James the Brother of Jesus and the Dead Sea Scrolls II (80 page)

It also proves – in the author’s view incontestably – that our analysis of the arcane twists and turns of some of these New Testament materials was absolutely right and that one has to be prepared to employ a peculiar form of logic in order to follow the incredibly complex and recondite mutual polemics of these documents.

Nakdimon, Ben Kalba Sabu
‘
a’s Tomb, Honi, and Boni

Nor is this finally to put to rest the whole issue of Acts’ parody of ‘
the Ethiopian Queen
’ above and her various look-alikes such as Queen Helen of Adiabene who seems to have supported the ‘
Zealot
’ cause in Palestine in this period – or at least her sons and/or descendants did, as opposed to more collaboration-minded
fellow-travelers
of the Romans, such as
the Herodians
. In fact, it is our position, if
MMT
really was addressed to one or another of her sons, such as Izates or Monobazus, that, because of their self-evident
wealth
, they very likely helped in the support and upkeep of an installation like the one at Qumran.
40

Nor does it put to rest the whole issue of the relationship to her of Simon
Magus
’ ‘
Queen
’ by the same name whom, as we have on several occasions now remarked, hostile sources assert he found among the fleshpots of
Tyre
in Phoenicia – the locale of Mark’s version, anyhow, of this material about Jesus ‘
casting an unclean spirit
’ from the daughter of the ‘
Greek Syrophoenician woman’
who – like so many others in these traditions – was also depicted as ‘
falling at his feet
’. Nor, for that matter, Helen’s own well-documented interest in ‘
the suspected adulteress
’ passage from Numbers 5:12–29 – itself, either c
o
incidentally or otherwise, leading into that on ‘
Nazirite oath
’ procedures from 6:2–21 – a passage she is said to have hung in gold leaf on a commemorative plaque in the Temple Court.

This had to be saying something, presumably about her own biography, and it seems pretty obvious what that is:
don
’
t make false accusations concerning someone in this regard
.
41
Like
Ben Kalba Sabu
‘
a
and his ‘
twenty-one years
’ of ‘
grain buying
’ largesse according to Rabbinic sources,
twenty-one years
, as already underscored, also turned out to be the amount of time according to this same Talmudic tradition of Queen Helen’s legendary three successive ‘
Nazirite oath
’ penances – an inordinate amount of time, laid upon her somewhat disingenuously it would seem (presumably to get further contributions from her) by the Ra
b
bis for real or imagined infractions, impurities, or sins of some kind, doubtlessly having something to do with here marital b
e
havior or perceived ‘
fornication
’.

But these key numbers, ‘
twenty-one
’ or ‘
twenty-two
’, are always associated with the years Nakdimon or
Ben Kalba Sabu
‘
a
, as we saw – the legends here overlap – could have fed the total population of Jerusalem had not ‘
the Zealots
’ (‘
the
Biryonim
’ – ‘
the
Sicarii
’?) either burned Nakdimon’s immense grain storage reserves or mixed mud with them, or both.
This brings us back not only to Helen and
the Famine
but also to Paul, to say nothing of Acts’ ‘
Ethiopian Queen
’ since, according to Josephus and early Church tradition as already explained, it was Helen and/or her son Izates who sent their grain-buying agents to Egypt and Cyprus, dispensing their fabulous wealth to feed the inhabitants of Jerusalem in this period.
42

It is worth recalling that the
Talmud,
though advertising itself as representative of a tradition supporting meticulous o
b
servation of Law, is always – like its mirror opposite the New Testament –
anti-Zealot
. Where Nakdimon’s associate ‘
Ben Kalba Sabu
‘
a
’ is concerned, two other traditions stand out. The first associates him in some manner with the fabulous tomb Queen Helen and Izates’ brother ‘
Monobazus
’ (Helen’s son as well?), built in Jerusalem, her first son Izates having predeceased them (the reason given in the
Talmud
for her successive periods of Nazirite oaths
43
). But Helen’s husband also seems to have been called by a variation of this name ‘
Bazeus
’ and, as already suggested, it probably operated in a Persian cultural nexus something like ‘
Agbarus
’ or ‘
Abgarus
’ did in more Semitic circles or, for that matter, ‘
Herod
’ and ‘
Caesar
’ in Palestinian Greco-Roman ones.
This ‘
tomb
’ material is reflected, too, in John’s report of the ‘
precious ointment
’ Mary was using to wash Jesus’ ‘
feet
’, about which
Judas Iscariot
was said to have complained and which, Jesus then says – according to John 12:7 – ‘
should be kept for the day of (his) burial
’.

The Tomb of the Royal Family of Adiabene was so impressive (then and now) that it is remarked in all sources, Talmudic, early Church, Syriac/Armenian, and Josephus.
44
Not only is ‘
Ben Kalba Sabu
‘
a
’ – himself often confused in these traditions with
Nakdimon
– associated in some manner with it (the writer considers him to be identifiable with one or another of He
l
en’s descendants), but ‘
Nicodemus
’ in the Gospel of John (a Gospel along with Luke very much involved as well, as we have been demonstrating, in the transmission of these kinds of questionable and overlapping materials) is also to be associated with another such fabulous tomb.

In this instance he is the ‘
Rich
’ merchant who John 19:39 portrays as ‘
also coming
’ to prepare Jesus’ body with precious ointments (a costly ‘
mixture of myrrh and aloes about a hundred weight
’ – earlier he was described as ‘
a Ruler of the Jews
’!) before its placement in another legendary tomb, this time belonging to another such
Rich
individual identified only as the my
s
terious cognomen, ‘
Joseph of Arimathaea
’ (‘
a Disciple of Jesus
,
though secretly
,
for fear of the Jews
’ –
thus
!). Not only had John 12:7 above already implied that
Mary
was supposed to have
kept
the ‘
litra of pure spikenard ointment of great value
’ ‘
for the day of (his) burial
’, but in his introduction of ‘
Nicodemus
’ earlier (3:1), he portrays the two of them as having a long di
s
cussion about how ‘
a man who is old can enter his mother
’
s womb and be born a second time
’ (3:4 – again something of ‘
the Primal Adam
’ ideology of many of these early ‘
Judeo-Christian
’ groups).

Not only can one recognize as well – should one choose to regard them – several of the elements of early Church a
c
counts of James’ being,
but the discussion twice actually evokes in 3:16–18 (just as in John 1:14–18 earlier) the expression ‘
only begotten
’ which Josephus applies to Helen’s favorite (and perhaps ‘
only
’) son Izates, for whom the burial monument we are discussing was originally constructed. It actually rises to a crescendo, amid repeated evocation of
Light
and Dark, just as in John 1:18 as well, with Jesus querying
Nicodemus
, ‘
If I say to you Heavenly things will you believe?
’ (John 3:12). Jesus then answers his own question with the seeming (though admittedly ‘
mystifying
’) denial,
‘
No one has gone up into Heaven except he who came down out of Heaven, the Son of Man who is in Heaven.’
Though following the Greek (and, in fact, Pauline) rh
e
torical and poetic device of strophe, antistrophe, and epode, this one really is a tongue-twister but, obviously, it was meant to be ‘
mystifying
’.

These things as they may be, the second point about ‘
Ben Kalba Sabu
‘
a
’ is that the ‘
Zealot
’ Rabbi of the next generation, R. Akiba, married his daughter Rachel, again after some
three successive rejection periods totalling some
twenty-one
years
(here the correspondence with Queen Helen’s three successive
Nazirite
oaths, as well as the number of years these two Talmudic ‘
Rich Men
’ were supposed to have been able to supply Jerusalem with grain before ‘
the Zealots
’ spoiled it) – this purportedly because he was only a ‘
Poor
’ shepherd and
Ben Kalba Sabu
‘
a
was so ‘
Rich
’.
45
Then finally R. Akiba came to her with some ‘
twenty-four thousand
’ students and, so impressed was she that she finally married him. The stories vary here as to whether they were already married when he was just a ‘
Poor
’ shepherd ‘
sleeping on straw
’ or whether this happened later, after her f
a
ther, hearing of his ‘
Great Name
’, finally became reconciled to him.
46

Elsewhere in the
Talmud
, it is made plain that one of Akiba’s students was another of these ‘
Monobaz
’s, obviously d
e
scended either from Helen and her sons, Izates or Monobazus, or this ‘
Ben Kalba Sabu
‘
a
’, or all three.
47
Our conclusion from all this is that these members of Helen’s family were not only instrumental in fomenting and financing the First Uprising against Rome (for which commonweal they and not the discredited and despised Herodians would be the heirs apparent or presumptive monarchs), and two of her ‘
kinsmen
’ or descendants, another ‘
Monobazus
’ (whichever one this was) and ‘
Kenedaeus
’, had already proved their valor, dying in its first engagement; but also the Second – the significance of R. Akiba’s ‘
twenty-four thousand Disciples
’ with whom he won ‘
Ben Kalba Sabu
‘
a
’’s daughter Rachel’s hand. Moreover, they were also instrumental in the financing and support of the
Movement
represented by the installation and correspondence at Qumran.

In any event, this associate of ‘
Ben Kalba Sabu
‘
a
’, ‘
Nakdimon
’ or ‘
Nicodemus
’ – possibly one of the representatives of this family as well – was alleged by the
Talmud
, in the episode with which we started this whole discussion, to have gone into the Temple at a time of drought and, like James (in our view the
Nazirite
-style spiritual Leader both at Qumran and a designee of this family, around whom as
the
Zaddik
of his generation most of these disparate
Opposition
groups revolved),
prayed for rain
.
48
So knowledgeable does the
Talmud
present itself as being regarding this episode that, as we saw, it even records the words of his prayer!

To go over the details of this event and refresh them in the reader’s mind one last time: as the
Talmud
puts it, ‘
he
(Nakdimon)
wrapped himself in his cloak
and
stood up to pray
’.
In this prayer entreating God for sufficient water in the Te
m
ple to accommodate even those on pilgrimage, Nakdimon is made to speak of
his
‘
Father
’
s House
’ – the very cry, based on Psalm 69:9 (a Psalm absolutely intrinsic to Gospel presentations of the events of Jesus’ life) that John 2:17 puts into the mouth of Jesus when speaking of his
zeal
for and desire
to purify the Temple
. Again too, we have the theme of ‘
supplicating
’ or ‘
speaking to God
like a son
’, for which the
Talmud
claims Simeon ben Shetah thought
blasphemy
charges should have been leveled against Honi, ‘
were he not Honi
’.
49