James the Brother of Jesus and the Dead Sea Scrolls II (161 page)

As he continues in both, Josephus identifies this ‘
Fourth Philosophy
’ – which at first he had declined to name – as ‘
the
Sicarii
’ but, as already noted, he never actually employs the term ‘
Zealot
’ until midway through the
War
around 68
CE
at the point when, along with those he is calling ‘
Idumaeans’
, they slaughter James’ nemesis and judicial murderer, Ananus ben Ananus, along with Josephus’ own close friend,
Jesus ben Gamala
, and throw their naked bodies outside the city without bur
i
al as food for jackals.
68
Josephus follows this up in the
War
with a picture of
the Zealots
that is so hysterical (including dres
s
ing themselves up as women and wearing lipstick) as to verge on the absurd, but by this time he, too, is beside himself with animosity.
69

For his part, Hippolytus rather follows up his picture of his
Third Group
– ‘
those who will call no man Lord
’ (presumably, not even Jesus) – with a ‘
Fourth Group’
who are basically schismatics and who have ‘
declined so far from the
(
Ancient
)
Disc
i
pline
’ that those ‘
continuing in the observance of the customs of the Ancestors would not even touch them’
.
70
This
Group
resembles nothing so much as Pauline ‘
Christians
’ or perhaps some later, even more ‘
Gentilizing
’ or ‘
Gnosticizing
’ group. Fu
r
thermore,
should they happen to come into contact with them
,
they would immediately resort to water purification as if they had come into contact with someone belonging to a foreign People
.
71
One should note the resemblance of this last to Acts 10:28’s picture of Peter’s words, accurate or not, to ‘
Cornelius
’ that it was ‘
unlawful for a Jewish person to keep company with or come in contact with one of a foreign race’
.

We shall further explain the significance in this encounter with ‘
Cornelius
’ in Caesarea with regard to the Roman
Lex Co
r
nelia de Sicarius et Veneficis
.
This Law, in effect, banned ‘
circumcision
’ – at least for those not originally born Jewish – and other similar ‘
bodily mutilations’
,
circumcision
being considered in Roman jurisprudence ‘
a bodily mutilation
’ equivalent to ‘
castr
a
tion
’, the application of which became particularly stringent after the fall of the Temple and the War against Rome from 66–73
CE
– itself, not significantly, ending in the suicide of ‘
the
Sicarii
’ at Masada.
72

Though a fourth ‘
grade’
, not unsimilar to Hippolytus’
Fourth Group
, does appear in Josephus’ extant
Jewish War
, there it is the more innocuous matter of being in an inferior state of apprenticeship or novitiate as compared with those already far-advanced where
Holiness
or bodily and spiritual
purity
were concerned but not as having slipped, as it were, out of the ‘
Jewish fold
’ altogether, as in Hippolytus, to be looked upon as virtual
foreigners
and/or
untouchables
.
73
This is a significant discre
p
ancy between the two accounts and, on the face of it, Hippolytus’ makes more sense, since it is hard to imagine such a horror of contact or ‘
touching
’ directed simply against junior members in a less-advanced state of
ritual purity
. In this context too, one should recollect all the various ‘
touching
’ episodes with regard to Jesus in the Gospels.
74
In fact, Hippolytus’ ‘
Fourth Group
’ resembles nothing so much as the new more ‘
Paulinized
’ Christians we have been highlighting (of the kind
Peter
learns to accept) following, in the writer’s view, a less stringent, more extra-legal form of
Essenism
totally alien to those preceding it. It is for this reason that it becomes impossible either to
associate with
or
even
‘
to touch them
’ as Hippolytus would have it.

This being said, Hippolytus now returns to his earlier description of the Three Groups of Essenes – or, at least, the two earlier ones, that is, those he calls ‘
Zealot Essenes
’ and ‘
Sicarii
Essenes’
, if in fact they can be distinguished in any real way from the Third (those willing to undergo any form of torture rather than ‘
call any man Lord
’) – because he now picks up the points paralleled in normative Josephus about the longevity of Essenes, their temperateness, and the incapacity they display of b
e
coming angry.
75
But he also now returns a second time to his previous description of how ‘
they despised death
’ and the wil
l
ingness they showed to undergo torture of any kind amalgamating, as just indicated, parts from both Josephus’ descriptions of
Essenes
in the
Jewish War
and ‘
the Fourth Philosophical Sect
’ (later either
Sicarii
or ‘
Zealots
’) in the
Antiquities
.
76

In any event, in this passage from Hippolytus’ presentation, the reader will immediately recognize the description in the
War
of the bravery shown by the Essenes in ‘
our recent War with the Romans
’ (that is, unlike
Pharisees
,
Herodians
,
Esta
b
lishment Sadducees
, and
Christians
– meaning ‘
Pauline
’ ones and not
Sicarii
–
the Essenes
did participate in the War against Rome
and
they were on the side of the insurgents
,
whatever the orientation
77
) that no matter how much they were ‘
racked and twis
t
ed, burned and broken’
, they could not be made to ‘
blaspheme the Law-giver
(meaning Moses – here the ‘
blaspheming
’ charge again) or ‘
eat forbidden things’
.
78

It is this last which is the pivotal point, for Hippolytus now refines it as well – in the process, bringing it in even closer agreement with and, as a consequence, the actual reverse once again of what Paul is so concerned about from 1Corinthians 8–11 where he is in the process, not only of attacking persons like James, but all persons ‘
with weak consciences
’ such as these same
Essenes
in Hippolytus – persons whose ‘
conscience was so weak
’ (8:4) that they would not even ‘
eat things sacrificed to idols’
, considering such fare ‘
polluting
’ or ‘
defiled
’ (8:7). This point is not only pivotal, it is
decisive
. Considering the commi
t
ment, personal sacrifice, and dedication of such persons, as Hippolytus (in this, supported by normative Josephus) will now go on to describe them, this position expressed by Paul in 1 Corinthians is not only disrespectful, deceitful, and unnecessarily abusive, it is contemptible. As Hippolytus expresses this: ‘
If
,
however
,
anyone would attempt even to torture such persons in order to induce them either to blaspheme the Law or eat things sacrificed to an idol
,
he will not achieve his end for
(
an Essene of this kind
)
submits to death and endures any torment rather than
violate his conscience
(Paul’s ‘
conscience
’ language).’
79

The reader now has the option of deciding which version of Josephus is more accurate – or are all three accurate? – the
Jewish War
’s less specific and vaguer ‘
rather than eat forbidden things
’ or the more precise and, as we can now see,
MMT
-oriented ‘
refusal to eat things sacrificed to idols
’ reflecting James’ directives to overseas communities. Nor is this to say an
y
thing about Paul’s attack on those refusing to eat these same ‘
things sacrificed to idols
’ in 1 Corinthians 8:3–10:23 climaxing with his proclamation of ‘
Communion with the Blood of Christ
’ in 10:16.

Sicarii
Essenes
,
the
Lex Cornelia de Sicarius
, and
the
Sicaricon

Therefore we now approach a conundrum: the sort of
Essenes
described by Hippolytus – in particular, those he is calling either ‘
Zealot Essenes
’ or ‘
Sicarii
Essenes
’ or both, who apparently will not tolerate anyone discussing the
Torah
who is not circumcised and are prepared to kill anyone doing so who refuses or declines to be circumcised – are, also, prepared to unde
r
go any sort of torture rather than ‘
eat things sacrificed to an idol’
. This certainly does represent a refinement of Josephus with particular relevance both to ‘
the Party of the Circumcision
’ and those Paul refers to with such evident antipathy in Galatians 2:12 as the ‘
some from James
’ and ‘
those of the circumcision’.

We have already called attention to the section of
MMT
having to do with this complete and total ban on consuming ‘
things sacrificed to idols’
. Furthermore, we have also called attention to Columns XLVI–XLVII of the Temple Scroll dealing with ‘
pollution of the Temple
’ as well and barring various classes of ‘
unclean
’ persons and things from the Temple – in pa
r
ticular, enigmatically evoking someone or something called ‘
Bela
‘
’ and including ‘
skins sacrificed to idols’
.
80
Moreover, looked at from another perspective and through another vocabulary, these kinds of bans represent just another variation of the theme of ‘
pollution of the Temple
’ – which the version of James’ directives in Acts 15:19 refers to as ‘
the pollutions of the idols
’ and which Paul was accused of doing by the crowd in the Temple in Acts 21:28 by ‘
bringing Greeks into the Temple
’ – the third and perhaps most decisive of ‘
the Three Nets of
Belial
’ charges in the Damascus Document, the ‘
Nets
’ with which he
both deceives and subverts Israel
.
81

Before pulling all these strands of inquiry together, we should perhaps turn to one final source relevant to discussing such ‘
Sicarii
Essenes
’ and bearing on the possible circumcision they indulged in – possibly with the
sica
-like knife, from which Jos
e
phus claimed they originally derived their name
82
– and the view in Roman jurisprudence of
circumcision
as bodily mutilation.