James the Brother of Jesus: The Key to Unlocking the Secrets of Early Christianity and the Dead Sea Scrolls

by Robert H. Eisenman

Book Overview

"A passionate quest for the historical James refigures Christian origins, ... can be enjoyed as a thrilling essay in historical detection." --The Guardian

James was a vegetarian, wore only linen clothing, bathed daily at dawn in cold water, and was a life-long Nazirite. In this profound and provocative work of scholarly detection, eminent biblical scholar Robert Eisenman introduces a startling theory about the identity of James--the...

• Format: Paperback
• Language: English
• ISBN: 014025773X
• ISBN13: 9780140257731
• Release Date: March 1998
• Publisher: Penguin Books
• Length: 1136 Pages
• Weight: 2.00 lbs.
• Dimensions: 2.0" x 5.5" x 8.4"
• Age Range: 18 years and up
• Grade Range: Postsecondary and higher

Customer Reviews

Pauline Evangelism: From Tax Collector to Tithe Farmer

As Eisenman makes clear, Christianity today only fractionally relates to the historical Jesus. The Jesus of modern X-tianity is a dim reflection of James found in a hodge-podge of Arthurian-like rememberances of the political movement to kick Rome out of Palestine. The implications of Eisenman's book for X-tianity are legion: The moral content of Jesus's philosophy, admirable as it is, is a Hellenistic smoothing over of Mithraic and Zoroastrian mystery cults from the border legions. Jesus was no more than a political marionet of the Parthian empire (read between the lines in both the redacted "New Testament" and Josephus), and he and his family represented a front against both the Herods and Rome. He was an anti-establishment icon that only in the 4th century took on the other-worldly dogma the religion holds today. His historical greatness rests in the Parthian attempt to set up a buffer state against Rome in place of the Idumean Herodian line that was joined at the hip with the empire. What X-tianity is today is no more than the by-product of a political cult surrounding the legend of Jesus that could tolerate no other interpretations of his life because they threatened the power of those who claimed divine knowlegde. The first suppression of the Gnostics in the 4th century is one example. Later heretics suffered the same cruelties. That is always the way it goes with Abrahamic religions: It boils down to politics and eradication. Like an old worn coin, we cannot see it 2000 years later for what it originally was when minted. Jesus was a political figure at a time when religion and politics were the same thing: "the king of the Jews" who was killed in a manner reserved for political rebels. Eisenman has done the world a tremendous service with this work, as so many reviews note. My only observation beyond what others have said is that there is no reason to unhinge the book's main logic on the point of Paul's unlikely ability to have had a long range Roman political agenda, as some critics of the work have tried to do (in an apparent effort to discredit the mass of evidence Eisenman arrays). The argument, a red herring if I ever smelled one, is that Eisenman can't be right because Paul could have had no view of the future of Christianity, and therefore no motive to invert and emasculate the "fourth philosophy" of the anti-Roman Jerusalem Christians under James. Suppose we grant that point--it changes only one thing: Paul's likely motivation. All we need do is look to Paul's own writings for his motives, to see that he constantly seeks money from his overseas communities, all in the name of being saved, while boasting of his special relationship with Jesus. Sound familiar? Paul was clever, and merciless, and he knew he could get tithe money easier by defrauding people spiritually than by demanding it as a Roman tax farmer. So maybe he wasn't a Roman agent, although the evidence suggests he was, yet he still convicts himself out of his

Set yourself apart, & read this.

Eisenman's "James" is the BEST work of non-fiction I have EVER read. It should be required reading for anyone who makes ANY claim to (Western) Religious Knowledge -- theological, historical, or spiritual. It is not for the faint of heart: It is both physically massive and conceptually dense. In my case, six months, cover-to-cover. My wife called it the "Omnipresent Tome." To pick it up is a true investment -- But boy does it pay. Though deep scholarship, Eisenman's tale is nonetheless gripping. He outlines his premises, then weaves and connects them with meticulous care. His book reads like a detective story. But "James" is much more -- a monumental struggle to recover lost memory. A Deleted History, to which each of us has a real and important relation. It is a story of intrigue and transcendence, of subterfuge and conflict. For some readers, the book must imply a dark, unspoken theme. Dark, because there is the most Insidious and Ironic Purpose behind our forgetfulness. Eisenman is not just reproducing the shattered. He is not merely recreating processes of undirected time. He is helping us to name the Culpable, the Robbers of Self-Memory, the Perpetrators of the Shattering. "James the Brother of Jesus" shines a very direct light on the shadowy foundations of Western religious assumption. I was fascinated by the principal personalities of Eisenman's story -- James, Josephus, and Paul -- as well as the dozens of fragmentary echoes of voices that were silenced long ago. One is left wondering at the Systematic Erasure of early witness. So much history (yet so little) exists only as attributed quotes, eviscerations which appear in others' writings, as if they had crawled there to be hidden, like the Treasures of the Copper Scroll... Eisenman gathers a thousand such fragments and very carefully plots the implications. Separately, the pieces are puffs of air; together, they constitute a secret, essential, and yet sad, Forbidden Gospel. The major points the author makes are: James was the undisputed successor to Jesus; Early Christianity was very Jewish and very messianic; Early Christianity was stronly allied with the Qumran-Essene population; Paul's philosophy of inclusion is antithetical to the real tenets of early Christianity; Luke was the quintessential propagandist; The New Testament is corrupted by forgeries, which Authorities even now use to justify themseleves; ... and goodness, a thousand other things.... If you want to understand Christianity, "James" is a giant first step.

A disturbing but enlightening trip

To anyone raised on ideas of swearing on the Bible, gospel truth, and sermons taking biblical narratives as factual events, this book will be very disturbing. It literally sets traditional notions about Jesus and the early church on their heads, but to those who already find the biblical record unbelievable, the New Testament will become clear for the first time. First, the history of the first century of the common era as presented in the gospels and Acts is shown to be fatally flawed. Josephus is relied on for the larger framework, Paul's letters, rather than Acts, are relied on for the period 40-60CE, and all extant references to James fill in the details of the views of the first Christians. Extensive use is made of the Dead Sea Scrolls. Eisenman advances a controversial, but compelling case, at least to me, that the earliest, Jewish followers of Jesus were Essenes, who held the same hyper-observant, anti-establishment, eschatological views that prevailed at Qumran, and that the Teacher of Righteousness was, in fact, James, and that Paul was the Man of the Lie. To make his case, Eisenman analyses biblical materials minutely, on a year by year, name by name, sometimes word by word basis. This can be both exhausting and repetitious, but for me it worked. I spent a very long time reading this book, because I looked up every reference the author made to the Bible, Dead Sea Scrolls or Josephus (which he recommends the reader do), to be sure he wasn't misrepresenting the materials. It was worth it. This year, as I heard the Passion according to Luke read on Palm Sunday, for the first time in my life, I understood what I was hearing.

Creates a different perspective from which to read history

The reader is not a scholar, but enjoys reading scholarship concerning early Christianity. Eisenman's book produces so much detail it is hard to keep it all in mind. Yet after 400 pages this reader, through meticulous repetition on the part of the author, was able to make sense of what the author was trying to say. And that is: that James is the blood brother of Jesus; James was the one who succeeded Jesus; and very importantly, if James Messianic version of what would become Christianity had succeeded, there probably would have been no Christianity because it would have died in the ruins of Jerusalem.Eisenman's work challenges current mythologies of Jesus in the Gospels as well as the Pretine succession. But a faithful Christian need not fear his conclusions, because one can see how important tradition is. Tradition interprets events and scripture. The rewrites, overwrites and omissions in the New Testament are a teastment themselves of how what would become the prevailing understanding would see the impact of Jesus' life, death and resurrection. Eisenman at the beginning of the study warns the reader to beware of what comes from the predominant view of any particular time. Eisenman being a scholar does not always write things directly because he is working with material that has shifting meaning. Several languages are involved and studies from the first several centuries did not understand Hebrew and Aramaic languages. Yet there were times when the reader would have wished for a statement about where he was going. There is to be volume II, hopefully shorter. But this reader is looking forward to seeing it.

A pure light of scholarship. Profound and Rare.

Some readers complain that Eisenman's Book is too long, con-fused and not edited correctly. I disagree. This book clarifies, synthesizes and produces wonder at the pass of almost every sentence. Given the importance of his huge task, Eisenman's sentences and sections are usually crisp and minimal which only heightens the full impact of his evidence and implications. Most of what I find in `James Brother of Jesus' I have read in bits and pieces in other extremely speculative and much less respected works like `Holy Blood, Holy Grail', `Dead Sea Scrolls Deception,' `The Hiram Key' and Barbara Thiering's work. These works have been ignored and dismissed by the Christian establishment for a long time on the basis of weak evidence and wild leaps of imagination. They had a point. But Eisenman's work towers over anything that has gone before it in its breadth and depth of internal historical research. He brings the Christian tradition, with its shadowlands of history and myth, to a critical point with monumental power. That is, never before has the dichotomy between the historical Jesus via James and the Myth of Jesus via Paul been drawn so clearly, carefully and exhaustively. If you are a `thinking Christian', as opposed to a dogmatic apologist, read this book. The confusion in the Christian soul between the historical reality of Jesus and the existential reality of the spirit or myth of Jesus `the Christ' must be confronted. With `James The Brother Of Jesus' Christian Ostrich time is over. My only argument with Eisenman is theological and teleological. 1)Theological - by implying that the Pauline `myth' of Jesus Christ is shattered by the revelations about the real history of James, he, like many other iconoclasts, misses the point. Christianity, like all religions, is a myth that structures social relations, psychological perception, ethics, behaviours and history itself. No more, and certainly no less than any other religion. The origins of Christianity's anti-Semitism is well taken and is vitally important given the recent revelations about `Hitler's Pope'. But there has been much Good as well in this myth. 2) Which leads to the teleological question `Why write this? To what end?' Is it to rub Christian noses in the cesspool of history, as if other traditions, didn't have them? Or is it a Jack Nicholson `You Can't Handle The Truth' kind of throwing down the gauntlet challenge to Christians? Some of us can handle it, and have struggled with the dichotomy between the existential myth and empirical facts of Christianity to be able to accomodate the `twin' Jesus.In sum. - Read It!