James the Brother of Jesus and the Dead Sea Scrolls I (38 page)

But what is the meaning of this ‘
Wall
’ or ‘
Fortification
’ language connected with James’ second cognomen ‘
Oblias
’? How is it to ‘
be found in Scripture
’ as Eusebius reports? This is an intriguing question.

There are several possibilities. First, it should be appreciated that this
Protection
,
Fortress
, or
Bulwark
language is of the same genre and sense as the
Pillar
language Paul has already applied to James, Cephas, and John (Galatians 2:9). But there are other words in Hebrew, also synonyms, which come close to the sense of this usage. These, found in Psalms and Prophets and reflected to some extent in the New Testament, are also in use in both the Community Rule and the Qumran Hymns.

Fortress
,
Rock
,
Bulwark
, and
Cornerstone
Imagery at Qumran

In the Hymns Scroll found at Qumran, we find much of the imagery that we have already encountered in these passages describing James in early Church Literature. These should, perhaps, not be called ‘Hymns’, which is a little misleading. It implies a parallel with the Psalms in the Bible, but this document, found in the first cave discovered at Qumran in 1947, also tells something of a story. Written in the first person, it relates some of the experiences of its narrator, who appears to be a real person.

He repeatedly refers to himself as ‘
the Poor One
’ or ‘
Ebion
’ – familiar terminology where James’ followers are in question – as well as what he repeatedly calls ‘
the soul of the Poor One
’, apparently meaning, as in the biblical Psalms, his quick or ‘life’.
3
In a key allusion in the Damascus Document, for instance, we hear of an attack or ‘
pursuit with the sword
’, apparently led by the Liar, on ‘
the soul of the Righteous One
(
Zaddik
)
and all the Walkers in Perfection
’, which parallels the sense of ‘the Soul of the Poor One’ here in Hymns.
4

In addition, Hymns repeatedly refers to ‘Righteous works’, ‘Perfection’, ‘the Way’, ‘Piety’ – even ‘the Poor Ones of Piety’ (
Ebionei-Hesed
) – ‘zeal for Righteousness’, ‘zeal’ against ‘the Seekers after Smooth Things’, and ‘zeal’ against all ‘Lying interpretations’.
5
There is also a distinct note of predetermination and foreknowledge not very different from Paul in Romans 8:28–9:11, also discussing ‘
loving God
’ (
Piety
), ‘
separating
’, and ‘
telling the Truth
’ and ‘
not Lying
’, or the famous prologue to the Gospel of John – not to mention the same intense interest in ‘Light’ one finds there. The author of the Hymns writes: ‘
You alone created the Righteous One, establishing him from the womb
’. Nothing could better give the sense of early Church testimonies to James being ‘
consecrated
’ or ‘
a Nazirite from his mother’s womb
’ than these passages.

But our text goes further, using the language of ‘
Strength
’, ‘
Fortress
’, and ‘
Protection
’ we have been encountering with regard to James and ‘Peter’. We are even treated to ‘
Rock
’ imagery so familiar in Peter’s very name, which is, indeed, parallel to the kinds of allusions we are encountering regarding James and now in these Hymns relating to their author. As these Hymns from Qumran put it in two succeeding sections (and, in one way or another, throughout):

But I will be as one who comes to a Fortified City and strengthened behind a Strong Wall until rescued, and … I will depend on You, my God, for You put (the)
Foundation on Rock
and … build
a Bulwark of Strength
, which shall not sway, and … its
Gates shall be Doors of Protection
, barring entrance with bars of Strength which cannot be broken.
6

For You have upheld me by Your Strength, You have
poured your Holy Spirit upon me
… and Strengthened me before the wars of Evil … You have made me like
a Fortress of Strength, like a Strong Wall, and established my Building upon Rock
and my Foundations are like Eternal Foundations … and all my Ramparts are like Fortified Walls, which do not sway on their Foundations.
7

One immediately sees that this imagery is the same as that being applied to James in early Church sources. In these Hymns we have the essence of what lies behind the peculiar epithet ‘
Oblias
’, which apparently carried the sense of ‘Protection’, ‘Shield’, or ‘Strong Wall’.

As we saw, the Hebrew
‘Oz
(‘Protection’, ‘Shield’) is closest to the ‘
Ob
’ of ‘
Oblias
’. This word ‘
‘Oz’
is often coupled in the Biblical Psalms with the phrase ‘to the people’. In Psalm 29, it is used on two occasions amid imagery important to Qumran. In the first instance, ‘give unto the Lord … Strength’ (29:1), it introduces allusion to the ‘voice of the Lord breaking the cedars of Lebanon’ (29:5) and ‘the voice of the Lord shaking the wilderness’ (29:8). Allusion to ‘Lebanon’ and ‘the cedars of Lebanon’ is important in many Qumran
pesharim
,
8
while ‘a reed shaking in the wilderness’ is just the allusion the New Testament uses in describing John the Baptist (Mt 11:7 and Lk 7:24). Finally the psalm concludes with the assurance that ‘the Lord will give
Strength to His people
’ (29:10–11).

In Psalm 61 the actual words from the Hymns Scroll are used, ‘a Fortress of Strength’, together with ‘Rock’ imagery (61:2–3), which fairly permeates the next Psalm. Psalm 62 not only includes three references to ‘Salvation’ – ‘
Yesha‘
’ or ‘
Yeshu‘a
’ (62:1–7) – but also allusion to ‘Piety’ (
Hesed
) and ‘paying a man according to his works’ (62:12). ‘
Strength
’ or ‘
‘Oz
’ is also used repeatedly in Psalm 68, preceding the thoroughly Messianic Psalm 69, in which two allusions familiar from Gospel presentations of Jesus are used, ‘zeal for (my Father’s) House consumes me’ (69:9) and ‘for my thirst, they gave me vinegar to drink’ (69:21), and over and over again the language of ‘the Righteous’, ‘swallowing’, ‘the Poor’, ‘the Meek’, and ‘Salvation’ occurs (69:15–33).

In Psalm 68, the phrases ‘Strength’, ‘
Strength to thePpeople
’, and even ‘His Strength is in the clouds’ (68:28 and 34) – again together with references to ‘Salvation’ (68:19) and ‘the Righteous Ones’ (68:3) – are actually used, finally in terms of ‘rain’ and ‘the coming of the Heavenly Host
in Power
upon the clouds’ (68:35). This last allusion, again incorporating the imagery of ‘Power’ and applied to the imminent return of Jesus in Scripture, will not only be at the heart of James’ Messianic proclamation in the Temple – which all these early Church sources will integrally tie to his demise – but the like-minded proclamation in the Qumran War Scroll as well, where, incorporating the imagery of Daniel too, the ‘Messiah’ is presented as coming with the Heavenly Horsemen or Heavenly Host upon the clouds, that is, ‘the clouds of Heaven’, and bringing Judgement ‘like rain’.
9

There is also one other important occurrence of this ‘Fortress’ imagery at Qumran, that of ‘the Precious Cornerstone’, meaning
the Cornerstone of the Temple
. This is found in a crucial passage in the Community Rule, where it is connected to the spiritual Temple. The last is described as an ‘Eternal Plantation’, language Paul reproduces in discussing how Apollos does the watering and himself as the architect who lays the Foundations of ‘God’s building’ (1 Cor. 3:6–12). This kind of ‘Foundations’ and ‘Cornerstone’ imagery is also present in Ephesians 2:19–22’s characterization of the Community as ‘the Holy Temple’ and ‘Household of God’. As Acts 4:11 puts this in Peter’s mouth, referring to Jesus (echoed in 1 Peter 2:7): ‘This is the Stone, which you the builders have set at naught, which has become the Head of the Corner’ (Psalm 118:22).

Amid allusion to ‘
being set apart as Holy
’ – our ‘
Nazirite
’ language again – and spiritualized ‘atonement’ imagery, the members of this Council are described as ‘a sweet fragrance’, ‘an odour of Righteousness’, ‘a House of Perfection and Truth for Israel’, and finally again, ‘a Fortified Wall, a Precious Cornerstone, whose Foundations will neither rock nor sway in their place’. All this is delivered within the context of the commandment, used in the New Testament to describe the mission of John the Baptist: ‘separate from the midst of the habitation of the Men of Unrighteousness and go into the wilderness, to prepare the Way of the Lord, as it is written, “Prepare in the wilderness the Way of (the Lord), make straight in the desert a Pathway for our God”’ (Isa. 40:3).
10

How could one get closer to the imagery of the first ‘Christians’ than this? It should be clear that this imagery in the Community Rule parallels what is being applied in these early Church testimonies to James, not only regarding the mysterious
Oblias
cognomen connected in some manner with his ‘
Zaddik
’ nature, but also the references to James providing ‘
Protection to the People
’ or being a ‘
Strong Bulwark
’ or ‘
Fortified Wall
’.

Onias the Righteous and Honi the Circle–Drawer

James has a relationship to an individual referred to in Talmudic literature as ‘Honi
the Circle-Drawer
’, another name for ‘Onias
the Righteous
’, that is, Onias the
Zaddik
. This ‘
Righteous One
’ terminology in this period is interesting. The first person referred to in this manner is an individual called Simeon
the Righteous
around 200 BCE or before. This individual turns out to be the hero, not only of Talmudic transmission scenarios, but an apocryphal biblical book, Ecclesiasticus – in Hebrew,
Ben Sira
, after the name of its putative author, Jesus ben Sira.

Ben Sira
was previously known only in Greek and allied recensions, though it was always suspected that a Hebrew original had existed. Such an original finally came to light in a huge cache of medieval Hebrew manuscripts found in a synagogue
Genizah
in old Cairo in 1896. Fragments of this Hebrew version of Ben Sira were then found not only among the Dead Sea Scrolls, but in the debris at Masada,
where the Jewish
‘
Sicarii
’
committed suicide
in the year 73 CE rather than submit to Rome.

What the relationship of
Ben Sira
is to Qumran is difficult to say, but it very likely centers about the ‘
Zaddik
’ cognomen attached to Simeon’s person in his capacity of High Priest in the era just prior to the Hellenizing ‘pollutions’ that led to the Maccabean Uprising. Not only does this prefigure the similar title attached to James’ name, but several other individuals, particularly someone in the next century known as ‘
Honi the Circle-Drawer
’ after
the circles he
drew to
bring rain
.

Ben Sira is the only biblical work signed with a date. It was written, presumably in Egypt, in 132 BCE by a grandson of the individual whose name it bears. Not only is ‘Simeon’ or ‘Simon’, with whom the famous panegyric to ‘Famous Men’ concludes, surnamed ‘the Righteous One’, he is pictured in his glorious High Priestly vestments, which ‘shone like the sun shining on the Temple’ (50:7), making a
Yom Kippur
atonement. The Hebrew version of this paean makes it clear we are dealing with ‘
Men of Piety
’ or
Hassidim
, not the
‘Famous Men
’ of Greek translation.

Ben Sira applies both the ‘
Sons of Zadok
’ terminology and ‘
the Covenant of Phineas
’ co-equally to the High Priesthood of Simeon the
Zaddik
and his descendants in perpetuity.
11
This paean to the ‘
Men of Piety
’ of preceding generations not only includes the Noahic ‘Covenant of Peace’, but begins in the Hebrew version with a reference to Noah also as ‘the Righteous’, ‘Perfect and Righteous in his generation’, with whom ‘Everlasting Covenants were made’ (44:17–19). It ends with a quotation from Psalm 148:14, again on behalf of Simeon the
Zaddik
: ‘He lifted up the horn for His people, the praise for all His Pious Ones’ (
Hassidim
– 51:15).