James the Brother of Jesus and the Dead Sea Scrolls I (28 page)

In another episode in Acts, ‘Paul had his head shaved’ because of a
vow he took
(18:18). ‘Shaving the head’ occurs upon completion of the oath or vow period, usually seven days, and is a very important aspect of temporary Nazirite-oath procedures, just as letting ‘no razor come near one’s head’ is of life-long Naziritism predicated of James and other ‘Rechabite’ types. Here in Acts, James has put a penance on Paul to show that he himself still ‘walks orderly
keeping the Law
and there is no truth to the rumours circulating’ about him (21:24). But, of course, there
is
truth to these rumours concerning Paul’s regular observance of the Law – which in Galatians 3:10–13 he describes as ‘a curse’.

Be this as it may, Paul pays for the expenses of ‘the four who had taken
a vow
upon themselves’. According to James’ express instructions, this should have included ‘shaving their heads’, but it is not clear whether Paul actually does this as these procedures are interrupted by a riot precipitated by Jews from Asia, who see him in the Temple (21:26–27). We can now see that temporary ‘Nazirite’ activity of this kind clearly also had significance for James’ Jerusalem Community or Assembly, at least as portrayed in Acts, and the name often accorded them, ‘Nazoraeans’, playing on this and no doubt other characteristics, was probably not simply an accidental one.

Where the city ‘Nazareth’ is concerned, we have already noted that Josephus never mentions it in any of his works, which are
very
detailed. Nor is it listed in any biblical setting previously. In Jesus’ case,
Nazoraean
and
Galilean
would both appear to be esotericisms referring to the ‘Messianic’ or ‘Zealot Movement’. ‘Nazareth’, if it existed at all, may have been a little village not far from Sepphoris. On the other hand, ‘Nazareth’ may have sprung into life to meet a later need. Where Judas ‘the Galilean’ is concerned, Sepphoris also has special significance, because Josephus describes how his followers broke into the armoury there to arm themselves. Prior to this, Josephus describes the end of a rabbi or teacher (the term he actually uses is ‘
sophist
’), whom he characterizes as ‘expert in the Laws of their country’, someone he calls ‘
Judas the son of Sepphoraeus
’.
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This clearly relates to the place name ‘
Sepphoris
’ in the same way that ‘Nazareth’ is supposed to relate to Jesus.

Nazara and Cochaba: the ‘Branch’ and the ‘Star’ Prophecies

Likewise, Christians of all ages have generally thought Jesus ‘
the Nazrene
’ denoted a geographical notation, missing the ideological implications of the terminology. Actually, Julius Africanus (170–245 CE) also refers to two villages associated with the members of Jesus’ family – the group known as ‘the
Desposyni
’ in early Christian tradition.
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These he locates in Judea and calls ‘
Nazara and Cochaba
’. He says the relatives and descendants of Jesus and his brothers inhabited these cities and came from there. But no such cities can be identified in Judea of this period. Epiphanius places Cochaba in Syria in the region of Damascus. Julius Africanus, however, may have in mind what Matthew 19:1/Mark 10:1 call ‘the coasts of Judea on the other side of the Jordan’, which dovetails nicely with all these notices about activity across Jordan and in the so-called ‘Damascus’ region.
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Both names have Messianic overtones. ‘
Nazara
’ relates to either ‘the Branch’ or the ‘
Nazirite
’ terminology; ‘
Cochaba
’ is based on the Hebrew word for star, from which another Messianic Revolutionary in the second century, ‘
Bar Kochba
’, derives his name, even though he seems to have come from another town in these areas, ‘
Chozeba
’.

We have already mentioned ‘the Star Prophecy’, quoted three times in very important contexts in the Damascus Document, the War Scroll, and in the collection of Messianic proof-texts known as the Messianic
Testimonia
.
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It is based on Numbers 24:17: ‘a Star will rise from Jacob, a Sceptre to rule the world’. For this reason, together with ‘the
Shiloh
Prophecy’ about ‘the Sceptre’, to whom ‘the Peoples would gather’, and ‘the Staff’ (Gen. 49:10), it was called the ‘World Ruler Prophecy’.

If any prophecy shows the power of oracles or fortune-telling in human history and on the human mind, it is the Star Prophecy. It is interesting because it is not even associated with a Jewish prophet, but rather a Gentile one, ‘Balaam’. Allusions to ‘Balaam’, seen as one of the archetypal ‘Enemies’ in the
Talmud
, will occur repeatedly in our texts, as will wordplay related to the archetypal adversary ‘Belial’ and its underlying meaning in Hebrew, ‘
balla‘-‘Am
’, ‘
swallowing
’ or ‘
consuming the People
’.
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Josephus understands that the Star Prophecy was the moving force behind the Uprising against Rome in 66–70. This prophecy was pivotal in showing that the Uprising against Rome was not simply a political or anti–colonial one – the manner in which it is normally portrayed – but rather
Messianic
and/or religious. Josephus subverted the revolutionary thrust of this prophecy by applying it to the Roman Emperor-to-be Vespasian. For services rendered Josephus was adopted into the Roman Imperial family itself. The service that Josephus rendered these patrons was to deflect the force of this prophecy from unknown, charismatic insurgent leaders to the events culminating in the rise of the Roman Emperor Vespasian, the progenitor of ‘the House of the Flavians’. Rabbinic Judaism, true to its Pharisaic roots, indulges in the same interpretation as Josephus, applying the Prophecy – through the person of its founder Rabbi Yohanan ben Zacchai – also to the Roman Emperor-to-be Vespasian. Paul, of course, applies it to the Supernatural Redeemer figure he calls ‘the Christ’ or ‘Christ Jesus’, an individual he never met except through the visionary experiences he claims as his private ‘revelations’.

Echoes of this prophecy are found not only in ‘the Star’ over Bethlehem of the Gospel of Matthew (2:2–10) – where ‘seeing the Star, they rejoiced with overwhelming joy’ – but also in the name of the Jewish revolutionary hero of the next century, ‘Simon
Bar Kochba
’. Correspondence from this legendary hero has been found in caves in the Judean Desert. Here, his name is not Bar Kochba, ‘the Son of the Star’, but rather Bar Kosiba, demonstrating definitively that the title ‘
Kochba
’ was deliberately adopted and was not a family name. Talmudic writings, playing on the resonance of ‘
Choziba
’ with the Hebrew word for ‘
Lying
’/‘
Chazav
’, mock his claims to Messiah–hood, insisting rather that ‘a Liar has gone forth out of Israel’.
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Not only does this last, once again, vividly confirm the anti–Messianic orientation of the Rabbis, it comprises a pointed parallel to the way Qumran is applying this same ‘Liar’ terminology to an adversary of the Righteous Teacher – one who has so many similarities to Paul.

For Suetonius, Tacitus, and Roman historians thereafter, basing themselves on Josephus, this ‘World Ruler Prophecy’ is the foundation of the Uprising against Rome, that is, the Jews were led astray by an ‘ambiguous oracle’ from their ancient literature – capable of manifold interpretation – that ‘a World Ruler would come out of Palestine’.
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They were mistaken in this as Josephus is, also, anxious to point out.

This is the position of Rabbinic Judaism as well following the Pharisaic point-of-view. Of course, the position of Qumran is
directly
the opposite. There is no mistaking this which is why, presumably, these documents ended up abandoned in caves along the Dead Sea shoreline. No one lived to come back and retrieve them. This was the price paid for an alternative interpretation of this Prophecy – the apocalyptic one of the War Scroll recapitulated, too, in James’ proclamation of ‘the Son of Man sitting on the right hand of the Great Power and about to come on the clouds of Heaven’ in the Temple on Passover, 62 CE.

Paul takes the safe side of things applying the ‘World Ruler’ Prophecy to the other-worldly Redeemer figure he calls ‘the Christ’. He was not in too much jeopardy with such an interpretation and, not surprisingly, his is the interpretation that has survived – or at least enjoyed the greatest vogue – for the last nineteen hundred years.

James’ Naziritism versus Paul’s

This is how important these matters are. Plus, they are intertwined with other complexities. For Eusebius, Epiphanius, and Jerome, James is a lifelong Nazirite. He was also a vegetarian. As Eusebius puts it, quoting Hegesippus: ‘He drank no wine or strong drink, nor did he eat meat. No razor came near his head, nor did he anoint himself with oil, and he did not go to the baths’. Whatever one makes of this testimony, it certainly is that of ‘a Nazirite’, one either ‘separated’ or ‘consecrated’, ‘Holy from his mother’s womb’.

In fact, it is more. The elements of ‘not anointing himself with oil’, ‘not going to the baths’, and ‘not eating meat’, that is, being a vegetarian, are additional to what was normally understood as Naziritism or even, for that matter, Rechabitism. Epiphanius will add the note of
abstention from sexual activity
– ‘life-long virginity’ as he puts it. All of these writers will add the element of ‘not wearing wool, but only linen’, which will have much to do with James’ role in the Jerusalem of his day and his functioning as a
priest
, or the ‘Opposition High Priest’.

All of these traits would appear to have to do with how James was ‘consecrated’ or ‘Holy from his mother’s womb’ or his ‘very great Holiness’. It is a not incurious parallel that Paul, in airing his differences with James in Galatians 2 or at least representatives ‘from James’, insists that God ‘separated’ or rather ‘chose’ him
from his
‘
mother’s womb
’. The ‘some from James’ materialize in Acts or Paul’s letters, where ‘some’ come down to ‘trouble’ Paul’s communities, most notably by insisting on circumcision and keeping the regime of extreme purity that would make ‘table fellowship’ or ‘eating with Gentiles’ – and thus the whole Gentile Mission – impossible.

Paul speaks about this kind of ‘
Nazirite from the womb
’ or ‘
consecration
’ in the context of speaking about how God ‘chose’ him and ‘revealed His son in (him)’, how the Gospel, as he taught it ‘among the Gentiles’, was the result of a direct ‘revelation of Jesus Christ’ (Gal. 1:15–16), and how if anyone preached a Gospel contrary to the one he has preached – ‘even an Angel in Heaven’ – ‘he is to be accursed’, this in the same breath as affirming his ‘zeal for the Traditions of (his) Fathers’ (1:6–14).

Paul makes this astonishing claim as well as others about ‘not Lying’ or ‘seeking to please men’ amid reference to ‘Damascus’ and ‘Arabia’. One can only assume that Paul knows well the parallel claims circulating around the person of James and chooses to emphasize his own importance by making such claims for himself. Obviously, these were made with much less justification. However, where ‘brazen speaking’ is concerned, as Paul himself triumphantly avers, he is nothing loath.
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Chapter 11

James’ Vegetarianism, Abstention
From Blood, and Consuming No Wine

‘Loving God’, ‘Things Sacrificed to Idols’, and James’ Vegetarianism

James’ Naziritism or ‘Holiness from his mother’s womb’ is not the only claim reversed in Paul’s discussions. Whereas James clearly is said to abstain from eating meat, Paul emphasizes its consumption as in 1 Corinthians 10:25: ‘Eat everything that is sold in the marketplace. There is no need to raise questions of conscience’. Paul expresses this position in chapters 6–10 of 1 Corinthians, where he is discussing one of the categories of James’ directives to overseas communities, the prohibition on ‘things sacrificed to idols’ (1 Cor. 8:1, 8:10, and 10:28). The basic answer Paul gives to
all
James’ directives is, ‘all things are Lawful for me’ (1 Cor. 6:12 and 10:23) even though ‘not all things profit’ or, as he puts it in 1 Corinthians 8:1, ‘build up’.

The ‘building’ language is fundamental to Paul’s view of himself as the ‘architect’ or ‘builder’ of a Community (3:9–14). It fixes the context of the contrary kind of aspersion, as for instance, in the Habakkuk
Pesher
on the Adversary of the Righteous Teacher it calls ‘the Spouter of Lying, who
led Many astray
by
building a worthless city on blood
and
erecting an Assembly on Lying
’.
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So incensed does Paul become with these adversaries, after terming persons who worry over ‘reclining in an idol Temple’ or ‘eating things sacrificed to idols’, ‘weak’ in 1 Corinthians 8:10, that he blurts out: ‘So if meat causes offence to a brother, I shall never eat flesh again forever, so as not to offend (literally ‘scandalize’) my brother’ (8:13). This is the same theme he was addressing in 1 Cor. 6:11–13, amid reference to ‘being washed’, ‘justified’, and ‘made Holy’, before he turned to ‘fornication’ and ‘being
joined
to a prostitute’s body’ in 6:16. It culminated in the allusion to ‘meats are for the belly and the belly for meats’ and his oblique reference to ‘the toilet drain’.