James the Brother of Jesus and the Dead Sea Scrolls I (121 page)

In the Habakkuk
Pesher
the ‘
casting
’ and ‘
dragnets full of fish
’ imagery from Habakkuk 1:14-16 is definitively interpreted in terms not only of taxation by the
Kittim
(in this context, the Romans), but also their
tax
farming
, i.e., their ‘
parceling out
’ their sovereignty and
tax collecting
among various petty rulers in the East (including, quite obviously, Herodians). This whole exercise is pointedly characterized in the Habakkuk
Pesher
as ‘their plenteous eating’ – all developed in terms of the innumerable ‘
fish of the sea
’ they catch in ‘
their dragnets
’.

The New Testament reverses this language, showing its awareness that it was being applied to Roman taxation, by having Jesus recommend ‘casting a hook into the sea’ of Galilee to get the money to pay Roman taxes or tribute, or, reversing this again and returning to the original Jewish apocalyptic cast, ‘casting the tares’ or ‘the polluted fish’ into ‘a furnace of Fire’.

In a further adumbration of this ‘casting’ language, the Gospels describe the ‘Power’ Jesus has and the ‘Authority’ he gives his disciples ‘to cast out Evil demons’. Not only can this be seen as parodying what groups like those responsible for the documents at Qumran do to backsliders – ‘cast them out’ – but in Acts, ‘the Jews’ cast out
James’
double
Stephen to be stoned, not to mention Josephus’ Zealots ‘casting out’ the naked body of James’ nemesis, the High Priest Ananus, without burial from Jerusalem, thereby desecrating it.

Determinations of this kind were made solely on the basis of early Church sources, both in and outside the New Testament, and on the basis of Josephus – with peripheral verification and illustration only, where ethos was concerned, from the Dead Sea Scrolls. These, in turn, led to the question about how and why such incredible lacunae occurred and who could have been responsible for or benefited from them.

For instance, James and his Jerusalem Assembly are able to go on functioning relatively without disturbance in the Jerusalem of the 40’s to the 60s CE, while an individual like Paul can hardly set foot in the city without being mobbed – this because of fear of the Jewish populace as a whole, among whom individuals like James, John the Baptist, and presumably Jesus (if he was anything like them), appear to have been
very
popular. Paul’s escape from the representatives of the Arab King Aretas down the walls of Damascus in a basket, by his own testimony in 2 Corinthians 11:32–33, also bears this out (for Acts’ picture of parallel events, it is
the Jews
from whom Paul is escaping). This is the same ‘Arab King’ whom, according to Josephus, the Jewish common people saw as taking vengeance on the Herodians for the death of John the Baptist in the mid-30s, the same period in which Paul admits to having ‘persecuted’ those of ‘the Way’ even ‘unto death’.

All this rather is lumped together in Scripture, as it has come down to us, under the general heading of the perfidy of ‘the Jews’. This becomes frozen in early Church theology by the time of the works of Clement of Alexandria, Tertullian, Irenaeus, Origen, and Eusebius as the ‘guilt of the Jews for their crimes against the Christ of God’.

But this was hardly the case in the Palestine of the time. This is to mistake sectarian strife for strife with foreigners. Though John, Jesus, and James may have run afoul of sectarian strife, that is strife with other Jewish Establishment groups or Herodians; it was not the mass of Jews
per se
who were their enemies. Rather, the opposite is more likely the truth.

Finally, we have placed James at the centre of sectarian and popular agitation ending up in the fall of Jerusalem and we have identified the basic issues involved in such strife, particularly as these related to gifts from Gentiles and their admission into the Temple (considered ‘pollution of the Temple’ at Qumran) – reflected too in
MMT
and its hostility to ‘things sacrificed to idols’. We have been able to use these parameters to point out Paul’s connections to the Herodian family and the kind of code that was being applied to such relationships – at Qumran and in Revelation, 2 Peter, and Jude involving ‘Balaam’, ‘Belial’, and ‘Devilishness’.

It is these things that the Dead Sea Scrolls put in sharp relief. Without the Scrolls we would only have suspected them, because of the mutually contradictory information in the New Testament and early Church documents. With the Scrolls for use as control, we get an entirely different picture of events in Palestine than either the New Testament or the documents of Rabbinic Judaism – now normative Judaism – provide. Whether James is to be identified with the Righteous Teacher at Qumran or simply a parallel successor is not the point – the Scrolls allow us to approach the Messianic Community of James with about as much precision as we are likely to have from any other source.

One hopes that the arguments put forth in this book and its successor will lift some of the cloud of unknowing and misrepresentation surrounding these issues. Once James has been rescued from the oblivion into which he was cast, abetted by one of the most successful (and fantastic) rewrite enterprises ever accomplished – the Book of Acts – it is necessary to deal with the new constellation of facts which the reality of his being occasions. It will also no longer be possible to avoid the obvious solution to the problem of the Historical Jesus – the question of his actual physical existence as such aside – the answer to which is simple.
Who and whatever James was, so was Jesus
.

List of Abbreviations

Acts Th
:
Acts  of Thomas

Ad Cor
:
Clement of Alexandria, Letter to the Corinthians

Ad Haer
:
Irenaeus,
Against Heresies

Ad Rom.
: :
Ignatius, Letter to the Romans

Adv. Hel
.:
Jerome,
Against Helvidius

Adv. Marcion
:
Tertullian,
Against Marcion

ANCL:
Anti–Nicene Christian Library (1867–71 edition)

Ant
.:
Josephus,
The Antiquities of the Jews

Apion
:
Josephus,
Against Apion
(
Contra Apion
)

1 Apoc. Jas.:
First Apocalypse of James

2 Apoc. Jas. :
Second Apocalypse  of James

A
poc. Pet.:
Apocalypse of Peter

Apost. Const.:
Apostolic Constitutions

APOT
:
Apocrypha and Pseudepigrapha of the Old Testament
(ed. R. H. Charles)

ARN
:
Abbot de Rabbi Nathan

As. Moses:
Assumption of Moses

b. Git.
:
Babylonian Talmud, Tractate
Gittin

b. San.
:
Babylonian Talmud, Tractate
Sanhedrin

b. Yoma
:
Babylonian Talmud, Tractate
Yoma

BAR
:
Biblical Archaeology Review

BASOR
:
Bulletin of the American Scholls of Oriental Research

CD
:
Cairo Damascus Document

Comm. on Gal.
:
Jerome, Commentary on Galatians

Comm. on John
:
Origen, Commentary of John

Comm.
in Matt
.
:
Origen, Commentary on Matthew

de Carne
:
Tertullian,
On the Body of Christ

de Mens.
et Pond
.
:
Epiphanius,
De Mensuris et Ponderibus

de Monog
.
:
Tertullian,
On Monogamy

de Verig.
vel
.
:
Tertullian,
On
the Veiling
of Virgins

Dial
.
:
Justin Martyr,
Dialogue with Trypho

DSSU
:
The Dead Sea Scrolls Uncovered
(ed. R. Eisenman and M.Wise)

EH
:
Eusebius,
Ecclesiastical History

Enarr. in Ps. 34:3
:
Augustine,
Discourses on the Psalms

Eph.
:
Ignatius, Letter to the Ephesians

Epist. Apost.
:
Epistle of the Apostles

Epist. B.
:
Epistle of Barnabas

Gen.
R
.
:
Genesis Rabbah

Gos.Th.
:
The Gospel of Thomas

Haeres.
:
Epiphanius,
Against Heresies
(
Panarion:The Medicine Box
in Latin)

H.N
.
:
Pliny,
Natural History

Haer
.
:
Tertullian,
Against Heretics

Hennecke
:
The New Testament Apocrypha
(ed. E. Hennecke and W. Schneemelcher)

Hipp.
:
Hippolytus,
Refutation of all Heresies

Hom.
in Luc
.
:
Origen,
Homilies on Luke

HUCA
:
Hebrew Union College Annual

JJHP
:
James the Just in the Habakkuk Pesher
(R. Eisenman)

j.Ta‘an
:
Jerusalem Talmud, Tractate 
Ta’anith

Lam.
R
.
:
Lamentations Rabbah

M.
San
.
:
Mishnah Sanhedrin

Mur.
:
Wadi Murabba‘at, Cave 1

MZCQ
:
Maccabees,
Zadokite,
Christians and Qumran
(R. Eisenman)

Opus imperf.
C.
Iul
:
Augustine,
Opus Imperfectum contra Secundum
Juliani

pars.
:
parallels

Protevang.
:
Protevangelium of James

Ps.
Hom
.
:
Pseudoclementine
Homilies

Ps. Philo
:
Pseudo Philo

Ps.
Rec
.
:
Pseudoclementine
Recognitions

Quod Omnis
:
Philo,
Every Good Man is Free

4QD
:
The Qumran Damascus Document (Cave 4)

1QH
:
The Qumran Hymns

1QM
:
The Qumran War Scroll

11QMelch
:
The Qumran Melchizedek Text

4QMMT
:
The Qumran Letter(s) on Works Reckoned as Righteousness from Qumran

1QpHab
:
The Qumran Habakkuk
Pesher

4QpIs
:
The Qumran Isaiah
Pesher

4QpNah
:
The Qumran Nahum
Pesher

4QpPs 37
:
The Qumran Commentary on Psalm 37

1QS
:
The Qumran Community Rule

11QT
:
The Qumran Temple Scroll

4QTest
:
The Qumran Testimonia

Suet.
:
Suetonius,
The Twelve
Caesars

Tos.
Kellim
:
Tosefta Kellim

Trall.
:
Ignatius, Letter to the Trallians

Vir.
ill.
:
Jerome,
Lives of Illustrious Men