James the Brother of Jesus and the Dead Sea Scrolls II (112 page)

The ‘
doing
Torah
’ language will not only be absolutely fundamental to the Habakkuk
Pesher
’s exposition of Habakkuk 2:4: ‘
the Righteous shall live by his Faith
’, but it also underlies the general usage in Hebrew that translates into English as ‘
works
’. These allusions to ‘
Doer
’ and ‘
doing
’ are pregnant with meaning for the approach of James and actually appear several times in the New Testament Letter associated with his name. In James, as at Qumran, this emphasis on ‘
being a Doer
’ is ranged against the allusion to being a ‘
Breaker
’ or ‘
breaking the Law
’ (2:9–11), an ideology which also permeates
MMT
. Some have even gone so far as to see this allusion to ‘
Doers
’/
’
O
sei ha-Torah
as the basis for the denotation in the Greek of Josephus and Philo’s ‘
Essenoi
’ or ‘
Essenes
’.
34

Other esotericisms found in the
Pesharim
important for solving the puzzle of the Scrolls are phrases like ‘
the City of Blood
’ in the Nahum
Pesher
or ‘
a worthless City built upon blood and an Assembly
’ or ‘
Church erected
(or, as in Amos 9:11, ‘
raised
’)
upon Lying
’ in the Habakkuk
Pesher
.
35
Not only can these be looked upon in terms of both Paul’s ‘
architectural
’ and ‘
building
’ imagery in 1 Corinthians – particularly 1 Corinthians 3:6–17, where he actually does use the imagery of CD (and of Isaiah 60:21–61:4) of ‘
planting
’ and ‘
God causing to grow
’ and really does call himself ‘
the architect
’ or ‘
builder
’ – but, as we shall see, also his understanding of ‘
Communion
’ both with the ‘
body
’ and ‘
blood of Christ
’, found later in 1 Corinthians 10:14–17.

At least where it is found in the Nahum
Pesher
, this expression ‘
City of Blood
’ (Nahum 3:1) – as it is interpreted in the
Pesher
, ‘
the City of Ephraim
,
the Seekers after Smooth Things at the End of Days
,
who walk in Deceitfulness and Lying
’ – will have real meaning where the related phrase ‘
the Simple of Ephraim
’ tied to the idea of ‘
joining
’ is concerned.
36
It is possible to interpret it in terms of ‘
Pauline Christians
’ (
Gentiles
of course) or Resident Alien ‘
Joiners
’ in an associated status with the new ‘
Community of God
’, the attitudes of whom with regard to ‘
Torah
’ have not yet been clarified or sufficiently consolidated. This is of course the other side of the coin of the expression ‘
the Simple of Judah doing
Torah
’ – identified in the Habakkuk
Pesher
with ‘
the Poor
’. These are the kind of esotericisms which abound in Qumran literature and have puzzled scholars for so long. Yet they are consistent and homogeneous and provide clues for finally unraveling the meaning of the documents in which they are found.

The Destruction of
the Righteous Teacher
by
the Wicked Priest
in the Habakkuk
Pesher

The Habakkuk
Pesher
is one of the most important and best preserved documents found at Qumran. Its First-Century d
a
ting, like that of the Psalm 37
Pesher
it so much resembles, is reinforced by a wealth of internal allusions within the document itself which make it impossible that the document could have come from any century earlier than the First, whatever external dating tool might be applied.

The most obvious and important of these internal allusions is the reference to ‘
the
Kittim
’, the foreign, invading armies, ‘
who come to lay waste the earth
’ (obviously from the West, since they ‘
come from afar
,
from the Islands of the Sea
,
to
consume all the Peoples
like an insatiable eagle
’ – the ‘
eating
’ and
Gentiles
/
Peoples
allusions again), and are characterized as ‘
sacrificing to their standards and worshipping their weapons of war
’.
37

This allusion – which indicates habitual and not specific action – can apply to no time during the entire period we have been considering other than that of Rome – and this
Imperial Rome
, after the deification of the Emperors had taken hold and the Emperor’s medallion busts were affixed to the standards. Josephus specifically describes one such sacrifice the Romans made facing the Eastern Gate after they had stormed the Temple in 70
CE
.
38
But there were others they obviously would have made – a whole series of them as they made their bloody way down from Galilee, reducing fortress city after fortress city, all vividly described in Josephus.
39

Josephus also describes the incident of Pilate trying to smuggle such Roman military standards – in this case probably bearing the image of Tiberius Caesar (14–37
CE
) – into Jerusalem and the Temple
by night
causing a frantic reaction the next day. This incident is clearly connected with the attempt by Gaius Caligula to have his own portrait bust set up in the Temple five or six years later in 40–41
CE
.

Aside from the references to ‘
the
Ebionim
’ or ‘
the Poor
’, the
Pesher
also alludes to ‘
the Riches and booty
’ of ‘
the Last Priests of Jerusalem
’, Jerusalem’s fall, and how these ‘
Priests
’ (plural not singular –
ergo
, the
Herodian
High-Priestly clans not the singular hereditary High Priest of the Maccabean Period) enriched themselves and literally ‘
profiteered from
’ the elicit ‘
plunder of the Peoples
’.
40
Again, in our view, these last are ‘
Violent Gentiles
’ or, more specifically,
Herodians
viewed as Ge
n
tiles by groups as ‘
Pious
’ as the Qumran sectaries. The ambiance for this, as we have shown, is amply developed in Book Twenty of Josephus’
Antiquities
, where he twice notes how the ‘
Rich
’ High Priests sent their servants and other thugs to the threshing floors to raid the tithes, so that ‘
the Poor
’ among the lower priests died of want.
41
He also delineates in the
War
how these
Herodian
High Priests accepted gifts and sacrifices in the Temple on behalf of Romans and other foreigners, including both the Emperor and Herodians, which led directly to the War against Rome and was considered ‘
pollution of the Temple
’ by their opponents.
42

But the most obvious dating tool is the citation and exegesis of Habakkuk 2:4, the climax of the
Pesher
– ‘
the Righteous shall live by his faith
’ – the scriptural passage forming the basis of a good
deal of Paul’s scriptural exegesis, to say nothing of James’. In addition to this, there is also, as in James 5:7–11, the counseling of ‘
patience
’ tied to the exegesis of Habakkuk 2:3: ‘
if it tarries
,
wait for it
’, which directly precedes this. Both of these passages are interpreted eschatologically, that is in terms of
the
‘
End Time
’. In fact, the interpretation of Habakkuk 2:3 is specifically related to the
delay
of this ‘
End
’ and resembles not
h
ing so much as the scriptural warrant for what goes in Christianity even today under the heading of ‘
the Delay of the
Parousia
’ – the delay of the second coming of Christ and the final eschatological events associated with this.

As the
Pesher
puts this: ‘
The Last Era
(or ‘
Last End
’)
will be extended and exceed all that the Prophets
(primarily Daniel)
have foretold
,
since the Mysteries of God are astounding
.’
The exposition – just as with that of Habakkuk 2:4 which follows – then goes on to apply this, like James 1:22–24, to ‘
the Doers of the
Torah
’.
43
Presumably this exegesis repudiates a more ‘
Lying
’ one on the same materials being circulated by ‘
the Man of Lying
’ or ‘
Lying Spouter
’. These are the kinds of characteristics that make anything other than a First Century ambiance for these arguments hard to imagine.

This document, found in a single exemplar only, would appear to be a record of the scriptural exegesis sessions of the Righteous Teacher who is specifically referred to as being able to give authorative scriptural exegeses and to whom ‘
God made known all the Mysteries of the words of His Servants the Prophets
’.
44
Elsewhere, he is said to be able ‘
to interpret
’ these words. In this case, if ‘
the Righteous Teacher
’ is not James – since he is clearly referred to in the exegesis as being destroyed along with several members of his Council – then we have to do with someone like James’ successor according to early Church tradition, Simeon bar Cleophas who, not unlike the individual designated as ‘
Elchasai
’, certainly functioned somewhere in the Judean wilderness or across Jordan in the Pella or Damascus region following the death of James (there being no real Jerusalem left at this point to function in).

As the
Pesher
puts it in interpretation of Habakkuk 2:2 (‘
write down the vision and make it plain on tablets
’): ‘
And God told Habakkuk to write down what was coming in the Last Generation
,
but He did not reveal to him
(
the Time of
)
the Co
m
pletion of the Era
.’
One should compare this with words attributed to Jesus in Matthew 5:18 and 24:34: ‘
until all these things shall be accomplished
’ or ‘
completed
’. Earlier, the same
Pesher
had identified ‘
the Traitors together with the Man of Lying
’ as ‘
not believing what the Righteous Teacher expounded from the mouth of God
’ (
n.b.
, the emphasis here and in the rest of the column on ‘
believing
’).
45

Identifying these ‘
Traitors
’ as not only betraying ‘
the New Covenant
’ and ‘
the Last Days
’ but also as ‘
Violent Ones and Covenant-Breakers
’ (note the parallel here with James 2:9’s ‘
Law-Breakers
’), these together with ‘
the Liar
did not believe all that they heard was going to happen in the Last Generation from the mouth of the Priest in whose heart God put the intell
i
gence to expound all the words of His Servants the Prophets
,
through whom God foretold all that was going to happen to His People’
.
46
These passages are only a little inverted from the kind of thing one encounters in Early Christian sources about James, namely that ‘
the Prophets declare concerning him
’ – meaning not necessarily that he would do the expounding but that his name was to be found by searching Scripture where the events of his life were prefigured, particularly in these ‘
Prophets
’. Again, not only do these kinds of allusions link the
Pesher
very closely to the scriptural ambiance and eschatological expectation of Early Christianity, but we even have in it something akin to Paul’s ‘
fleshy tablets of the heart
’ allusion in 2 Corinthians 3:3, should one choose to regard it.