James the Brother of Jesus and the Dead Sea Scrolls II (119 page)

Exploiting references to the Babylonians ‘
plundering many Nations
’ (
Go
’
im
) and ‘
Additional Ones of the Peoples
’ (
Chol Yeter-
’A
mim
), in turn, ‘
plundering
’ in the underlying text from Habakkuk 2:7–8 and the Babylonians ‘
gathering the Nations
’ and ‘
collecting the Peoples
’ preceding these in Habakkuk 2:5, the
Pesher
produces the picture of ‘
tax-farming
’ begun three columns earlier. There, it will be recalled, ‘
the
Kittim
’ (here clearly, ‘
the Romans
’) were described as ‘
collecting their Riches together with all their booty like the fish of the sea
’ (Hab. 1:14) and ‘
parceling out their yoke and taxes
’ – this in interpretation of Habakkuk 1:16, ‘
his portion is fat and his eating plenteous
’. Now the text asserts: ‘
Its interpretation
(meaning the ‘
spoiling many Nations
’ and ‘
the Additional Ones of the Peoples spoiling you
’),
concerns the Last Priests of Jerusalem
,
who gathered Riches and prof
i
teered from the spoils of the Peoples
.’
104
Here the text has, once again, been deliberately altered to produce the desired exeg
e
sis. Not only have ‘
the Last Priests of Jerusalem
’ now been substituted for the ‘
collecting
’ and ‘
gathering
’ activities of the Bab
y
lonians in the underlying text from Habakkuk 2:5-8, but a new allusion, ‘
profiteering
’, is introduced which is not in the underlying text – at least not yet, that is, not until Habakkuk 2:9 and ‘
the profiteer
’
s profiteering – Evil unto his house
’.

This word used here, ‘
boze
‘
’/‘
beza
‘
’, is also used in the Damascus Document where the ‘
pollution
’, ‘
Riches
’, and ‘
fornicating incest
’ of the Establishment classes – ‘
each man sinning against the flesh of his own flesh
,
approaching them for fornication
,
they used their power for the sake of Riches and profiteering
’ – are being described.
105
The Hebrew here definitely carries the sense that ‘
the Last Priests are profiteering from the spoils of the Peoples
’ (in our view, as by now should be clear,
Herodians
), not the sense one finds in most translations, that ‘
the Last Priests
’ are ‘
plundering the Peoples
’.
106

This is the kind of imprecision one gets in ‘Consensus’ interpretation of texts in the interests of promoting a theory of the Maccabeans as ‘
the Wicked Priests
’ and, in some sense therefore, conquering foreign peoples. But this is not the sense of the
Pesher
. Rather, it is ‘
the Peoples
’ and ‘
the Men of Violence who rebelled against God
’ who are the ones doing the ‘
plundering
’ – namely, ‘
the Herodians
’ and ‘
other Violent Gentiles
’ – and ‘
the Last High Priests
’ (plural), in the sense both of multiple High-Priestly clans an something of the imagery of ‘
the First vs
.
the Last
’, ‘
profiteering
’ from this kind of predation – as we have already made amply clear,
by accepting gifts and sacrifices from persons of this type in the Temple
, the theme of the Dama
s
cus Document as well as
MMT
. Furthermore, it is for this reason that ‘
the Wicked Priest
’ is specifically described as ‘
acting in the Ways of Abominations
(
and
)
of all unclean pollution
’.
107

The text now adds – laconically in view of its consequence: ‘
But
,
in the Last Days
,
their Riches together with their booty will be given over to the hand of the Army of the
Kittim
,
because they are the Additional Ones of the Peoples
.’
108
As the
Pesher
would have it, this last is now ‘
Yeter ha-
‘A
mim
’, and not ‘
Yeter-
‘
Amim
’ as in Biblical Habakkuk 2:8 underlying it. The reason for this would seem to be to further emphasize the contrast between ‘
ha-
‘
Amim
’/‘
Herodians
’ and ‘
the
Yeter ha-
‘
Amim
’/‘
Romans
’, both basically two parts of a single exegetical complex.

There can be little doubt what is transpiring here. The reference to ‘
the Army of the
Kittim
’ would appear to be definitive. Again, allusion to ‘
the
Kittim
’ has been deliberately introduced into the
Pesher
, even though it does not appear in the underlying text, because the exegete knows very well that these are going to
appropriate all the wealth and plunder that the Herodian
High Priests have
‘
collected
’, and take it to Rome. This cannot apply to any previous period, except the long-ago Babylonian one on which the
Pesher
is based, because at no time, as we have explained, did we have any foreign armies plundering the country in such a massive manner – probably not even during the Maccabean Uprising and certainly not after 167
BCE
until 70
CE
. But it also means that the text is being written by eyewitnesses to this either shortly before 70
CE
or sometime not long afterwards.

The Method of the Qumran Commentators

This is an extremely important
Pesher
, for not only does it provide definitive historical proof of the backdrop to the events in question, but it shows the method of the Qumran Scriptural exegetes – if ‘
method
’ it can be said to be. The exegetes are for the most part interested in the useful vocabulary from the underlying Biblical passage, not always the
actual sense of the pa
s
sage. This is also true of the Gospels, even though the scriptural exegesis developed there is often the reverse of the one here at Qumran.

For instance the term, ‘
ha-
’A
mim
’/‘
the Peoples
’, does not really appear in the underlying passage from Habakkuk 2:8, though ‘
Go
’
im
’/‘
Nations
’ and ‘
Yeter-
‘A
mim
’/‘
Additional Ones of the Peoples
’ do. Rather the exegetes purposefully introduce it into their interpretation because it means something to them, that is, ‘
Herodians
’. Also it contributes to the balance they are looking for between ‘
ha-
‘
Amim
’/‘
Peoples
’ and
Yeter ha-
’A
mim
’/‘
Additional Ones of the Peoples
’.

The underlying Biblical text from Habakkuk 2:6–7 has the foreign armies – in this instance, the Babylonians – doing the plundering and oppressing and ‘
the Remnant of the Peoples
’, meaning all the others,
being oppressed and being plundered
. Nothing loathe, the exposition now has the ‘
Additional Ones
’ or ‘
Remnant of the Peoples
’, identified with brutalizing foreign armies from the West (
i.e
., ‘
they come from the Islands of the Sea
’) – in this instance undoubtedly the Romans – and it is they who finally ‘
plunder the Riches
’ that ‘
the Last High Priests of Jerusalem
’ have already ‘
amassed and profiteered from
’ the ‘
Vi
o
lent
’
predation activities
of the Herodians and their
Violent
henchmen or thugs like Saulos and Costobarus.

One need only add to all of this that, according to Josephus, Bernice (the mistress at this point of Titus) was
the Richest
woman in Palestine
– as was, doubtlessly,
her aunt Herodias before her
. This was in part, no doubt, the source of her attra
c
tiveness to people like her uncle, Herod of Chalcis, and Polemo, a foreign King from Cilicia, who was even willing to circu
m
cise himself to marry her. This is not to mention her third sister Mariamme’s marriage to: first, the son of the Temple Treasu
r
er (and Paul’s possible ‘
kinsman
’) Julius Alexander who read Josephus’ works in Rome, and after divorcing him (‘
contrary to the Laws of her Country
’
109
), next to Demetrius, the son of the Alabarch of Alexandria (and probably, therefore, Tiberius A
l
exander’s brother and Philo’s nephew), the Richest man in Egypt.

The sense of this commentary is crystal clear, once one dispenses with the cloud of unknowing of much Qumran schola
r
ship. Normative Qumran translations by scholars with little sense of literary analysis or metaphor make it look as if ‘
the Last Priests of Jerusalem
’ were ‘
gathering the booty
’ and ‘
doing the plundering
’ and not ‘
the Peoples
’ and ‘
the Men of Violence
’. They were, but indirectly, through these – ‘
Violent Ones
’ and ‘
Peoples
’.

This is the sense of the passage preceding this one (based as it is on Habakkuk 2:7–8) as well, interpreting Habakkuk 2:5 about an arrogant man who never gets enough wealth into his mouth, collecting the Nations and Peoples unto himself – in the Biblical Habakkuk,
meaning the Babylonian King
. This is expanded in the interpretation in the text
into the Wicked Priest
‘
co
l
lecting the Riches of the Men of Violence
’ and ‘
taking the Riches of the Peoples
’, meaning ‘
the Riches
’
of the violent Herodian tax-farmers
by which means he ‘
heaped upon himself guilty Sinfulness
’. In the process, it is allusions of this kind that make a mockery of the famous and beloved New Testament passages about Jesus keeping ‘
table fellowship
’ with ‘
tax-collectors
’ and ‘
harlots
’ –
i.e.
, persons like Bernice, her sisters Drusilla and Mariamme, and her aunt Herodias.

This passage about how
the Wicked Priest
‘
deserted God and betrayed the Laws
’, ends with an allusion to how ‘
he acted in the Ways of the Abominations
(
and
)
of all unclean pollution
’. Here ‘
the Way
’ terminology, usually applied to ‘
the Way of the Perfection of Holiness
’ or ‘
the Way in the Wilderness
’, is inverted to encompass the behaviour patterns of the Evil Establis
h
ment and, at this point, the
Pesher
is fairly running away with itself with derogatives and can hardly restrain its disgust and ou
t
rage at all these ‘
Abominations
’ or ‘
blasphemies
’. It does not interest itself in the subject of ‘
the Riches of the Men of Violence
’ or ‘
Peoples
’
per se
, though like the Letter of James, it does condemn ‘
Riches
’ in a general sense – therefore its self-designations, ‘
the Poor
’ or ‘
the Simple of Judah doing
Torah
’.