James the Brother of Jesus and the Dead Sea Scrolls II (33 page)

The only difference between the Hebrew version of this conception, as we encounter it in Palestine from the person of Honi onwards, and others – including that of ‘
the Christ
’ and the later Shi‘ite Islamic
Imam
further afield – is that in Palestine, the
Zaddik
-ideal becomes associated with the ongoing Revolutionary strife against all vestiges of foreign rule and concomitant ‘
consuming zeal for the Lord of Hosts
’ directed against Jewish Law-breakers and backsliders too.
9
This, in turn, becomes e
n
twined in the First Century CE in Palestine with the struggle against the Herodian Royal Family and their hangers-on or co
l
laborators. This would include the High Priesthood appointed by this family and the Roman Procurators in succession (or allied) to it – which, therefore, should be called, as we have already pointed out, the ‘
Herodian
’ High Priesthood, by this time already being called ‘
Sadducees
’ as well – and teachers like Paul.

This ‘
Zealot
’,
rainmaking
Zaddik
-tradition attaches itself to putative second or third-generation descendants of Honi such as John the Baptist and James and, through them, the
Messianic
ideal, no matter what definition of it one finally chooses to use. By contrast, the Elijah
redivivus
tradition in its initial manifestation only attached itself to Honi. Where Paul is concerned, so practised was he in polemical dialectic and rhetorical debate that in Romans 13:2–3 he is even able to invert the issue of ‘
Law
-
breaking
’ to encompass rather,
those who break
Roman
Law
(as he puts it so cannily, ‘
the Authorities God appoints
’
and their
‘
Ordinances
’) not Jewish Law and it is now patently Roman Law that is being referred to as ‘
the Ordinances of God
’
not Mosaic
.

Furthermore, in Romans 13:4–10, he even goes so far as to use
the all-Righteousness
Commandment
, ‘
love your neighbor as yourself
’ (in James 2:8 ‘
the Royal Law according to the Scripture
’),
to
support paying taxes
to Rome, which every Government official – who in Paul’s agile dialectic have now
suddenly been turned into
‘
the Servants of God
’
has a right to expect
. In 2 Corinthians 11:13–15, as already remarked, he even turns this designation as it relates to the actual Leadership of the Mov
e
ment around as well. Now this Leadership, whom he claims – like ‘
the Sons of Zadok
’ at Qumran
10
– are being designated by some as ‘
Servants of Righteousness
’ (which would clearly have to include James, Peter – ‘
Cephas
’ in Galatians 2:9 – and John ‘
whose End shall be according to their works
’, vocabulary very close to what one also finds at Qumran
11
), are rather merely ‘
disguising themselves as Apostles of Christ
’ and are, as we have seen as well, in reality only ‘
deceitful workmen
’ and
Satan-like
‘
Pse
u
do-Apostles
’ (2 Corinthians 13:13)!

In 1 Corinthians 8:1–13, where he actually uses the ‘
Piety
’ language of ‘
loving God
’ and builds towards rejecting James’ ban on ‘
things sacrificed to idols
’, Paul dismisses such ‘
scruples
’ as the ‘
weak consciences
’ of the ubiquitous ‘
some
’. In doing so, he actually uses the ‘
puffed up
’ language we shall encounter, as we proceed, in the Habakkuk
Pesher
, based on Habakkuk 2:4 where it introduces the all-important biblical proof-text, ‘
the Righteous shall live by his Faith
’. But as Paul uses the expre
s
sion, he applies it to what is clearly the Leadership of the Jerusalem Church, ‘
puffed up
’
by its own
‘
Knowledge
’ when it should be ‘
built up
’
by
‘
love’
; or, as he so cannily puts it in 8:1 – using what we shall see to be the pivotal language of ‘
building
’ – ‘
love builds up
’. For its part, the Habakkuk
Pesher
, introducing its key exegesis of this same ‘
the Righteous shall live by his Faith
’, actually interprets it in terms of the punishment the Guilty ‘
will multiply upon themselves when they are judged
’ – pr
e
sumably at
the Last Judgement
, the
Pesher
always being very consistent on allusions of this kind to ‘
the Last Judgement
’.
12

The Days of Noah
and the Coming Eschatological Flood

Of course the biblical story about Elijah, in imitation of Moses, to say nothing of Noah, spending ‘
forty days and nights on the Mountain of God in Horeb
’ prefigures Jesus’
Temptation
for forty days and forty nights
‘
in the wilderness
’ as retold in Gospel narratives – with, to be sure as is usually the case, precisely the opposite effect since, as the Gospels retell it, the whole episode is viewed
as the result of
‘
Devilish
’ or ‘
Satanic
’
manipulation
.
13
The Pseudoclementine
Homilies
also alludes to this co
n
frontation ‘
in the wilderness
’ with the Devil but according to it the victors are those following James – ‘
Satan
’
s servants
’ being, in fact,
Apostles
such as Paul, who have no written credentials from James and do not teach his position on ‘
abstaining from blood
,
fornication
,
things sacrificed to idols
,
and carrion
’, but are rather sent to ‘
deceive
’ – that is, it is
they
who are ‘
Satan
’
s Servants
’ or ‘
Deceivers
’ not
vice versa
!
14

For their part, as the Synoptics present this episode, the focus is shifted and it is rather aimed at just those kinds of cha
r
ismatic Revolutionaries, to whom Jesus (if he existed as such) must have belonged and who, together with extreme purity-minded ‘
Zaddik
’ or ‘
Zadokite
’ Leaders (who in other contexts go by the name of ‘
Nazirites
’ or ‘
Nazoraeans
’), were indulging in the same sort of ‘
redivivus
’ posturing that commentators like Josephus considered so fraudulent.
15
Josephus also basically evokes the same two themes of a ‘
wilderness
’ sojourn and Satanic manipulation and, in his accounts, what these ‘
Impostors
’ and ‘
Religious Frauds
’ – ‘
who were in intent more dangerous even than the Bandit Leaders or Revolutionaries
’ – were doing was ‘
leading the People out into the wilderness there to show them the signs of their impending Freedom
’ or ‘
Redemption
’ – ‘
signs
’, the Gospel narratives seem to imply, that were no better than ‘
Temptation by the Devil
’.

Actually, scriptural stories about Elijah generally prefigure those about Jesus, including raising the dead, curing, etc., the only difference being that the more xenophobic portrayal of Elijah’s attitude of apocalyptic ‘
zeal
’ is, in almost every instance, jettisoned. On the contrary, guided by the anti-nationalist antinomianism of teachers like Paul, it has been totally reversed into the mirror opposite comprising an amorphous form of cosmopolitanism reflecting the ideals of the Roman ‘
Pax Romana
’ wholly at odds with the normative ethos of Palestinian ‘
Messianism
’ as reflected in the Dead Sea Scrolls and the general ‘
Elijah
redivivus
’ tradition resting on ‘
a consuming zeal
’ for either God or the
Torah
of Moses, or both.

In fact, if one looks closely at the above episode, where Elijah encounters ‘
the Angel of the Lord
’ in a cave, one will even be able to detect the prefiguration of the earliest
surah
s of the Koran depicting, as they do, Muhammad’s opening visionary experiences ‘
in a cave
’.
16
These include the theme of all-night vigils in caves such as this, coming out and wrapping himself in his ‘
cloak
’ or ‘
raiment
’, and being told by the Angel – in this case, purportedly Gabriel – ‘
Arise and warn
’ (
Surah
84:1–2 – ‘
The Cloaked One
’).
17
In Elijah’s case, it will be recalled, it was, rather, ‘
Arise and eat
’ – presumably to prepare himself for the jou
r
ney to the Mountain of the Lord in Sinai!
18

For its part, the Palestinian
Talmud
also compares Honi’s ‘
rainmaking
’ to Isaiah 54:9’s ‘
this is like the days of Noah
’, which itself echoes or is echoed in the Synoptics’ ‘
Little Apocalypses
’ and, according to Gospel portraiture, words attributed to Jesus. This reads in Matthew 24:37, ‘
But
as
the days of Noah
,
so shall be also the coming of the Son of Man
’. In it, such ‘
days
’ are compared to final eschatological Judgement, just as they are in the
Talmud
. As Matthew 24:30 puts this:
‘Then shall appear the sign of the Son of Man in the sky
…
and they shall see the Son of Man coming on the clouds of Heaven with
Power
and Great Glory’
.
As the Damascus Document puts a similar idea in the summation at the end of its historical and exhortative se
c
tion: ‘
And they shall see
Yeshu
‘
ato
’ (‘
His Salvation
’).
19
One should also note, by implication, that the Noahic ‘
Flood
’ is being equated with ‘
the coming of the Son of Man on the clouds
’ – once again, apocalyptic
rain
and
storm cloud
-imagery. This in turn is the key eschatological proclamation attributed to James in early Church accounts of the prelude to his death in the Temple on Passover – perhaps, even more likely,
Yom Kippur
since James is depicted in these accounts as being in the
Inner Sanctum
of the Temple doing an atonement on behalf of the whole People, an activity normally associated with
Yom Kippur
.

Not only does the Jerusalem
Talmud
consider that
rain is withheld
for the sins of
idolatry
,
fornication
,
and murder
– or, as it puts it, ‘
polluting the ground with Blood because Blood pollutes the Land
’
20
– again the basic categories of James’ directives to overseas communities and ‘
the Noahic Covenant
’ generally; it also connects the story of Honi ‘
filling up cisterns
,
pits
,
and ca
v
erns
’, the implications of which we shall explore more fully below, with repeated reference to a ‘
Stone
’
in the Temple
(in this instance, ‘
the Stone of Lost Property
’). But this, too, contains just the slightest echo of the ‘
Hilkiah
’ material, delineated in 2 Kings 23:4, in which Josiah is depicted as ‘
standing by the Pillar
’ when he swears ‘
to keep the Covenant
’. This kind of ‘
Pillar
’ or ‘
Stone
’ also mysteriously reappears in the story of James’ death in the
Second Apocalypse of James
from Nag Hammadi. Nor is this to mention ‘
Stone
’ and ‘
Cornerstone
’ symbolism generally at Qumran, particularly in the Community Rule, where the ‘
Wall that will not shake on its Foundations
’ and ‘
Fortress
’ imagery abounds – to say nothing of in the New Testament.
21
In this
Second Apocalypse
, James is pictured as ‘
standing beside the
Pillar of the Temple
beside the
Mighty Cornerstone
’ when his opp
o
nents decide ‘
to
cast him down
’ – the language of almost all these early Church accounts of his death.
22