James the Brother of Jesus and the Dead Sea Scrolls I (45 page)

In Column XI, where ‘the Star Prophecy’ is finally expounded, first the actual Prophecy: ‘a Star will rise from Jacob, a Sceptre to rule the world’ from Numbers 24:17, is quoted in its entirety. Then it is analysed in detail. But in the three columns preceding this (VIII),
the situation in ‘the camps’, where ‘the Holy Angels are with our Hosts’ and those ‘Perfect in Spirit and body prepared for the Day of Vengeance’ is delineated
.
9
God ‘strengthens’ and ‘fortifies all the mighty Warriors’, ‘making war through the Holy Ones of His People’ (the last equivalent to Daniel 7:21’s ‘Kedoshim’ or ‘Saints’)
. For this reason, ‘
all indecent lewdness is to be kept from the camps’, ‘since the Holy Angels are together with their Hosts
’. Furthermore, the ‘linen’ battle raiment of the Priests is described in great detail. This is not to be worn ‘in the Temple’ thereafter, nor are these Priests ‘to profane themselves with the blood of the Nations of Vanity’.
10

Over and over again it is reiterated that
military victories are accomplished by the human ‘Holy Ones of the Covenant’ with the help of ‘the Holy Angels’ and ‘the Host of the Heavenly Holy Ones’ on the clouds
. This is expressed as follows: ‘The Power is from You not us. Our Strength and the Power of our hands accomplish no
mighty works
, except by Your Power and the Power of Your mighty bravery.’
11
Aside from this tell-tale ‘Power’ vocabulary, one should also note the belligerence of this expression, important for fixing the ethos of the literature at Qumran.

In the War Scroll, David’s victory over Goliath sets the
Davidic
ambience of what follows, including the interpretation of ‘the Star Prophecy’. This is a crucial moment for Qumran exegesis, and it is no overstatement to say, for that matter, the world generally. Not only is this interpretation specifically framed in terms of the Messiah-like ‘no mere Adam’, showing, as nothing else can, that
this ‘Star Prophecy’ was being interpreted Messianically at Qumran
;
12
but it will now develop into the language of Daniel’s ‘
Son of Man coming on the clouds’ with the Heavenly Host
or, as Matthew puts it, ‘
the Son of Man coming with Power and great Glory’ or ‘sitting on the right hand of Power and coming on the clouds of Heaven
’ (24:30, 26:64, and pars.).
13

Quoting Isaiah 31:8’s ‘
by the sword of no Man, the sword of
no mere Adam
’, the War Scroll now goes on to evoke the ‘Primal Adam’, thus tying all these themes – the Davidic, ‘the Star’, ‘the Son of Man’, ‘the Perfect Adam’, and the ‘Messiah’ – together in one extended proclamation, ultimately combining ‘clouds’ and ‘rain’ imagery and expressing this Judgement in terms of ‘coming on the clouds’ and the ‘shedding of rain on all on earth’. That all of these motifs come together here in exegesis of ‘the Star Prophecy’ in the War Scroll is about as much proof as one could ask that the approach we have been following produces results. Nothing less would have prepared us for this and, without it, we could not have appreciated the presence of all these motifs here. This exegesis is directly followed by an extended description of the Heavenly Host coming on the clouds, richer than in any other source and repeated a second time at the end of the Scroll as we have signaled.

For it, the Messiah-like Leader ‘
joins the Poor
’ (‘
Ebionim
’ repeated twice) and ‘
those bent in the dust’ to rise up ‘against the Kittim
’.
14
It reads:

By the hand of Your Messiah … so that You may glorify Yourself in front of Your Enemies and overthrow Belial’s Legions, the Seven Nations of Vanity, and
by the hand of the Poor Ones of Your Redemption,
with the fullness of Your Marvelous Power, You have (opened) a Gate of Hope to the cowering heart … for You will kindle the Downcast in Spirit, who shall be as a flaming torch in the chaff to ceaselessly consume Evil until Wickedness is destroyed
.

In the Damascus Document too, ‘the Sceptre’ is the Messianic ‘Leader’, also referred to in another Messianic fragment seemingly connected to these matters, ‘The Messianic Leader (
Nasi
)’.
15
In that Document, he ‘will utterly destroy the Sons of Seth’ – synonymous with ‘the Seven Nations of Vanity’ and mentioned in Numbers 24:17 as well.

One should compare the ‘torch in the chaff’ simile at this point in the War Scroll to the words of John the Baptist, quoted in Matthew 3:11–12 and applied to ‘
one coming more Powerful than’ he: ‘He shall baptize you with the Holy Spirit and Fire, whose winnowing fan is in His hand to purify His threshing floor, and He will gather His wheat into his storehouse, but He will burn up the chaff with unquenchable fire’
. The references to ‘harvesting wheat’, ‘burning’, and ‘Fire’ will, to be sure, recur in the sequence of parables following the evocation of ‘the Enemy’ in ‘the Parable of the Tares’ in Matthew 13:24–50, the only real Jewish Christian parable in Scripture. The allusions to ‘burning’ and ‘Fire’ are also very strong in eschatological contexts elsewhere at Qumran – as they will be later throughout the Koran – particularly in evocation of ‘the Last Judgement’.
16

At this point, the passage from Isaiah 31:8, referred to above, is introduced into the exegesis
implying the Messiah to be ‘more than a Man, more than a mere Adam’
. At the same time, it links him to
vanquishing the Kittim – here clearly the Romans – with ‘the sword’
. It reads as we also saw: ‘
And from that time, You announced the Power of Your hand over the Kittim with the words, “And Assyria shall fall by the sword of no Man, but by the sword of no mere Adam You shall consume him (Hebrew: ‘eat him’).”
’

The idea of ‘consuming’ or ‘eating’ here plays off the ‘flaming torch consuming the chaff’ descriptive of ‘the Poor in Spirit’ above, now applied directly to the Star/Messiah and his constituency, the Poor (
Ebionim
) and ‘those Bent in the Dust’.

Because,
by the hand of the Poor Ones and the hand of those Bent in the Dust
(i.e.,
‘the Poor in Spirit’
)
will the Enemies from all the lands and the Mighty Ones of the Peoples be humbled, so that they will be paid the Reward on Evil Ones … to justify the Judgement of Your Truth on all the sons of man
in order to make for Yourself an Eternal Name among the People
.
17

Therefore, in the War Scroll,
the Messiah will render Judgement with the help of ‘the Poor’ and ‘those Bent in the Dust’ on ‘the Mighty Ones of the Peoples’
.

Not only do we have in these climactic portions of the War Scroll ‘the Star Prophecy’ interpreted in terms of Daniel 7’s ‘Son of Man’ – the basis as well of James’ proclamation in the Temple on Passover, 62 CE – but this is accompanied by inclusion of the scriptural warrant for someone ‘more than Man’ or ‘the sword of a Higher Adam’ to accomplish this victory over all foreign armies and bring the final eschatological Judgement. Again we have the coupling of nationalist and ‘Zealot’ Messianic war-likeness with what superficially, anyhow, would appear to be the more spiritual ‘Primal Adam’ ideology of daily-bathing Ebionite/Essene groups.

This is a crucial melding and defines the religio-historical situation in 62 CE almost perfectly. For its part, the War Scroll moves directly into an extensive description of ‘
the coming of the Heavenly Host on the clouds of Heaven
’ of such ecstatic beauty and brilliant creativity as to be overwhelming:

For You will fight with them from Heaven … because the majority of these Holy Ones are in Heaven along with the Host of Your Angels in Your Holy Abode praising Your Name together with
the Elect of the Holy People, whom You have set aside for Yourself
…
for whom You have recorded … the Covenant of Your Peace and over whom You will reign for all Eternal Ages
.
18

The text then turns completely war-like, having the nature of an exhortative for battle or, as it now must be termed (using the language of Islam), ‘Holy War’:

For You have commanded the Hosts of Your Elect in their thousands and their Myriads, together with your Holy Ones and the Army of Your Angels, who are mighty in battle, together with the Elect of Heaven and Your blessings, to smite the Enemies of the land with the Greatness of Your Judgements … because you are a Terrible God in the Glory of Your Kingdom and the Assembly of your Holy Ones is among us to give us Eternal aid.

Its imagery is now purely confrontational, militaristic, and eschatological, including the rationale for the Qumran ‘
camp
’-style communities:

We shall despise kings and mock and scorn the Mighty, because our Lord is Holy and our Glorious King (‘His Messiah’) is with us, together with the Holy Ones, the Mighty Host of Angels are under His command
19
and the Valiant Warrior is among our Assembly, and the Hosts of His Spirits (Islam: ‘
Jinn
’) are with our foot soldiers and our horsemen.

This finally gives way to a key simile comparing ‘the coming of the Heavenly Host’ to ‘clouds’, making it clear we are completely in the realm of Daniel, the New Testament’s ‘
Son of Man coming on the clouds of Heaven with Power and Great Glory
’, and the totality of ‘rain’ and ‘Judgement’ imagery we have been following: ‘
They are like clouds, clouds of dew (covering) the earth, as torrential rain, shedding Judgement on all that grows on earth
.’

Here, of course, is the ‘rain’ imagery that we have been signaling in our presentation of the
Zaddik
as rain-maker and one begins to appreciate that one is in a much more sophisticated universe of poetic imagery and symbolism than one might have previously suspected. Of course, Paul is working in the same poetic universe of allegory and metaphor – but to opposite effect. The allusion to ‘
shedding Judgement on all that grows on earth
’ parallels Matthew 5:45’s God ‘
sending rain on the Righteous and the Unrighteous
’ alike, as well as
allusions comparing the coming of the Son of Man to ‘the Days of Noah
’ (Mt 24:37–38, Mk 13:26–27, Lk 21:27).

Just for good measure this ‘rain’ simile is repeated again, almost word-for-word, at the end of the War Scroll. Here, referring now to
God ‘keeping his Covenant with us and opening the Gates of Salvation for us numerous times
’, the text proclaims again:

For Yours is the Might and in Your hands, the battle … for our Ruler is Holy and the Glorious King is with us. The H(ost of His Spirits is with our foot soldiers and horsemen. They are as clouds, clouds of de)w covering the earth and as torrential rain shedding Judgement on
(
all that grows there
.
Arise hero
) …
smite the nations, your enemies, and consume guilty flesh with your sword
(this last clearly being a Messianic allusion).
20

Not only do we have here the ‘God our Ruler’ ideology of Josephus’ ‘Zealots’ or ‘
Sicarii
’, there can be little doubt of the ‘Messianic’ thrust of all this, not to mention its blood-curdling war-likeness – perhaps a necessity in the circumstances. The fresh and original imagery here, once again, recapitulates the Messianic ‘
sword
’ of the ‘
no mere Adam
’ passage from Isaiah 31:8 above, including even the allusion to ‘
consuming
’/‘
eating
’.

The Imagery of the Heavenly Host and Coming Apocalyptic Judgement in James

This is almost precisely the picture one gets in early Church accounts of James’ proclamation in the Temple on Passover of
the Son of Man coming on the clouds of Heaven
. That such a proclamation is attributed to James, to whom the ‘rain-making’ tradition also adhered, at this pivotal moment in his activity is astonishing – but the parallels in materials relating to James go further than that.

The Letter of James is also steeped in the language of ‘
doing
’ and ‘
Doer
’, the same root as the word, ‘
works
’ (
ma‘asim
), so much a part of the vocabulary at Qumran. In it, ‘
Salvation
’ is not simply ‘
a free gift of Faith
’ as in Paul; rather there will be ‘
Jud
gement without mercy on those who do not
do mercy
’ (2:13). In the last chapter, its author – James or another – launches into a thoroughgoing and completely uncompromising apocalyptic. This begins with condemnation of
the Rich
: ‘And now you Rich, weep, start crying for the miseries that are coming to you’ (5:1).

This condemnation of ‘the Rich’ is also a set piece of Qumran ideology, expressed most vividly perhaps in the ‘Three Nets of Belial’ section of the Damascus Document. But the condemnation of ‘the Rich’ is also a principal theme associated with those holding the tradition associated with James’ name most dear, ‘the
Ebionim
’ or ‘the Poor’. The same was no doubt true for those following the Righteous Teacher of the Scrolls, where the terminology ‘the Poor’ and several of its parallels permeate the corpus.