James the Brother of Jesus and the Dead Sea Scrolls II (150 page)

This is what Paul is doing with James’ directive to
abstain
from blood
in 1 Corinthians, a letter in which he earlier refers to his community as ‘
God
’
s building
’ and where he actually compares himself to ‘
the architect
’ (3:6–14)! In this passage, he is also even using the ‘
laying the Foundation
’ imagery of both the Community Rule and Hymns at Qumran, not only stressing the necessity of ‘
building
’ on ‘
the Foundation of Jesus Christ’
, but several times referring to the fact of his ‘
building
’ as opposed to ‘
Apollos
’
watering’
.

This, in our view, is what is meant by the allusion to the Lying Spouter’s ‘
leading Many astray
’ and ‘
building a Worthless City upon Blood’
, with the additional aside of ‘
raising a Congregation upon Lying
’ in 1QpHab X.9–10, which will now go on to characterize his ‘
Service’
as
Worthless
, his ‘
works
’ as ‘
Lying’
, and his ‘
amal
as ‘
Empty’
. But it should also be clear that Paul’s treatment of
Blood
in 1 Corinthians 10:16–11:29 is also the import of how he treats the Qumran ‘
New Covenant in the Land of Damascus’
. Not only does he treat it esoterically, turning the written word
Damascos
in Greek –
Damascus
in Latin and En
g
lish, but
Dammashek
in Hebrew – into ‘
the Cup of Blood’
, as per the meaning of its
homophonic
root in Hebrew,
dam
/
Blood
and
chos
/
Cup
; he is
reversing
it once again! In fact, as we shall see, the parallel will go even further than this, both in 1 Cori
n
thians 11:24–29 and the Synoptics related to it, in the phrase always connected to this formula, ‘
Drink
this in
Remembrance
of me
’ – in Hebrew,
mashkeh
or
dam-mashkeh
, ‘
give blood to drink
’ – to say nothing of the phrase in CD XX.18–21, ‘
the Book of
Remembrance
that was written out before Him
for God-Fearers
’
.
40

In 1 Corinthians 11:20–30, he claims to have received his view of what he calls ‘
the Lord
’
s Supper
’ directly ‘
from the Lord
’ (11:23), though how and by what mechanism he does not explain. Rather he moves directly into connecting this with the la
n
guage of
the
New Covenant
, also the language used in climactic sections of the Damascus Document, where it becomes assoc
i
ated with an even more extreme rededication to ‘
the First
’ or ‘
Old
’.
41
It is Paul’s approach to this
New Covenant
that becomes the manner in which it is attributed to Jesus in Gospel portrayals of
the Last Supper
, at least in the Synoptics. Luke 22:20 pe
r
haps puts this most graphically, reflecting the language Paul uses here in 1 Corinthians 11:26 almost exactly and incorporating the
Cup
(or
Chos
) imagery from Qumran, itself developed – as we just pointed out – in terms of a play on the word, ‘
Wrath
’ or
Cha
‘
as
there.

In the process, of course, Paul in 1 Corinthians 11:25 reverses this as well: ‘
This Cup is the New Covenant in my Blood
.
As often as you drink it
,
do this in Remembrance of me
.’
All three Synoptics also add the language of ‘
being poured out for the Many
’ – Matthew 26:28 adding ‘
for remission of Sins’
. Even this language is reflected in the Damascus Document’s presentation of ‘
the Covenant which God made with the First to atone for their sins
’ or ‘
for remission of their Sins
’ directly following its exegesis of the Zadokite Covenant.
42

Not only does the language of ‘
the Cup of the New Covenant in
(
his
)
Blood
’ in the Gospels recapitulate that at Qumran of ‘
pouring out of Lying
’ (the root of ‘
the Spouter of Lying
’ appellation) and ‘
the Many’
, the Letter to the Hebrews too – not surprisingly – discusses both ‘
the New Covenant
’ and that of ‘
the Old
’ extensively. It does so in the context of quoting Jerem
i
ah 31:31–34, perhaps the original provenance of this language of the ‘
New Covenant with the House of Judah
’ and probably, also, the origin of these several archaizing allusions to ‘
the House of Judah
’ in both the Habakkuk
Pesher
and the Damascus Document (Hebrews 8:8). Hebrews 9:20 also evokes Exodus 24:8’s ‘
this is the Blood of the Covenant
,
which God has e
n
joined upon you
’ and makes repeated reference to the Damascus Document’s ‘
Covenant of the First
’ (8:13 and 9:15).
43
In e
x
tensive, if esoteric, discussion of these two
Covenant
s, not only does Hebrews express this ‘
New Covenant in the Blood of Christ
’ in terms of ‘
Perfecting the one who serves
’ (9:9), ‘a
Perfect Tabernacle
’ (9:11), and ‘
making Perfect the Spirits of the Righteous
’ (12:23), but in evoking Habakkuk 2:4’s ‘
the Righteous shall live by his Faith
,’ it even uses the Habakkuk
Pesher
’s language of the
City
, combining it with that of ‘
building
’ and ‘
erecting
’ (10:38–11:16)! Here the parallel with both Paul in 1 C
o
rinthians and the Habakkuk
Pesher
is patent: ‘
For he was waiting for
a City
,
the Foundations of which were built and erected by God
’
.

Paul expresses this idea, as we just saw, in 1 Corinthians 11:25 – precisely prefiguring Luke 22:20 – as ‘
This Cup is the New Covenant in my Blood
’. He not only follows this up by reference to
the Cup of the Lord
, but here all resemblances end because he then rather speaks about ‘
drinking the Cup of the Lord unworthily
’ and, thereby, ‘
drinking Judgement to oneself
,
not seeing through to the body of the Lord
’ (1 Corinthians 11:27–29).

In doing so, he mixes the two separate ‘
Cup
’ imageries we have been following, by implication demonstrating that he a
p
pears to realize the two are interrelated – the one having to do with Divine
Vengeance
, the other a
spiritualized
or
allegorical
reinterpretation of a
Mystery Religion
-type ‘
Covenant
’ of some kind. Therefore we can conclude that what is referred to on three separate occasions in the Damascus Document at Qumran as ‘
the New Covenant in the Land of Damascus
’ becomes for Paul, in a figurative and esoteric transformation revealed only probably to a few adepts, ‘
the New Covenant in the Blood of Christ
.’

It should be recalled that in the first description of the Scriptural exegesis sessions of
the Righteous Teacher
/
Priest
in Column Two of the Habakkuk
Pesher
, this ‘
New Covenant
’ was expressed in terms of a two or threefold allusion to
Traitors
, that is, it appears, ‘
the Traitors to the New Covenant
’ and ‘
the Traitors to the Last Days
’, who ‘
did not believe in the Covenant of God and defiled His Holy Name
’, nor ‘
what they heard was going to happen to the Last Generation from the mouth of the Priest in whose heart God put the insight to interpret all the words of His Servants the Prophets’
.
62
Nor is this to mention those ‘
Covenant-Breakers’
also alluded to in the key original citation in Jeremiah 31:31–34 about the coming ‘
New Covenant
’ – the ‘
Torah
within them
’ that, as Paul would put, was going to be ‘
written upon their hearts
’
as
well! – who, along with those designated as
Violent Ones
and these two or three species of
Traitors
would appear to attend the Scriptural exegesis sessions of
the Righteous Teacher
.
44
At
the Last Supper
in the Gospels too it is just prior to Jesus ‘
taking the Cup
’ and announcing ‘
the New Covenant in
(
his
)
Blood
’ that he raises the issue of his coming ‘
betrayal
’ (Matthew 26:21 and
pars
.) or that in John 13:29, anyhow,
the
Traitor
Judas leaves to betray him.

But the relationship between ‘
the New Covenant in the Land of Damascus
’ at Qumran and ‘
the New Covenant in the Blood of Christ
’ in Paul does not end there. There is the additional connection just signaled above, which also may or may not be coincidental. In our view, it is purposeful. As already explained, the word for
Blood
in Hebrew is
Dam
– in the Nahum
Pesher
, for whatever reason, the plural
Damim
. But this is the first syllable in the place name
Damascus
, whether in Hebrew (
Dammashek
) or any other language.

The word in Hebrew for
Cup
, as we saw in our analysis of the wordplay surrounding the two words,
Chos
and
Cha
‘
as
–
Cup
and
Anger
– in the Habakkuk
Pesher
, is
Chos
(in fact, the Wicked Priest really did give, in a manner of speaking, the Righ
t
eous Teacher ‘
the Cup of
Blood to drink
’). Therefore the place name
Damascos
, in Greek and other derivative languages really does mean, taken according to its precise homophonic or literal transliteration in Hebrew, ‘
Blood
’ and ‘
Cup
’ (
Dam
and
Chos
) or ‘
Cup of Blood’
. Just as in the case of the overlaps between ‘
swallowing
’ in Hebrew (
balla
‘
) and ‘
casting down
’ in Greek (
ballo
) in the usages surrounding the deaths of both the Righteous Teacher at Qumran and James, it is hard to conceive of additional overlaps such as these as mere coincidence.

This makes ‘
the New Covenant in the Land of Damascus
’ at Qumran the very same thing as ‘
the Cup of the New Cov
e
nant in
(
his
)
Blood
’ in Paul (and the Gospels) – only the one esotericizes and, in due course,
absolutely reverses the sense of the other
. The parallel between ‘
Drink
’ and ‘
Give to drink
’ in Greek and
Mashkeh
in Hebrew just increases the correspondence further, making it seem as if the relationship – esoteric as it may have been – had to have been a conscious one. This is a perfectly astonishing conclusion, one that – to coin a euphemism – turns the history of Christianity ‘
on its ear
’ – this, too, from a do
c
ument, which on the basis of an analysis of the handwriting of one or two fragments, scholars insist on placing in the Second Century BCE.
On the basis of an analysis of the
internal data
and its
vocabulary
, such an early date is patently absurd.