James the Brother of Jesus and the Dead Sea Scrolls I (32 page)

Josephus, true to his penchant for sexual innuendo, notes that Bernice was rumoured to have had an incestuous relationship with Agrippa II, her brother.
17
This is very much the picture that emerges too in Acts, where Bernice appears together with Agrippa II – seemingly as his consort – in amiable interviews with Paul (25:13–26:30). So does her sister Drusilla, whom Acts 24:24 has the temerity to identify only as ‘a Jewess’, even though by this time, after a number of sexual indiscretions, she had
deserted the Jewish religion altogether
– this Josephus specifically notes – and married Nero’s freedman, the infamous Governor Felix (52–60 CE).

Of course, all this will bear on the second theme in the ‘Three Nets of Belial’ in the Damascus Document and the Letter of James, ‘fornication’, which Paul, too, is anxious to paper over, despite his pro forma protestations to the contrary, since he himself has relations with clear fornicators – most notably these same Bernice, Agrippa II, Drusilla, and Felix. One could hardly imagine John the Baptist, who had but two decades before lost his head because of such confrontations, conversing so congenially with such persons, or James, for that matter, from what we know of his uncompromisingly continent life-style. As it is, Paul converses with them – there is no reason to contradict Acts’ picture at this point – with his usual congeniality or deference, even obsequiousness.

It is here Acts 24:6 acknowledges for the second time that the
actual charge
of ‘pollution of the Temple’ was being directed against Paul, then calling Drusilla ‘a Jewess’ without further explanation. But what kind of a Jewess could Drusilla have been? It was only her father’s grandmother Mariamme who was ‘native-born’, as Josephus puts it in the episode about Simon wishing to bar her father Agrippa I from the Temple, the rest of her ancestors being either Idumaean Arab or Greek. Acts does not explain how she merits the appellation, nor, what is even more important, that she was
an Herodian
.

As Luke presents it in Acts: after
often
conversing with the blood–thirsty Felix about ‘Righteousness’ and the coming ‘Judgement’ (24:22–26), Paul obsequiously asks Agrippa II and Bernice of all people, ‘King Agrippa, do you believe the Prophets? I know that you believe’ (26:27) and discoursing with them in detail about his vision on the road to Damascus and the Gentile Mission. Then Agrippa II responds: ‘In a little while you would persuade me to become a Christian.’ And Paul: ‘Not only in a little, but I would wish to God you and all those hearing me this day would very much become as I also am except for these bonds’ (26:28–29). At this point according to Acts, Agrippa II and Bernice turn aside to Festus (60–62 CE) and say more or less what Pontius Pilate and other Roman Governors are depicted as saying in the literature: ‘This man has done nothing deserving of death or chains’ (26:31).

Festus was Felix’s successor and it is upon his death that King Agrippa II and his High Priest Ananus get together
to destroy James
. As if to emphasize the parallel with what happened to Jesus, Acts has Agrippa add, ‘This man might have been let go if he had not appealed to Caesar’ (26:32). The scenario here of an intervening interview with high Herodians, combined with hearings before the Roman Governor, is exactly the same as the Gospel of Luke, who
also authored Acts
. As Acts develops the story, it is a good thing Paul was not let go, as ‘
the Jews
… were preparing an ambush to put him to death’ (25:2–3). Earlier, similar partisans or ‘
Sicarii
’/‘Zealots’ are pictured as having ‘made a plot, putting themselves
under a curse
and
vowing neither to eat or drink until they killed Paul
’ (23:12).

At this time Paul’s ‘sister’s son’, a person of some influence – though Acts interestingly declines to name either
him
or
his mother
– intervenes and informs the Roman Captain commanding the Citadel of these things.
18
  The latter, thereupon, provides Paul with a huge escort: 200 soldiers, 200 auxiliaries, and 70 cavalry, and conducts him to Caesarea on the coast (23:23). The gist of this Captain’s letter to Felix is revealing: ‘This man had been seized by the Jews and would have been put to death by them, but having come upon the scene with troops and learned that he was a Roman citizen, I rescued him’ (23:27–28).

In the run-up to the Uprising against Rome in the 60s, King Agrippa II and Bernice are finally barred from the Temple and for that matter
all
Jerusalem, even though his great-grandfather Herod and father King Agrippa I had been involved in rebuilding the Temple. In fact, this building had just been completed in time for its destruction by the Romans in 70 CE. Just prior to James’ death at the beginning of the decade, the same sort of ‘Zealots’ responsible for this had already
erected a wall to block Agrippa II’s view of the sacrifices
in the Inner Court of the Temple. It had been Agrippa’s habit to eat while reclining with his guests on a veranda of his palace which had a fine perspective of the sacrifices in the Temple.
19
It would have been interesting to know what kind of food he was eating and who his guests were on these occasions
.

These were the things – not to mention that ‘Zealot’ groups like the one led by Simon (the head of an ‘Assembly of his own’ in Jerusalem) would not even have considered him Jewish in the first place, to say nothing of the rumour of his incest with his sister Bernice – that led to their both being banned from Jerusalem by ‘
the Innovators
’ or ‘
Revolutionaries
’ and the burning of their palaces during the War.

Belial, Balaam, and Polluting the Temple

The extreme purity demanded by such Temple ‘Zealots’ throughout the Century is vividly presented in the Temple Scroll. Some call this document ‘a Second Law’, because it deals with much more than just ‘the Temple’ and was delivered in the first person as if God were speaking – presumably to Moses and the whole people. In the column about
the exclusion of certain classes of unclean persons from the Temple
(just preceding the one about the
inadmissibility of bringing ‘skins sacrificed to idols’ into the Temple
), a barrier of the kind erected against Agrippa II and his dining companions around 61 CE above is called for. This was to protect the Temple from
even being ‘seen’ by such persons
; and the reference is coupled with
the use of the terminology
‘
Bela‘
’ or ‘
balla‘
’/‘
to swallow
’.

Of course, this relates to the ‘
Belial
’ terminology at Qumran and the
B–L–‘
(‘
swallow
’/‘
consume
’)
circle-of-language which, more or less, functions in opposition to language with the
Z–D–K
root meaning of ‘
Righteousness
’. 1 Peter 5:9 knows this language, and uses the ‘Enemy’ terminology in speaking of the ‘
Diabolos
’ (‘
Belial
’ at Qumran), then connecting it with an allusion to ‘being swallowed up’. It is also connected to allusions in the New Testament like ‘
Balaam
’. Not only is ‘
Balaam the son of Be‘or
’ referred to in 2 Peter 2:15 and Jude 1:11; but Revelation 2:14, in the context of referring to ‘
the Diabolos
’ (2:10) and ‘Satan’ (2:13), describes how ‘
Balaam taught Balak to cast
(
balein
)
a net before the sons of Israel to eat things sacrificed to idols and commit fornication
’. This is the ‘
Three Nets of Belial
’ language of the Damascus Document.

When the ‘Zealots’ or ‘
Sicarii
’ finally did seize control of the Temple Mount in the aftermath of all these demands as the Uprising turned more extremist and moved into its ‘Jacobin’ phase, the first thing they did was to burn the debt records ‘to cause a rising of the Poor against the Rich’.
20
They also burned the Herodian palaces, including both Bernice’s and that of her brother Agrippa II, presumably the one in which he had reclined and viewed the Temple sacrifices while eating. Later, they also burned all the palaces of the High Priests appointed by Herodians, all of whom appear finally to have been slaughtered, including James’ nemesis Ananus.

In fact, the issue we have been discussing here was the crux of the issue chosen by the lower priests when they stopped sacrifice on behalf of foreigners, including the Emperor, and rejected their gifts in the Temple. This rejection was contrary to the practice and point of view of the reigning Herodian High Priests responsible for the death of people like James. The rejection of these gifts and sacrifices was the issue on which the lower priests (called by some ‘Levites’) chose to take their stand
three and a half years after the death of James
.

The carnage that ensued – including the butchering of most or almost all of the High Priests and the burning of their palaces and those of the Herodians – culminated in the election, as we have mentioned, of the simple ‘Stone-cutter’ Phineas. As opposed to this, the highly Paulinized 1 Peter, however retrospectively, presents the following recommendation:

For the sake of the Lord, accept the authority of every social institution,
the Emperor as the Supreme Authority
and
the Governors as commissioned by him to punish criminals
, and praise good behaviour. God wants you to behave well, so …
fear God
(here is the ‘
God-fearing
’ terminology)and
honour the Emperor
(2:13; cf. Paul in Romans 13:1–8 which uses the ‘all Righteousness’ Commandment of James’ ‘Royal Law according to the Scripture’ to the same effect).

At this time, right before the Uprising, the lower priests or Levites won the right to wear
the white linen of the High Priests
.
21
Acts is very interested in ‘the number of priests’ who are joining the new Movement. As it avers in the preamble to the stoning of Stephen: ‘And the word of God increased. And the number of the Disciples in Jerusalem multiplied exceedingly, and
a great multitude of the Priests
were obedient to the Faith’ (6:7). In the same vein, later on, Acts 21:20 characterizes the majority of James’ followers as ‘
Zealots for the Law
’, a priestly notation, as we have seen, going back both to Maccabean High Priestly claims and the zeal of Phineas by virtue of which they were said to have won their High Priestly office in perpetuity. To put this into a proper context, these same early Church descriptions of James that we are considering here, as we have as well, not only insist that he wore the mitre of the High Priest, but also that he wore
white linen
. It is difficult to escape the impression that all these matters are connected in some manner, and that the Qumran documents, however one chooses to date them, are the key to unlocking these connections.

Noah’s and James’ Vegetarianism Re-evaluated

We now have the wherewithal to explain both the vegetarianism ascribed to Judas Maccabee in 2 Maccabees and to James in these various early Church accounts and its sophisticated reversal in Paul. Judas
goes out into the wilderness with nine other men and eats nothing but ‘wild plants to avoid contracting defilement’
. John the Baptist – also designated ‘
a Righteous One
’ in both Josephus and the Gospels – does so as well. James, too, because he was ‘
Holy
’ or ‘
consecrated from his mother’s womb
’ – and also presumably because he was ‘
a Zaddik
’, is pictured as
abstaining from animal food as well
.

Where eating only vegetable fare is concerned, one can conceive of a scenario based on this Noahic ideology, where because the sacrifice in the Temple was interrupted or performed improperly by impure men having no claim to Righteousness and, as a consequence, ‘polluted’, the ‘Noahic’ permission to eat meat was considered to be withdrawn or no longer in effect by these desert sojourners mindful of the
extreme purity demands of Perfect Righteousness
. This goes back to the salvationary experience of the first
Zaddik
, Noah. He was not permitted to eat meat all the days of the Flood until he gained dry land and made a proper sacrifice. But he was to pour away the blood and not eat the flesh with blood in it, because ‘the life’ of the animal was in the blood. Only then was he permitted to resume eating animal life. To some, however, this permission might have appeared dependent on a proper sacrifice made by
Righteous Priests in the Temple
. Judas Maccabee was probably not a vegetarian while the Temple was properly functioning, but became one when it was considered defiled or the sacrifice was interrupted.

Often James’ vegetarianism and the peculiar dietary habits of many of these charismatic ‘Revolutionaries’ or ‘Innovators’ is taken for some kind of asceticism. From what we are seeing here, this is not the case. It has to do with the demands of
all Righteousness and Perfect Holiness
. Just as those following
the regime of ‘Righteousness towards one’s fellow man’ and ‘Perfecting the Way’
developed an extreme poverty regime, because to make economic distinctions between oneself and one’s neighbour would not be
Righteous
; so too, those following the extreme purity commandments had some question about the permissibility of eating meat.