Peter,Remember, from the other thread, that this is in accordance with a tradition that James was entering the temple during the Jewish revolt. Which is not at all the same thing as saying that the destruction of Jerusalem was because of the death of James.
Not least because, once the war/revolt was set in motion, the siege by the Romans was completely assured. And Hegesippus mentions thesiege of Vespasian as following after the death of James--he does not mention the destruction of Jerusalem as happening on account ofthe death of James. Recall that 'Hegesippus' is writing in 5 books. Temporal sequence is going to be part of his narrative, so we shouldn't interpret this last sentence as the 'conclusion' of this passage but rather as the introduction to additional discussion of the Jewish war, which discussion must have been already underway by the time it came to discuss James and his death (which was in the middle of the Jewish war, since the siege of Jerusalem by Vespasian was not the first development of that war, and since James was acting in the temple, which would not have been possible before Ananus and the other high priests / former high priests were dead or driven out of the city).
In short, not only have we failed to read Josephus/Origen very closely, we have also failed to read Hegesippus closely.... I really do believe that this whole misunderstanding of the situation here (by far too many scholars to be excusable) has been motivated primarily by shoddy "reasoning from excerpts" (considered crudely and in isolation) and not a close study of the authors involved, their motivations, and the context of these excerpts.
There is much food for thought here, but I will have to limit my response to dealing with Hegesippus. I appreciate the desire to understand texts on their own terms and not to read them through the lens of later interpreters, whether either ancient or modern. At the same time, I think those later interpreters often provide insights that are very useful in understanding the texts. In this particular case, I think your reading of the passage from Hegesippus does not do a good job of accounting for the data (I acknowledge that even if I am right about that, that would not by itself discredit your understanding of Origen’s possible interpretation of Antiquities 20).
I take Hegesippus to be saying that Vespasian’s siege of the city was not “inevitable” as you put it, nor was it a “development of the war”. It was the result (“fruit”) of the Jerusalemites’ killing of James. Prior to that event, the righteous one’s intercessory prayer in the sanctuary, kneeling and asking for forgiveness for the people, had held back God’s judgment on Jerusalem. By killing James, the Jews and Scribes and Pharisees removed “the rampart of the people” that was protecting them. I think that is by far the most plausible way to understand the explicit fulfillment citation of LXX Isaiah 3.10, “Let us take the just man for he is unprofitable to us. Yet they shall eat the fruit of their works.” What do you take “the fruit of their works” to be? I think the quotation may well be a metaleptic reference to the larger context of Isaiah 3 on God’s punishment of Jerusalem and Judah. Possibly the mention of the “Rechabim to whom the prophet Jeremiah bore witness” is a metaleptic reference to Jermiah 35 (especially v. 17) as well.
So I’m not persuaded by your argument that “And immediately Vespasian besieged them” actually belongs to the following section in Hegesippus, not only because it relies on a conjecture about what might have been in a lost source, but also because it does not fit well with the internal logic of the story, and the words kai euthus (“and straightaway,” well known from its frequent use in Mark’s Gospel) are unlikely to begin an entirely new pericope but instead tie what follows them closely with what precedes them. James’ killers had to eat the fruits of their works.
Similarly, while I’m sure you realize the story is unrealistic in many of its aspects, and much of it is composed of reworked scriptural passages (Isaiah, Jeremiah, the trial and death of Jesus and the stoning of Stephen in Acts 7, the door from John 10; see the marginal notations in the Loeb edition) I think you overestimate the extent to which Hegesippus is writing accurate or even realistic history. James, unrealistically, seems to have taken over the role of the High Priest (right down to the linen vestments) who alone enters the Holy of Holies to make atonement for the sins of the people only on Yom Kippur, the Day of Atonement (Leviticus 16.29-34). James goes into the sanctuary much more often, presumably because the author thinks the people have much greater sin that needs forgiving.
The passage about James’ knees becoming as hard as a camel’s is meant to emphasize that James has been doing this for quite a while. It is not some recent development brought on by the disruptions of the war. There are no disruptions from the war apparent in the text. There are still priests in Jerusalem (2.23.7) as well as Scribes and Pharisees and “Jews” and their big problem in the text is not that they are at war with Rome, but that so many people are going astray and following Jesus because of the preaching of James. So, with a remarkable lack of foresight, they ask the same James to address the people at Passover, for which “all the tribes” (how many tribes is that?) and the Gentiles have been able to gather. They mistakenly hope that James, contrary to his known record, will restrain the people from accepting Jesus as the Christ, and they acknowledge that they and all the people are, for some reason, bound to obey James. This is a Christian legend, and trying to interpret it by putting it in the context of historical data about the Jewish War known from other sources is a mistake.
The historical/chronological problem that the story in Hegesippus is intended to resolve from its own Christian perspective is the theological issue of divine causality: why did God wait forty years to punish the Jews for killing Christ? The answer is: because of the presence of James the Righteous One in the city, constantly praying for forgiveness for the people. God’s punishment came only after the people did away with James. James’ death is the trigger event for the punishment of Jerusalem, but the underlying cause is the continued rejection God’s messengers culminating in the killing of Jesus. (I realize that this would mean that, on my theory that Origen knows this story, whether from Hegesippus or another source, he’s gotten it slightly wrong). I am indebted to John Painter (Just James 1e 1999, 143-144), who notes that Eusebius had come up with this explanation:
I would go beyond Painter here and suggest that the theological justification for the delay in punishing Jerusalem for killing the Christ of God is already there in the story Hegesippus relates, and even that it is very plausibly the reason that James came to be called “the Righteous One” in the second century (despite Hegesippus’ claim that James was known as the Righteous by all from the Savior’s time, James is never called that in the New Testament). I am probably more aware than most of the effect that Eusebius can have on later interpretation. But while he often reads things in his sources that are not there, I also think sometimes he gets things right.But it would be right to mention, too, certain facts which bring home the beneficence of all gracious providence, which for forty years after their crime against Christ delayed their destruction. All that times most of the apostles, including James himself, the first bishop of Jerusalem, known as the Lord’s brother, were still alive, and be remaining in the city furnished the place with an impregnable bulwark. [Eusebius HE 3.7.7-9]
Best,
Ken
