James the Brother of Jesus and the Dead Sea Scrolls II (118 page)

It speaks about how ‘
they tortured
’ or ‘
inflicted upon him the Judgements on Evil
’, ‘
taking vengeance upon the flesh of his corpse
’. This comes just preceding the interpretation of a passage in the underlying text of Habakkuk: ‘
because of the blood of Man
(‘
Adam
’)
and the Violence done of the Land
,
the City
,
and all its inhabitants
’ (2:8, repeated in 2:17). It should be apprec
i
ated that, in light of the ‘
the Primal Adam
’ ideology, it would be possible for someone to read the reference to ‘
Adam
’ in the underlying text of Habakkuk at this point as another reference to ‘
Christ
’ and all further passages should be considered with that in mind. The
Pesher
reads: ‘
This concerns the Wicked Priest whom, as a consequence of the Evil he committed against the Righteous Teacher and the Men of his Council
,
God delivered into the hand of his enemies to afflict him with torture in order to destroy him in agony
,
because he condemned His Elect
.’
95
Not only then do we have this ‘
torturing
’ allusion running through a good part of Column Nine, but this idea of ‘
His Elect
’ also occurs in 4QpPs37 III.6 in the run-up to the material about ‘
the Princes of Evil vanishing like smoke
’. To recall the Damascus Document’s exposition of Ezekiel 44:15’s ‘
Sons of Zadok
’, these are ‘
the Elect of Israel
,
called by Name
,
who will stand in the Last Days
’ and ‘
justify the Righteous and condemn the Wicked
’ – again the ‘
condemned
’ usage just encountered in 1QpHab IX.11. Preceding this in 1QpHab V.3–4, too, it is stated in exegesis of Habakkuk 1:12–13 ‘
that God would not destroy His People by the hand of the Nations but rather
,
by the hand of His Elect
,
God will execute Judgement on the Nations
.
And with their chastisement
,
all the Evil Ones of His
(
own
)
People
,
who kept His Commandments only when convenient
,
would be punished
.’
This is an extremely pregnant exposition. Not only do we have in it the repeated allusion to ‘
hand of
’, previously encountered in
Messianic
passages of the War Scroll about ‘
the hand of the Messiah
’, ‘
the sword of no mere
Adam
’, and ‘
the hand of the Poor
’ – ‘
the Downcast of Spirit consu
m
ing Ungodliness
’, but the implications of this for native Palestinian conceptualities of ‘
the Day of Judgement
’ and the fact that ‘
the Backsliders among His own People
’ were to be judged along with all others are considerable.
96

The pronouncement is also delivered in exegesis of Habakkuk 1:12, which refers to God as ‘
my Rock
’ who has ‘
ordained them for Judgement
’ and ‘
punishment
’, the implications of which for the designation of Peter as ‘
Rock
’ and his role in early Christian eschatology – like ‘
the Elect
’ in this passage at Qumran – are noteworthy. In 4QpPs37 III.1–13, ‘
the Elect
’ are ‘
the Assembly of His Elect
’ – in Christian terms equivalent to ‘
the Jerusalem Assembly
’ or ‘
Church
’ of James the Just. In turn, th
e
se are equivalent to those who in the next passage are called ‘
the Assembly of the Poor who will possess the High Mountain of Israel forever
’.

In the view of the Psalm 37
Pesher
, ‘
the Assembly of His Elect
’ are to be the ‘
Leaders and Princes
,
the choice of the flock among their herds
’, this in exegesis of an underlying reference in 37:20 to ‘
the most valuable of the lambs
’. It is interesting that to produce this very positive exegesis the underlying Hebrew of the original has been reversed from the received version of Psalm 37:20, which rather alludes to ‘
the Enemies of the Lord
’. This is now transformed in the text as it is quoted into the homophonic phrase in Hebrew, ‘
whoever loves the Lord
’,
97
and it is these who are identified – just as ‘
the Meek of the flock
’ in CD XIX.9 of Ms. B who ‘
will escape at the Time of the Visitation
’ and ‘
the coming of the Messiah of Aaron and Israel
’ – with ‘
the choicelings of the flock
’, ‘
the Assembly of His Elect
’, and ‘
the Assembly of the Poor
’. This is typical of Qumran te
x
tual redaction and interpretation and the liberties taken there, as it is the New Testament.

In this transformation, one immediately recognizes the ‘
Piety
’ part of the
Righteousness
/
Piety
dichotomy that has become familiar to us as the basis of Josephus’ descriptions of John the Baptist’s teaching in the wilderness and the doctrines of ‘
the Essenes
’, not to mention of Jesus and James in early Christian texts. Here at Qumran, these ‘
Lovers of the Lord
’ – along with several allusions in the underlying
text of Psalm 37 (12, 21, 30, and 32) to ‘
the Righteous One
’/‘
Righteous Ones
’ as well – are obviously to be identified with ‘
the Penitents of the Wilderness
’, (in the Damascus Document, both ‘
the Penitents of Israel
’ and ‘
from sin in Jacob
’)
who will live in Salvation
(‘
Jesus
’)
for a thousand generations
’ and to whom, ‘
all the Glory of
Adam
will be theirs
’.

The evocation of these ‘
Penitents of the Wilderness
’ comes amid exegesis of ‘
the days of the Perfect
,
whose portion shall be forever
’ of 37:18. Following this, preceding evocation of ‘
the Assembly of His Elect
’ and ‘
the Assembly of the Poor
’/‘
the Righteous
’, allusion is made to ‘
the days of the famine and the Wicked perishing
’ (37:19). In the
Pesher
, this is interpreted in terms of ‘
the Penitents of the Wilderness
’/‘
the Assembly of the Poor
’ being ‘
kept alive
’ or redeemed – the whole ambiance being a juridical one – while ‘
the Wicked
’, described as ‘
all those who did not depart
(
from the Land of Judah
)’, ‘
will perish from famine and plague
’.
98
Once again, even here, it would appear that we have yet another possible oblique parallel to what in Christian tradition is called ‘
the Pella Flight of the Jerusalem Community
’. This whole section immediately follows the first reference to how ‘
the Evil Ones of Ephraim and Manasseh
’ – later simply ‘
the Wicked Priest
’ – would be ‘
delivered into the hand of the Violent Ones of the Gentiles for Judgement
’.

In the Habakkuk
Pesher
, another delineation of the sins of ‘
the Wicked Priest
’ and ‘
the Last Priests of Jerusalem
’ in general is presented just after references in Column Nine to how ‘
the Wicked Priest was delivered over to the hand of his enemies
’ as a ‘
consequence of the Evil he did to the Righteous Teacher and the Men of his Council
’ and just after reference to ‘
torturing him with the Judgements on Evil
’. Of course, it should be appreciated that an allusion such as ‘
the Last Priests of Jerusalem
’ – which certainly does mean ‘
High Priests
’ or ‘
Chief Priests
’ and, as a plural, parallels the references to these same
Priests
in the New Testament – makes no sense anytime before the destruction of the Temple in 70
CE
and their decimation by ‘
the Zea
l
ots
’ and their
Violent
Idumaean allies when the Revolt moved into its more extreme ‘
Jacobin
’ phase, as it were, and
all collab
o
rators were dealt with
. Along with James’ destroyer Ananus, among these, as just indicated, was Jesus ben Gamala, whose f
a
ther managed to get word to Josephus in Galilee about a plot in Jerusalem to remove him when he (Josephus) was commanding there in the early days of the Uprising.
99
These are the passages in which Josephus describes how
the Idumaeans
, whom he calls ‘
turbulent and unruly
,
ever on the alert to create mayhem and delighting in Innovation
’, butchered all the High Priests and, in particular, ‘
cast out
’ the bodies of Ananus and Jesus ben Gamala, his friend,
without burial
, ‘
naked as food for dogs and beasts of prey
’.

As Josephus recounts all these matters, these
Idumaeans
, introduced by stealth at night into the city by those he has star
t
ed now to call ‘
Zealots
’, were ‘
of the most murderous and savage disposition
’, ‘
pests
’, ‘
the sum total of the offal of the whole country
’.
100
In an extremely vivid description, he describes how,
together with
‘
the Zealots
’, ‘
they stealthily streamed into the Holy City
,
Brigands of such incomparable Impiety
as to pollute even that hallowed Sanctuary
…
recklessly intoxicating the
m
selves in the Temple and imbibing the spoils of their slaughtered victims in their insatiable bellies’
.
Once again, in good colla
b
orationist style, Josephus is reversing not just the ‘
Piety
’ ideology but also the ‘
pollution of the Temple
’ accusation and appl
y
ing it, like his ideological look-alike Paul, to ‘
the Zealots
’ and those allied to them, not
to the
‘
Establishment
’
High Priests
.

In addition to using the language of the Scrolls about ‘
pollution of the Temple
’, ‘
Piety
’, ‘
Riches
’ and, in particular, ‘
the spoils
’ ‘
the Last Priests of Jerusalem gathered
’ in the Temple – the very language the Habakkuk
Pesher
actually is using at this point, Josephus has already told us that James’ destroyer Ananus – who basically had total control of the government for the two years since the outbreak of the War – was the whole time trying to make the necessary inroads that would make it possible for the Romans to once more enter the city, and was just on the point of succeeding when ‘
the Zealots
’, aided by ‘
the Idumaeans
’, overwhelmed him and his fellow collaborating ‘
Chief Priests
’.
101

The allusion to ‘
the Last Priests of Jerusalem
’, which the
Pesher
now makes as a concomitant to this general allusion to ‘
plundering
’ and ‘
profiteering
’ (in effect, ‘
tax-farming
’ – the language is very precise here
102
), is entirely appropriate because, at this point, the
Pesher
actually knows it is speaking about
the total destruction of these
‘
Last
’
collaborating
‘
High Priest
’
clans
. Nothing like this
ever
happened before and the
Pesher
is quite cognizant of its significance. There is no possibility such whol
e
sale destruction of High Priestly clans can be read into any events prior to 68–70
CE
. Even at the time of Pompey in 63
BCE
or Herod’s later assault on the Temple with the help of Roman troops in 37
BCE
, Josephus makes it very clear that
neither allowed any plundering or booty-taking to go on
! This is the definitive point and Josephus explicitly says as much both as r
e
gards Pompey’s behavior in the Temple and Herod’s directives to his troops – unless we are speaking about Antiochus Epiphanes here, a dubious
proposition.
103
That leaves only Titus and his father Vespasian and we know they took ‘
booty
’ – a good deal of it, because,
inter alia
, they used the proceeds of it and the labor force they acquired to build the  Colosseum in Rome.