Texts have been set up as idols, as cruel as ever were worshipped by savage idolaters.

Laurence Binyon

Saul (Paul) and the Hellenist Faction 3

Conversion of an Ethiopian Eunuch
Agrippa Kills James of Zebedee
The Church is Persecuted and Saul Appears

Abstract

The main sources of information about Paul are his epistles and the Acts of the Apostles. The epistles naturally are partially autobiographical and show him in the best light, and the Acts of the Apostles is partisan. Paul apparently spent three years as a novice Essene, but failed the novitiate because he lacked Essene humility. But, having evaded Harith’s soldiers, Paul returned to Jerusalem knowing a great deal more about Essene philosophy, and the basis of Jesus’s teaching, than did the apostles, who were not trained Essenes but converted Jews. In 15 days there, he saw only two apostles, James and Peter, implying that the Nazarenes were hard to find and not at all prominent. The church at Antioch had no trouble in supporting the church in Jerusalem, suggesting that membership of the Jerusalem church was small. Paul left and did not return for another 14 years. The true apostles wanted nothing to do with him.

Conversion of an Ethiopian Eunuch

The conversion of an Ethiopian eunuch (Acts 8:25) is another composed passage furthering Luke’s objective of showing the spread of Christianity from the Jewish domain to the gentile one. It has several points of similarity with Zephaniah chapters 2 and 3, where we find a desolate Gaza, an Ethiopian, rivers and an Ethiopian woman coming in supplication. These chapters are apocalyptic and the context is God’s judgement. The appearance of the poor, the remnant who will not be wicked or deceitful, and God’s punishing the nations suggests that Luke has had an Essene scriptural citation before him and he has re-written it to suit his purpose.

Eunuchs were not admitted as Jews so again we have a deliberate contrast between the hidebound, unforgiving, God forsaken Mosaic Jews and the kindly forgiving Hellenizers. The Hellenizer, Philip, has to travel by a desert or a lonely road to avoid his persecutors, traditional Jews or Pharisees.

The eunuch asks (Acts 8:36), “What forbids?”. The question was part of the early baptismal ritual reflecting Jesus’s injunction to the apostles in Mark 10:14:

Forbid them not, for such is the kingdom of God,

meaning the kingdom of God was open to any of the children of Israel—providing they were righteous or repentant. If the story were true, he would have had to repent his sins, meaning his transgressions of the law of Moses. Luke overcomes the problem of having an African repent of transgressions of a law which did not apply to him by depicting him as a godfearer, an unconverted believer in Judaism.

Later, Christians were not required to repent at all, indeed eventually they were corralled into the faith at birth before they had had chance to sin at all so no repentance was necessary. Baptism into the Christian faith abandoned the repentance of the Essenes, John and Jesus, and instead required mere belief in “Jesus Christ, the Son of God”. Acts 8:37 has this very formula, proving its late composition. Early Greek manuscripts do not have it, but it is often cited by the church fathers who were probably responsible for its inclusion.

Agrippa Kills James of Zebedee

So far, the orthodox Jews have been supportive of the apostles, though they had persecuted the Hellenized members of the church, but now Luke says that the death of the apostle James, the brother of John, pleased the Jews. Why their change in attitude? Herod Agrippa reigned from 41-44 AD and the Nazarene church continued in Jerusalem until the Jewish War so this accusation looks suspicious. Luke has here reverted once more to anti-Semitism and to his scriptural style of writing suggesting that the passage is inserted.

If “the Jews” did not like all Nazarenes, as Luke now wants us to believe, why should they have tolerated them for another twenty years? Luke is deliberately painting the Jews as enemies of the Nazarenes to explain the separation of Christianity and Judaism as being the fault of the intolerant Jews. Agrippa doubtless did harass the Nazarenes to please his allies the Sadducees and the Roman colonial administration, who would still have had them down as trouble-makers, but the expression “the Jews” is propaganda, like that in the gospels, especially John’s. It has a racist intent that only a gentile could accept. The same intent appears in 12:11. It all confirms that the passage is added.

Herod apparently killed James with a sword, not a traditionally Jewish method of killing, unless he was beheaded with a sword. People who die by sword wounds are normally soldiers. Had James been part of another uprising? Rebellions were still ocurring because within five years, Josephus tells us that Tiberius Alexander crucified two “sons” of Judas the Galilaean.

Acts relates next the death of Herod Agrippa, which is also related by Josephus in Antiquities of the Jews. Lampe in Peake’s Commentary asserts that the two stories are widely different in detail, showing that Luke had not read Josephus. One tends to accept experts like Lampe, but inspection shows that Luke’s account is simply shorter than Josephus’s, and therefore misses out much of Josephus’s detail, while adding one detail of his own by contriving to have Agrippa eaten by worms like his grandfather, Herod the Great. Josephus said Agrippa was dead within five days of being a healthy man, while being eaten by worms suggests a gradual decay of the flesh by cancer or gangrene—Herod the Great was an old man, but did not die quickly, and suffered from maggots eating his privvy member.

In Antiquities, Agrippa looked up to see an owl which had been foretold would herald his death within five days. Josephus actually describes it as a “messenger of ill-tidings”. In Greek, a messenger is an angel. Luke says Agrippa was struck by an angel of the Lord. The story in Acts therefore is remarkably similar to that of Josephus in this particular unusual detail, and could show that Luke had indeed read Josephus. Eusebius relates the story from Josephus, but omits the explicit words pertaining to the owl, leaving only the mention of the angel, although he retains the explanation of the bird as a herald of death. It looks as though Eusebius, or more likely a simpler editor, has just excised the words about the owl to leave an apparent harmony.

That Josephus took his story from Luke is impossible, because it is Josephus’s account which is the more detailed. It is true that Luke has some tradition to work on because of his introductory sentences about a quarrel between Agrippa and the rulers of Tyre and Sidon ameliorated by one Blastus that Josephus omits.

The Church is Persecuted and Saul Appears

And at that time there was a great persecution against the church which was at Jerusalem, and they were all scattered abroad throughout the regions of Judaea and Samaria, except the apostles.
Acts 8:1

This is one of those verses that indicate the true story of early Christianity. Hitherto, Luke has told us that the Nazarenes were greatly popular with the multitudes, except apparently those Nazarenes who were Hellenists, Jews who had adopted the Greek culture and language. One of them, Stephen, is stoned to death and the church in Jerusalem is greatly persecuted and scattered—except the apostles!

If the church were persecuted, surely its leaders, the apostles, would be the first to suffer. This can only make sense if Luke means by the church only the Hellenist members of the Nazarene sect. In this, Luke might not have been careless, for that is what the church became. Evidently the apostles, who had been personally appointed by Jesus, a strictly Mosaic Jew, were recognized as Hebrews by the traditional Jews of Palestine, and were not persecuted. This confirms that the Nazarenes had split into two factions, a traditional faction and a Hellenised faction. Only the Hellenised faction survived to become Christianity.

The point Luke wants to make however is that the developing religion had spread beyond Jerusalem to Judaea and Samaria. There were Essenes in these areas, perhaps even Nazarenes, the converts of John and Jesus, but Luke makes it clear that the Hellenised faction is what he is talking about. Simultaneously, he introduces Saul who would become Paul, the proximate leader of the Hellenistic faction of the Nazarenes that was to become the Christians.

Saul appears in Acts 8:1, standing by at the death of Stephen and in Acts 8:3 laying waste to the church—persecuting the Hellenistic faction with great vigour even into their own homes. Despite his own statements that he was a “Hebrew of the Hebrews” and of the “seed of Abraham”, he was more likely a first generation Jew, the child of gentile godfearers brought up as a Jew. He proves to have Roman citizenship and he spoke and wrote Greek, so he was a Hellenised Jew himself. He wanted to be known as a Hebrew of the Hebrews—a true Jew—precisely because he was not, and he hoped to prove his Jewishness by vehemently persecuting the Grecized Nazarenes, shameful apostates of the Jewish religion. But such a vigorous persecution might have had even more certain grounds.

In sensitive areas, the Romans were keen to maintain peace not to stir up trouble. After the Nazarene rebellion in which a Roman battalion had been defeated, they will have pressurized the local authorities, the High Priest and the Sanhedrin to keep troublemakers clearly in sight and to root them out if they offered any threats. The Sadducees evidently still regarded the Nazarenes as seditionists keeping a close watch on them and, applying the stratagem of “divide and rule”, were delighted to profit from the split in their ranks, turning the people against them by encouraging their chauvinistic feelings against those influenced by foreign culture. Saul could effect to prove that all Greek speaking Jews, specifically himself, were not apostates by pursuing his job with vigour.

I say “his job” because later he seeks the authority of the High Priest to follow the Nazarenes to Damascus and it seems quite likely that he was in his employ from the beginning. A Greek speaking Jew who was a citizen of Rome and employed by the collaborating High Priest to maintain public order in a time of insurrection and who later infiltrated the organization he was persecuting—Saul begins to sound a more sinister figure than Christians would have us believe.

The Greek for “made havoc” is an expression commonly used of the savage mauling of its prey by a wild beast. If Luke here in Acts is faithfully rendering his source the implication might be that Saul was indeed a Roman agent. “Wild beasts” is code for lawless (without the Law of Moses) gentiles in the scriptures and the same code is found in Revelation. By using the verb meaning the mauling of a beast, Luke subtly identifies Saul as a Roman counter insurgent. Today, he would doubtless be called an “advisor”. He was Jewish, a big help to a military advisor to the Jews, but his loyalties were to Rome.

There are other historical examples for such people. Tiberius Alexander, the nephew of Philo of Alexandria, one of the classical authors to describe the Essenes, was a Roman procurator of Judaea. Though a Jew, he dutifully crucified Jewish rebels just as Pilate did. Saul infiltrated the Essenes then the Nazarenes then the Christians, ostensibly becoming their main evangelist but possibly serving as a Roman spy throughout—he was all things to all men (1 Cor 9:22). Christian scholars have puzzled why Acts does not finish with the trial and martyrdom of Paul at Rome. The truth might be that he was pensioned off to Spain.

Saul, yet breathing out threatenings and slaughter against the disciples of the Lord, went unto the high priest, And desired of him letters to Damascus to the synagogues, that if he found any of this way, whether they were men or women, he might bring them bound unto Jerusalem.

Saul went to the High Priest for letters to the synagogues in Damascus giving permission to seek out and arrest any that were “of the way” there (Acts 9:2) and bring them back to Jerusalem. Christians consider the use of the outmoded expression “the way” proves the authenticity of this passage. But if they want to argue thus, they have to accept that it is plainly indebted to the language of the Essenes who always spoke of their movement as “the way”. And, if the passage is genuine it offers real historical problems. Damascus was not administered from Judaea but directly by the Romans. What authority then had the High Priest who was merely the local ruler of Judaea.

In a vision on the way to Damascus Saul is confronted by Jesus who asks “why are you persecuting me?”, and Paul becomes convinced that it is the heretics who preach Jesus’s message, not the appointed apostles. He becomes a convert to the Hellenist sect taking the name Paul and appoints himself as apostle to the gentiles.

Such is the story, but could a “Pharisee of the Pharisees” work for the collaborating High Priest? It seems unlikely, even if the traditional enemies, the Pharisees and the Sadducees, were united in wanting to punish the Hellenistic branch of the Nazarenes opposing the Laws of Moses. Hyam Maccoby poses the following questions.

Why should Saul go to Damascus when he evidently had plenty of work harrying the Nazarenes in Judaea?
Why should an apparently private citizen apply for permission to pursue the Nazarenes abroad—surely it was a job for the authorities if it had to be done at all?
What authority would the High Priest of Judaea have over people living in Damascus, a Syrian city?
What authority would the High Priest have over synagogues, teaching establishments run by rabbis and supported by local Jewish communities, wherever they were?

If Nazarenes had to be pursued, it is difficult to see why the High Priest would not have sent one of his own Temple Guard. That is the point noted above. All of this persecution by Paul would be better explained if he were a member of the Temple Guard, implying that Paul was a paid agent of the High Priest and therefore directly or indirectly an agent of the Romans. If Paul worked for the High Priest, it suggests that his claim to be a Pharisee is a lie.

The idea of any local body like the Jewish Sanhedrin having any juridiction over the citizens of Damascus, the famous Arab city in Syria, seems absurd. Furthermore, the High Priest had no authority over synagogues, all of which had their own president who was a Pharisee. Even if the expatriate Pharisees of Damascus had supported the persecution of Hellenised Jewish apostates by Saul, which seems possible, it is difficult to accept that the local Roman governor would have been happy that Jews were kidnapping Greek speakers to take them back to Judaea.

Moreover, Paul tells us elsewhere that Damascus was ruled by king Harith of the Nabataean Arabs. There is no other extant source for such an assertion. Damascus was an Arab city, but Harith ruled much further south, and it is hard to see any convincing reason why the Romans would have let such an important and strategic centre as Damascus be ruled by a relatively minor sheikh from the south.

Did “Damascus” mean the Arab city? The reference in Acts to the street called “Straight” seems to confirm that it is. But if there were another Damascus in Judaea, it could have fallen under the jurisdiction of the High Priest who could therefore have legally sent his policeman. If ”Damascus” were a code word for the Essene community at Qumran then Paul would not have been going outside of Judaea to get to “Damascus”. Acceptance of this idea would directly link Paul, the early Christians and the Qumran Community.

Now in Galatians, Paul says after his conversion:

I went away into Arabia and again I returned unto Damascus. Then after three years I went up to Jerusalem.

This confounded scholars until the Essene headquarters was recognised as Damascus but now it is clear. After becoming a follower of Jesus, Paul went to Qumran to be initiated as an Essene, a procedure which takes three years. This is further demonstrated in his writings which use more Essene words than any other books of the New Testament. The references to the street named Straight and to Arabia evidently are editors’ additions inserted through ignorance or deceit. And in Acts, Paul’s sojourn in Damascus is turned in typical fashion into a dispute with Jews not the period of initiation it really was—the disputes came later.

It seems that the Essenes called their headquarters at Qumran by the name “Damascus”. If this is the Damascus meant, then these problems are easier to solve. It was in Judaea and therefore subject to the jurisdiction of the High Priest, was a place where Essenes or their converts might be expected to go under duress, and, being on the boundary with Nabataea, might well have been occupied or put under siege by Harith explaining Paul’s own tale.

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Last uploaded: 24 April, 2008.