James the Brother of Jesus and the Dead Sea Scrolls I (39 page)

Not surprisingly, considerable attention is paid to both Phineas and Elijah as priests. The latter is praised for his ‘word’, called ‘a flaming torch’, and his ‘zeal’. Phineas, described as ‘third in Glory’ (after Aaron and Eleazar), is likewise praised for ‘his zeal’ and ‘being steadfast when the people rebelled’ – words reminiscent of the Damascus Document.
12
He is also extolled for the atonement he made on behalf of Israel, as a result of which the Noahic ‘
Covenant of Peace
’ was sealed with him and his descendants securing for them ‘the Command of both Temple and the people … and the High Priesthood in perpetuity’ (45:23–24).

Not only was Simeon the
Zaddik
descended from an Onias, but he was the father of an Onias, the names ‘Simon’ and ‘Onias’ seeming to alternate in his genealogical line.
Simeon’s son Onias is an important character in 2 Maccabees, and he would appear to have been the High Priest just prior to the outbreak of the Maccabean Uprising. His ‘Piety and Perfect observance of the Law’ are specifically remarked and 2 Maccabees goes on to describe him as ‘the Protector of his countrymen’ and ‘this Zealot for the Laws’ (3:1 and 4:2). The parallel at this point with James could not be more precise.

Onias’ martyrdom under Antiochus Epiphanes (175–163 BCE), the Eleventh Horn ‘with a mouth full of boasts’ of Daniel 7:8, triggers the Uprising led by Judas. Together with the Prophet Jeremiah, this Onias makes a post-mortem return at the end of the narrative to give the Messianic sword of vengeance to Judas, presumably in confirmation of both his High Priestly and avenging activities (15:26). There is, therefore, in the view of 2 Maccabees, no interruption between the High Priesthood of Onias and that of Judas Maccabee. Nor does Judas’ father, Mattathias, play any role as he does in 1 Maccabees – Judas is simply the
direct
heir to the saintly Onias. Not only does Onias appear to be surnamed, like his father, ‘the
Zaddik
’, but the description, ‘Protector of his fellow countrymen’, applied to him in connection with evocation of his ‘zeal for the Law’ – not to mention his martyrdom – prefigures the application of this ‘
Oblias
’ terminology to James two centuries later in these early Church accounts, the resonance of this epithet with the name ‘Onias’ also being curious.

Another ‘Onias the
Zaddik
’ in the next century, ‘Honi
the Circle-Drawer
’, also prefigures James in at least two respects – in the application of the cognomen ‘the Righteous One’ to his name, and that he is described as being able
to bring rain
. And like James, he suffers martrydom and this by stoning.
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Though possibly casual, these connections seem too real to be simple coincidence.

In Talmudic tradition, Honi is the father of another individual called ‘Righteous’ with a curious sobriquet, ‘Hanan
the Hidden
’. Not only does he also appear to have been
a rainmaker
, but identical with John the Baptist, the name ‘Hanan’ in Hebrew coming from Johanan (John), ‘God comforts’. The
Talmud
calls Hanan (sometimes ‘Hanin’) the son of a daughter of Honi and, in its own picaresque style, says he was called ‘Hidden because he liked to
hide himself in the toilet
’, reminiscent of its ‘toilet’ traditions regarding ‘Jesus the Nazoraean’, James, and ‘the Essenes’.
14

Actually this ‘Hidden’ tradition is probably to be associated with the ‘Hidden’ or ‘Secret Adam’ tradition, which ultimately goes into what Shi‘ite Islam is calling to this day ‘the Hidden
Imam
’. As such, it carries a
redivivus
aspect. In the
Zohar
, the first
Zaddik
Noah, who ‘sought Righteousness’, is twice referred to as ‘
hiding
himself’ or ‘
being hidden
in the Ark on the Day of the Lord’s Wrath to escape the Enemy’.
15
The allusion to ‘the Enemy’ in this context, applied in Jewish Christian/Ebionite tradition to James’ assailant,
Paul
, is always interesting.

In the
Talmud
, there is also a ‘Rip van Winkle’ tradition associated with this Honi, which carries with it the implication of a
redivivus
tradition like the one associated with Elijah and John in the Synoptics. Honi is said to have fallen asleep under
a carob tree
, only to awake seventy years later, when his grandson was still alive and the tree bore fruit! We have already seen how in some traditions ‘carobs’ were said to have been the true composition of
John’s
food.
16

Finally, the
Talmud
knows another rainmaking grandson of Honi it calls ‘Abba Hilkiah’, contemporary with James. The rainmaking tradition adhering to all these priestly
Zaddik
s
was obviously an important one, and not unconnected with the ‘
Oblias
’ or ‘Bulwark’ tradition adhering to James’ person.

This ‘rain’ often carried with it the connotation of eschatological Judgement. In the War Scroll, this ‘Judgement’ is associated with the coming of the Messianic ‘King of Glory’ and Heavenly Host (‘
upon the clouds
’) and it ‘
falls like rain on all that grows on Earth
’, meaning, as in Matthew 5:45 in ‘the Sermon on the Mount’, ‘
sending rain on the Just and Unjust
’ alike. This is the sense, too, of ‘the Flood’ associated with the
saving
actions of the first
Zaddik
Noah. This association of the ‘coming of the Son of Man’ with ‘the days of Noah’ and ‘entering the ark’ is expressly drawn later in Matthew’s Little Apocalypse (24:37–39; also Lk 17:26–27); and, in
Ben Sira
’s praise of former ‘Men of Piety’, even Ezekiel’s ‘
Vision of the Glory of the Chariot
’ is linked to ‘
torrential rain
’ and apocalyptic Judgement (
Ben Sira
49:8–10 based on Ezekiel 13:11–13 – ‘
the Lying Spouter
’ section as found in Ezekiel and so important to Qumran – and 38:22).
17

Phineas too, the archetypal progenitor of ‘
priestly zeal
’, was considered one of these rain-makers. Since this was a
redivivus
tradition as well, it seems to be a part of the ‘
Primal Adam
’ tradition too – a conceptuality hinted at in Ben Sira 49:19 introducing Simon the
Zaddik
– that ‘
above every living creature is Adam
’.

Elijah’s miraculous rain-making, hinted at in
Ben Sira
48:3, is also signaled in the last Chapter of the Letter of James in the context of apocalyptic Judgement, ‘
rain
’, and ‘
the coming of the Lord’/‘the Lord of Hosts … with Power
’, as it is in ‘
the prayer of a Righteous One
’ which brings the ‘
rain
’ (5:4–18). This evocation of Elijah’s prayer and rain-making, in fact, directly connects to the picture of James’ rain-making in the extant account of Epiphanius.

Epiphanius makes this claim in the aftermath of his description of James’ ‘
Naziritism
’ and how he never cut his hair, wore only linen, and was connected to the Priesthood, entering the Holy of Holies once a year to ‘
ask forgiveness before God out of his super-abundant
Piety
’. He then informs us: ‘
And once during a drought
(c. 45 CE?),
he lifted his hands to Heaven and prayed, and at once Heaven sent rain … Thus, they no longer called him by his name, but his name was, rather, “the Just One”
’.
18
This association of ‘
the Just One
’ with rain-making is extremely important. For the Letter of James, so efficacious was this ‘prayer of the Just One’ that Elijah, who in 1 Kings 20:10–14 is not simply ‘
zealous
’, but ‘
exceedingly zealous
for the Lord’, could both ‘
pray a prayer’ for the rain to come, but also for it to cease
(Jas. 5:18).

Honi, whom Josephus calls ‘
Onias the Just One
’, received his other sobriquet, ‘
the Circle-Drawer’
, on account of the
circles he drew to bring the rain
, out of which he would not step until it came. We hear about similar circles being drawn by Josephus’ and Hippolytus’ ‘Essenes’, who in their observation of the Sabbath would not step out of a certain radius even to relieve themselves – this, of course, the parody in the Rabbinic tradition about Hanan
the Hidden
‘
hiding himself in the toilet
’! Not only is Qumran concerned with such scrupulous purity, specifying the exact location of the latrines from ‘the camp’,
19
but we have also seen the caricature of such concerns in the somewhat ribald Rabbinic tradition about Jacob of Kfar Sechania (or Sihnin) and Jesus the Nazoraean’s recommendation to the High Priests about their toilets and ‘a prostitute’s hire’.

But the connections go deeper than this. If Honi is the father of Hanan the Hidden, and Hanan equivalent to John the Baptist, then James is probably a descendant of Honi. Again, the Rabbinic notices about ‘
the sons’ or ‘daughters of the Rechabites’ marrying ‘the sons’ or ‘daughters of the High Priests’
give us additional basis for understanding relationships such as these. In particular, the Gospel of Luke portrays Jesus as related to John the Baptist and, specifically, that their mothers, who were ‘
the daughters of Priests
’, were cousins (1:36). Setting aside theological concerns about the bona fides of James’ relationship to Jesus – or, for that matter, the historicity of ‘Jesus’ himself – if we accept the materials before us at face value, this would place James the Righteous and Josephus’ ‘Onias the Righteous’ (the
Talmud
’s ‘Honi the Circle-Drawer’) in a direct genealogical – to say nothing of an ideological – line.

Epiphanius, charming as ever, but also sometimes incisive, puts this proposition as follows. Following his points about ‘no razor ever touching’ James’ head, etc., he insists that James

wore
no second tunic
, but used only a linen cloak, as it says in the Gospel, ‘The young man fled, leaving behind the linen cloth which he had around him’ (Mark 14:51 – this the ‘bathing’ clothing of the ‘Essenes’). For it was John and James and James, these three, who practised this way of life: the two sons of Zebedee and James the son of Joseph and brother of the Lord …
But to James alone, it was allowed to enter once a year into the Holy of Holies
,
because he was a Nazirite
and
connected to the Priesthood
. Hence Mary was related in two ways to Elizabeth and James was a distinguished member of the Priesthood, because the two tribes alone were linked to one another, the royal tribe to the priestly and the priestly to the royal, just as earlier in the time of the Exodus, Nahshon, the scion from the tribe of Judah, took to wife a previous Elizabeth daughter of Aaron (Ex 6:23).
20

Aside from the overlapping between the two Jameses and a certain amount of garbling, this is extremely incisive testimony and parallels the Talmudic traditions about ‘the sons of the Rechabites marrying the daughters of the High Priests’ or vice versa. Not only do we have a certain resonance of the name ‘
Nahshon
’ with Hippolytus’ ‘
Naassenes
’, but Exodus has Elizabeth as
Aaron’s wife
and
Nahshon’s sister
, not
Nahshon’s wife
and
Aaron’s daughter
, reflecting these reversals concerning ‘sons’ or ‘daughters’ of the High Priests in Talmudic traditions about these Rechabites.

Elsewhere Epiphanius sets forth the proposition that Alexander Jannaeus – the most powerful of the previous Maccabean Priest-Kings – prefigured the combination of priestly and royal lineages one finds in James and Jesus.
21
The same combination of lineage in the Damascus Document (a ‘Messiah from Aaron and Israel’) has always puzzled commentators, but we see in these references about James’ lineage in Epiphanius a parallel ideology in formation.

The story of John’s birth in Luke, and the consanguinity of Elizabeth and Jesus’ mother Mary signaled there, also bears the seeds of this kind of dual royal and priestly genealogy. That the zealous Maccabean Priest-Kings, the forerunners of these kinds of heroes, incorporate the same combination of priestly and royal offices points to the closeness of these kinds of conceptions.

From the early Christian perspective, the whole presentation of Jesus as ‘a (High) Priest forever after the order of Melchizedek’ – a concept also seemingly in vogue among the Maccabeans – is set forth in a letter addressed, interestingly enough, ‘to the Hebrews’ in Rome (Heb 7:16–26). Though the authorship of this letter is disputed, there can be no disputing the concept that Epiphanius is drawing on to arrive at his conclusions. The same ideology is to be found in the Qumran materials, even the ideological interest in Melchizedek.
This, in turn, supports the interpretation of the Qumran documents we have been attempting to delineate, that the Maccabean and early Christian approaches flow into each other, and the Qumran documents do not differ appreciably from either.