which differed widely from the dates of the Jews.

The Dositheans: With the mention of the Dositheans, however, we come to a subject of greater interest. And here we will leave Epiphanius and follow the data collected in the excellent article of Salmon. 1 The "Ebionite" Clementine "Recognitions" tell us that Simon Magus was a disciple of Dositheus (that is, perhaps, of the school of Dositheus), and that Dositheus (Heb. Dosthai) was the prophet like unto Moses whom Yahweh was to raise up. The Clementine "Homilies," on the contrary, in true legendary style declare that both Dositheus and Simon were co-disciples of John the Baptist. As Jesus, the Sun, had twelve disciples, so John, the Moon, had thirty disciples, the number of days in a lunation, or more accurately 29½, for one of them was a woman. Simon, it is said, studied magic in Egypt, and there is a strange legend of a contest between him and Dositheus, in which Simon proves himself the victor.

1 "Dositheus," in Smith and Wace's "Dict. of Christ. Biography."

The importance of Dositheus: The Recognitions also state that Dositheus was the founder of the sect of the Sadducees, which means probably nothing more historically than that Dositheus, as [362] was to be expected of a Samaritan, rejected all the subsequently canonical books, and held to the Pentateuch alone. In any case this statement assures us that Dositheus was considered in subsequent times a man of very great importance. And as this statement was also made by Hippolytus in his lost Compendium, the view must have been very widespread. In any case Hippolytus gave the foremost place among his pre-Christian sects to Dositheus.

Origen (in Johann. iv.) speaks of books ascribed to Dositheus as being still current among the followers of that then ancient tradition, and of a popular belief among them that their master had not really died.

Some Curious Legends: Epiphanius describes the Dositheans as observers of the Law; they, however, abstained from animal food, and many of them from sexual intercourse. Epiphanius further adds a story that Dositheus finally retired to a cave and there practised such severe asceticism as to bring his life to a voluntary end. An exceedingly interesting variant of this story appears in a Samaritan Chronicle, where it is said that the Samaritan high-priest took such severe measures against the new sect, because of its use of a Book of the Law which was said to have been falsified by Dousis (Dositheus), that Dousis was compelled to "fly" to a mountain and hide himself in a cave, where he died from want of food. There is a striking similarity between this and the conclusion of the Shemtob form of Toldoth which we have quoted in the chapter on "Traces of Early Toldoth Forms," where Jesus flies away to a cave on Mount Carmel.

Eulogius, Patriarch of Alexandria, who died 608 A.D. [363] and who appears to have studied Dosithean books, says that Dosthes (Dositheus) exhibited particular hostility to the Patriarch Judah. That is to say, presumably, that the Dositheans particularly detested a certain Judah. Can this have anything to do with the Judas of the Toldoth, and did the Dositheans give the other side?

Dositheus and the 100 years B.C. Date: Finally, it is very curious to find that Aboulfatah, an Arab historian, who nourished in the fourteenth century, and who was personally acquainted with the adherents of this long-lived Dosithean tradition, places Dositheus 100 years B.C. Dositheus, he tells us, was said to have claimed to have been the Prophet, foretold by Moses, and also the Star, prophetically announced in Numbers.1 Dositheus, says Aboulfatah, that is to say, according to the tradition of the Dositheans of his day, lived in the days of John Hyrcanus. who died 105 B.C.2

1 Num. xxiv. 17: "There shall come a star out of Jacob."
2 See Juynboll (T. G. J.), "Chronicon Samaritanum, arabice conscriptum cui Titulus est Liber Josuoe" (Leyden; 1848), pp. 112, 114.


The Conflation of traditions: This Dosithean tradition, therefore, appears to me to be deserving of greater attention than has yet been bestowed upon it; it is not satisfactory to dismiss it impatiently with the epithet "fabulosa" as does Juynboll, and those who copy from him. The Simon Magus tradition is interwoven with the Dosithean; the Church Fathers assert with one voice that all the heresies of Christianity sprang from Simon Magus; the Simon Magus legends are interwoven with the Toldoth legends of Jesus. Baur startled traditionalists with the theory [364] that the name Simon Magus was simply a disguise for Paul, but the Jewish tradition amazes us still further with the suggestion that Simon Magus in some fantastic fashion is a legend-glyph, if not for Jesus, at any rate for those who followed the earliest tradition of the historical Jesus.

We will next turn our attention to some considerations "Concerning the Book of Elxai." [see ch 18]
User avatar
DCHindley
Posts: 3411
Joined: Mon Oct 07, 2013 9:53 am
Location: Ohio, USA

Re: Rechabites and James the Just

Post by DCHindley »

I think it is obvious that a LARGE number of obscure posts have either been based on, or could easily be answered, by what has been relayed above by Mead.

Since none of the obscure posters seems to credit Mead as the source of their speculations, it goes to show just how thoroughly the POVs expressed by Mead, which were based on the best of scholarship as it existed in his day, still permeates that cloud of ideas and "facts" from which we draw our speculations or make our decisions.

Since Mead, and the other scholars of his day, are human beings working from incomplete remains of the distant past, they may well be wrong. We should be aware of where the ideas we express and tactics we employ to investigate past matters have originated, so that when we read more modern authors, who have a bit more evidence to work from than did the scholars of the late 19th and early 20th centuries, we can understand the nuances of the facts they analyze and the conclusions they draw.

DCH
Post Reply