James the Brother of Jesus and the Dead Sea Scrolls I (30 page)

Noah, of course, is also a very important figure in the Qumran literature as he is in all apocalyptic literature, apocryphal or sectarian. The Damascus Document, in introducing its view of pre-existence, fore-knowledge, and predestination, puts the proposition as follows:

He (God) knew their works before they were created and he hated their generations … And He knew the years of their
Standing
and the number and the meaning of their Eras for all Eternal being and existences, until that which would come in their Eras for all the years of Eternity. And in all of them He raised for Himself
men called by Name
that a remnant might survive in the Land and fill the face of the earth with their seed. And
He made known to them His Holy Spirit by the hand of His Messiah
, and He (it) is Truth, and
in the correct exposition of His Name, their names
(
are to be found
), and those whom He hates,
He leads astray
.

And now, my sons, listen to me and I will uncover your eyes that (you may) see and understand
the works of God
(‘he that has eyes let him see’ in Gospel formulation) in order to choose that which pleases (Him) and reject that which He hates, in order
to walk Perfectly in all His ways
… They were caught in them (the ‘nets’ or sins), because they did not keep the Commandments of God … All flesh on dry land perished; they were as though they had never been because they
did their own will
and did not
keep the Commandments of their Maker
.
8

There is so much in these lines that is relevant to a discussion of the differences between Paul and James, but for the purposes of economy, one should note the allusion to the ‘Holy Spirit’ being revealed ‘by the hand of His Messiah’ and the strong emphasis on both ‘keeping’ and ‘doing the Commandments’.

This is also strong in the Letter of James as it is in Qumran literature when it comes to defining what is meant by a true ‘
Son of Zadok
’. The definition of this term – aside from the more eschatological one that follows in the Damascus Document – provided by the Community Rule is: ‘the Keepers of the Covenant’ (
Shomrei ha–Brit
). This is the synonym for ‘
Nozrei ha–Brit
’ – again ‘the Keepers’ or ‘Observers of the Covenant’. In both contexts, ‘the
Nozrim
’ or the ‘Nazoraeans’ are ‘Keepers of the Covenant’, the exact oppposite of what we now after two millennia of Pauline dogma consider ‘Nazrenes’ or followers of Jesus
the Nazarean
to be.

All of this is very esoteric, but one thing the Damascus Document is doing in these introductory columns is describing just what a true ‘
Son of Zadok
’ is and what he is conceived of as
doing
. Therefore the Document is often referred to as ‘The Zadokite Document’ which, were it not for another of its esotericisms: ‘
the New Covenant in the Land of Damascus
’, might be a better name for it.

In the
Zohar
, where the passage from Proverbs about ‘
the Zaddik the Pillar of the World
’ is being analysed, Noah is described as acting as a true copy of the Heavenly Ideal – ‘
an embodiment of the world’s Covenant of Peace
’. Ben Sira vouchsafes this Noahic ‘Covenant of Peace’ to the archetypal embodiment of the ‘Zealot’ High Priest, Phineas, as well as to his descendants including the later ‘Sons of Zadok’.
9
Whatever one might think of the historical roots of the
Zohar
in thirteenth-century Spain, statements of this kind certainly are instructive and seem to hark back to an earlier time especially in the light of the Dead Sea Scrolls.

The significance of these words is amplified in the section called ‘
Phineas
’, towards the end of the
Zohar
, where its author shows familiarity with the ‘suffering
Zaddik
’ ideology: ‘When God desires to send healing to the Earth, He smites one Righteous One … with suffering … to make atonement … and sometimes all his days are passed in suffering to
Protect the People’
.
10
Statements like this have a peculiar prescience. ‘Protection of the People’, for instance, appears in the passages Eusebius cites from Hegesippus where James’ ‘
Zaddik
’ nature is being delineated.

1 Peter, for instance too, is very much concerned with the idea of ‘suffering for Righteousness’ sake’ (2:19–3:14). It also evokes ‘Noah and the Flood’ which it identifies with ‘being saved by water’ – imagery it will then use to propound the new ‘Christian’ version of the ideal of baptism (3:20–21). But this letter also knows the language of ‘
being foreknown before the Foundation of the world but manifested at the Last Times
’ (1:20), ‘
the Precious Cornerstone
’ (2:7), ‘the Name of Christ’ (4:19), ‘
making Perfect
’ (5:10), and the living stones being
built up into a spiritual House
–
a Holy Priesthood to offer
spiritual sacrifices pleasing to God
(2:5).

Like the ‘
suffering
Zaddik
’ idea in the
Zohar
above, this is paralleled almost word for word in the language of
spiritualized
‘
atonement
’
and
‘
Temple
’ applied to
the Council of the Community
in the Community Rule at Qumran. Finally, 1 Peter 5:8 talks about ‘
the Enemy
’ in terms of his ‘
swallowing up
’, language absolutely fundamental at Qumran and the description of the destruction of the Righteous Teacher there. Not only does mention of the ‘
Zaddik
’ ideal and Noah being an embodiment of ‘the world’s Covenant of Peace’ link up with ‘the Primal Adam’ or ‘Secret Man’ ideology in Ebionite tradition but, as these move West, they become fixed in the more Hellenistic notion of ‘the Christ’.

Abstention from Blood

In addition to explaining Noah’s ‘Perfection’ – as is so often the case,
in physical terms not spiritual ones
– Rabbinic Judaism also sets forth a general Covenant in his name, ‘the Noahic Covenant’. The ideology behind this Covenant is presented in various places in the
Talmud
, but its main thrust has to do with what is expected by God of all mankind, irrespective of national grouping; since, because of the Flood, Noah not Adam becomes the new father of mankind. Noah is presented, therefore, as setting forth the basic laws that all men are obliged to follow, even if they do not come under the Mosaic Covenant, which applied only to Jews – those born under this covenant.
11

Paul in his letters is very interested in the ramifications of such thinking, since he has turned to groups theoretically coming under what the Rabbis would refer to as ‘the Noahic Covenant’. Paul is anxious to emphasize that his communities should
not
come under the Mosaic Covenant, that, contrary to what seems to have been the position of the Jerusalem Leadership, they should not allow themselves
to be circumcised
; for then they would come under the terms of the Mosaic Covenant, in particular the Law – circumcision being the sign of the Covenant (Gal. 5:1–9). All this, no doubt, strikes the modern reader as somewhat arcane, but these were
real
issues and the real, burning and bitter arguments that were going on at the time.

In the Old Testament presentation, Noah and his family obviously could not have eaten meat, because if they had, there would have been
no
animals left to populate the earth. Again, it should be emphasized, these points may seem silly, but for those people – ancient and modern – who habitually confuse literature or story-telling with reality, these become the terms of the debate. At any rate, Noah concludes a compact of sorts with God. In this, God promises not to destroy the earth again – or as He puts it, ‘not to curse the earth again on account of man’ (Gen. 8:21). By the end of the second narrative of these events, this has been magnified into a ‘Covenant’. This is the ‘Covenant’ that Rabbis and others at the end of the Second Temple Period are so intent on explaining and giving substance to.

In the course of these matters, Noah makes a sacrifice from the clean animals and birds which propitiates God and he is allowed
to consume flesh
or
meat
. The only caveat that God makes is that mankind was ‘not to eat
the blood of flesh with life in it
’ (Gen. 9:4). Of course, Jews to this day have taken this as the scriptural warrant for a whole complex of legislation involving the killing, preparation, and eating of animal life, and, in particular, the abstention from
consuming blood
– the life of the slaughtered animal being considered to be in the blood and therefore not consumable. In Islam, the situation is more or less the same. In Christianity, following the dialectic of Paul in Romans and 1 Corinthians above, this concern has gone by the boards.

But this was
not
the case for early Christianity in Palestine. It was quite the opposite. All of this relates to the issue of ‘table fellowship with Gentiles’. The same is true in the Damascus Document concerning why the children of Israel were ‘cut off’ after the Mosaic period: ‘they ate
blood
… in the wilderness’ – ‘each man
doing
what was right in his own eyes’.
12
Whereas Paul will utilize this language of ‘cutting off ’ to make an obscene pun about cutting off one’s sexual parts in circumcision (Gal. 5:12), for the Damascus Document, Abraham and the other ‘Keepers of the Covenant’ are designated ‘Friends’ or ‘Beloved of God’. This is exactly the language the Letter of James uses, when arguing with its interlocutor – the man teaching that Abraham was rather ‘justified by his Faith’ not works (Gal. 3:6–29). Speaking to this Adversary, the Letter of James points out:

Don’t you realize you Empty Man
that
Faith without works
is useless. You surely know that Abraham our father
was justified by works
… You see that
Faith was working with works
and that
by works Faith was Perfected
. And the Scripture was fulfilled which says, ‘Now Abraham believed God and it was reckoned to him as Righteousness, and he was called
Friend of God
’. (Jas. 2:20–23)

This scriptural warrant from Genesis 15:6 is also a cornerstone of Paul’s famous discussions in Galatians 3:6 and Romans 4:3, but of course with exactly opposite intent.

This notion of ‘blood’ and consuming it, is, therefore, one that exercises those responsible for the literature at Qumran to no small degree. In other documents Qumran refers to how ‘
the Spouter of Lying led Many astray to build a Worthless City upon blood
’ and ‘
a City of Blood’
quite derogatorily.
13
We shall have occasion to connect allusions such as these with Paul’s innovative doctrine, ‘
Communion with the Blood of Christ’
and his reinterpretation of ‘
the New Covenant
’ in 1 Corinthians 10–11. Luke adds, as we saw, the slightly differing twist, ‘
This is the New Covenant in my blood which was poured out for you
’ (22:20).

Certainly ‘
pouring out
’ the blood was a fixture of Jewish ritual practice, as it has become to some extent for Muslims. Even in stories about Abraham’s sacrifice of Isaac, which James 2:21 evokes to support its position on Abraham ‘
being justified by works
’ (in Islam this becomes the sacrifice of Ishmael), there is no intimation that the consumption of his blood was permitted even symbolically. In this Noah episode in Genesis, as we saw, it is expressly forbidden: ‘You shall not eat the blood of flesh with life in it. I will demand an account of your lifeblood. I will demand an account from every beast and from man. I will demand an account of every man’s life from his fellow man’ (9:4–5).

When the Damascus Document ascribes the ‘
cutting off
’ of the Children of Israel ‘in the wilderness’ to the ‘
consumption of blood
’, the reference is to Numbers 11:31–32 and how the Children of Israel ate quail there. While neither the authors of Exodus 16:30 or Psalm 105:40 – which also refer to this episode – regard eating this quail in a negative manner, but rather an illustration of God’s solicitude for Israel, Numbers does. For its part, the Damascus Document is so incensed about ‘consuming blood’ that it deliberately highlights this episode, adding that they ‘
were led astray in these things
’ and ‘
complained against
the Commandments of God
’.