James the Brother of Jesus and the Dead Sea Scrolls II (63 page)

The version of this encounter one finds in Matthew 8:5–13 is somewhat different. It directly follows another ‘
touching
’ and ‘
cleansing
’ episode in Matthew 8:3 – in this case, the ‘
cleansing
’ of ‘
a leper
’ (‘
Simon the Leper
’?), who ‘
came
and
worshipped him
’. In Luke 7:18–22 following these curings and raisings, it should be appreciated that these motifs drift into the allusion to ‘
the lepers being cleansed
’ and the multiple references to ‘
coming
’ we shall discuss further below. In this exchange between Jesus and John, just as the ‘
Centurion
’ sends his ‘
two servants
’ to Peter in Acts 10:7, John is now pictured as sending ‘
two ce
r
tain (ones) of his Disciples
’ to query Jesus with the apocalyptically charged, ‘
Are you the one who is to
come
?’. This is language we shall eventually see reflected in ‘
the
Doresh ha-Torah
’ (‘
the Seeker after the Law
’)
who
came
to Damascus
’ in Ms. A of the Damascus Document and ‘
the coming of the Messiah of Aaron and Israel
’ in Ms. B and in ‘
the Star who would come out of Israel
’ from Numbers 24:17 in Ms. A and the Qumran
Testimonia
below.
27

But in Matthew 8:5, it is neither the ‘
Elders of the Jews
’ or the ‘
Friends of the Centurion
’ who come to Jesus on
the Ce
n
turion
’s behalf, but now ‘
the Centurion
’
himself
; and here, not only does he refer to his servant ‘
being
laid out
in the house
’ (8:6) – as in the ‘
garments
’/‘
cushions
’ being ‘
laid out
’ in Talmudic scenarios or Luke’s ‘
Poor Man Lazarus at the Rich Man
’
s door
’ – but now even, after commenting as in Luke on the Centurion’s ‘
great Faith
’, the ‘
Go your way
’ (8:13) of the several Talmudic stories attributed to either
Yohanan ben Zacchai
or
Eleazar ben Zadok
about the ‘
hair
’ or ‘
feet
’ of these same
Rich Men
’
s daughters
. Moreover, the perspicacious reader will also immediately discern that this same ‘
Go your way
’ has now m
i
grated down in Luke 7:22 into the outcome of Jesus’ exchanges with
the Disciples of John
over the question of ‘
the One who is
to come
’.

Finally, in this healing, Matthew is even more anti-Semitic and pro-Pauline than Luke – if this is possible. To his version of Jesus’ compliment to the Centurion of ‘
not even in Israel have I found such great Faith
’ (8:10) – also more or less repeated in Matthew 15:28 later in his version of the ‘
cleansing
’ of the ‘
Cananaean woman
’
s daughter
’,
viz
., ‘
O woman
,
great is your Faith
’ – is now attached the additional ideologically-charged and pointed comment, including this
Centurion
among ‘
the Many
’
who
‘
shall come from East and West
’
and
‘
recline
(
at the table
)
with Abraham and Isaac and Jacob in the Kingdom of the Heavens
’ (
sic
). In the portrait of ‘
Heaven and Hell
’ that concludes the ‘
certain Poor Man
’ laid at the gate of the ‘
Rich Man clothed in purple and fine linen
’ in Luke 16:22–31, this will be ‘
Lazarus on the bosom of Abraham
’. In the same breath, Ma
t
thew reverses the ‘
casting out
’ language Josephus used to illustrate
Essene
treatment of backsliders, to say nothing of his own later ‘
casting out down the toilet bowl
’ parable and the way Luke will portray the Jewish crowd as ‘
casting
’
Stephen
‘
out of the city
’ in Acts 7:58: ‘
But the Sons of the Kingdom shall be cast out into the outer darkness’
(8:12; this is pure ‘
Gentile Mission
’ material).
To add insult to injury, Matthew adds here, ‘
and there shall be much weeping and gnashing of teeth
’.

To go back to the further resurrection episode in Luke 7:11–17 that intercedes between this
healing
of
the Centurion’s servant
and the exchange between ‘
the Disciples
’ of John and Jesus, Luke portrays Jesus as resurrecting the ‘
only son
’ ‘
in a city called Nain
’ of a bereaved ‘
widow
’ – another of the
Talmud
-like ‘
widow
’ scenarios which Luke, in particular (but also Mark), appears to have found so attractive. Not only should one note in this regard, for example, ‘
the widows overlooked in the
daily serving
’ in Luke’s introduction of ‘
Stephen
’ in Acts 6:1, but in both Luke 21:1–5 and Mark 12:41–44, there is the proverbial and particularly charged episode of the ‘
certain Poor widow casting her two mites into the Treasury
’ – ‘charged’ because it is so similar to the later scenario in Matthew 27:3–10 of Judas
Iscariot
casting his ‘
thirty pieces of silver
’ (‘
the price of blood
’ – here in Matthew 23:30, this is ‘
communion
’/‘
partaking in the blood of the Prophets
’ – more ‘
blood libel
’ accusations) into
the Temple Treasury
prior to his alleged
suicide
, that it too probably has simply been transferred and revamped.

In any event, like Judas’ ‘
casting
’ his ‘
thirty pieces of silver
’ into ‘
the Temple Treasury
’, it deals with what emerges as one of the pivotal issues for this period, that of ‘
sacred gifts given to the Temple
’ – in this instance, on the part of ‘
the Rich
casting
their gifts into the Treasury
’ (but also on the part of ‘
Gentiles
’ generally) as opposed to those ‘
cast
’, as Luke 21:4/Mark 12:43 would have it, by ‘
this certain Poor widow
’ (‘
cast
’/‘
casting
’ repeated five times in four lines!) ‘
out of her poverty
’. Of course, as in the resurrection of the ‘
only-begotten son
’ of ‘
the widow of Nain
’ (Adiabene), the overtones of this episode with the gifts to the Temple from another probable ‘
widow
’, Queen Helen
of Adiabene
(whose gifts included the famous seven-branched gold candelabra which was taken to Rome in Titus’ victory celebration and there, presumably melted down to help build – of all places – the  Colosseum!) should be obvious.

Furthermore, Jesus’ attitude towards ‘
the Poor
’ and ‘
poverty
’ in the matter of the ‘certain
Poor widow
’’s
two mites
– again missing, not only from Matthew, but John as well – is a far cry from what it is in John 12:5’s picture of his response to
Judas Iscariot
’s complaints about ‘
the Poor
’ over the wastefulness of
Lazarus
’ sister Mary
anointing Jesus’ feet with expensive oin
t
ment
. On the other hand, this time it does once again bear a resemblance to the
Talmud
’s picture both of Rabbi Akiba’s
po
v
erty
as opposed to his
Rich
father-in-law, Ben Kalba
Sabu
‘
a
’s ‘
superfluity
’ and Rabbi Eliezer’s ‘
poverty
’, whose ‘
fame
’ would in due course, like ‘
this Poor widow
’’s ‘
be worth more than all the rest
’ (Luke 21:3/Mark12:43).

The encounter with this second
widow
here in Luke 21:1–5 whose
two mites
were ‘
worth more than all the rest
’ is pivotal too, because, in both it and Mark, it introduces Jesus’ telltale oracle patently based on Josephus’ description of Titus’ destru
c
tion of the Temple: ‘
There shall not be left a stone on top of a stone that shall not be thrown down
’.
28
Here, too, Jesus is not only called ‘
Teacher
’ (‘
Teacher
’ carrying with it, in the writer’s view, something of the sense of ‘
the Righteous Teacher
’), but the whole discourse he now delivers on ‘
going out from the Temple
’ is replete with multiple allusions to the language of ‘
lea
d
ing astray
’ (in Matthew 24:5 and 11, ‘
leading
Many
astray
’
29
) as well as that of ‘
the Elect
’, ‘
delivering up
’, ‘
false Christs and false prophets
’, ‘
misleading
’ or ‘
deceiving with (great) signs and wonders
’.

In addition, Jesus is depicted as pointedly characterizing the ‘
Rich
’ and those he pictures as
occupying
‘
the Chief Seats in the Synagogues
’
as ‘
going to receive a greater
’ or ‘
more abundant Judgement
’ – that is, in proportion to their ‘
Riches
’ (Luke 20:47/Mark 12:40). Furthermore, this phraseology is replicated almost precisely in the Habakkuk
Pesher
’s picture –
in expos
i
tion of
Habakkuk
2
:
4
– of how the punishment ‘
of the Wicked
would be
multiplied upon themselves
’ when they
were judged
’. Moreover, this means, of course, on ‘
the Last
’ or ‘
Day of Judgement
’ (
n.b
.
, in particular, that even here the verb ‘
eating
’ or ‘
devouring
’ is used to express this in both Luke 20:47 and Mark 12:40 just as it is in the Habakkuk
Pesher
30
).

For its part Matthew 24:2, while retaining Mark’s ‘
going forth from the Temple
’ but discarding the ‘
widow
’
s two mites
’ material, embeds Jesus’ oracle of the destruction of the Temple at the end of its general ‘
woes
’ – ‘
woes
’ not unlike or really separable from those of the curious ‘
prophet
’ in Josephus,
Jesus ben Ananias
, after the death of James leading up to the d
e
struction of the Jerusalem,
31
which we shall consider in more detail below; ‘
woes
’, too, which throughout the whole of Ma
t
thew 23 are used to attack the ‘
Rabbis
’, ‘
Pharisees
’, ‘
Hypocrites
’, ‘
Blind Ones
’, ‘
fools
’, ‘
Blind Guides
’, and just about every pe
r
son or concept of any consequence in this period (in particular, concepts fundamental to Qumran ideology
32
), finally giving way, as in the other two Synoptics, to ‘
the Little Apocalypse
’ in Chapter Twenty-Four and, of course, to the typical proclam
a
tion ascribed to James in all early Church literature of ‘
seeing the Son of Man coming
(together with the ‘
Elect
’)
on the clouds of Heaven with Power and great Glory
’ (Matthew 24:30/Mark 13:26/Luke 21:27).