James the Brother of Jesus and the Dead Sea Scrolls II (61 page)

The curing of this ‘
woman with a flow of blood
’ who, like ‘
the Cananaean woman
’
s daughter
’ in Matthew 15:28, will also ultimately be described as ‘
saved by her Faith
’ (interestingly this affirmation is missing from Mark 7:29 which only has Jesus saying ‘
Go your way
’), is sandwiched in between the two halves of the
raising
/
healing of Jairus
’
daughter
(Mark 5:25–34 and
pars
.). Not only does it, like these other ‘
touching
’ incidents, again have to do with ‘
touching his clothing
’, ‘
border of his ga
r
ment
’, and ‘
the Multitude
’ or
Rabbim
of Qumran allusion, but it is also possible to see it as
making fun of Jewish scrupulou
s
ness over blood
and
issues related to blood
generally
– concerns particularly strong, not only at Qumran, but also in James’ directives to overseas Communities as reiterated in Acts.

In fact, Mark 5:29 actually uses the language of ‘
drying up the
fountain
of her blood
’, instead of ‘
the flow of her blood
’, to describe her state regarding this matter. One possible way of looking at this modification in Mark is as an amusing caricature of the Damascus Document’s pointed concern over
blood
generally (‘
the Forefathers
’ having been ‘
cut off
because they ate blood
in the wilderness
’ – and
the Temple Establishment
as well, because they were in contact with ‘
those sleeping with women du
r
ing the blood of their periods
’
7
). Perhaps even more to the point, it is possible to see it as a disparaging play on the language in this same Damascus Document of ‘
the
Fountain
of Living Waters
’, which was the essence of what it conceived of as ‘
the New Covenant in the Land of Damascus
’ – this ‘
New Covenant
’ itself clearly an affront to those being characterized in it, as well, as ‘
having turned back from it and betrayed it
’!
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Once again, Mark is uncharacteristically more expansive and, not only does
the woman with
‘
the fountain of blood
’
for twelve years
‘
come and fall down before
’
Jesus
(5:33), but Mark would also appear to be having a lot of fun generally – if we can consider its author(s) as this well-informed and having this degree of sophistication – over the whole connection, pivotal to the Damascus Document’s historiography, between ‘
the New Covenant in the Land of Damascus
’ and ‘
the Well
’ or ‘
Fou
n
tain of living waters
’ that was literally or figuratively ‘
to be dug
’ there – now here in Mark 5:29 (if, as we said, we can give him credit for this amount of sophistication) being caricatured in terms of ‘
the
fountain of her blood
’.

We will see this ‘
blood
’ usage, so abhorred by those at Qumran, in the context of the imagery of ‘
the New Covenant in the Land of Damascus
’, in particular the ‘
Blood
’ (
Dam
) and the ‘
Cup
’ (
Chos
) which make up the syllables of this denotation in Greek and Paul’s ‘
the Cup of the New Covenant in (his) blood
’ (1 Corinthians 11:25) as we proceed.
Be these things as they may, Jesus is now pictured as ‘
coming to the Ruler of the Synagogue
’
s house
’ and, as with
Lazarus
and the
Greek Syrophoenician woman
in Tyre and Sidon, now raising or curing
his daughter
(Mark 5:35–43 and
pars
.).

As these motifs reverberate back and forth from one Gospel to the other, and to the
Talmud
and then back, the same
Mary
who in Luke ‘
sat at
’ and, in John, ‘
fell at
’ or ‘
anointed his feet
’ (while Judas
Iscariot
and/or Martha ‘
complained
’), ‘
washed his feet with her hair
’. In fact, this notice clearly so appealed to John that he repeated it twice in 11:2 and 12:3.

Jairus
Kisses Jesus
Feet
’,
Ben Kalba Sabu
‘
a
Kisses
Rabbi Akiba
’
s Feet
, and Eliezer ben Jair

To go back to ‘
Jairus
’, whose story – which had been interrupted for some reason – is now resumed in all three Gospels. He too is characterized in Mark 5:22 as ‘
falling at
(
Jesus
’)
feet
’, the ‘
Multitude gathered around him
’. We shall see the conne
c
tion of these two successive characterizations of persons ‘
falling at Jesus feet
’ in the same episode – one a ‘
Ruler of the Syn
a
gogue
’, and the other, another unnamed ‘
certain woman
’ who ‘
comes
’ to him with a
twelve-year
‘
flow
’, or ‘
fountain of blood
’ – to the story in Rabbinic tradition about how both Rabbi Akiba’s wife and his
important father-in-law ‘
fall at his feet
’ below.

In the tradition about ‘
Jairus
’
daughter
’, not only does the picture of ‘
the flute players and the crowd
’ in Matthew 9:23 identify this as a typical scene one would encounter across the Mediterranean in this period (though not perhaps in Palestine), but allusion to the important catchwords ‘
master
’ or ‘
lord
’ we have encountered above also appears. But even more to the point, just as the ‘
certain woman
,
whose daughter had an unclean spirit
’ ‘
came and fell at Jesus
’
feet
’ later in Mark 7:25 and Matthew 15:25, not only does Jesus speak with regard to the ‘
woman with the twelve-year issue of blood
’ in the patently ‘
Paulinizing
’ manner, ‘
your
Faith
has cured you
’ (presumably meaning she was a
Gentile
– Mark 4:34/Luke 8:48), but, as in the ‘
little daughter
’ of the woman who was a ‘
Greek Syrophoenician by race
’ also in 7:25, Mark 5:23 applies the diminutive ‘
little
’ to ‘
the Ruler of the Synagogue by the name of Jairus
’’ ‘
little daughter
’.

Finally, even more important than any of these, Mark 5:41 – being the most prolix of any of these accounts as we have seen – actually also uses a variation of the phrase Acts 9:40 applies to ‘
Tabitha
’ at Jaffa, after Peter traveled there from Lydda to resurrect her,
i.e.
, ‘
Tabitha arise
’ – ‘
get up
!’ Here in Mark, this becomes – not ‘
Tabitha
’ (which we have already previously proposed as a quasi-anagram or phoneme for the Samaritan ‘
Taheb
’) – but ‘
Talitha cumi
,
which interpreted means
(that is, tran
s
lated from Aramaic into Greek),
little girl
,
I say unto you
,
arise
’. Of course, however the diminutive ‘
little
’ (now applied to the ‘
maid
’ or ‘
girl
’) may be, it is hardly conceivable that the use of the Aramaic ‘
talitha
’ for ‘
little
’/‘
young girl
’
9
at this point in Mark is not in some way connected to the related use of the Aramaic ‘
Tabitha
’ for the name of ‘
a certain Disciple (female) at Jaffa
’, cured or resurrected by Peter in Acts 9:40 in an almost precisely parallel way, is accidental or merely coincidence.

But to take the case, as well, of Rabbi Akiba in the
ARN
; we have already seen how when he and his new wife Rachel,
Ben Kalba Sabu
‘
a
’s daughter, married despite the fact ‘
he was so Poor
’ and despite her father’s vow to disinherit her, they not only had to sleep on straw, but how the even more vivid and tender Talmudic tradition dramatized this by picturing him as ‘
picking the straw out of her hair
’.
10
We suggested that this episode could be seen as a variation on Luke’s picture of Jesus’ birth in a manger, for it also pictures ‘
Elijah the Prophet
’ in the guise of a man ‘
coming
’ to them in a clearly
redivivus
manner and
begging some straw
,
since his wife was in labor and
‘
there was nothing for her to lie on’.
It was at this point that the trad
i
tion pictures Rabbi Akiba as remarking, ‘
there is a man
’
who was so Poor
,
that
‘
he lacks even straw
’!
11

In fact, so many of these New Testament traditions seem to go back to stories about Rabbi Akiba and his well-known co
l
leagues of the previous generation, such as Rabbi Yohanan ben Zacchai and Eliezer ben Hyrcanus, that any casual connections such as these should immediately be remarked. In the first place, not only was Rabbi Akiba a ‘
ben Joseph
’, meaning, his name
literally was
‘
Akiba ben Joseph
’.
Notwithstanding, in the stories we have about Rabbi Akiba’s relations with his wife (
Ben Kalba Sabu
‘
a
’s daughter) and her father, we are also
twice
confronted with the references to ‘
falling down before him and kis
s
ing his feet’.
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The first occurs when, after having been secretly married to Ben
Kalba Sabu
‘
a
’s daughter, R. Akiba returns a second time after his two stays of ‘
twelve years
’ at the academy – location unspecified, but probably in
Lydda
, though it may have been further afield (here all our number ‘
twelve
’s again of the Nakdimon story and its spin-offs) – with ‘
twenty-four thousand Di
s
ciples
’ and, like Martha’s sister Mary and therefore Lazarus’ as well and the unnamed ‘
woman in the city who was a Sinner
’ with the alabaster flask who accosts Jesus at ‘
the Pharisee
’
s house
’ in Luke 7:38, she ‘
falls down before him and kisses his feet
’.
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The second comes right after this, when
Ben Kalba Sabu
‘
a
, Rachel’s father, hears that ‘
the Great Man had come to town
’ and, prevailing upon Rabbi Akiba to help him annul his vow to disinherit his Rachel – just like the Great ‘
Jairus
’, styled a ‘
Ruler of the Synagogue
’ in the story about the resurrection of his daughter (Mark 5:22) – ‘
he (Ben Kalba Sabu
‘
a) falls down before him (R. Akiba) and kisses his feet
’.
14