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Carl Sagan

The Apostolic Age Begins 2.1

A Tradition of a Field of Blood
Appointment of New Apostles

Abstract

Paul only knew Jesus through his visions but arrogantly he claimed to know him better than Apostles that had known him in the flesh. He taught that the Torah had been superseded by the death on the cross of a divine being, Jesus, in atonement of men’s sins. Faith in this was the only way to be saved. These were the ideas of the mystery religions and Gnosticism. The New Testament has Jesus as the pre-existent Son of God, divine in his own right—Paul’s aim, though he hesitated in claiming outright divinity for Jesus. Paul’s stories were credible only to people influenced by paganism. The Nazarenes had a lot of such people among them—the publicans and sinners—Jewish backsliders and apostates receptive to Hellenistic culture. Paul’s teachings were heretical in that, to achieve his ambition, he wanted the requirements of the Mosaic Law to be eased for his gentile converts. The leader of the Church at Jerusalem, James the Just, refused.

A Tradition of a Field of Blood

So, after the crucifixion the disciples still expected a miracle and Israel to be liberated “soon”, as Luke-Acts proves, and Peter continued to preach that God had promised to king David to put a son on the throne of Israel. In Acts 1:15, Peter made a speech apparently having just returned from the Mount of Olives, but the inclusion of the phrase “and in those days” implies time had passed to allow the disciples to emerge from hiding. The speech really was later when the hue and cry had died down.

The address, “men and brethren”, implies that the speech was made to a crowd that included people who had not yet been recruited to the Nazarene cause, unless there were Essenes present and he is distinguishing the true brotherhood of initiates from the Nazarenes who had merely been baptised and instructed. The speech begins by explaining the fate of Judas.

Now this man (Judas) purchased a field with the reward of iniquity, and falling headlong, he burst asunder in the midst, and all his bowels gushed out. And it was known unto all the dwellers at Jerusalem, insomuch as that field is called in their proper tongue, Aceldama, that is to say, The field of blood.

A Catholic commentator, Ronald Knox, has described Peter’s explanation (New Testament Commentary: Acts, Epistles, 1954) as “of baffling obscurity” which means that a proper interpretation is incompatible with the traditional Christian myth. Knox suspects errors or omissions in the text which might have been considerable. He adds:

We cannot even be certain that the author is describing the death of Judas.

An observation precisely to the point!

Whoever died in the field had made loud noises, fallen prone, been gutted and received a just reward for acquiring land to which they had a guilty entitlement only. The passage could easily have been plural, originally—“their bowels” rather than “his bowels.” It was not just one man but men—Roman soldiers—and the land was not just a field but the land of Israel. The field was the place in the Qidron valley where the Roman Jerusalem garrison had been massacred by the advancing Nazarenes and the thousands of pilgrims marching with them.

Stories circulated about this victory and the Field of Blood where it had occurred. The Christians had to invent an explanation of the tales and why a field of blood was associated with the followers of Jesus. The death of Judas is offered as an explanation as it is in Matthew 27:3-10, although the story is quite different. Matthew describes how Judas tries to return the reward of thirty pieces of silver in exchange for Jesus’s release, fails and hangs himself. The priests, not wishing to taint the Temple treasury with the returned blood money instead buy the Potter’s Field in which to bury foreigners. This field was therefore called the Field of Blood.

These explanations are incompatible attempts to explain a mysterious legend among the early Christians of a Field of Blood—or perhaps of sleep, a euphemism for death—in which foreigners lie dead. Bishops attempting to explain this came up with various answers, two of which we have preserved. Luke’s (there is no scholar who believes it is Peter who gave this explanation) is quite false, being an adaptation of the death of Nadhan, the wicked nephew of Ahikar, from the Book of Ahikar which circulated amongst the semitic races since the fifth century BC, and was popular among the eastern Christians.

Either explanation is in any case inadequate since such a rumour must be based upon a far more substantial event than that of a man tripping up and spilling his innards, or guiltily hanging himself. The gore must have been considerable to leave such an impression.

Matthew admits more of the truth in calling the field the “Potter’s Field” and that foreigners were buried in it. Furthermore the field was considered from at least the fourth century AD to have at the junction of the valleys of Hinnom and the brook Qidron.

In Acts 1:20 Luke has Peter quoting Psalms in explanation of the death in the Field of Blood. The psalms quoted are 69:25:

Let their habitation be desolate and let none dwell in their tents,

and 109:8:

Let his days be few and let another take his office.

The scriptural quotations in Acts are given in typically Essene fashion—freely altered to suit the author’s purpose. The first is inappropriately plural in reference to a single man, Judas, and the second has nothing to do with the way he died but sets the scene for appointing an apostle in his stead. Another hint of Essene influence is the word for “office” in Acts 1:20 which correctly means “overseer.” It is the word which came to mean “bishop” in the church but which came from the Essene rank of “mebaqqer” (J Allegro, The Dead Sea Scrolls, 1964 112). The true source in the Psalms which explains the reference to Potter and the dashing of innards is Psalms 29:

Thou shalt break them with a rod of iron. Thou shalt dash them in pieces like a potter’s vessel.

The psalm refers to the enemies of Israel, expressing the actions expected of a warrior messiah, and, in this context in Acts, relating the wish to some real event that happened at the “Field of Blood”, just outside Jerusalem! The “Field of Blood” or “Sleep” reserved for foreigners is obviously the site of the Nazarene victory over the Jerusalem garrison in the Qidron valley. The reference to the “potter” makes it certain. It would have been quite natural after the victory for the Nazarenes to have called the field of victory the “Potter’s Field”, referring to this psalm. The Gadarene swine falling over a cliff in the gospels might imply that Romans soldiers were thrown from high places, an effective way of “dashing” them and accounting for the gory account of the death of Judas.

Appointment of New Apostles

Peter’s speech in Acts turns to the appointment of a successor to Judas, showing that the twelve apostles were actually offices as the normal translation suggests. They had the post of mebaqqer.

Wherefore of these men which have companied with us all the time that the Lord Jesus went in and out among us, Beginning from the baptism of John, unto that same day that he was taken up from us, must one be ordained to be a witness with us of his resurrection.

Luke tries to make out that Jesus begin his ministry at his baptism by John the Baptist, whereas, in the synoptic gospels, he only began to recruit when he got to Galilee some time later. Since Luke speaks of Jesus being taken up and the “baptism of John” in the same sentence, it seems that he means the baptism of Jesus by John. Only disciples of John the Baptist would have been present at Jesus’s baptism, implying that the longest serving followers of Jesus were previously followers of John, and indeed that is proved in the fourth gospel. The corect interpretation makes it certain because the “baptism of John” is the baptism administered by John. Disciples of John helped him with the “Baptism of John”, the name used of pre-Christian baptism elsewhere in the New Testament when referring to those baptised by John. It proves that Jesus was a disciple of John and there was a single movement of Nazarenes. The followers of both Jesus and John were called Nazarenes.

Jesus was John’s successor as the Nasi and local followers of John would naturally have transferred allegiance to Jesus. There were Jews who preferred to follow John in his own right. There are several possible reasons for this. One is that diaspora Jews on a pilgrimage to Palestine might have been baptized by John, departed and not heard of subsequent events. Also, local converts who transferred allegiance to Jesus at first, later abandoned him, when Jesus seemed to falter and had to flee to Phoenicia.

Last were those who did not accept the resurrection, seeing Jesus simply as a false prophet and abandoning his band. These latter cases might well have turned back to John, who evidently outlived Jesus and became himself to look legendary, so that he was thought of as a messiah.

The Nazarenes had two candidates for the overseer’s job left by Judas, Joseph Barsabas, surnamed Justus, and Matthias. Though the Nazarenes are seeking a successor to Judas to fill the vacancy in the ranks of the twelve apostles, the “brother” of Jesus, James, is not put forward as a candidate. This offers difficulties for Christian commentators because James is soon revealed as the leader of the Jerusalem church! Either James automatically succeeded his brother and Luke is avoiding the issue for the sake of his romance, or James is the head of a different organization, or different branch of the umbrella organization which encompasses both the bemused group of Jesus’s converts and a long established church of evangelic Essenes.

When Luke wrote, all the main protagonists were dead but, for the gentile Christians, Paul and Peter were the principle figures not the staunchly Jewish James. The puzzle only occurs therefore if James is assumed to have been a follower of Jesus when really they were equals or James was the superior as leader of the Essenes. Either James was the newly appointed Nasi, the successor of Jesus, or the successor of John the Baptist as the priestly leader of the Essenes.

In Peter’s speech (Acts 1:15) “brethren” has a wider meaning than brothers in a kinship sense, leaving a doubt whenever it is used. The scrolls use the word “brethren” in the same sense of a brotherhood rather than siblings. If Jesus and James were really brothers by kin and not simply in a social sense then some of the confusion can be explained which occurred if James appeared calling himself Nasi. He looked like Jesus! It is not necessary to believe this, however, because he probably looked like Jesus anyway simply because both were Nazarites accustomed to wearing their hair long, habitually dressed in pure white linen and used similar Essenic mannerisms and manners of speech.

Of course, James might have been the choice of successor to Jesus but Luke is simply attributing to Peter acts that belonged to James, but denied him here because, for Luke, James was not one of the apostles whose acts he wished to record.

Coincidences

Gressman pointed out in 1924 that the word “parbar”, which appears in 1 Chronicles 26:19, means “shining” and is probably the same word as the name of a chamber in Herod’s Temple, “parvah”, suggestive once again that Yehouah was considered a sky or sun god. The etymology of the word is the Sumerian, “barbar”, an adjective applied to sun temples at Sippar, Lagash, Larsa, and Babylon in earlier times. The sound of these words is close to that of Bar Abba, and plainly the chamber in Herod’s Temple suggests the words were contemporary. Since Essenes were fond of punning, associated themselves with Lightness and were known to serenade the morning sun, it seems they might have seen Barabbas (this being the Greek form) as signifying shining whiteness and therefore purity, like their white robes!

Another coincidence for Christians to explain away? Barabbas was another name the Nazarenes used of themselves, and Barsabbas or Barnabas were attempts to suggest otherwise, and particularly to dissociate Jesus from the bandit leader.

One of the two candidates as apostle to replace Judas was Joseph Justus, called Barsabbas. This is a revealing combination of names. “Justus” suggests Joseph was an Essene because it means “righteous” and although there were righteous people who were not Essenes, it is the latter who used the expression of themselves explicitly. A man in our society might be called Singh and not be a Sikh but it is a justified assumption that he is. When “just” or “righteous” is used in the New Testament as a description of someone, it is likely that he is an Essene.

Joseph’s other name, Barsabbas, could mean “son of the sabbath” or “son of the aged”, but we find confusion about the name in the ancient manuscript called the Western text which has at this point Barnabas, and at 15:22, where the Alexandrian text has another Barsabbas, Judas Barsabbas, one of the chief men of Jerusalem, the Western text has Barabbas! The names were obviously not accurately recorded and, indeed, the suspicion is that they are deliberate misrepresentations of “Barabbas.”

Barabbas was a rebel but the church was trying to avoid any association with Jewish rebellion at a time when it was a sensitive issue. Barabbas was therefore replaced by less emotive names, Barnabas and Barsabbas. Possibly these men were called Barabbas as the top rank of the Essenes, Hasidim who called God “father” and therefore were given the appellation, Barabbas.

Nothing more is known of Joseph the Just. Tradition has it that he was one of the seventy evangelists appointed in Luke, but few will give the seventy any historicity, so the tradition about Joseph is invented. A Jesus Justus appears in Colossians 4:11 and some have suggested that he is the same man as Joseph, the man who, Papias said, drank snake venom unharmed, but it seems most likely that they were simply different Essenes.

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Last uploaded: 19 April, 2008.