James the Brother of Jesus and the Dead Sea Scrolls II (153 page)

In Galatians 5:15 and 5:26, he even evokes the term ‘
Glory
’ or ‘
vainglory
’ again, in cautioning his communities ‘
not to seek vainglory
’ or ‘
self-glorification
’ by ‘
envying
’ and ‘
biting and swallowing one another
’ – strange words coming from his perspe
c
tive. This would appear to be the same ‘
vainglory
’ or ‘
self-glorification
’ the Habakkuk
Pesher
is referring to at this point here. There is so much ‘
vainglory
’ of this kind in the corpus ascribed to Paul that to enumerate it all would be endless.

Where the Letter of James is concerned, ‘
If anyone among you seems Religious
,
not bridling his Tongue
,
but rather D
e
ceiving his heart, such a one
’
s Religion is Worthless
.’ As previously suggested, ‘
Religion
’ here basically approximates or takes the place of the references to ‘
Service
’ and ‘
amal
in the Habakkuk
Pesher
.
55

The ‘
heart
’ imagery here is presaged by Jeremiah 31:31–33’s ‘
making a New Covenant
’ with ‘
the House of Judah
’ d
e
scribed in terms of ‘
putting My
Torah
inside them and writing it upon their heart
’. But it should be clear that when combined with Habakkuk 2:2’s ‘
writing and running
’ above, this produces Paul’s play on the appointment ‘
Letters
’ written by James – and, for that matter, ‘
written letters
’ generally – in 2 Corinthians 3:3, referring to ‘
Christ
’
s Letter
,
served by us
,
not written in ink
,’ but ‘
on the fleshy tablets of
(
the
)
heart’
.

This ends with his evocation of his and, doubtlessly, his companions’ being ‘
able Servants of the New Covenant
’ in 2 C
o
rinthians 3:6 (here, note again, the Habakkuk
Pesher
’s ‘
Servants
’ language just signaled above). Paul then adds, ‘
not of letters but of the Spirit
,
for the letter kills
,
but the Spirit gives life
’. Aside from the clear derogation here, he then concludes speaking fairly plainly this time: ‘
But if the Ministry of death
,
having been cut in letters in stones
,
was produced with Glory
…
how much rather shall the Ministry of the Spirit be with Glory
?
For if the Ministry of Condemnation was Glory
,
how much rather does the Ministry of Righteousness exceed it in Glory.’

How much more hostile to ‘
Palestinian
’ parameters can one show oneself to be and, of a completely philo-
Hellenistic
mindset, can one display? Not only does one have here the ‘
condemnation
’ and ‘
Justification’
descriptive of the eschatological role of the
true
‘
Sons of Zadok
’ in the Damascus Document, to say nothing of the total
usurpation
of the
Righteousness
do
c
trine itself, but the constant play in the Habakkuk
Pesher
on both the ‘
Worthless Ministry
’ of the Liar and his ‘
Vainglory
’. The Letter of James, directly following its allusion to ‘
making yourself a Friend of the World
’ and ‘
turning yourself into an Enemy of God
’, also reverses the thrust of Paul’s repeated evocation of this term ‘
Worthless
’ or ‘
in vain
’ by asking, ‘
Does Scripture speak in vain
’? (James 4:5). For more of Paul’s ‘
Vainglory
’ and his ‘
Tongue
’, one has only to consult 2 Corinthians, which is full of what even Paul himself admits is ‘
boasting’
. One could not find more appropriate examples to illustrate the identity of outlooks between the Habakkuk
Pesher
and the Letter attributed to James.

For its part, the
Pesher
seems to refer to just this kind of activity by adding the phrase to its
Vainglory
allusions, ‘
and i
n
structing them in works of Lying’
. This is how
the Lying Spouter
is building his ‘
Worthless Assembly
’ or ‘
Church upon Blood
’ and
Lying
,
i
.
e
., just as the
works
of
the Righteous Teacher
are
Righteous
and ‘
full of Righteousness and Justification
’, so, too, the
works
of
the Man of Lies
are ‘
of Lying
’ and
Empty
. We have all of the allusions necessary to connect this material to the kind of person seen as
the Enemy
or
Liar
– in Islam ‘
the
Dajjal
’ or
Joker
– in
Jewish Christian
or
Ebionite
texts such as the
Recognitions
or the
Anabathmoi Jacobou
. There can be little doubt that the
Worthless City
referred to at this point in the
Pesher
is an intellectual or spiritual one – the reference to
Blood
in this instance, as in Pauline Christianity generally, also being figur
a
tive. Nor in this regard should one forget the allusion being attributed to Jesus in Matthew 5:14’s
Sermon on the Mount
– fo
l
lowing ones to
Strength
, ‘
being thrown out’
, ‘
trampled upon’
, and
Light
– of his Community being ‘
a City on a hill
’ that ‘
could not be
hidden
’.

Moreover, the
Pesher
does not stop here. It now adds the
third
kind of works – those we have identified as ‘
suffering works
’ or ‘
works with eschatological effect’
, the same kind of works the
Pesher
evoked two columns earlier in VIII.2 in its e
s
chatological interpretation of Habakkuk 2:4. We identified this with the ‘
works working with Faith
’ of James 2:18–26, only now it was
works
working with ‘
Faith in the Righteous Teacher’
, another excellent example of materials relating either to James or
the Righteous Teacher
(or both) being retrospectively absorbed into the presentations of Jesus such as Paul is now using in Galatians and, to a lesser extent, in Romans to construct his ideology of the
Salvation by Faith
. In the Habakkuk
Pesher
, the same term ‘
amal
is now applied to how the Liar ‘
tired out Many with a Worthless Service
,
instructing them in
works of Lying
,
so that their
‘
amal
(
works
)
would be Empty
’ or ‘
for Emptiness
’ – ‘
Empty
’ here, clearly meaning ‘
Empty of saving
’ or ‘
eschatological effect’
.

In regard to this, it is instructive to look at Paul’s encouragement at the end of 1 Corinthians 15:58 above to his ‘
Beloved brothers
’ to ‘
be super-abundant in the work
(
s
)
of the Lord always
,
knowing that your toil is not Empty’
. But this is obviously almost word-for-word the description in the Habakkuk
Pesher
above about the ‘
amal
of the Spouter of Lying ‘
being Empty’
.
56
The counterpoint between this and the Habakkuk
Pesher
, not to mention Paul’s reference to ‘
Super Apostles
’ elsewhere, cannot be accidental and even the James-like ‘
works’
, now called ‘
the work
(
s
)
of the Lord’
, is here evoked. This word ‘
Empty
’ – and the word in the Habakkuk
Pesher
in Hebrew at this point
is
‘
Empty
’ – is also the basis of the epithet
James 2:20 uses to d
e
scribe the ‘
Wicked
’ Ideological Opponent, who doesn’t know that ‘
Faith without works is dead
’ nor that, ‘
just as the body apart from the Spirit is dead
,
so Faith apart from works is also dead
’ (2:26).

James calls this individual the ‘
Empty Man
’ or ‘
Man of Emptiness’
, obviously alluding to that individual’s position on how ‘
Abraham was justified
’ and the eschatological value of the ‘
suffering works
’ or ‘
toil
’ with which ‘
he instructed
(or ‘
misled
’?)
the Many
’ – that is, that ‘
they counted for Nothing
’ or were ‘
Empty
’ of soteriological effect where the matter of eschatological ‘
Salvation
’ or ‘
being saved
’ was concerned. In thinking that ‘
Abraham was justified by Faith
’ and not
works
, this individual – who in his very being gainsaid the idea of Abraham as ‘
the Friend of God’
, he being ‘
the Enemy of God
’ – did not know that ‘
Abraham was
justified by works
when he offered up his son Isaac on the altar
’ (2:21).

There can be no doubting the implication of these words and the purposeful introduction of a notation like that of ‘
amal
into the Qumran exposition of both Habakkuk 2:4 – which we have already identified as
Jamesian
– and 2:13 about ‘
the Pe
o
ples laboring for the sake of Fire and the Peoples tiring themselves out for the sake of Emptiness
’ in terms of the value of the teaching of the Ideological Adversary of
the Righteous Teacher
. With this last, we approach about as close to absolute conve
r
gence as one could imagine.

The exegesis of these passages from Habakkuk 2:12–13 now closes by calling down ‘
Hell-fire
’ on precisely the kind of i
n
dividual who has been ‘
building
(
this
)
Worthless City upon Blood and raising a Congregation
/
Assembly
upon Lying’
, ‘
bla
s
pheming and vilifying the Elect of God’
. There can be little doubt that throughout the corpus of Letters attributed to him in the New Testament, particularly Galatians and 1 and 2 Corinthians, Paul did precisely this – ‘
insulted and vilified
’ the Leade
r
ship of ‘
the Jerusalem Assembly
’ or ‘
the Church
’ led by James.