James the Brother of Jesus and the Dead Sea Scrolls II (46 page)

John’s account, of course, like Acts’ entire ‘
Stephen
’ episode – not to mention the Synoptic ‘
Lazarus
’/‘
Canaanite woman
’ episodes – is replete with anti-Semitism; and this episode, in particular, where ‘
the Chief Priests
’ are represented as not only
wishing to kill Jesus
(cf. Matthew 26:4)
but Lazarus as well
–
on account of
(
the
) ‘
many of the Jews (seeing what Jesus had done)
were believing on Jesus because of him
’ (John 12:10-11) – is a particularly noteworthy example, the reference to ‘
the Jews
’ portraying them as a completely ‘
alien
’ People. Notwithstanding, the retrospective and mythological nature of the whole scenario in both sets of materials should be patent.

Of course, whereas Matthew and Mark have no ‘
dogs licking Lazarus under the table
’ episode, Luke has no ‘
Canaa
n
ite
’/‘
Syrophoenician woman
’ encounter
.
Nevertheless, just as the thrust of Matthew and Mark’s ‘
Canaanite
’/‘
Greek Syrophoenician woman
’’
s
retort to Jesus implies that she has something to teach even Jesus; or, to put this in another way,
the Jewish Messiah Jesus
has something to learn even from a lowly Gentile believer. In particular, the ‘
Tyre
’ allusion in Matthew 15:21 and Mark 7:24 – interestingly, in Luke 6:17 the ‘
parts
’/‘
coasts of Tyre and Sidon
’ allusion is tied rather to one about the People ‘
trying to touch
’ Jesus,
when
‘
the power went
out of him’ – will have, as already suggested, real importance in traditions about some of these women, such as, for instance, Simon
Magus
’ companion
Helen
, whom Christian tradition says he found ‘
in the brothels of Tyre
’, to say nothing of the ‘
Tyrian gold
dinar
’ Boethus’ daughter
Martha
or Nakdimon’s daughter
Miriam
is said ‘
to need every Sabbath evening just for her sweetmeats
’ or ‘
spice puddings
’!

‘
The Crumbs that Fall from the Rich Man
’
s Table
’

The polemic in the Lukan counterpart of these two presentations – where ‘
the dogs
’ rather
lick Lazarus
’
sores
and do not just ‘
eat the crumbs under the table
’ and where Lazarus is presented as ‘
a certain Poor Man desiring to be filled from the crumbs
’ under ‘
a certain Rich Man
’
s table
’, himself described as ‘
clothed in purple and fine linen
’ (how believable is this?) – ends in a fulsome attack on Judaism, the Law, and Jewish ‘
blindness
’ generally in the face of such seemingly overwhelmingly convincing miracles
as Jesus
’ (
not Lazarus
’)
coming resurrection from the dead.

In Luke 16:22–31, this is expressed in the manifestly mythological picture of the afterlife that follows – this in place of the picture of
Jesus
’ resurrection of Lazarus ‘
from among the dead
’ in John. As Luke 16:22 laconically depicts this, ‘
the Poor Man
(
Lazarus
)
died and he was carried away by the Angels into the bosom of Abraham
’ (the counterpart of Lazarus’ resurrection in John – now abstracted into a parable or an allegory). At this point, then,
‘the Rich Man also died
’ and, ‘
being in the torment of Hades
’ (one could hardly get a more Hellenized version of the afterlife than this), ‘
cried out for mercy
’ to ‘
Abraham afar off
’ – presumably meaning ‘
in Heaven
’, ‘
Lazarus on his bosom
’ (16:23).

Though there is no hint here of Lazarus’ resurrection into the present world but rather this ‘
far-off
’ one or ‘
Heaven
’, still Abraham’s rebuke in the doctrinal discussion that follows of ‘
the Rich Man
’ as one of the followers of ‘
Moses and the Prop
h
ets
’ (note the Pauline theological implications) does turn on the theme that, even
if
‘
one came to them
(i.e.,
Jews
)
from the dead, they would not be repent
’ (16:30).

Not only do these passages from Luke anticipate the next step in John 11:17–45, that is, Jesus’ resurrection of Lazarus, ‘
four days in the tomb
’ and already ‘
stinking
’ (to whom in 11:34 even the predicate, ‘
having been laid
’, is applied), but the very next line in Luke 16:31 reiterates, with even clearer bearing on John’s narrative, again with the signification of
a final concl
u
sion by Abraham presented as answering Lazarus’ query
: ‘
even if someone were to rise from the dead, they
(again meaning, ‘
the Jews
’),
would not be persuaded
’. Moreover, as if to add insult to injury, the words Luke puts into Abraham’s mouth here seem to carry an echo of the language used in the opening exhortative of the Damascus Document, to wit, ‘
hear, all you who know Righteousness
’ and ‘
hear me, all who enter the Covenant
’,
43
but as always with reverse dialectical effect, that is, how could ‘
they be persuaded
’ (meaning ‘
the Jews
’ again), since
they don’t even
‘
hear Moses and the Prophets
’ (
thus
)!

The themes here in Luke parallel the
Lazarus
episode in John, including even the precise antithesis of this, ‘
Then
many
of the Jews, who
came
to Mary and saw what Jesus
did
, believed on him’
(11:45).
While others, it seems (the ubiquitous ‘
some
’ again), ‘
went to the Pharisees and told them what Jesus had
done
’ (11:46 – again, the repetition of the ‘
doing
’ theme). This then provokes the next step in John’s plot-line (no pun intended), namely, the picture of ‘
the Chief Priests
(as in Matthew 26:4 above)
plotting together how they might kill
’
Jesus
as well as Lazarus (11:47-53 –
n.b.
, in this scene how
even Caiaphas is pi
c
tured as
‘
prophesying
’!) just as in 12:10–11, immediately following, they will then do regarding
Lazarus
.

To leave
Lazarus
for the moment – in Mark 7:25–27, Jesus is pictured as ‘
casting out (
ekbale
) unclean spirits
’ or ‘
demons
’
from
‘
the Greek Syrophoenician woman
’
s daughter
’ (note that here too, she is depicted
as
‘
falling at his feet
’ and ‘
the children
’ are characterized as about ‘
to be filled
’ or ‘
satisfied
’) and in 7:24, the implication seems simply to be of
his
‘
hiding
’ (the ‘
hidden
’ language)
in a non-Jewish household
– the allusion to ‘
unclean spirits
’ carrying with it its own additional polemic in terms of Jewish ‘
cleanliness
’ requirements we shall highlight further as we proceed.

On the other hand, in Matthew 15:21–28 – where the ‘
casting
’ allusion is not used in relation to ‘
casting unclean spirits
’ out of the ‘
Canaanite woman
’
s daughter
’ as in Mark 7:26, but rather in relation to ‘
the crumbs falling from the tables of their masters
’, now expressed in terms of ‘
taking the childrens
’
bread and
casting it
(
balein
)
to the little dogs
’ – the anti-Jewish and pro-Gentile Mission slant, as in ‘
Lazarus being carried away by the Angels into Abraham
’
s bosom
’ in Luke 16:22, is plain. This is achieved in Matthew 15:24 by having the episode clearly prefaced by Jesus’ assertion, ‘
I was not sent except to the lost sheep of the House of Israel
’, just as the counterpart in Luke 16:21’s ‘
Poor Lazarus wanting to be
filled
from the crumbs which fell from the Rich Man
’
s table
’ – note the parallel with Mark 7:27’s ‘
let the children first be filled
’ – is prefaced by its compressed version of Matthew 5:18’s Sermon on the Mount, starting with ‘
not serving two masters
’ in 16:13 and ending with the ‘
not a jot or tittle shall pass from the Law
’ assertion in 16:17.

This is also true of Luke 6:17’s earlier evocation of Matthew/Mark’s ‘
coasts of Tyre and Sidon
’ (in Matthew 15:21 and Mark 7:31, this is ‘
parts
’ or ‘
borders of Tyre and Sidon
’), which is immediately followed in 6:18–19 by ‘
those troubled by u
n
clean spirits also coming
’, ‘
the whole crowd seeking to touch him
(
Jesus
)’, ‘
the Power going out of him and healing them
’!, and reprising another part of Matthew’s ‘
Sermon on the Mount
’, starting with ‘
Blessed are the Poor
’ in 6:20 and ending with
the
‘
house built without a foundation
’ in 6:49.
One should also not fail to observe that the ‘
coming
’ and ‘
falling
’ in Mark 7:25 above is rather that of
the
‘
Greek Syrophoenician woman falling at Jesus
’
feet
’, whereas in Matthew 15:27 and Luke 16:21, the ‘
falling
’ remains that of ‘
the crumbs from the table
’. But now, unlike in Luke, in Matthew ‘
the crumbs fall to the little dogs
’ while ‘
their masters
’
take the place of the
‘
Rich Man
’
in Luke
!

In all these traditions we are, once more, face to face with the kinds of inversions or polemical reversals we shall see in Paul’s reversal of James’ position on ‘
things sacrificed to idols
’ and
eating
‘
unclean foods
’ in 1 Corinthians 6-12 both, as we have alluded to it above and will treat further below. In the first place, there is the play on the allusion to ‘
dog
’ or ‘
dogs
’ (sing
u
lar or plural, masculine or feminine is beside the point) – already signalled in relation to the
Talmud
’s rather droll exposition of
Ben Kalba Sabu
‘
a
’
s
pseudonym; but now, in addition to the allusion to them in Luke’s ‘
Poor Lazarus
’ episode, there is the e
v
ocation of them in Matthew/Mark’s depiction of Jesus’ ‘
exorcism
’/‘
curing
’ of the ‘
Greek Syrophoenician
’/‘
Canaanite woman
’
s daughter
’ in the explanation that ‘
even the dogs under the table eat the children
’
s crumbs
’/‘
eat the crumbs that fell from their masters
’
table
’.
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