the one Agrippa theory

copyright 2008 Stephan Huller

As Daniel Schwartz rightly notes, the two thousand year old Jewish tradition makes clear that there was only one ‘Marcus Agrippa.’ He was born around 28 CE, was acknowledged as the messiah after some initial resistance and then when even greater Jewish dissention broke out end up annihilating the Jewish religion in 70 CE. Of course what one hundred generations of rabbinic teaching says about Marcus Agrippa doesn’t seem to matter much too western scholars. That is because ‘Agrippa’ has long been a part of our own religious history at a time when Jews were relegated to living in ghettos and prohibited from intermingling with Christians. To this end a completely separate understanding developed among Europeans which continues to this day.
When scholars piece together their understanding of who or what ‘Marcus Agrippa’ was they prefer instead the authority of a single man whose original testimony was passed on through the Fathers of the Church. This writer was named Joseph or ‘Josephus’ as the name is preserved in Greek. In truth Josephus was actually quite a bit like Agrippa only fortune didn’t smile on him as favorably. After leading a Jewish revolt to try and overthrow Agrippa’s authority in Palestine he ended up getting captured and switching to the Roman side. He made a bargain with the Roman generals to help them secure victory in Jerusalem and thereby saved his life.
So it is within this context that we should see that at the end of the war he began work on a history of the Jewish people which ends with attempt to explain away his role in the uprising. There was feeling among members of the king’s inner circle that Josephus’ text wasn’t quite telling the truth. He wasn’t being honest about his own role in the revolt nor his true motivation. The Jewish War was at bottom a rejection of Agrippa by many if not most of his Jewish subjects.
Now what ever that original text looked like, it is undeniable in my mind that it has not survived down to the present age undefiled. What we have received instead we have received a version of that text which passed through a series of ancient hands in the Catholic Church and effectively become ‘Christianized.’ Many if not most scholars over the last two hundred years view Josephus’ ‘confession’ that he was secretly a Christian as proof that the existing text was tampered with. Yet this is only one are many other examples of this ‘Catholicizing’ of his original Jewish text.

I want the reader to understand what I am suggesting. To be a member of the official orthodoxy in the second century one had to deny the messianic claims of ‘Mark’ – i.e. Marcus Julius Agrippa. This argument is outlined in my other books. Nevertheless it stands that Josephus’ subtle anti-Agrippanism in the original work became developed to the next degree by Catholic editors. Now Josephus was being used to against Agrippa’s secretary Justus and his rival historical text A Chronicle of the Kings of the Jews to prove that in point of fact there was no connection whatsoever between Agrippa and Christianity.

I know that this sounds quite ridiculous. One could use this kind of logic to argue on behalf of the idea that Buddhism really believed in Christ. All you have to do is claim that someone came along and removed all the passages which proved your point. Nevertheless I don’t thing that my argument is as preposterous as this owing to the fact that we see that the same pattern of denying a relationship is demonstrable in other Catholic texts which are linked to the new ‘Christianized’ version of Josephus.

Let us begin first with the narrative of Paul before Agrippa we just saw from the Acts of the Apostles. Tannehill notes that it is quite possible that ‘the narrative world may be completely fictional.’ Hans Conzelmann believes that its central point that Festus had to ask Agrippa help him solve the case is utterly ‘artificial’ and ‘self-contradictory.’ So why do scholars question its inclusion in the text?

We should be careful to note that the text here doesn’t say that Agrippa had nothing to do with Christianity. It can be read in such a way that it wanted to explain why it was that some people thought Agrippa was connected with Christianity or better yet identified as St. Paul.

The material does this by having ‘Paul’ – a figure otherwise unknown before the second century – go before the king and utter an apologia. The author develops a most ridiculous argument now that this Herodian king knew absolutely nothing about Jesus or the religion of Christianity even though his predecessor Herod Antipas seemed utterly obsessed about finding out about these matters.

Agrippa is also acknowledged to be a man who is ‘well acquainted with all the Jewish customs and controversies.’ Yet at the same time the text makes it seem as if R. Gamaliel, one of the most important Jewish figures from the period, was well acquainted with the religion of the ‘Nazarenes.’ Jews and Christians had by then been supposedly fighting with one another for decades. How then can Agrippa be an ‘expert’ on Jewish controversies when this was by far the most important spiritual movement in the period? The answer is obvious. The author of Acts merely wants to disconnect Agrippa utterly from the movement because it was well known he was its original patron.

Indeed what makes matters even more ludicrous is that Agrippa was already king of the Galileans at this period in history. Christianity was originally identified as ‘Galileanism’ because it had so many adherents in the region. To this end either Agrippa has to be perceived as a completely delinquent ruler or the second century text deliberately presents an utterly counterfeit historical claim.

Moreover many of the things which are uttered here are impossible to believe were ever conceived as a strategy that anyone would have used before the king. When Paul declares that the Jews ‘can testify … that according to the strictest sect of our religion, I lived as a Pharisee.’ No one who actually lived in the period would have ever tried to win the kings favor this way. Agrippa was a sworn enemy of the Pharisees. He butted heads with this ‘separatist’ community many times in the course of his reign. It would be a bad way to begin oral arguments on behalf of clemency.

The artificiality of the Acts of the Apostles narrative has been addressed in many other works so it is not my place now to rehash old arguments. Nevertheless it is worth noting what the author is attempting here. He wants to simplify the context of the emergence of Christianity into a world where there was such a thing as ‘Jewish orthodoxy.’ Indeed the author is hoping to gloss over the actual reality of the age that there were countless ‘Judaisms’ each claiming to be ‘orthodox’ and all other rival communities represented schisms from it.

We can begin to see the reason this is so important to the author of the Acts of the Apostles when we step back and look at his purpose in writing this pseudo-historical text in the first place. He desperately wants to establish that there was such a thing as a clear unmistakable ‘orthodoxy’ within the Judeo-Christian tradition. The alternative was that there was always chaos even before the destruction of the temple and so he and his Church had no grounds for accusing those who disagreed with them as ‘breaking away’ from its original doctrine.

Whatever the case may be, it is obvious how artificial the whole dialogue is once we go back to Paul’s supposed open declaration to Agrippa that he was a lifelong Pharisee in order to win his favor. This would be like trying to get something from the American President George Bush by shouting out that you are a lifelong Democrat. Indeed when we look carefully at Paul’s statement before Agrippa, the problem isn’t just that he ‘mentions’ his Pharisaic affiliation – the text is so artificially concocted that the pseudo-apostle continues to heap praise upon this hated group beyond what is reason would allow.

All of this necessarily begs the question – who wrote Acts? It is an inquiry I have developed elsewhere in some detail. The critical part of that inquiry was that there can be no doubt that the text was slightly modified at the time of Irenaeus, the late second century Roman Church Father. Irenaeus invented the character of ‘Luke’ who now became the author of both a gospel and this book of Acts. However when you look closely at the structure of the work Luke can’t possibly be the original author. It seems far more likely that John who was also called Mark – who spends the first half of the work in the company of Peter and most of the second with ‘Paul’ – was originally credited with the composition. The opening words of the companion work, the Gospel of Luke, also undoubtedly were originally argued to be ‘Johannine.’

To this end I believe that the original mid-second century author was ultimately concluding with the clear proof that ‘Mark’ was clearly a different person from Marcus Agrippa. This point became less important in the late second century when Agrippa was himself a most forgotten figure. Nevertheless the Markan heretics continued to heap insults on the invented figure of ‘John Mark’ in the text. A member is cited at the time of Origen as saying to him of the Book of Acts that “your deceitful codice is not trustworthy.” The true Mark was not as described in this text.

So who did this third century heretic think ‘Mark’ really was? We will never know for certain. Nevertheless I think that the Book of Acts provides us with some clues in its description of Agrippa in what follows in the chapter. ‘Paul’ goes on to describe to Agrippa what happened to him on the road to Damascus – the experience that we have now identified as being the ‘revelation’ in 2 Cor 13:3f. Nevertheless it is clear also that these heretical adherents of Mark denied ‘Paul’ as well as the aforementioned figures from Acts. Whoever was announcing his ‘vision from heaven’ in this epistle he wasn’t named ‘Paul’ - ‘Mark’ is a much more likely suggestion.

Isn’t it strange then that the author of Acts seems to acknowledge that Marcus Agrippa was also associated with having a visionary experience? When ‘Paul’ speaks directly to Agrippa telling him that at “about noon, O king, as I was on the road, I saw a light from heaven, brighter than the sun, blazing around me and my companions’ ‘Paul’ is made to think that the king might be convinced by his argument because he was also connected with a well known ‘revelation from heaven.’

We hear the Catholic pseudo-apostle say not only “so then, King Agrippa, I was not disobedient to the vision from heaven’ but again ‘the king is familiar with these things, and I can speak freely to him. I am convinced that none of this has escaped his notice, because it was not done in a corner.” Of course the author is just contradicting himself again. The whole premise at the beginning of the discussion is that Agrippa knew nothing about Christianity. Now suddenly ‘everyone’ must have known these things including Agrippa.

Why then the pretence that Agrippa didn’t know anything about Christianity? Clearly the author is trying to make it seem that Agrippa’s vision was something different from the one which founded Christianity. The next lines make this clearer. Out of nowhere ‘Paul’ asks “King Agrippa, do you believe the prophets? I know you do." Indeed the Jewish tradition cited in the Appendix knows full well that Agrippa was declared to be no less than the messiah of the prophets. Of course Agrippa believed in the prophets! Wouldn’t you if they were universally regarded to prove you were the reason for the very existence of Israel?

Agrippa’s response to this strange statement is even stranger. We read that “Agrippa said to Paul, "Do you think that in such a short time you can persuade me to be a Christian?" To which Paul replied "Short time or long—I pray God that not only you but all who are listening to me today may become what I am, except for these chains." This is reference again to the central mystery of the so-called ‘Pauline epistles’ – namely that the martyr who is ‘weak’ necessarily ‘empowers’ those who behold his trials.

Scholars have struggled with the meaning of these words relating Agrippa to Christianity for some time. The Greek literally means here ‘you have convinced me a little.’ In my mind this is a clear play on words on the emphasis of Mark’s ‘littleness’ in his community yet there are other interpretations. Peloubet notes that “most modern critics agree with [the idea] that Agrippa’s better nature was touched and that he spoke sincerely saying in effect, ‘if you go on a little longer you will persuade even me [to become a Christian].” Indeed he rightly notes that “this best agrees with Paul’s reply.”

As such the author of Acts clearly did not think it ridiculous that the last king of Israel might well have been connected with Christianity. He leaves us with a curious ambiguity which says to the effect that ‘if you hear that Agrippa was a Christian he only was so because of ‘Paul.’ In other words – and this is critical – the author was saying to his adherents whatever you may have heard Marcus Agrippa was not the author of the Pauline epistles. This narrative in the Acts of the Apostles actually ‘proves it’!