James the Brother of Jesus and the Dead Sea Scrolls II (27 page)

Because of said ‘
Impiety
’, Aristobulus’ ‘
Zealot
’-minded Priestly supporters pray to be avenged on their own countrymen of the opposite persuasion, in response to which God now ‘
sends
’, as Josephus describes it, ‘
a violent windstorm
’ – or ‘
whir
l
wind
’ – which ‘
destroyed the fruits of the whole country
’.
35
This is an obvious case of ‘
pietistic
’ intercession or, as Tractate
Ta
‘
anith
would have it in describing Honi, ‘
importuning God like a Son to the Father
’. At the same time, it is the inverse of the situation, pictured in Isaiah 45:8 and evoked in the same Tractate, of ‘
the Heavens raining down Righteousness
’ and
the Earth
‘
causing Salvation to spring up and Justification to grow
’.
36
Rather the event Josephus describes in his
Antiquities
(as usual it is missing from the
War
) is more like that delineated in the War Scroll and the passage from Ezekiel 13, remarked above, on ‘
the Daubers on the Wall
’ in the Damascus Document – who ‘
cry
“
Peace
”
when there was no peace
’ – as it is that in Matthew’s ‘
Little Apocalypse
’ of
the Heavens
‘
raining down
’
Judgement
‘
on the Just and Unjust alike
’.
37

Not only should this be viewed as punishment for the ‘
Impiety
’ of the Pharisee besiegers of Aristobulus’ supporters’ in cheating them (
n
.
b
., how this theme of ‘
cheating
’ is clearly also present in James 4:3–4:9 on ‘
the Rich
’
cheating the mowers in the field
and a similar
Judgement
is being patiently awaited), and an answer to the prayers of
Pious
‘
Zadokite
’ or ‘
Righteous
’ Priests attempting to do proper
Temple service
in the midst of all the carnage; but it is also
Vengeance for the stoning of Honi
, ‘
the Righteous
’ and ‘
Beloved of God
’, by these same persons that preceded it. Though, strictly speaking, Josephus does not specify that this Vengeance is for Honi’s death, nevertheless, at the same time, he does not distinguish between the two succeeding events to any extent, nor for that matter the punishment for them. But the cause of the punishment –
the
‘
Impiety
’
of the b
e
siegers
on both counts – should be clear and it is echoed one hundred and twenty-five years later
in the events surrounding the stoning of James
and
the punishment inflicted
, according to the view of his supporters – conserved, it would seem, in at least one version of Josephus and in Hegesippus –
for this
.

Both
Talmud
s recount the complex of views surrounding Honi’s behaviour, but particularly the Palestinian one has Honi debating Simeon ben Shetach, the most famous Pharisee Leader of the time and the kinsman of Alexander Jannaeus’ wife, Salome Alexandra.
38
In this account, the issue is whether, in originally ‘
importuning God as a Son to a Father
’
to bring the rain and fill the cisterns
and, thereafter,
praying for the rain to cease,
Honi was not guilty of ‘
blasphemy
’ or, as the Jerusalem
Ta
l
mud
puts this, ‘
profanation of the Name
’; and here, significantly enough,
the comparison with Elijah is cited
!
39
Though not expressed in so many words, this is obviously Simeon ben Shetach’s position, in
pronouncing the ban on Honi
– ‘
profanation of the Name
’ being a way of expressing the infraction of ‘
blasphemy
’, in turn,
a pivotal motif in all early Church accounts of James
’
stoning too
.
40

Honi’s response, as conserved in the
Talmud
, alludes to
his exalted status
‘
among the People
’ and their recognition of him as the ‘
Friend of God
’ and ‘
Zaddik
’.
41
Though arcane, the gist of this response is that,
for the sake of
‘
the contrary decision
’ or ‘
adjudication by a
Zaddik/
Just One
’,
God would annul a punitive decree
or
banning
, even one as extreme as this one on ‘
pro
f
anation of the Name
’ or ‘
blasphemy
’ clearly being pronounced upon him, according to this account in Tractate
Ta
‘
anith
, by the Pharisee Establishment in the person of its most prominent representative, Salome Alexandra’s kinsman, Simeon ben Shetach.
42

If this Talmudic account is to be credited, not only do we have in it the confirmation of Honi’s status – reported as well in Josephus and anticipating that of James – as ‘
the Just
’, ‘
Righteous One
’, or ‘
Zaddik
’
of his generation
, but a reflection of the background issue that eventually led to his stoning. As in the stoning of James the Just one hundred and twenty five years la
t
er, against a similar backdrop and for similar reasons; this can be seen as having been occasioned by accusations on the part of the Pharisaic Establishment of ‘
Profanation of the Name
’, or, to put this in another way,
pronouncing the forbidden Name of God
as James must have done at least once, probably in the year 62 CE, if the account of his
Yom Kippur
-style atonement in the Inner Sanctum of the Temple as an ‘Opposition’ High Priest of some kind, as reported in all sources, is to be credited.
43

Other Rainmaking
Zaddik
s in the ‘
Hidden
’ or ‘
Secret Adam
’ Tradition

Not only does Josephus designate Honi, who ‘
prayed to God to end the drought
’ and ‘
whose prayers God heard and sent them rain
’,
Zaddik
and ‘
Beloved of God
’, but he also describes how in the midst of all these troubles Honi ‘
hid himself
’, obv
i
ously for protection but also yet again suggesting the ‘
Hidden
’ ideology we have been highlighting above.
44
This ‘
Hidden
’ not
a
tion is picked up in the
Talmud
in terms of a ‘
Rip van Winkle
’-style extended-sleep narrative connected to Honi’s person, and it also applies this to another of Honi’s putative descendants, another ‘
Rainmaker
’,
Hanan
or
Hanin
ha-Nehba
, that is, ‘
Hanan the Hidden
’.
45
This
Hanin
or
Hanan
(in English ‘
John
’) is portrayed as the son of one of Honi’s daughters, making him a grandson of Honi on the female side. Moreover, not only is the individual called ‘
John the Baptist
’ in the Gospels and in Jos
e
phus often identified with
Hanan the Hidden
, but some texts have Elizabeth, John the Baptist’s mother, as
the daughter of one
‘
Anon
’, that is, ‘
Onias
’ or ‘
Honi
’.
46

It should be recalled that according to the Infancy Narrative of Luke, John’s mother and Jesus’ mother were kinswomen (1:36) both, therefore, presumably carrying priestly blood at least on their mothers’ side.
47
We have already seen how in the Second-Century ‘
Infancy Gospel
’ ascribed to James and called therefore,
The Protevangelium of James
, John’s mother Elizabeth
tried to
‘
hide
’
her son in a cave
(22:3). But in the same narrative, Mary too is described as ‘
hiding
’
the infant Jesus in a cave
(18:1) whereas in the semi-parallel materials in Luke, Elizabeth is alternatively described as, rather, ‘
hiding herself for five months
’ (1:24).

Muhammad, in
Surah
s 3 and 19 of the Koran, also knows something of this ‘
Hidden
’ ideology as applied to both John and Jesus and there, too, events surrounding their respective mothers are likewise conflated.
48
He also shows some familiarity with the ‘
Primal Adam
’ doctrine, pronouncing, for instance, in
Surah
3:19 that ‘
the likeness of Jesus with
Allah
is as the likeness of Adam
’ – a perfect statement of the doctrine; or in 19:17, in describing how God’s ‘
Spirit
’ was sent to Mary, that ‘
it assumed for her the likeness of a Perfect Man
’, again betraying more than a little contact with groups conserving this kind of doctrine in Syria and Iraq.
49
Just like those ‘
People of the Book
’ in 3:113–14 above, ‘
who recite the revelations of
Allah
in the night se
a
son
’ and ‘
believe in
Allah
,
the Last Day
,
enjoin Righteousness
,
and forbid fornication
’ – a perfect Jamesian combination – he also knows that John, Jesus, and Elijah (the grouping of these three together is in itself telling) ‘
are of
the Righteous
’ (6:85).

Since we have already encountered this same ‘
Hidden
’ and ‘
Zaddik
’ language in the Medieval
Zohar
above – there used to describe the prototypical, rainmaking
Zaddik
Noah ‘
the Righteous
’, who ‘
hid himself
in the ark … on the Day of the Lord
’
s
A
n
ger
to escape from the
Enemy
’ – it is difficult to escape the impression that these allusions are not simply accidental and that the ideology behind them is connected in some way with the
rainmaking
Zaddik
or ‘
Friend of God
’.

It has also gone into Shi‘ite Islam, attaching itself to the ‘
Imam
’ concept and producing in all functioning Shi‘ite ideologies of whatever kind the notion of ‘
the
Hidden Imam
’. This in turn is but a variation of the Ebionite/Naassene/Elchasaite ‘
Secret Adam
’ or ‘
Hidden Power
’ doctrine or ‘the Christ’ that descends – in Christian scripture,
in the form of a dove
– to be inca
r
nated in any time or place in a variety of recipients usually connected in a familial manner to one another.

As this is expressed in the Pseudoclementine
Recognitions
: ‘
Know then that Christ
,
who was from the beginning and always
, w
as
ever present with the Pious
,
though secretly
,
through all their generations
–
especially
with those who waited for him
,
to whom he frequently appeared
(1.52).’
50
In earlier, more Palestinian, terms this same doctrine might be described as the ‘
pre-existent
Zaddik
’. John the Baptist – himself possibly identical with
Hanan
or
Hanin
ha-Nehba
– is referred to in Mark 6:20 as ‘
a Just Man and Holy
’ and considered, in the Synoptics anyhow, an
Elijah
redivivus
(Matthew 11:14 and pars.), meaning, an Elijah
come-back-to-life
or an incarnation of Elijah. This is not true for the Gospel of John which is intent on denying this point (1:21–25).