James the Brother of Jesus and the Dead Sea Scrolls I (100 page)

In Rabbinic tradition, Honi ‘was hidden’ for seventy years because the terrain was so rocky, another link with the ‘Hidden’ traditions surrounding him and John and Jesus. Where the confusion or overlap of either ‘fig’ or ‘carob’ trees associated with these stories is concerned, both were considered by tradition to grow apart in rocky places and produce a kind of ‘honey’ that was eaten – usually as
poor man
’s food. In Rabbinic sources the passages ‘honey out of a crag’ (Deut. 32:13) and ‘honey out of a rock’ (Ps. 81:16) were applied to these genera of trees.
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Again, we have the overlap with the food ascribed in Christian sources to John.

One final link-up in all these traditions: Simeon bar Yohai, the eponymous founder of
Zohar
tradition and a central figure of Jewish Kabbalistic lore, was said to have ‘
hidden
’ himself with his son – also named Eleazar – in a cave for some twelve years at the time of the Bar Kochba Uprising (132–36 CE), again surviving on the honey or fruit of carobs or fig trees growing in these rocky areas.
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It is interesting that when John mentions this ‘
Cana of Galilee
’, ‘Jesus’ mother’ – again, as we have said,
always unnamed
in John – also suddenly materializes (as in the Synoptics, somewhat confrontationally – 2:1–2:4), as do ‘his brothers’ (2:12). Presumably she goes unnamed because for John, ‘
Mary
’ is ‘the wife of Clopas’.

Aside from the final reference to ‘Nathanael from Cana of Galilee’ at the end of John, it is in the context of the other three references to ‘Cana of Galilee’ that Jesus is said to ‘make water into wine’, ‘manifesting his Glory, so that his Disciples believed on him’ (Jn. 2:11 and 4:46).

‘Zeal for Your House Consumes Me’

Psalm 69, which John applies to Jesus’ ‘zeal’ for
his
‘Father’s House’, is itself also a completely Messianic psalm. It is also ‘
Ebionite
’, in the sense that it contains positive allusions to ‘the Poor’ (
Ebionim
– 69:33). It was obviously very important to the exegetes of early Christianity, because not only does it contain this allusion attributed to Jesus about
zeal
for his ‘Father’s House’, but another familiar-sounding motif about being ‘alienated from my brothers and estranged from my mother’s other sons’ (69:8), just encountered to some extent in this ‘Cana of Galilee’ episode in John. It also contains the allusion to ‘being given poison to eat and vinegar to drink’ that is such a central element in Gospel Crucifixion narratives (69:21).

But the Psalm is also replete with Qumranisms like: ‘let their table become a snare before them’ – an important connotation for these various disputes (69:22) – ‘swallowing’ (69:15), ‘the Righteous’, ‘the Meek’, and ‘the Pit’ (69:29–32). It also contains reference to the Lord’s ‘Wrathful Anger’ and his ‘Fury being
poured out
upon them’ – usually connected in the Scrolls to these ‘drinking’ and ‘swallowing’ motifs (69:24), but in a pro-Palestinian not a Hellenistic manner. In fact, it ends up on the thoroughly Zionistic note, despite the anti-Zionistic use made of several of these citations above in the Gospels: ‘God will
save Zion
and
rebuild the towns of Judah
. They will be lived in, owned, inherited by His Servants’ descendants, lived in by
those who love His Name
’ (69:35–36).

It should be remarked that this episode in John evoking Jesus’ ‘zeal’ for the Temple is slightly out of synch with the Synoptic Gospels, which place the Temple-cleansing and the clear note of violence it contains in the run-up to Jesus’ last days in Jerusalem, thus making it appear that the Roman soldiers and Temple police had ample cause for arresting Jesus as a subversive disturbing the peace. This notion of ‘zeal for the Law’ and ‘zeal for the Judgements of God’ is also prevalent in the attitude of the Scrolls, making these last appear at once ‘Zealot’ as well as ‘Messianic’.

Of course, Josephus shows that the ‘Zealot’ Movement also has its root motivation in the ‘Messianic’ or ‘World Ruler Prophecy’ found in these passages of Numbers leading up to this evocation of Phineas’
zeal
for the Law (24:17–25:15). At Qumran, ‘zeal for the Judgements of Righteousness’ is part of ‘the Spirit of Truth’ and ‘the Way of Light’ of ‘the Sons of Righteousness’ and the curses upon ‘the men of the lot of Belial’.
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The phrase ‘zeal for the Law’ occurs in the crucial exegesis of the ‘Way in the wilderness’ Prophecy from Isaiah 40, utilized in the Gospels to characterize the activities of John the Baptist there. The Community Rule reads: ‘He shall
separate
from every man who has not turned away from all
Unrighteousness
, and …
Everlasting hatred
for the Men of the Pit in a Spirit of secrecy … For he shall be like a man
zealous for the Law, whose time will be the Day of Vengeance
!’
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One should also remark the use of this word ‘zeal’ throughout the Pauline corpus. Since Paul actually seems to be playing on the language of his opponents – and these within the ‘Movement’ not outside it – its connotation is usually reversed. In 1 Corinthians, for example, Paul calls his communities ‘zealous of spiritual things’. He uses the term there amid motifs of ‘building up the Church’ or ‘Assembly’ and, what would have infuriated Jerusalem more than anything, ‘speaking in Tongues’ (1 Cor. 14:12). In 2 Corinthians 7:11 he uses it, as here in the Community Rule, in connection with God’s ‘Anger’ and ‘Vengeance’, but with exactly opposite signification.

He alludes twice to ‘zeal’ in Galatians, once in connection with the all-important allusion to ‘being chosen’ from his mother’s womb, we have discussed above, even going so far as to imply that he himself had once been ‘a Zealot’ by pointing out how ‘
exceedingly zealous
for the traditions’ of his Fathers he had been (thus – Gal. 1:14). Even more tellingly, he uses it in Galatians 4:17–18 three times, this after attacking the Law as bringing death, attacking circumcision, and attacking the Jerusalem Leadership. Just following his own evocation of the ‘Enemy’ and ‘Lying’ epithets (‘So your Enemy have I become by speaking Truth to you?’ – 4:16), he proceeds to accuse his opponents – here clearly
within
the Movement and the very
ones
using these epithets against him – of being, ‘
zealous after you to exclude you
, so that you will be
zealous after them
’, though not ‘
zealous for the right things
’! The play on their central concept of ‘zeal’ is hard to miss.

Perhaps his most characteristic use of the term comes in chapter 10 of Romans. This follows his insistence that the Gentiles attained ‘a Righteousness of Faith’, as opposed to Israel’s failure to attain ‘a Righteousness of the Law … because it was
not by Faith but by works of the Law
’ (9:30–31 – note the play on the ‘works’ ideology normally associated with James). In turn the condemnation of the ‘zeal for God’ of the Jews in this passage, which we shall quote below, is followed in Romans 11:3 and 11:28 by variations of his accusations against the other Israel – ‘the Israel according to the flesh’ – of killing all the Prophets and being ‘Enemies’ of all men that we previously encountered in 1 Thessalonians 2:15.

In Romans 12:19, he plays off the emphasis in the Community Rule’s interpretation of Isaiah 40:3 on zeal for ‘
the Day of Vengeance
’ – a term vividly used in Isaiah 63:4 amid the imagery of ‘
making the Peoples drunk with My Fury
’ – by quoting Deuteronomy 32:35’s ‘
Vengeance is mine … saith the Lord
’. Finally, he completely attacks the Zealots in Romans 13:1–7, where he recommends ‘paying taxes’, because the Authorities ‘
have been appointed by God
’ and
the tax collectors are, therefore, ‘Servants of God
’!

One should note, in addition, the admonition to ‘feed your Enemy’ in Romans 12:20 and the ‘Community as Temple’/‘Community as sacrifice’ imagery, ‘the Many being one body in Christ’ in Romans 12:1–5 – imagery encountered in the Community Rule expounding Isaiah 40:3’s ‘Way in the wilderness’ in terms of ‘zeal for the Law’ and ‘the Day of Vengeance’. Here, quoting Isaiah 8:14, which in the original Hebrew ends with the important ‘net’ and ‘Pit’ imagery – which he significantly omits – he reverses the ‘Cornerstone’ imagery from Isaiah 28:16, not to mention that language of ‘stumbling’ used in James 2:9 to emphasize the crucial point about ‘keeping the whole Law’.

Now ‘the Israel, following after a Law of Righteousness’ and ‘works of the Law’, ‘stumble over the Stone of Stumbling’, ‘a Stone of Stumbling in Zion and a Rock of offence’ (in Greek, ‘
Petra
’, that is, ‘
Peter
’, here); but instead of the words ‘a net to the inhabitants of Jerusalem and a Pit’ that follow in Isaiah 8:14, Paul substitutes the phrase ‘and everyone that believes on him shall not be ashamed’ that goes with the ‘Cornerstone’ and ‘laying in Zion a sure Foundation Stone’ imagery of Isaiah 28:16, with which he began, not Isaiah 8:14 (Rom. 9:32–33).

These too were the very words we just heard in the John 2:11 episode about the miracles Jesus did in Cana of Galilee, ‘revealing his Glory so that his Disciples
believed on him
’ – not to mention the thrust of Psalm 69, which John goes on to quote in 2:17, about ‘loving God’ and ‘loving His Name’ generally. In fact, as we have repeatedly seen, Paul uses the Commandment to ‘love your neighbour as yourself’ to justify his whole panoply of anti-Zealot instructions, such as ‘rendering tribute to all those due tribute’ and obeying the ruling Authorities, ‘who are no terror to good works’, but are rather ‘appointed by God’. The former possibly even plays on the Habakkuk
Pesher
’s verdict of Vengeance on the individual responsible for destroying the Righteous Teacher and the Poor: ‘he shall be paid the reward with which he rewarded the Poor’, also reflecting the Isaiah 3:10–11 passage applied to James’ death in early Church literature, ‘the reward of his hands shall be rewarded him’.
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These are all matters retrospectively inverted and superimposed in the Gospel portrait upon Jesus, so much so that it would be proper to call the individual who therein emerges, not Jesus, but Jesus/Paul. Is it any wonder that the Gospels portray their ‘Jesus’, not only as ‘
eating and drinking
’, but keeping ‘table fellowship’ with tax collectors? Wherever one finds allusions of this kind in Paul, retrospectively imposed on the portrait of ‘Jesus’ in the Gospels, the description ‘Jesus/Paul’ would be appropriate.

The complete passage, referred to above, from Romans 10:2–4 reads:

For I bear witness to them (the Jews) that they have
zeal for God
, but
not according to Knowledge
, for
being ignorant of God’s Righteousness
, but rather seeking to
establish their own Righteousness
, they failed to submit to
the Righteousness of God
. Because for Righteousness, Christ is the end of the Law for anyone that believes.

Paul ends this particular discussion with the conclusion: ‘
For there is no difference between Jew and Greek
, for that same Lord of all is
Rich
towards all who
call on Him
’
(10:12) – here playing on Qumran allusions to ‘
Riches
’ and ‘
being called by Name
’ – both reversing and spiritualizing the outright attack one finds there and in James on ‘
the Rich
’ or ‘
Riches
’.
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Paul is at his allegorizing best here. It is small wonder that his opponents – again, those
within
the Movement not outside it – found him difficult to contend with.

All of these things are part and parcel of what it meant to have ‘
zeal for God
’ or, for that matter, to be a part of ‘
the Zealot Movement
’. It is no wonder Mark and Matthew found these things confusing when it came to handling the cognomen of Jesus’ possible cousin and putative
second brother
, ‘
Simeon
’ or ‘
Simon the Zealot
’, and, therefore, thought that in some manner we had to do with ‘
Cananite
’ or ‘
Canaanites
’. The reader will probably feel the same bewilderment trying to make his or her way through these interlocking metaphors and terminologies.

The ‘Zealot’ Essenes in Hippolytus’ Josephus

One work from Hippolytus of Rome (
c.
160–235 CE), a contemporary of Clement of Alexandria – it is clearly authentic, though perhaps not from Hippolytus – which literally connects both ‘
Zealots
’ and “
Essenes
’ (even ‘
Sicarii
’ and ‘
Essenes
’), was found in the Nineteenth Century at Mount Athos Monastery in Greece. In saying these things, sometimes it is of the most astonishing clarity and perspicuity; and, though basically reproducing the gist Josephus’ descriptions, according to it the ‘
four groups of Essenes
’ differ from received Josephus’ presentations.