James the Brother of Jesus and the Dead Sea Scrolls II (35 page)

Two hundred years before, Irenaeus in Western Europe, in discussing ‘
the Ebionites
’ whom he already knew were hostile to and had rejected Paul, puts the same proposition in similar terms:

“
Therefore do these men reject the commixture of the Heavenly wine and wish it to be the water of the world only
,
not receiving God so as to have union with Him
,
but they
remain in that Adam
who … was expelled from Paradise not co
n
sidering that
,
as at the beginning of our formation in Adam, that breath of life proceeded from God
…
so also in the
Last Days
the Word of the Father and the Spirit of God
,
having become united with the ancient substance of Adam
’
s fo
r
mation
,
rendered Man living and Perfect
,
receptive of the Perfect Father
.
”
36

Though Irenaeaus, living in Lyons in Transalpine Gaul, never mentions groups like Epiphanius’ ‘
Elchasaites
’ or ‘
Sabaeans
’ – denotations which were mainly only known in the East and probably had not traveled that far West (for instance, western authors like him, Hippolytus, and Tertullian, do not seem to even know Hegesippus); still it should be clear that this kind of theorizing about ‘
Adam
’ was alive and well even in the Western Empire.

For the Koran (2:34 and variously) and Islam thereafter, as with Epiphanius’ ‘
Ebionites
’ and ‘
Elchasaite
s’,
Adam is above the Angels who prostrate themselves to him
, ‘
all save
Iblis
’ – the ‘
Belial
’ we shall encounter throughout the Dead Sea Scrolls.
In other words, this ‘
Primal
’ or ‘
Supernatural Adam
’ is ‘
the Son of Man
’ (‘
Man
’ and ‘
Adam
’, as we have seen, being for all intents and purposes indistinguishable in Hebrew) or, as the newer Greek usage now developing in the West would put it, ‘
the Christ
’ who ‘
in the Last Days
’
was going to
‘
come upon the clouds of Heaven
’
leading the Heavenly Host
. It is extraordinary that we should have to go as far afield as Irenaeus in France to explain this tantalizing allusion to ‘
Christ
’ as ‘
Perfect Man
’ in the K
o
ran!

As Paul puts it in line with his teaching ‘
spiritual things spiritually
’ in 1 Corinthians 2:13–15 and his Philo-like poetic allegori
z
ing: ‘
So also it has been written,
“
The First Man Adam became a living soul
;
the Last
(or ‘
Second
’)
Adam became a life-giving Spirit”’
concluding, as we saw above: ‘
The First Man is out of the earth
,
made of dust
.
The Second Man
(meaning Jesus),
the Lord out of Heaven
(1 Corinthians 15:45–47).’
Again, this is a perfect rendition of the ‘
Man
’ or ‘
Adam
’ ideology we have been encountering,
the First Adam
‘
made of dust
’ (which Paul repeats twice more in 1 Corinthians 15:48) prefiguring Muhammad on ‘
the likeness of Jesus with God being the likeness of Adam
’. This gave rise to the idea of Jesus as ‘
Second Adam
’, the bringer of Heavenly Judgement and Paul’s ‘
Lord out of Heaven
’.

One immediately sees that this is a
redivivus
tradition paralleling the one involving
rainmaking
and Priestly ‘
zeal
’ attaching itself to Phineas, Elijah, and Honi or, if one prefers, Elijah’s incarnation in John. Likewise, ‘
the Son of Man
’ (that is, ‘
the Son of A
d
am
’), based on the notice in Daniel 7:13 about ‘
one like a Son of Man coming with the clouds of Heaven
’ is but a variation of ‘
the Lord out of Heaven
’ or ‘
Second Adam
’ notation. However this time, in addition to the supernatural dimension as in Christianity-to-come, it also carries an
eschatological
one, that is, ‘
the Son of Man
’ is now combined in the new Hebrew ‘
Mess
i
anic
’ ideology with the additional imagery
of
‘
the Messiah coming on the clouds of Heaven
’
to
render final apocalyptic Judgement on all mankind
.

This in turn is expressed in terms of ‘
rain
’ – now
eschatological rain
– in turn, carrying with it the connotation of a ‘
Last Judgement
’ that in the words of the War Scroll and Matthew 5:45
will fall on
‘
the Just and Unjust alike
’ or ‘
upon everything that grows
’.
37
The same ideology is also to some extent announced in the Letter of Jude, in which Jude uses a passage freely quoted from Enoch 1:9: ‘
The Lord will come with myriads of his Holy Ones to execute Judgement against all and condemn all the ones who were ungodly among them regarding all their works of ungodliness which they did in an ungodly way
.’
38

Enoch is an extra-biblical text using apocalyptic imagery, inspired seemingly by the same visionary impetus as Daniel, which, though widely copied and expanded in post-biblical times, never penetrated either Jewish or Christian canons despite being highly prized in sectarian environments such as at Qumran.
39
Not only is this passage from Enoch, which is quoted in Jude 1:14, extant in fragments found at Qumran, but Jude 1:11 preceding it and allusion to ‘
Adam
’ in 1:14 as well, instead of using the language of the Damascus Document’s ‘
Belial
’, employs like Revelation 2:14 the linguistically-related usage ‘
Balaam
’.
40

In fact Revelation 2:14 conflates James’ directives to overseas communities with the Damascus Document’s ‘
Three Nets of
Belial
’. This is expressed in the latter in terms of the ‘
nets
’ with which ‘
Belial
’ attempted ‘
to ensnare Israel
’, presenting them ‘
as three kinds of Righteousness
’ – nothing of course could better express Herodian family policy than this. On the other hand, Revelation rather expresses this as: ‘
Balaam taught Balak
(again the variations on ‘
Belial
’)
to cast
(
balein
)
a snare before the Sons of Israel to eat things sacrificed to idols and commit fornication
.’
All the key usages for both the Scrolls and the Paul/James polemic are here.

Replete with other language such as ‘
grumbling
’, ‘
boasting
’, and ‘
Light and Dark
’ imagery so familiar both in a Jamesian co
n
text and in the Dead Sea Scrolls,
Jude (which is actually ascribed to ‘
the brother of James
’) uses the Messianic-style imagery of ‘
Salvation
’, ‘
stars
’, and even ‘
clouds
’ (‘
clouds without water
’ in 1:12). It puts this scenario for
apocalyptic Messianic
‘
Judgement upon the clouds
’ – intending doubtlessly by ‘
Lord
’ here, ‘
the Messiah
’, or, as it appears at this point and elsewhere in Paul, ‘
the Lord Jesus Christ
’ (1:12–17, 21, and 25).
41
This could not be more parallel to the exegesis of ‘
the Star Prophecy
’ in the War Scroll from Qumran as we shall see in due course below.

For Paul, in discussing his ideas about ‘
the First Man Adam
’ and Jesus
as
‘
Second Adam
’
being
‘
the Lord out of Heaven
’, this ‘
coming of the Son of Man on the clouds of Heaven
’ is transformed into a discussion simply about the difference between earthly and Heavenly existence. But in his masterful use of rhetorical allegory, Paul also appears to be playing on language f
a
miliar as well from the Messianic portions of the War Scroll and the exposition of
the Star Prophecy
from Numbers 24:17 it contains in Columns Eleven to Twelve.
42
In referring to Adam as being ‘
formed out of the dust
’ (1 Corinthians 15:48), the War Scroll’s triumph of ‘
those bent in the dust over the Mighty of the Peoples
’ now appears to be transformed in Paul into ‘
the First Man
’ (‘
the Primal Adam
’) or
the earthly man
‘
formed out of the dust
’.
43

Likewise, the War Scroll’s idea of
the
‘
Victory
’
by
‘
the Star
’
Messiah together with
‘
the Poor
’ (
Ebionim
), ‘
the Downcast of Spirit
’ (compare this to ‘
the Poor in Spirit
’ in Matthew 5:3’s
Sermon on the Mount
) or ‘
those bent in the dust
’, and
the Heavenly Host upon the
‘
clouds’
; Paul now likens to ‘
a Mystery
’, in the sense of a Hellenistic ‘
Mystery
’. This ‘
Mystery
’ in 1 Corinthians 15:51 – in other words, this ‘
Victory
’ – is now the one that
God
‘
gives us by our Lord Jesus Christ
’ and, in the typical Helleni
z
ing allegorizing style – which he characterizes as ‘
teaching spiritual things spiritually
’ in 1 Corinthians 2:13 – it is now ‘
Victory
’
over
death
, not
‘
Victory
’
over
Rome
or, as the War Scroll so exuberantly expresses this concept,
Victory
‘
over the Mighty of the Peoples
’ or ‘
the
Kittim
’. As Paul so deftly transposes this ‘
Victory
’ in 1 Corinthians 15:55, it becomes,
‘Death where is your sting? O Hades
(note now, the complete Hellenization of the vocabulary here),
where is your Victory
?’

THE NEW TESTAMENT CODE: NAKDIMON AND NICODEMUS

Nakdimon Ben Gurion’s Rainmaking and his Twenty-one Years of Grain Storage

The Babylonian
Talmud
presents one ‘
Nakdimon ben Gurion’
, a contemporary of James who prayed for rain just before the fall of the Temple in 70 CE.
1
Josephus, reversing the name of the same or similar character into ‘
Gurion the son of Nakdimon’
, actually calls him ‘
Nicodemus’,
corresponding to the
Nicodemus
in the Gospel of John who brought an expensive mixture of myrrh and aloes to prepare Jesus’s body for burial (19:40). The
Midrash Rabbah
on
Genesis
calls him – even in the Hebrew –
Nicodemon
(i.e.,
Nicodemus
).
2
Rabbinic sources generally portray him, like James,
going into the Temple and making rain at the time of a famine
, this one apparently during the siege of the Temple by the Romans in 68-70 CE.
3
Like
Elijah
and
Honi
before him,
Nakdimon is able to bring sunshine as well
.
4

Two sources,
Ta‘anith
explicitly and
Abbot de Rabbi Nathan
(
ARN
) implicitly, play on the Hebrew root of his name,
Na-Ka-Da
, meaning ‘to pierce or break through’, as the sun ‘breaks through the clouds’, and portray him miraculously bringing the sun back after it had already set. Thus for
ARN
‘the sun broke through again’ and ‘continued shining for his sake’.
Ta‘anith
compares him even more flamboyantly to Joshua and Moses, declaring that ‘for the sake of three, the sun broke through’. At this point
ARN
(quoting Joshua 10:13-14)
 
even asserts that Nakdimon was so favored by God that he could even make the sun stand still – another Joshua or Jesus-like sign or miracle.

These curious, even bizarre, traditions about
Nakdimon
give the impression that more underlies these events than might be supposed, especially when other
rainmakers
and quasi-contemporaries such as James,
Abba Hilkiah
, and
Hanin the Hidden
are taken into account. Clearly we have a combination of themes based on the portraits of Elijah and/or Honi the Circle-Drawer (Josephus’ ‘
Onias the Righteous
’) in biblical and Rabbinic narrative and in Josephus. The
ARN
ascribes to Moses the circles Honi drew and in which he stood to pray to bring rain, perhaps due to Moses’ ability ‘
to make the sun shine through’
. In Moses’ case this is the prayer he made
to cure Miriam
’
s leprosy
.
5

Yet someone as R
ich
as the Nakdimon of rabbinic legend could not be thought of as having accomplished anything r
e
motely resembling
rainmaking
and other such miraculous feats. Nor would such a Rich individual be described in terms of his p
iety
,
Zaddik
-status, and
Friendship with God
. No doubt the same kind of subversion of native Palestinian materials is going on in Rabbinic tradition that we have already encountered in the Gospels and in the Book of Acts.

Ben Kalba Sabu
‘
a
and Nakdimon ben Gurion Supply Jerusalem with Enough Grain to Last for
Twenty-one Yea
rs

In Rabbinic sources, Nakdimon is an individual the Scrolls and the Gospels would classify as
Rich
.
6
One of these fabulou
s
ly wealthy types with whom Nakdimon is often associated has a tantalizing pseudonym, ‘
Ben Kalba Sabu‘a
’ (
Ben Kalba
meaning ‘Son of the Dog’
in Aramaic – female ‘
dog
’ in homophonic Hebrew). As with Nakdimon, his name is explained in terms of things he has done or the meaning of his name, thus the description: ‘
no Poor were ever turned away from his door
’ and, when ‘
they came to his house hungry as a
dog
,
they went away
filled
’ (
Sabu‘a
in Aramaic carrying the sense of ‘
being filled
’).
7

Not only are some of these allusions related to subjects we have been discussing above, but the
dog
/
female dog
aspect (
kalba
) of the exposition echoes, ever so slightly, the episode in the Gospels about Jesus’ encounter with the ‘
Cananaean
’ or ‘
Greek Syrophoenician woman’
, where Jesus complains about ‘
taking the children
’
s bread and casting it to the dogs
’ (Mt 15:26 and Mk 7:28 –
balein
once again and actually
kunariois
/
little dogs
).
8
No less important, the second part of
Ben Kalba Sabu‘a
’s name,
Sabu‘a
or ‘
filled
’, can also have the sense in both Syriac and/or Aramaic of being ‘
immersed
’ or ‘
to bathe
’.
With a little imagination Ben Kalba Sabu‘a
would be the ‘
Son of the Sabaean Dog
’ or ‘
of the Sabaean Bitch
’
.

As we shall see, both
Nakdimon
and
Ben Kalba Sabu‘a
will be tied to the number
twenty-one
,
Nakdimon
in the number of cisterns he will
be able
to fill
in his miraculous activities at a time of drought, and
Ben Kalba Sabu‘a
in
the number of years that either he
or
Nakdimon
could have fed the entire population of Jerusalem had not the Zealots in their monstrousness burned his
or
Nakdimon
’
s immense granary reserves and mixed mud with them
!
9
According to Talmudic tradition,
twenty-one
is the number of years of Queen Helen of Adiabene’s
three successive Nazirite oath periods
. These had been laid upon her by the Rabbis for perceived infractions of the biblical law of adultery; Helen erected a gold plaque in the Temple courtyard on which was engraved the ‘suspected adultress’ passage from Numbers 5:11-31,
10
which immediately precedes the rules
appertaining to
vows of the Nazirites and their oaths
in 6:1–21.
Ben Kalba Sabu‘a
is also associated in some manner with the fabulous tomb which Queen Helen and her son built in Jerusalem.
11
This well-built family masoleum still exists today and can be easily visited.
12
Fu
r
thermore, not only did the Second Revolt-era ‘
Zealot
’ Rabbi Akiba marry
Rachel
,
Ben Kalba Sabu‘a
’
s daughter
, but one of Akiba’s more well-known students was one ‘
Monobaz
’, a descendant obviously in the next generation of this same Helen or
Ben Kalba Sabu‘a
, or both, and probably Rachel’s brother.

Both Nakdimon and
Ben Kalba Sabu‘a
are linked with two other wealthy individuals. The first is the cryptically named ‘
Ben Zizzit Ha-Keset
’.
13
The other, one ‘Boethus’, will be grouped with these Rich men more because of
his daughter Martha
’
s Riches
and extravagant behavior
than his own. The name ‘
Boethus’
apparently evokes the reigning representative of that fam
i
ly Herod brought in from Egypt to take over the High Priesthood after he had disposed of his Hasmonaean wife
Mariamme
; in one tradition Martha is referred to as Miriam/Mary.
14

We can now ascribe
cistern-filling
,
water-supply
, and
famine-relief efforts
to six different persons: Queen Helen, her son Izates, Paul and Barnabas,
Ben Kalba Sabu‘a
, and Nakdimon. The latter not only promises (in
Tractate Gittin
) to supply Jerus
a
lem with enough grain for
twenty-one years
(the implication being during the final Roman siege;
i
n
ARN
Ben Kalba Sabu‘a
promised enough grain for
twenty-two years
not twenty-one
15
), but he also gives
twelve talents of silver
as surety to an unide
n
tified
Rich
foreign lord
or
grandee
to advance him ‘
twelve cisterns of water
’ so that he could fulfill his promise
to fill the Te
m
ple cisterns
by that amount.
16
One should note the numbers
twelve
and
twenty-four
in these traditions, as well as all allusions to
full
,
fill
,
filling
,
sated
, or
satiated
.

In both
Ta‘anith
and
ARN
this recondite story takes place
inside the Temple
. While fulfilling these promises, Nakdimon – like James – is pictured
making rain
. In fact,
so much rain does he make for the benefit of pilgrims coming to Jerusalem to ce
l
ebrate the Passover that he
fills
the Temple water cisterns to
overflowing
.
17
The characterization of this process as ‘
overflowing
’ will be another motif to watch in these intertwining stories as we proceed.

The efforts of Nakdimon and his colleague
Ben Kalba Sabu‘a
to relieve the famine and supply Jerusalem with grain reflect the
famine relief
efforts in the 40s of Queen Helen and her son Izates, not to mention those of Paul and his nascent
Antioch
Community in Acts. Helen, her husband, and/or her sons
were also involved in giving the golden candelabra to the Temple which stood in front of its entrance
, before Titus took it as booty to Rome using it in his victory celebrations as famously pi
c
tured on the Arch dedicated to his name.
Helen and/or her husband (
Bazeus
in Josephus; ‘
King Monobaz
’ in the
Talmud
) are also credited with donating the golden handles for vessels used on
Yom Kippur
in the Temple and, of course, the gold plaque  noted above.

Perhaps even more germane, Helen, whom we have elsewhere referred to as the ‘
Sabaean Queen
’,
actually
did
send her Treasury agents to Jerusalem to supply it with grain during the famine.
We have related this to Acts 8:26–40’s story of
the conversion of the Ethiopian Queen
’
s eunuch
.
In addition,
the
twenty-one
years
of her three successive Nazirite oaths
can be seen
as roughly the amount of time between this first famine and the stopping of sacrifice on behalf of foreigners and the r
e
jection of their gifts in the Temple
that began the Uprising against Rome in 66 CE.