James the Brother of Jesus and the Dead Sea Scrolls II (65 page)

In addition, after these either ‘
depart
’ or ‘
go their way
’, both Gospels picture Jesus as yet again evoking ‘
the True Prophet
’ ideology and applying it to John (7:26/11:9–10) while at the same time querying ‘
the Many
’ about ‘
going out into the wilde
r
ness
’ – in the manner of Josephus’ ‘
false prophets
’, ‘
Impostors
’, and ‘
Deceivers
’ – to say nothing of having him depict John as ‘
a reed shaken by the wind
’ (7:24/11:7). Moreover, they conclude by having Jesus, in the manner of a scriptural exegete, hi
m
self also apply ‘
the preparation of the Way
’ passage from Isaiah 40:3 and the Community Rule
39
to John, portraying
the tax-collectors
as ‘
having been baptized with the baptism of John
’ (Luke 7:26–34/Matthew 11:10–19 – what could be more mi
s
guided and laughable than this?). This is the context in which John is portrayed, accurately for a change, as either a ‘
Rechabite
’ or a ‘
Nazirite
’, that is, ‘
John came neither eating or drinking
(though nonetheless, as we just saw, thought by some as ‘
having a demon
’!) whereas Jesus, on the contrary, ‘
came eating and drinking
’ (the omnipresent ‘
come
’ again). It is here, too, that the famous and pointed ‘
glutton
’, ‘
winebibber
’, and ‘
friend of publicans and Sinners
’ barbs are evoked, which end in the plainly nonsensical: ‘
and Wisdom is justified by Her works
’ (in Luke 7:35: ‘
by all Her Children
’ – thus)! It is at this point, too, that Jesus is portrayed as visiting yet another ‘
house
’ in Luke 7:36–37 (again not paralleled in either Matthew or Mark), now that of ‘
the Pharisee
’ already discussed in some detail above, and keeping ‘
table fellowship
’ with him or, as this is also put in the pa
s
sage, ‘
reclining
’ or ‘
eating with him
’ (7:36–37).

There are also additional possible allusions of this genre to ‘
go your way
’, depending on how one wishes to translate the usage in the Gospels, in particular in Matthew 5:23–4’s
Sermon on the Mount
in the key context of ‘
gifts to the Temple
’ again – ‘
leave your gift before the altar and
go your way
’; in Matthew 8:1–13, following the miracle of Jesus ‘
making the leper clean
’ and before curing the paralytic ‘
servant
’ of the humble Roman Centurion, where it is now the ‘
some of the Kingdom
’ who ‘
shall be cast
into outer Darkness
’ and the Centurion’s ‘
Faith
’ is ‘
Greater than all in Israel
’ (8:10); in John 4:50, after curing the ‘
little child
’ of another supplicating ‘
nobleman
’, this one in
Galilee
and ‘
the second of the signs Jesus did on
coming
out of Judea to Galilee
’ (the only one that comes to mind in these locales would be one or another of the
Herod
s); in Mark 10:21, after ‘
a
l
lowing the little children to
come
unto
’
him
and ‘
laying hands upon them
’, once again, ‘
touching
them
’ and ‘
blessing them
’ – this followed by yet another suppliant (this one unnamed), ‘
running up
’, ‘
kneeling down to him
’, and again calling him ‘
Teacher
’ (10:13–20); and finally in Mark 10:52 and 11:2, following ‘
the camel
’ and ‘
the eye of the needle
’ allusions in 10:25, leading into Jesus in
Bethany
riding on
the colt
, and culminating – contrary to the complaints of the ‘
some
’ again – in the ‘
Many
spreading their garments before him on the way
’ (11:5–8), exactly in the manner of ‘
the Poor
’ in the ‘
Nakdimon
’/‘
Jesus ben Gamala
’ stories above.
40

In this picture in Mark 11:7 too, so enthusiastic are the People that they even ‘
cast
  their garments on the colt
’ as well. The same episode occurs in Luke 19:29–36 but before this, even more interestingly, in 17:11–19 the one ‘
falling on his knees
’ of Mark 10:17 becomes one of ‘
ten lepers
’ (‘
standing at a distance
’), who now rather ‘
falls on his face
’ and happens to be ‘
a S
a
maritan
’ (i.e., now we have ‘
a Samaritan leper
’! – but it basically shows the interchangeability of all these expressions) and the ‘
ten lepers
’ of Luke 17:12 turn into, in Mark 10:41,
the Ten
Disciples
who ‘
complain about
’ or ‘
are jealous of James and John
’ (
sic
)!

To go back to Luke 7:37: it was at this point that yet another woman appeared, called ‘
a woman in the city
’ and ‘
a Sinner
’, bringing the
pro forma
‘
alabaster flask of ointment
’. Once again, one should compare this with the woman with the ‘
alabaster flask of ointment
’ at ‘
Simon the Leper
’s
house
’ in Mark 14:3 and Matthew 26:7, an episode missing from Luke where it has already been replaced in 10:38–42 both by the visit to ‘
Martha
’
s house
’ (‘
in a certain village
’) and in 16:19–31, the ‘
Lazarus u
n
der the table whose sores were licked by dogs
’ episode – ‘
the lepers being cleansed
’ already having been mentioned along with ‘
the blind
’, ‘
the lame
’, ‘
the deaf
’, and ‘
the Poor
’ in Jesus’ earlier response to John’s ‘
certain two
Disciples
’ in Luke 7:22 and this same ‘
Simon
’, albeit now identified as ‘
the Pharisee
’ not ‘
the Leper
’, about to be mentioned in Luke 7:40 (again showing the basic transmutability of all these terminologies!).

The reader will bear with us if we repeat some of the points of this episode, since they are so remarkable and the issues at stake are so momentous. Now ‘
standing
behind
,
weeping at his
feet
’ (in Luke 8:41 to follow, it will be ‘
Jairus
,
a Ruler of the Sy
n
agogue
’, who ‘
falls at his feet
’, while in Luke 17:16 above, ‘
the leper
’ who ‘
was a Samaritan
’ only ‘
fell on his face at his feet
’!) while ‘
the Pharisee
’ – like Judas
Iscariot
, Martha, and
the Disciples
in other such episodes – whom we have discovered and shall discover again was called ‘
Simon
’,
complained
, ‘
she began
to
wash his feet with her tears and she was wiping them with the hairs of her head
’ (as we saw, one should compare this with John 12:3’s ‘
Mary anointing the feet of Jesus and wiping his feet with her hair
’).
It is not hard to see that we have all our imageries in just this one sentence, but so carried away by this time is Luke that he doesn’t stop here but rather goes on (to repeat), ‘
And she was lovingly kissing his fee
t and
anointing them with ointment
’
(7:38).

Now we really do have all our themes and motifs, but ‘
the Pharisee
’ – like
the Pharisees
as
Blind Guides
and in the ‘
U
n
washed Hands
’ Parable, yet again raises both the issue of such a woman ‘
touching him
’ and ‘
the True Prophet
’ characterization (this time as applied to Jesus), namely, ‘
if he were (such) a Prophet
’, how could he allow such a woman (‘
a Sinner
’) to ‘
touch him
’ (presumably meaning because she was either a Gentile or alluding to the defective state of her ‘
purity
’ – 7:39)?

It is at this point that Jesus starts to talk to someone he now suddenly addresses as ‘
Simon
’ who responds by calling him ‘
Teacher
’ again (7:40). Just as in the ‘
Simon the Leper
’ episode in Matthew 26:6–13 and Mark 14:3–9, this obviously should have been
Simon Peter
but, except for the rebuke which is about to follow in Matthew 26:34 and Mark 14:30,
Simon Peter
was never part of the episode. Not only does Jesus now clearly mean that
the Pharisee
with whom he is now ‘
reclining
’ and discoursing in a dialectical manner is called ‘
Simon
’, but what is really being picked up here is the ‘
Simon
’ from the ‘
Simon the Leper
’
s house
’ encounter
in Bethany
in Matthew 26:6 and Mark 14:3 – and the dizzying circle of these variations and elabor
a
tions continues. Of course, we are also in the area of the ‘
table fellowship
’ issue too, since Jesus has been invited ‘
to eat
’ and ‘
reclined
(
at the table
)
at the house of the Pharisee
’ (7:36) – how symbolic!

Again, though Simon has done nothing but offer him ‘
table fellowship
’ (it should be obvious that this ‘
Pharisee
’ is su
p
posed to be a caricature of
Simon Peter
, since this was the issue that so divided him from Paul in Galatians 2:11–2:17), Jesus launches into a lengthy diatribe, ending with the usual refrain from several of these episodes: ‘
Your Faith has saved you
’ (Luke 7:50). It also incorporates the same
creditor
/
debtor
haggling over numbers we have already encountered in Luke 16:1–15’s parable about ‘
the Unfaithful Servant
’, to say nothing of Matthew 25:14–30’s parable above about how those who, having seemingly invested their money
with ‘
money-lenders
’, doubled the number of their ‘
talents
’ and the ‘
interest
’ earned from ‘
two
’ to ‘
four
’ and ‘
five
’ to ‘
ten
’; and in Matthew 18:21–35 where, again in response to Peter (which also involved, not one, but two additional ‘
falling at his feet
’s), the numbers were ‘
seven
’, ‘
seventy
’, ‘
ten thousand talents
’, and ‘
one hundred dinars
’.

Though in Luke 16:1–18 which, it will be recalled, was again about ‘
a certain Rich Man
’
s steward
’ and his ‘
baths of oil
’, the haggling is over the numbers ‘
eighty
cor
s
’ or ‘
measures of wheat
’ and ‘
a hundred
’, either ‘
cor
s of wheat
’ or ‘
baths of oil
’. Here in Luke 7:41, it is ‘
five hundred dinars
’ as opposed to ‘
fifty
’ but, in any event, all have a good deal in common with
Nakdimon
’s ‘
cistern
’ negotiations. It also reflects the ‘
three hundred dinars
’ numerical variations of both the ‘
Simon the Leper
’ and John 12:5’s ‘
Judas of Simon Iscariot
’/‘
Lazarus
’/‘
house in Bethany
’ encounters and Matthew 26:15’s tenfold reduction of this in the amount then
appointed to
Judas by the Chief Priests
to
‘
betray
’ or ‘
deliver him up
’. Nor is this to say anything about the ‘
one hundred dinars
’ owed by ‘
the fellow debtor
’ in Matthew 18:29 or the ‘
hundred baths of oil
’ or the ‘
hundred measures of wheat
’ in Luke 16:1–18’s equally mercantile parable. But even more germane than this, aside from the parallel represented by the ha
g
gling between
Nakdimon
and ‘
his lord
’ over the number of
cisterns of water
that were owed or ‘
needed filling
’, it even more precisely corresponds to the ‘
four
’ to ‘
five hundred dinar
’ amounts Rabbinic tradition reckons as the value of Nakdimon’s daughter’s ‘
perfume basket
’!