James the Brother of Jesus and the Dead Sea Scrolls II (135 page)

This is the same ‘
stealing from the Meek of His People
’ and ‘
grinding the face of the Poor
’ passages surrounding Isaiah 3:10–11 and applied in early Church literature to the death of James. The reference to the Wicked Priest’s ‘
works of Abomin
a
tions
’ harks back to the parameters of Ezekiel’s ‘
Zadokite Covenant
’ and, first and foremost, consisted of his ‘
destruction of the Poor
’ – meaning, in our view, the destruction of James and several of his colleagues. They are also a play on the proper ‘
works
’ associated with and recommended by James and, for that matter, the Qumran Letter(s) (
MMT
) on ‘
the Works that would be Reckoned to you as Righteousness
’ or
‘
Justifying you
’.
31

This ‘
stealing from the Meek of His People
’ also comprises part of the passages in CD VI.11–14 having to do with ‘
ba
r
ring the door of the Temple
,
so as not to light its altar-fire in vain
’ (Malachi 1:10) and ‘
separating from the Sons of the Pit
’ du
r
ing ‘
the whole Age of Evil
’ (the ‘
seventy
’ years of Daniel 9:3 and Jeremiah 25:11 – the latter also so strikingly going on to refer to ‘
drinking
’, ‘
drunkenness
’, and ‘
drinking the Cup
’ of the Lord unto ‘
Judgement
’ and what is most clearly ‘
destruction
’) – all part of what was meant there by ‘
separating between clean and unclean
’, ‘
Holy and profane
’ and ‘
keeping away from
(
lehinnazer
)
polluted Evil Riches
’ and ‘
the Riches of the Temple
’.
32
There can be little doubt that this is the same ‘
stealing the tithes of the Poorer Priests
’ in the areas around Jerusalem (‘
the Cities of Judah where he stole the Riches of the Poor
’) by the thugs and servants of the High Priests, to which Josephus twice refers directly before and after the stoning of James in the run-up to the Revolt.

The accusation of filling Jerusalem with ‘
pollution
’, ‘
Abominations
’, and ‘
Blood
’, is exactly what Josephus (in a reversal of course) says ‘
the Zealots
’ and their ‘
Violent
’ Idumaean colleagues did in destroying James’ murderer Ananus, Saulos’ kinsman Antipas, and Zachariah, that is to say, they ‘
polluted the Temple of God
’ thereby bringing upon the Jews His (God’s) just ‘
Re
t
ribution
’. As previously explained, this accusation should be a familiar one by now and it is only slightly transformed in the version of it one gets in New Testament contexts and in the theology of the early Church.

‘
Lebanon
’, because of the ‘
whitening
’ imagery implicit in the original Hebrew (elsewhere, we saw it had to do with the garb the Priests wore in the Temple), is specifically interpreted as ‘
the Community Council
’, imagery also encountered both as regards ‘
the tombs of the two brothers that
miraculously whitened
every year
’ in the
Recognitions
and Jesus’ clothing at his
Transfi
g
uration
and that of the Angel in his tomb, ‘
white as snow
,
such that no
fuller
on earth could whiten
’, in the Gospels.
33
These wore white linen, as per Ezekiel’s directives in 44:17 – just as ‘
the Essenes
’ seem to have done – as if they were ‘
Zadokite Priests
’ permanently serving in the Temple before God. ‘
The Beasts
’, as we saw, are ‘
the Simple Jews
’ who actually ‘
do the
T
o
rah
’, and here we have the ‘
doing
’ usage again, just encountered in the various contexts above and actually referred to several times throughout the Letter of James in terms of being ‘
a Doer of the word
’/‘
the work
’/or ‘
the Law
’, which was used four columns earlier in VIII.1–3 to restrict the applicability of ‘
the Righteous shall live by his Faith
’ to ‘
Torah
-Doers in the House of Judah
’, that is, only ‘
Torah
-doing Jews
’.

Just so that there would be no mistaking any of these things, the
Pesher
at this point avers that the Wicked Priest ‘
would be paid the Reward he rewarded the Poor
’ (
Gemulo asher gamal
), ‘
the Poor
’ also being identified with ‘
the Community Council
’ – which wore
white
– and with ‘
Lebanon
’, and ‘
just as he plotted to destroy the Poor
,
so too would God condemn him to d
e
struction
’. The verb here, as already remarked, literally means ‘
destroy
’, so there can be no doubt that the language of ‘
swallo
w
ing
’ or ‘
eating
’ used throughout these passages to evoke the fate of ‘
the Righteous Teacher
’ and ‘
the Poor
’ (‘
the Dumb Beasts
’ or ‘
members of his Council
’), ultimately ‘
comes around to
’ the Wicked Priest and means ‘
to destroy him
’ – nothing else.

Here we should recapitulate the significance of the usage ‘
swallowing
’ as it relates to the ‘
destruction
’ of the Righteous Teacher and some of his colleagues on ‘
the Community Council
’ in 1QpHab XI.13–XII.10. In such a context, these last would be equivalent to the so-called ‘
Twelve Disciples
’ of Gospel portraiture. In the Community Rule, ‘
the Community Council
’ – which is reckoned as ‘
a Precious Cornerstone
’ and a kind of spiritualized ‘
Holy of Holies for Aaron
’ and ‘
Perfect Temple of God for Israel
’ – is presented as composed of ‘
Twelve Israelites and Three Priests
.
34
This, of course, can immediately be re
c
ognized as the
Twelve man
scheme of the Gospels and Acts and that of ‘
the Inner Triad
’ or ‘
the Central Three
’ – ‘
those repu
t
ed to be Pillars
’ as Paul in Galatians 2:6–9 refers to
them using the language of ‘
building
’ and ‘
architecture
’ so typical of him. In the Scrolls, it is not clear whether these ‘
Three
’ are part of or in addition to the ‘
Twelve
’, though the latter is more prob
a
ble.
35
This same confusion is reflected in the Gospels and compounded in Acts and early Church tradition, where it is not clear exactly who is an ‘
Apostle
’, nor how these relate to ‘
the Inner Three
’, nor who, in fact, really comprise the latter.
36

This ‘
swallowing
’ imagery is being deliberately applied throughout 1QpHab XI.5–15 to the destruction of the Righteous Teacher and some members of this Council, referred to collectively as ‘
the Simple of Judah doing
Torah
’ or ‘
the Poor
’. Both it and ‘
the Poor
’ are being purposefully applied to this ‘
destruction
’, as neither appear in the underlying passages of Habakkuk 2:15–18. We have made it clear that this ‘
swallowing
’ means ‘
consume
’ or ‘
destroy
’ here and that, in a kind of poetic justice, it is finally turned around and applied to ‘
the destruction of the Wicked Priest
’ – presumably by ‘
the Violent Ones of the Ge
n
tiles
’ or those Josephus is calling ‘
Idumaeans
’ – that is, just as the Wicked Priest ‘
swallowed
’ the Righteous Teacher and some of his followers among ‘
the Poor
’, so too would he himself be ‘
swallowed
’ or ‘
consumed
’.

We have shown too that this imagery of ‘
swallowing
’ and the circle of language related to it were based on the Hebrew root
B-L-
‘
. It forms a parallel and opposing one to the
Z-D-K
or ‘
Righteousness
’ language circle and also relates to allusions like ‘
the wine
’ or ‘
the Venom of the Kings of the Peoples
’ and ‘
their ways
’ (meaning
the Herodians
) in other Qumran documents such as the Damascus Document. This is the thrust, too, of the various adumbrations of this imagery we encounter – inclu
d
ing allusions to ‘
the Three Nets of
Belial
’, ‘
Balaam
’, ‘
Balak
’ and even ‘
Jezebel
’ and ‘
Babylon
’ in Revelation, not to mention ‘
the
Diabolos
’ – even ‘
Beelzebub
’ – elsewhere in the New Testament.

In fact, the first of these individuals and the original instigator of all these ‘
Innovations into the Customs of the People
’ was Herod himself, and the Rabbinic decipherment of the nomenclature ‘
Balaam
’ in terms of its root-meaning,
i.e
., ‘
he who swallowed the People
’, was absolutely characteristic of
the Herodians
, particularly as they disposed of
Opposition
Leaders such as John the Baptist, James, and many others.
37
This is the reason, too, this imagery is being used at this point in the Ha
b
akkuk
Pesher
because it describes what the Herodian-sponsored High Priestly
Establishment
did to the Righteous Teac
h
er/James. They destroyed him. Furthermore, the ‘
conspiracy
’ hinted at is the one between Ananus and Agrippa II to remove
Opposition
Leaders, particularly
Opposition ‘High Priests’
such as James, who
opposed Herodian gifts and sacrifices in the Temple
and
supported the building of a wall in the Temple to block their view of the sacrifices
. These took advantage of the chance provided by an interregnum in Roman Governors to remove the key individual they considered responsible for the agitation against them in the Temple – ‘
the Opposition High Priest of his time
’, James.

‘
Stumbling
’, ‘
Casting Down
’, ‘
Leading Astray
’, and ‘
Slaying with the Rod of his Mouth
’

To draw all these imageries even more closely together, early Church texts are saying the same things about James and his entry into the Holy of Holies on at least one
Yom Kippur
(if not many) – there to make atonement on behalf of the whole People (the atonement of a ‘
Righteous Priest
’/‘
Zaddik
’) – that Ezekiel is saying about the true ‘
Sons of Zadok
’ in the ‘
Zadokite Covenant
’ in 44:6–31.