James the Brother of Jesus and the Dead Sea Scrolls I (79 page)

But these two episodes – firstly, the flight of James in
Recognitions
, culminating with ‘
miraculous whitening
’ of these tombs, the visit to which saves James and his followers from the Enemy Paul, and secondly, the story of the ‘laundryman’ or ‘
fuller beating in James’ brains with a laundryman’s club’
– are now, not only connected, but seemingly combined in these rather more fantastic Gospel presentations of Jesus transfiguring himself before the core Apostles (Peter, James, and John ‘
his brother
’).

Such combinations, or variations on a theme, will be no more surprising than those we shall presently encounter surrounding Belial’s ‘
nets
’ and the various adumbrations of the ‘
casting down
’ allusions related to it. In Mark, these ‘whitening’ and ‘fuller’ themes, surrounding James’ death, appear to become the single allusion about how ‘
his clothes turned white as snow, whiter than
any fuller on earth could have whitened them
’. But, in addition, these have been both preceded and followed by or even compounded with evocation of ‘the Son of Man’ and/or his ‘coming’ – the essence basically of James’ proclamation in the Temple.

The result, then, of looking into these parallel testimonies about the Central Three in both Galatians and the Synoptics leads us to a surprising result, which, if true, could not have been anticipated. If accurate, it ties our sources together and confirms, in the most roundabout way, that our hypothesis about the method of composition of these well-informed – if tendentious – Hellenistic romances we call ‘Gospels’ is correct.

Pursuing the themes of the proclamation by James of the coming of the Son of Man, the attack on James in the Temple, and his death, has led us to results that we would not otherwise have imagined. In addition, however, as with the Gospel stories about Jesus being ‘tempted by the Devil in the wilderness’ or to ‘throw himself down from the Pinnacle of the Temple’, these stories about the flight of James, the ‘miraculous whitening’ of the ‘brothers” tombs, and the beating in of James’ skull with a laundryman’s club, must be older than or have preceded, at least, Mark’s account of Jesus’ ‘Transfiguration’ in its present form.

The reason we say ‘must’ here is that these traditions about James and even their conflation must have preceded their reflection in the Gospels. This is, admittedly, a surprising conclusion, but the fair observer, upon reflection, will be forced to acknowledge its logic. This means that either the Gospels are fairly late or the traditions about James, even in the conflated form in which we sometimes see them reflected in the Gospels, were actually circulating quite early.

The ‘white as snow’ simile involved in these portraits of the Transfiguration of Jesus’ ‘
clothes
’ brings us around too, however circuitously, to Daniel’s original vision of ‘
the Ancient of Days, sitting upon the Throne,
whose raiment was white as snow
’ (Dan. 7:9), not to mention the proclamation directly following this of ‘
one like a Son of Man coming on the clouds of Heaven
’. For Daniel 7:13–14, it was upon him that ‘
Sovereignty, Glory, and Kingship’ would be conferred
and ‘
his Sovereignty would be an Eternal Sovereignty which would never pass away
’. Again, the range and imagination of these ancient amalgamators and artificers are, as breath-taking, as they are impressive.

Chapter 20

James the First to See Jesus

The Reversal of ‘Hating the Men of the Pit’ into ‘Hating One’s Family’

The reference to James at the end of 1 Corinthians involves the twin topics of Apostleship and post-resurrection sightings of Jesus. Here we come directly to the matter of the existence or non-existence of ‘the Twelve’–  at least from a Pauline perspective.

Before pursuing these issues, it should be pointed out that Paul, in the background to his first reference to the Central Three – the Historical Three of ‘James the brother of the Lord,
Cephas
, and John’ not the artificially surreal one – even calls them ‘the Apostleship of the circumcision’. Claiming that ‘these Pillars’ gave them (himself and Barnabas) ‘their hand in agreement’; he interprets this to mean that, just as he and Barnabas would go ‘to the Gentiles’, they (the Central Three and others) would
go ‘to the Circumision’
(Gal. 2:7–8). The historical understanding of this was that there were or at least had been ‘Twelve Tribes’ of Israel and, therefore,
the symbolical thrust of the idea of there being ‘Twelve Apostles’ in the first place
was that, theoretically, they should go to
the Twelve Tribes of Israel
.

This is the thrust, too, of similar numerology in the Community Rule, where the Community Council is distinctly enumerated as being composed of ‘
Twelve Men and Three Priests
’.
1
The question of whether these ‘
Three Priests
’ – symbolical or real – were to be
from among the ‘Twelve
’ or
in addition to them
has never been fully resolved, though the implication of other documents leans towards the latter. For our purposes, however, it doesn’t particularly matter since most of these kinds of conceptions are esoteric.

This same Community Rule, in what can be only understood as its climax in Column Eight, where the ‘Inner Twelve’ and ‘Inner Three’ are set forth at its start, also contains the first elucidation of the ‘
making a Straight Way in the wilderness
’ Prophecy from Isaiah 40:3, applied to John the Baptist’s activities in the Gospels and, for that matter, the whole world. In addition to interpreting this Prophecy in terms of ‘
separating from the habitation of the Men of Unrighteousness and going into the wilderness
’, this Column also expresses such Christian notions as
making atonement by ‘doing Righteousness
(note the ‘Jamesian’ emphasis here)
and suffering the sorrows of affliction
’ and ‘
Precious Cornerstone
’ imagery.

Using the kind of esoteric language that in Paul borders on allegorization, it describes ‘the Community Council’ , where this Inner Twelve and Inner Three are mentioned – as we have to some extent already seen – as ‘
a Holy Temple of Israel’
and ‘
an Assembly’ or ‘Church of the Holy of Holies for Aaron’
; and the ‘
Perfection of the Way’
, it thereby embodies, as ‘
a pleasing odour of Righteousness and an agreeable sacrifice’, upon which ‘to establish the Holy Spirit according to Eternal Truth
’.
2

There are so many parallels of this kind in the Qumran corpus to ‘early Christian’ notions, particularly in the Pauline corpus, that it would be difficult to catalogue them all; still, it is perhaps important to remark from the start that the Qumran documents
are less cosmopolitan and not antinomian at all
, but rather always
nationalist or xenophobic
. They are also less prolix and more terse, but the themes and vocabulary are recognizably the same – albeit for the most part usually
inverted or reversed
.

Aside from these parallel imageries of
spiritualized Temple, sacrifice, and atonement
in these important Columns Eight–Nine of the Community Rule, the orientation is always the opposite of ‘Christianity’ as we know it, that is, ‘Pauline’ or ‘Overseas Christianity’. For the former, ‘
the Way’
, in the ‘
prepare in the wilderness the Way of the Lord
’ citation,
is ‘the study of the Law as commanded by the hand of Moses
’, not the ‘Pauline’
descent of the Holy Spirit upon Jesus
. According to the Qumran interpretation, ‘
the Penitents’ in the wilderness are ‘to separate from the Men of the Pit
’ – our ‘
Nazirite
’ terminology again – for whom ‘
Everlasting hatred
(not love!)
in a spirit of secrecy
’ is reserved.

They are instructed to ‘
do all
that is required’ as we just saw – again note the ‘Jamesian’ emphasis – to be as ‘
one
zealous for the Law, whose time will be the Day of Vengeance
’! This is the second interpretation of the ‘Preparation of the
Way
’ proof-text from Isaiah 40:3 in the Community Rule at Qumran
and it is
hardly very peaceful
! One can’t get much more militant. That this is ‘
Zealot
’ needs no further elucidation; but it is also combined with this spiritualized esoteric imagery where ‘the Community council’ is concerned.

For instance, one can even detect a basis for the ‘atonement’, James is said to have made in early Church sources, in the above description at the start of this Column of the Community Council as ‘
atoning for the guilt of sin and rebellious transgression and be a pleasing sacrifice for the land without the flesh of holocausts and the fat of sacrifice
’.
3

The members of this ‘Council’ also participate in some manner in an eschatological ‘Judgement on Evil’ or a type of ‘Last Judgement’ just as ‘Peter’ and, to some extent, ‘John and James the sons of Zebedee’ do in the Gospels.
4
In Matthew, after ‘Peter’ recognizes Jesus as ‘the Christ’ and is designated, in turn, by him as ‘the Rock’ upon which ‘his’ Community will be built (imagery extant in this section of the Community Rule as we just saw); he is given
the keys to the Kingdom
– obviously esoterically – to
‘bind on earth what will be bound in Heaven
’ and
vice versa
(Mt 16:16–20) and people still speak in terms of ‘St. Peter at the Gate’ even today.

This notion of ‘
going to the Circumcision
’, as described by Paul, is incorporated in Matthew as ‘Jesus’ sending out ‘
his Twelve Disciples
’ with instructions
not to go the ‘way of the Gentiles, nor enter the cities of the Samaritans’, but to go rather only to ‘the House of Israel
’ (Mt 10:1–5).
5
Mark and Luke abjure the use of ‘
Disciples
’ – terminology also preferred in John – referring only to ‘
the Twelve
’ (Mk 6:7 and Lk 9:1). For his part, Matthew then lists ‘
the Twelve Apostles
’ (10:2–4). Jesus’ instructions to the ‘Apostles’ here includes the ‘
casting out
’ language (
ekballo
), in this case, ‘unclean spirits’ or ‘demons’, and this variation on the ‘Belial’/‘Balaam’ language circle will even be used to characterize the activities of the Apostles in other ways.

These passages even contain veiled attacks, as we have seen, on someone as important as ‘Peter’. In addition to details like those in the previous chapter in Matthew, that ‘
many tax collectors and Sinners came and dined with Jesus and his Disciples
’ (9:10 – again, our by-this-time customary guffaw); statements like ‘
Whosoever denies me before men, him also will I deny before my Father in Heaven’
(10:33) have direct relevance to ‘Peter’ pictured, in the Gospels, as having
denied Jesus three times
on his death night (Mt 26:69–75)! This, of course, is part and parcel of the retrospective polemics of these Paulinized and Hellenized, Gentile Christian Gospels (to say nothing of
their drama
) as we have them.

They even contain explicit attacks on the ‘
secrecy
’ of groups, such as those at Qumran and baptizing groups generally. We have just heard the stricture, ‘
Everlasting hatred for the Men of the Pit
in a Spirit of secrecy
’ in the Community Rule’s interpretation of the ‘making a straight Way in the wilderness’ citation – applied to John the Baptist in Christian Scripture. This is also the picture in the Pseudoclementine
Homilies
, in which James requires the Elders to swear ‘
not to communicate in any way, either by writing’ or ‘by giving them to a writer’, to any unworthy person anything that they have learned or will be teaching
.
6

For Matthew, both this ‘
hatred for the Men of the Pit
’ and this ‘
secrecy
’ are inverted in ‘Jesus’’ proclamations that ‘
You shall be hated by all on account of my Name
’ and ‘
there is nothing secret that shall not be revealed, nothing hidden that shall not be made known
’ (10:22 and 26). This last even goes on to parody the ‘Light’ versus ‘Dark’ imagery so prevalent in the Scrolls – proclaiming ‘
What I tell you in the Dark, speak in the Light
and
what is whispered in your ear, proclaim it on the rooftops
’ (10:27). In the
Homilies
, the Epistle of Peter to James, giving rise to this response by James, even uses the Qumran language of ‘
the Pit
’, declaring how
false teaching can drag people down ‘into the Pit of Destruction
’ (1.3).