James the Brother of Jesus and the Dead Sea Scrolls II (111 page)

What unites all references to this ‘
Lying Spouter
’ or CD’s ‘
Zaw Zaw
’ allusion, tied to the one who ‘
will surely spout
’ (Micah 2:6) in IV.19–20, is that not only does he ‘
pour out on Israel the waters of Lying and lead them astray in a trackless waste
’, ‘
removing the boundary markers which the First
(‘
the Forefathers
’)
had laid out as their inheritance
’,
15
but this sort of beha
v
iour takes place in ‘
the Last Days
’ when in the Habakkuk
Pesher
he will be distinctly described as ‘
rejecting the
Torah
in the midst of their whole Assembly
’ and ‘
not believing in
’ the Scriptural interpretations of ‘
the Righteous Teacher
’ which the latter ‘
had received from the mouth of God
’!

He would even appear to have been involved along with these other ‘
Covenant-Breakers
’ in CD I.20 in physical violence – some of which might even be described as ‘
mortal
’ – ‘
against the person
(or ‘
soul
’)
of the Righteous One and all those walking in Perfection
’.
In other descriptions, these confrontations between ‘
the Liar
’ or ‘
Spouter of Lying
’ and ‘
the Righteous Teacher
’, however, are usually verbal and not so violent or physical and this ‘
Lying Spouter
’ or ‘
Man of Jesting
’/‘
Scoffing
’ is clearly d
e
picted as an
ideological
adversary of ‘
the Teacher of Righteousness
’
within
‘
the Movement
’,
not outside it
,
since he attends the scriptural exegesis sessions of
‘
the Priest
’/‘
Righteous Teacher
’/‘
Zaddik
’.
16

‘
The Wicked Priest
’ and the ‘
the Simple of Judah doing
Torah
’

The other opponent of the Righteous Teacher is easier to delineate. Though called ‘
the Wicked Priest
’, in the early days of Qumran research no distinction was made between him and ‘
the Spouter of Lying
’, but it is quite clear that ‘
the Righteous Teacher
’ has
two
separate opponents – one
inside
the Movement
, ‘
the Man of Lying
’, and the other
outside
it
, ‘
the Wicked Priest
’. That the latter is also a ‘
High Priest
’ – in this case
the Establishment
‘
High Priest
’ – is made clear as well from the a
p
pellation ‘
the Priest
’ attached to him in both Habakkuk and Psalm 37
Pesher
s.
17
He is also referred to as ‘
the Priest
’ who ‘
did not circumcise the foreskin of his heart
’ and ‘
rebelled against and broke the Laws
(
of God)
’.
18

The use here of the allusion ‘
the Priest
’ is exactly the opposite of how it is used with regard to ‘
the Righteous Teacher
’. The one is more or less the mirror reversal of the other – ‘
the Righteous Teacher
’, therefore, being ‘
the Opposition High Priest
’ of his time, which links up strongly with allusions associated with James and
his role in the Jerusalem of his day
, a pos
i
tion first delineated regarding him in the 1920s and 30s by Robert Eisler even before the discovery of the Dead Sea Scrolls (though he did have the Cairo
Genizah
Damascus Document to work with).
19

The allusion to the Wicked Priest’s being ‘
uncircumcised in heart
’ is also, ideologically speaking, of importance for our purposes. Though he may have been ‘
circumcised in the flesh
’, his ‘
heart
’ was ‘
impure
’ or ‘
polluted
’. Furthermore, he was o
b
viously not a ‘
Righteous Priest
’
20
as ‘
the Righteous Teacher
’, to say nothing of the ‘
the Priest after the Order of Melchizedek
’, certainly appears to have been. As the Habakkuk
Pesher
puts this: ‘
he
(‘
the Wicked Priest
’)
acted
’ or ‘
worked in the Ways of Abominations in all unclean pollution
’.
21

It is also important
vis-à-vis
the esoteric allusions in Ezekiel that are the basis for the definition of who
the true
‘
Sons of Zadok
’ were. These are the passages from Ezekiel 44:5–9 that also put the lie, as we have stressed, to Josephus’ claims that the rejection of gifts and sacrifices on behalf of Gentiles in the Temple in the run-up to the War against Rome in the Sixties
CE
(the decade in which James died) was ‘
an
Innovation
with which our people were before unacquainted
’. It is clear that this idea of banning foreigners and gifts and sacrifices from them or on their behalf from the Temple goes all the way back to these passages from Ezekiel 44:5–9. In fact, they make ‘
rejecting such gifts and sacrifices
’ a
requirement
for proper ‘
Temple service
’ and accuse those behaving in the opposite manner of ‘
breaking the Covenant
’, the very words the Habakkuk
Pesher
uses to describe the activities of ‘
the Wicked Priest
’ and those opposing ‘
the Righteous Teacher
’ in general.
22
With this in mind, there can be little doubt that this kind of allusion is meant to disqualify persons of the type of ‘
the Wicked Priest
’ from doing ‘
Te
m
ple service
’, despite any genealogical claims to the contrary they may have been making.

Earlier in the Habakkuk
Pesher
, these ‘
Covenant Breakers
’, ‘
Violent Ones
’, and ‘
Traitors to the New Covenant
’ were pr
e
sented as ‘
walking with
’ or being allied to ‘
the Man of Lying
’.
23
This ‘
breaking
’ language too was also part and parcel of the Letter of James – in particular, the recommendation at its beginning to be a ‘
Doer
’ (1:22–26, 2:13, and 4:11–17) or a ‘
Keeper
’ not a ‘
Breaker
’ (1:27 and 2:8–2:11) and condemning thereafter the one ‘
not bridling his Tongue
’ (1:26) or ‘
stumbling over one small point of the Law
’ (2:10). Such persons are ‘
Breakers
’ or ‘
Law-Breakers
’ as opposed to ‘
Doers
’ and ‘
Keepers
’ – familiar terms in James and used throughout the Damascus Document and the Habakkuk
Pesher
.
24

It is in these passages that Ezekiel 44:7 explains what is meant by the ‘
pollution of the Temple
’ charge made in the ‘
Three Nets of
Belial
’ section of CD IV.14–VI.2 directly following its exposition of Ezekiel 44:15:
‘Because you have brought foreig
n
ers uncircumcised in heart and uncircumcised in flesh into my Temple to pollute My House
...,
you have broken My Covenant because of all your Abominations
’.
Even this word ‘
Abominations
’ will be directly applied to ‘
the Wicked Priest
’ and it will be these kinds of esotericisms from crucial Biblical passages that will show what the problem concerning him was. It will be for us to interpret such esotericisms as we proceed, but disqualifying ‘
the Wicked Priest
’ from ‘
service
’ at the Temple altar must certainly be seen as part of their thrust.

In the
Pesharim
too, we also find esoteric, yet meaningful, expressions such as ‘
the Simple of Judah doing
Torah
’. These are basically identical with ‘the
Ebionim
’ or ‘
the Poor
’ – both, for all intents and purposes, describing the rank and file of the Community (in other contexts, ‘
the
Rabbim
’ or ‘
the Many
’).
25
Parallel to these are ‘
the Simple of Ephraim
’, urged in the Nahum
Pesher
‘
to turn aside from the one who deceives
’ or ‘
lies to
’
them
,
30
who have a parallel in the New Testament usage, ‘
these Li
t
tle Ones
’ – a usage also possibly reflected in the quotation from Zechariah 13:7 encountered in Ms. B’s version in CD XIX.7–9 of ‘
Messianic
’ events centering around the coming (‘
Second’ or ‘Third’) ‘Visitation
’. In the New Testament, Jesus is pictured as using the expression in Matthew 18:5 and
pars
. in such a way that it is obviously meant to be a stand-in for those among
the Gentiles
to whom Paul’s
Gentile Mission
is addressed – in the sense of being unsophisticated in Scriptural matters and, to a certain extent, not even aware of ‘
the
Torah
’ (
cf
.
, for instance, how Paul uses the expression in Galatians 4:19).

When evaluating its use in the Nahum
Pesher
at Qumran one should bear in mind its relationship to another favorite New Testament allusion, ‘
Samaritans
’, who –
bona fide
or not – claimed descent (as they still do today) from those in the Northern Kingdom, most generally known as ‘
Ephraim
’.
31
In the
Pesher
, the usage ‘
the Simple of Ephraim
’ was tied to another, ‘
Resident Aliens
’ (
Ger-Nilveh
), which for its part relates to the Hebrew ‘
joining
’ or ‘
Joiners
’ (‘
nilvu
’ or ‘
Nilvim
’). This expression conveys the sense of ‘
joining
’ or ‘
attaching oneself
’
to the Community in an associated
or
adjunct status
of some kind as the ‘
God-Fearers
’ were seen to be doing to the Synagogues throughout the Mediterranean at this time.

For its part, this expression, ‘
fearing God
’, crops up in critical passages among the promises made towards the end of the exhortative section of Ms. B, Column XX.19–20, which includes the allusion to ‘
a Book of Remembrance being written out before Him for God-Fearers and those reckoning His Name
’ and which so much resemble Paul’s and the Synoptics’ ‘
Do
’ or ‘
Drink this in Remembrance of me
’.
32
It too occurs throughout the New Testament corpus as, for instance, in Acts 10, where someone like the Roman Centurion ‘
Cornelius
’ is even described as ‘
a God-Fearer
’, ‘
Righteous
’, ‘
Pious
’, ‘
praying to God co
n
tinually
’ – the kind of language normally associated with either ‘
the Essenes
’ or someone like James – and even as ‘
continually waiting for him
’! But even more importantly, there are actually two further references in regard to his ‘
charitable works going up
’ (the very subject of the beginning of the Last Column of the Damascus Document and the references there to Leviticus 26:31 and Joel 2:13) and ‘
being remembered before God
’ (10:4 and 10:31), almost the very words just encountered in CD XX.19 of Ms. A as well. Moreover, this allusion to ‘
remembered before God
’ is almost word-for-word that of the description in the Pseudoclementine
Recognitions
of ‘
the two brothers
’ who were also ‘
remembered before God
’; and, because of having visited the burial monument of whom (‘
which miraculously whitened of itself every year
’), James and the rest of his Commun
i
ty of ‘
five thousand
’ were missed by ‘
the Enemy
’ Paul, who was pursuing them on his way to Damascus
with letters from the High Priest
!
33
It is worth observing, once again, that it is to ‘
God-Fearers
’ such as these that Paul generally directs his message.