James the Brother of Jesus and the Dead Sea Scrolls I (41 page)

The Stoning of Honi the Circle-Drawer

Josephus recounts the episode of the stoning of Onias the Righteous, which prefigures the stoning of James, at a key juncture in the story of the loss of Jewish independence. It would perhaps be well to summarize to some extent events leading up to this.

After the Maccabean Uprising, from the 160s to the 140s BCE, the mantle of successor in the Jewish independence movement fell to Judas’ brother Simon’s heirs – Judas himself seemingly having no children. The first of these was John Hyrcanus (134–104 BCE), Judas’ nephew, who, Josephus claims, wore three mantles: ‘King, High Priest, and Prophet’ – giving examples of each.
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The next was Alexander Jannaeus (103–76 BCE) – also called ‘Jonathan’ – John’s third son, who married his brother’s wife, Salome Alexandra, after his brother was killed. Like John, he was having difficulties with the Parties, which seem to have been developing at this time, particularly the Pharisees. This is the first mention of ‘Pharisees’ who, for the most part,
opposed the Maccabees
. Despite their pretence of legal and religious scrupulousness, they always appeared to be willing to accommodate themselves to foreigners and accept foreign rule in Palestine, most notably High Priests receiving their appointment from foreigners just so long as these priests could come up with a satisfactory genealogy and the Pharisees were accorded the proper respect and kept their hands on true power. This is certainly the situation as it develops into the Herodian Period.

This Salome Alexandra and the elder of her two sons, Hyrcanus II (76–31 BCE) – who appear to be mentioned negatively in a calendrical Scroll from Qumran
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– were the sole Maccabeans that can safely be said to have been ‘Pharisees’. Indeed her uncle, one Simeon ben Shetach, was one of the conservators of Pharisaic tradition and an heir, according to Rabbinic tradition, of Simeon the
Zaddik
, leading some decades thereafter to the famous Pharisee pair Hillel and Shammai.
27

Her younger son, Aristobulus II (67–49 BCE), was more impulsive and of a different stripe altogether, resembling more his revolutionary great-uncle Judas, at least where the issues of national independence and zeal were concerned. When the crisis arrived, the people ultimately show what side they are on. This crisis arrives in the midst of the events recorded about Honi the Circle-Drawer, his rain-making, and his stoning by the Pharisaic partisans of Hyrcanus II. In Josephus the ‘rain-making’ as such is really accorded to the partisans of Aristobulus II.
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For lack of a better term, we have termed Aristobulus’ Party, ‘
Purist Sadducees
’, as opposed to a more compromising Sadducean strain in the Herodian Period. Thus, there are really
two
groups of ‘
Sadducees
’, one along with Pharisees and Herodians forming the Establishment in New Testament presentations. These are best termed ‘
Herodian Sadducees
’. Like the Pharisees, by whom Josephus says they were dominated, they are accommodating in the extreme. However, unlike the Pharisees, when the Temple is destroyed in 70 CE, they cease to exist, having completely lost their
raison d’être
.

The other ‘
Sadducees
’ – epitomized by Judas Maccabee, his father Mattathias, Alexander Jannaeus, and this Aristobulus II – are consistently more resistance-minded, xenophobic, non-accommodating, and ‘
zealous for the Law
’, no doubt following a more Phineas–minded approach to Ezekiel’s ‘Zadokite Covenant’.

‘
Purist
’ Sadducees in the Maccabean Period, they become the ‘
Messianic
’ Sadducees in the Herodian Period. They develop in the First Century into so-called ‘
Zealots’, ‘Essenes
’, or ‘
Sicarii
’, and ‘
Palestinian Christians
’ or the ‘
Jerusalem Church
’ followers of James the Just, and follow a more esoteric understanding of the Zadokite Covenant based on ‘
Righteousness
’ and/or ‘
zeal
’ – the two attributes we most often hear about in early ‘Christian’ reports about James.

Their orientation was consistent: they would never compromise with foreign power, would not accept foreign gifts or sacrifices in the Temple (considered a form of ‘
pollution
’ or ‘
idolatry
’ by James and at Qumran), and reckoned Herodians both foreigners and fornicators whose authority in Palestine could and should never be acquiesced to. In the run-up to the War against Rome, as we shall see, they would not even allow Herodians to enter the Temple, they themselves had built, nor could High Priests appointed by the Herodians or the Romans be considered legitimate by them. With the destruction and almost total obliteration of the Maccabees by Herod (what remained were absorbed into the Herodian family), a new principle of authority emerged –
the Messianic one
.
Uncompromising
and
inflexible
, this Movement also tended towards an apocalypticism of the ‘Last Times’/ ‘Last Days’.

Which brings us to the direct circumstances surrounding Honi’s death. Alexander Jannaeus’ son Aristobulus, impatient of his mother’s Pharisee policies and involvement with foreigners like Antipater and Aretas in Petra, overthrew his Phariseeizing brother Hyrcanus II after their mother Alexandra’s death. Backed by the same popular support and representing the same ideological perspective as his father Alexander Jannaeus, he defeated his brother in battle
near Jericho
, forcing him to make over his Kingly and High-Priestly offices to him and ended the Pharisee depredations on their father’s supporters.

Herod’s father, Antipater, an extremely able operative with contacts both in ‘Arabia’ and along the Palestinian Coast, found sanctuary for Hyrcanus II with King Aretas in Petra; and finally enlisted Pompey and his adjutant, Aemilius Scaurus (referred to at Qumran as a ‘murderer’) – who were making their way down from war with the Persians in Anatolia and Armenia into Syria – to his cause.

In the meantime Aristobulus, now king, and his proto-‘
Zealot
’, ‘
Purist Sadducee
’ supporters – who, as it turns out, seem to have been mostly priests – take sanctuary, importantly,
in the Temple
. Antipater then returns with an army comprised of King Aretas’ ‘
Arab
’ forces and the few collaborationist supporters of Hyrcanus, besieges Jerusalem, and prepares to assault the Temple. It is at this point that Josephus interrupts his narrative to tell us
about
the miracles of Honi or Onias whom he now, not only calls ‘
a Righteous Man’
, but
‘the Beloved’
or
‘Friend of God’
.

For a change, Josephus’ story more or less accords with what the
Talmud
has to say about Honi, which also applies the ‘
the Righteous
’ cognomen to Honi. But, it is Josephus’ application of ‘
the Beloved
’ or ‘
Friend of God
’ description to Honi that
absolutely
accords with the way ‘Zadokite’ history is presented in the Damascus Document, as well as the description of Abraham as ‘a Friend of God’ in the Letter of James 2:23 and 4:2 – to say nothing of the Koran.

Josephus describes Honi as follows: ‘
At the time of a certain drought, he (Onias the Righteous) had prayed to God to put an end to the searing heat, and God heard his prayers and sent them rain. This man had hidden himself, seeing that this sedition would last a long time
’.
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Not only do we have here ‘
the prayer of the Zaddik … bringing rain
’ of the Letter of James 5:16–18, but also the ‘
Hidden
’ ideology already noted with reference to Noah and the Flood above. The
Talmud
’s ‘Honi’ was
hidden
for ‘seventy years’ because it took that long for the fruit of the carob (or possibly even a palm tree), under which he slept, to ripen. At the end of this period, he awoke and
ate its fruit
.

The ‘
Hidden
’ terminology is also applied to Honi’s putative heir, John the Baptist, whose mother Elizabeth is described as ‘
hiding herself
’ in the infancy narrative of Luke 1:24, as it is in the
Talmud
to Honi’s grandson ‘
Hanan the Hidden
’, who, it will be recalled, was supposedly accorded this name because ‘
he hid himself in the latrine
’. Even more telling, in the parallel Koranic presentation, the
Talmud
’s ‘
carob tree
’, associated with Honi’s seventy-year sleep, now enters Muhammad’s description of John’s relationship to Jesus as well, only it is now
Mary
instead of Honi, who
sits down under the carob
tree and
eats
the ‘
ripe fruit
’
that falls from it
.
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Nothing could better demonstrate the interrelatedness of all these traditions than this. In some manner they are all part of an identifiable whole and the story of Honi and his progeny is somehow connected to these traditions about John, Jesus, and James. It should also be clear that all these motifs then move into the Islamic Shi‘ite doctrine of the ‘
Hidden Imam
’ or ‘
Standing One
’ as well.

The Stopping of Sacrifice on Behalf of Romans and Other Foreigners in the Temple

With Aristobulus and his priestly partisans in the Temple and Hyrcanus’ besieging them outside, Hyrcanus’ supporters now trot out Honi. Here Josephus specifically notes that they are aware of and wish to make use of the intercessionary power he previously displayed in
praying for rain
. Hyrcanus’ supporters rather want him
to curse ‘Aristobulus and those of his faction’
in the Temple
. When Honi refuses,
they stone him
– the first paradigmatic stoning. It also demonstrates the configuration of parties and forces that then develop.

The time is Passover, 65 BCE, two years before Pompey’s Roman army – with
Pharisee
support – storms the Temple, putting an end to the nationalism of Maccabean rule and ushering in the
Herodian Period
. It is the
only
Sanhedrin-style stoning, Josephus records, before the stoning of Honi’s putative descendant James, another of these probably
Rechabite
-style ‘Priests’.

In Honi’s case, the
Talmud
had already recorded the threat of excommunication leveled against Honi by Simeon ben Shetach – the archetypal progenitor of the Pharisees and brother of Salome Alexandra. In the course of these confrontations, the
Talmud
compares Honi – not John as in the New Testament – to
Elijah
, observing, in words attributed to Simeon ben Shetach, that he
alone possessed ‘the keys to rain’ and was allowed, therefore, to take ‘the Name of Heaven’ in vain
.
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From this, one is permitted to conclude that the stoning of Honi by Hyrcanus’ Pharisee supporters was based on their perception of his ‘
blasphemy
’ related to possessing just such ‘
powers
’ and such ‘
keys
’.

For Josephus, the ‘zealous’ priests, making up the majority of Aristobulus II’s supporters, had been cheated by those outside the walls of the animals they had purchased for the purpose of making Passover sacrifices. Therefore,
they took vengeance for this ‘Impiety towards God’ and, by implication, the stoning of Honi, by themselves, now, praying for rain
– in this case, Divine ‘
rain
’ as eschatological vengeance. In other words, Aristobulus’ supporters, as pious priests, are also ‘
rain-making
’
intercessors
. At this point, according to Josephus, God sends down ‘
a terrible hurricane
’ which devastates the whole country – in his words, ‘taking vengeance on them for the murder of Onias’.
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All of these points, most particularly the Divine vengeance following Onias’ stoning, prefigure events both before and after the stoning of James.

Herod’s father now brings Pompey, the Roman Commander, into this configuration of forces, to finish what had been interrupted by Honi’s stoning. As he describes it, both brothers, Hyrcanus the older and Aristobulus the younger, rushed to Pompey as he made his way down from Damascus, attempting to conciliate him with gifts. However, Aristobulus soon ‘
turned sick of servility and could not bear to abase himself any further
’ to the Romans.