James the Brother of Jesus and the Dead Sea Scrolls II (42 page)

This is followed both by Peter’s and then James’ injunction endorsing it, ‘
not to communicate the books of my preaching
’ to anyone who has not ‘
been tested and found worthy according to the initiation of Moses
’ which, James immediately makes clear, meant ‘
a probation of six years
’ before being ‘
brought to a river or a fountain which is living water, where the regener
a
tion of the Righteous takes place
’ (the language here, of course, is completely that of the Community Rule of the Dead Sea Scrolls
13
). Moreover, James adds at this point, ‘
which we ourselves, when we were regenerated, were made to do for the sake of not sinning
’ – featuring the same concentration on ‘
forgiveness for sin
’ which was the original issue in the parable Jesus tells in Luke 7:47 about the alien woman, who
having
‘
loved much
’, ‘
had her many sins forgiven
’ with which we began this whole circle of notices.

It is at this point that ‘
the Elders
’, who have been listening to both James read Peter’s letter and James’ own admonitions thereafter, now
take the oaths to
‘
keep this Covenant
’,
thereby having
‘
a part with the Holy Ones
’ – language, once again, that is almost a facsimile of that found in Qumran documents
14
– in particular, emphasizing that they ‘
will not lie
’ (cf. Paul’s prote
s
tations to this effect in the letters attributed to him
15
).

This is, of course, the basic gist of the episode in Acts with which we began, which described how ‘
Satan filled
’
the hearts of Ananias
and Sapphira
, causing them, in ‘
keeping back part of the value of the land
’, ‘
to
lie
to the Holy Spirit
’ and ‘
lie
’
not just to men but
‘
to God
’ (5:3–4). It is at this point that
the
‘
great fear (that) came upon all who heard these things
’ is depicted in Acts 5:5 that so much parallels and reverberates with
the
‘
agony of terror
’ in this prelude to the Pseudoclementine
Homilies
, characterizing the frightened reaction of all those present when they heard James allude to how they
would be accursed, both living and dying, and be punished with everlasting punishment
’
if they should
‘
lie
’.
16
In the author’s view, the implied parallel between the two accounts could not be more exact.

That having been said – to go back to Jesus’ comment to ‘
Simon the Pharisee
’ concerning the woman ‘
who washed his feet with her tears
’, ‘
ardently kissing them
’, and ‘
dried them with the hair of her head
’ in Luke 7:44–47, to the effect that to ‘
who so loves much, much is forgiven
’ – one could not get much closer to the Rabbis’ reaction to Nakdimon’s treatment of ‘
the Poor
’ – ‘
in accordance with the camel is the burden
’ – than this either! Whereas in Nakdimon’s case, the use of the expression ‘
the Poor
’ served to introduce the fact that they were contemptuously allowed
to
‘
gather up the woollen clothes that had been laid
’,
so his feet would not have to touch the ground
; in John 12:5–6 (rephrased in Matthew 26:8 and Mark 14:3 and attributed to either ‘
the Disciples
’ as a whole or
the
‘
Some
’), it forms the crux of the ideological exchange between
Jesus
and
Judas (the son
or
brother
)
of Simon Iscariot
’ (in Matthew and Mark, anyhow, ‘
about to deliver him up
’ or ‘
betray him
’
17
) concerning th
e
se same ‘
Poor
’ – the latter character, as already suggested, capable of being seen or actually having been seen as representative of all Jews or at the very least, anyhow, those of the ‘
Ebionite
’/‘
Zealot
’ strain of thinking – namely Epiphanius’ ‘
Sicarii
E
s
senes
’ already called attention to above.

Martha’s Complaints, Mary’s Wastefulness, and Nakdimon’s Daughter’s Arrogance

Let us go over all these points again, repetitive or dizzying as this may be. John does so on several occasions, so why shouldn’t we? As already remarked, in John 11:2 earlier, Mary ‘
the sister of the sick man Lazarus
’ had been described as ‘
anointing the Lord with ointment and wiping his feet with her hair
’. In Luke 7:38 and 44, where Jesus is pictured as telling
a parable
to another ‘
Simon
’, ‘at ‘
the house of the Pharisee
’, it is yet another
unnamed
‘
woman of the city who was a Sinner
’, who was ‘
kissing his feet
’, ‘
anointing them with ointment
’,
and
‘
wiping his feet with the hairs of her head
’
!
By contrast, in John 12:2-3,
while
‘
Martha served
’, it was
Mary
who was rather described – just as in Mark’s variation
at
‘
Simon the Leper
’
s house
’ – as ‘
bringing in a hundred weight of expensive ointment of pure spikenard
’ and, more specifically at least in John,
anointing Jesus
’
feet with it
‘
and wiping them with her hair’.
Nor should the aside about ‘
the house being
full
of the smell of the perfume
’ be ignored. At this point the complaining is not being done by Martha over the issue of  ‘
table service
’, as in Luke’s version of the
events at
‘
Martha
’
s house
’, but rather by
Judas’,
who (though also alluded to earlier in John 6:71 as ‘
about to deliver him up being one of the Twelve
’ is now presented in a really substantive manner.

In Matthew and Mark’s ‘
Simon the Leper
’ scenarios, of course, it was ‘
the Disciples
’ or the mysterious ‘
some
’ who did the ‘
complaining
’ over the value of
the precious ointment the unnamed woman had poured over Jesus
’
head
– in Mark 14:5, again reckoned as ‘
three hundred dinars
’ as in John 12:5; in Matthew 26:9,
it was worth
‘
much
’. It is at this point that ‘
Judas the I
s
cariot
’ is introduced into the narrative, not ‘
complaining
’ as in John, but as
immediately going out
‘
to deliver him up
’ (Mark 14:10). Here Matthew 26:15 too, now finally gives its quantification to the amount, ‘
thirty pieces of silver
’, to be picked up in 27:3 and 27:9 that follow in Matthew’s (but not the other Gospels’) ‘
casting the pieces of silver into the Temple
’ scenario in the next chapter – a figure not to be considered independent, clearly, of the ‘
three hundred dinars
’ in Mark 14:5 and John 12:5, the one simply being a decimal multiple of the other.

Actually in John 11:21 earlier, Martha had already been complaining to some extent to Jesus that, if he had come sooner her ‘
brother would not have died
’, and following this, in 11:39, about
the
‘
stink
’ or ‘
smell
’
of Lazarus
’
rotting corpse already dead
‘
for four days
’. It is then directly after this in more or less a repeat of all these things in the next chapter too, that John 12:5 has ‘
Judas of Simon Iscariot, one of his Disciples
’ and ‘
the man who was going to deliver him up’,
say: ‘
Why wasn
’
t this ointment sold for three hundred dinars and the money given to the Poor
?’

Not only has the ‘
Simon
’ of the ‘
Simon the Leper
’ encounter in Matthew/Mark above now plainly floated into the mater
i
al about
Judas
here in John (or
vice versa)
; but the valuation of ‘
three hundred dinars
’ of ‘
the precious ointment of pure spik
e
nard
’ in John and Mark, as just underscored, is nothing but a reformulation of the ‘
thirty pieces of silver
’ Judas
Iscariot
then receives for the price of
his
‘
betrayal
’ or ‘
delivering him up
’ in Matthew 26:15 (unparalleled in either John, Mark, or Luke). It should also be observed that in the curious material that follows in Matthew 27:3–10 about ‘
the price of blood
’, in which Ma
t
thew thinks it is citing Jeremiah, but which is actually rather a free translation of Zechariah 11:12–13 about
throwing
‘
the wa
g
es of thirty pieces of silver into the Temple Treasury
’, Matthew quotes ‘the Chief Priests’ as saying ‘
it is not lawful to put them
(the ‘
thirty pieces of silver
’)
into the Treasury, for it is the price of blood
’.

Aside, however, from attributing this proof-text to the wrong prophet – a comparatively minor error – this again echoes the response Eliezer ben Hyrcanus reported hearing from Jacob of Kfar Sechania about what ‘
Jesus the Nazoraean
’ taught concerning whether
it was lawful or not to give
‘
the wages
’
earned from
‘
a prostitute
’
s hire
’
to the Temple
. As already to some extent suggested, this is an extremely charged statement in view of the perceived behavior of Herodian princesses such as H
e
rodias, Bernice, and Drusilla – and possibly even that of Helen of Adiabene herself.
Jesus
’ response, that
it was permissible to
‘
use them to build an outhouse for the High Priest
’, is also probably, as we said, the only real historical notice about him r
e
maining in the whole of the
Talmud
, the rest having long ago fallen victim to years of censorship.
18

Nevertheless, even the reference to ‘
High Priest
’ here plays back into the notices in the Gospels about ‘
Judas Iscariot g
o
ing to the High Priests in order to betray him
’ – further amplified in the picture of these same
High Priests
refusing
to put J
u
das
’ ‘
pieces of silver
’
into
‘
the Treasury because it was the price of blood
’ in Matthew 27:6. Moreover, the connection of this Talmudic tradition – possibly even going back to James – to this material uniquely developed in Matthew out of
the price for
‘
the precious ointment of pure spikenard
’ which ‘
should have been given to the Poor
’, quoted in John 12:5 in a speech a
t
tributed to ‘Judas
Iscariot
’ as well, should be patent.