James the Brother of Jesus and the Dead Sea Scrolls II (11 page)

Extreme Nazirites may have insisted, in the manner of James, on going as far as vegetarianism as Judas Maccabee in a previous epoch seems to have done when, according to 2 Maccabees 5:27, he ‘
withdrew into the wilderness along with about nine other companions
’ – ‘
the Ten Just Men
’ of Jewish mystical lore, upon whose existence the continued existence of the universe was predicated
22
–
Rechabite
-style, ‘
eating nothing but wild plants to avoid contracting defilement’
. The situation 2 Maccabees is describing here at the beginning of Judas’ Revolt against the Hellenizing Seleucids in Syria would appear to have been partic
u
larly applicable when 1) the Temple had been defiled; 2) was no longer functioning; or 3) the charge of ‘
pollution of the Te
m
ple
’ or the corruption of its sacrifice practices was in the air or perceived as valid.

This charge in particular is fundamental to almost all Qumran documents, as it is in so-called ‘
Jewish Christian
’ or ‘
Ebionite
’ ones.
23
The rationale here would be that,
with the corruption
or ‘
pollution of the Temple’
, the permission to eat meat – which in biblical terms was dependent upon Noah’s atoning sacrifice after the flood in Genesis 8:20–9:17 – was no longer viable or had been withdrawn. At Qumran too, as among
Essene
groups generally (not to mention those following John the Baptist, if they can be differentiated in any real way from the previous two), the practice of ‘
bathing
’ was fundamental – in large part ‘
daily bathing’
.
24

Extreme purity regulations, however, to the extent of abstaining from meat or wine, are not clearly articulated either at Qumran or in the various descriptions of
Essenes
that have come down to us.
In the Scrolls, the latter may have rested on the distinction between ‘
new wine
’ and older more alcoholic kinds, since ‘
wine
’ is generally referred to quite freely in them but not what kind of wine, a distinction that does not go unnoticed in Gospel commentary.
25
On the other hand, ‘
pure food
’ – wha
t
ever might have been meant by this either in Qumran documents or among Essenes – was insisted upon for all full-fledged participants in such groups, meaning those in the higher stages of Community membership,
26
and this may have involved a certain amount of vegetarianism not very different from that reflected in these descriptions of James and implied in the ones about John.
2
7
Certainly Paul’s remonstrations
against
precisely such kinds of persons, whom in Romans 14:1–15:2 and 1 Cori
n
thians 8:7–15 he refers to in the most intemperate manner conceivable, basically calling vegetarians like James ‘
weak
’ (certainly ‘
weak in Faith
’ or ‘
having weak consciences
’ – ‘
conscience
,’ as we shall repeatedly see, being one of his favorite euphemisms for ‘
keeping the Law
’
28
), make one suspect that special dietary observance of this kind did include what others perceived of as vegetarianism.

Nazirite
Bathing Groups in the East

Nazirite
or ‘
bathing
’ groups such as at Qumran or in Northern Syria are variously referred to by early Church fathers and others as
Nazoraeans
,
Ebionites
,
Elchasaites
,
Sampsaeans
,
Masbuthaeans
,
Sabaeans
,
Naassenes
,
Jessaeans
, and
Essenes
.
29
In fact, whatever the term ‘
Essene
’ might have meant, there is every likelihood that it was generically applied, at least by Palestin
i
an and Egyptian commentators of the First Century (namely Josephus and Philo) and the Second-Century Christian heresiologist Hippolytus, to all bathing groups of this kind. In other words, however one chooses to define the term – and there is even now no agreement on this definition
30
– ‘
bathing
’ is an integral aspect of it – in particular ‘
daily bathing
’ (‘
Hemerobaptists
’ in early Church sources;
Masbuthaeans
,
Sobiai
or
Sabaeans
in Syriac, Aramaic, and Arabic ones).

Writers from these times – ‘
heresiologists
’ in some vocabularies, that is cataloguers of ‘
heresies
’ (the designation is signif
i
cant in illustrating their outlook) – were fond of multiplying these groups into an endless panoply of schisms and sects d
e
pending on whose writings they had seen, whether they understood the terminologies they were seeing or not, or were the
m
selves able to pronounce or transliterate the terms in an accurate manner.
31
Though the term ‘
Essene
’ may have been popular in Palestine or Egypt, in a different tradition, the very same group may have been known by a different appellative based on a somewhat different linguistic root or phraseology.

‘
Sabaeans’
, for instance, a term that has come down to us through the Koran and Islamic usage, is probably the same as what goes in Aramaic and Syriac sources as either
Masbuthaeans
or
Sobiai
, that is,
Bathers
or
Immersers
. It is also probably interchangeable with what the Fifth-Century heresiologist Epiphanius, somewhat mysteriously, calls ‘
Sampsaeans’
, which he thinks, because of a homophonic root in Hebrew meaning ‘
sun’
, has something to do with their worship of the sun.
32
Perhaps he is right, as many of these groups do seem to have
prayed at dawn to greet the rising sun
, but the term probably has more to do with consonantal confusions as expressions were transliterated from one language to another.

Though many of these writers think they are eponymous designations referring to a person – as
Christianity
does ‘
the Christ
’ – usually the founder, often they are conceptual describing some aspect of the tradition that seemed particularly signif
i
cant to the commentator – as, for instance,
the Elchasaites
and their eponymous founder ‘
Elchasai’
.
33
Notwithstanding, almost all really are but an adumbration probably of the same basic ideological orientation regardless of chronology or place. Ther
e
fore in these catalogues, the same group may at times be called
Essene
or at other times,
Ebionite
,
Elchasaite
,
Sampsaean
(b
a
sically the same as
Elchasaite
anyhow),
Jewish Christian
,
Sabaean
, or some other such appellation. What all the foregoing, an
y
how, would have in common is an emphasis on
bathing
.

According to most of these early Church heresiologists, these groups mostly inhabited the area around the Dead Sea, pa
r
ticularly the Eastern side of the Jordan in what was called
Perea
or the area around Damascus and north from it – referred to in the Damascus Document as ‘
the Land of Damascus
’ and, even possibly, in Matthew 4:15 as ‘
Galilee of the Gentiles
’ – on up to Northern Syria and beyond across the Euphrates to the Tigris (what more latterly is often referred to as ‘
the Fertile Crescent
’). ‘
Perea’
, it should be observed, was the area on the other side of the Jordan where John the Baptist, particularly i
m
portant in most of these traditions, is pictured as originally operating. Not only is this an area in which there are extremely a
t
tractive warm water springs, in fact it is well known that John was even executed there at the Maccabean/Herodian Fortress of Machaeros.
34

Matthew 4:15’s ‘
Galilee of the Gentiles
’ makes it clear it is based on Isaiah 8:23–9:1, where the
Galil
or ‘
Circle
’ being r
e
ferred to as ‘
seeing a great light
’ (
Galil
meaning ‘
Circle
’ in Hebrew) is quite explicitly designated as
being
‘
beyond Jordan’
. In this sense, the term really means ‘
the Region
’ or ‘
Circle of the Gentiles
’ beyond the Jordan River – normally referred to as ‘
the Fertile Crescent
’ – not the
Galilee
in Northern Israel as the Gospels take it to be. These are the same areas in which one e
n
counters a bewildering plethora of petty kings – ‘
the Kings of the Peoples’
as Roman sources designate them.
35

We have already seen that this expression, ‘
the Kings of the Peoples’
, is also used in a key portion of the Damascus Do
c
ument where ‘
the Kings
’ of the Ruling Establishment referred to are also alluded to as ‘
the Princes of Judah
’ and their offen
c
es, such as
fornication
,
incest
,
pollution of the Temple
, and illegally amassing
Riches
, are vividly delineated.
36
This also pr
o
vides a good dating tool if such were needed and a further indication that the
Sitz
-
im
-
Leben
of documents making references such as this was Roman – in particular Imperial Roman – and not Seleucid or Hellenistic.
In fact, all such petty, Greek-speaking, tax-farming
Kings
in the Eastern areas of the Empire should probably be included in this category as this was how they were referred to in Roman jurisprudence – ‘
the Peoples
’ being the subject
Peoples
in Asia Minor, Northern Syria and Mesopotamia, and even Palestine.

In this regard, the allusion to
tax-farming
is particularly appropriate since this is an issue having singular resonance with Gospel portrayals of people involved in such activities, especially in the picture of those called ‘
publicans
’ or ‘
tax-collectors
’ interacting with or ‘
keeping table fellowship
’ with Jesus or ‘the Messiah’. It should be appreciated that a picture such as this also had political or theological implications as, of course, did the charged reference to ‘
prostitutes
’ usually accompanying it – the point being that one should not object to or disapprove of such persons, but rather conciliate them or accommodate them.

The Descendants of Queen Helen of Adiabene

The same Rulers can also sometimes be found referred to in Roman sources as ‘
Arabs’
.
37
Not only must the Herodian family in Palestine, which also gained footholds as model Roman bureaucrats in Lebanon, Syria, and Asia Minor in this period, be reckoned among such ‘
Arabs
’, but so should
Kings
like the First-Century Northern Syrian Monarch Eusebius calls ‘
Agbarus
’ or ‘
Abgarus
’ – in variant manuscripts even ‘
Albarus
’ or ‘
Augurus
’ – ‘
the Great King of the Peoples beyond the E
u
phrates’
.
38
It is to Constantine’s Bishop Eusebius, formerly Bishop of Caesarea in Palestine and responsible for some of the most far-reaching innovations concerning the Christianity ultimately adopted into the Roman Empire, that we owe this latter title – the use of the term ‘
Peoples
’ in it being both revealing and giving it an aura of credibility.
39