James the Brother of Jesus and the Dead Sea Scrolls II (164 page)

Early commentators had difficulty reconciling the self-evident militancy, intolerance, and aggressiveness that run through almost all the Scrolls with their self-evident
Essene
-like characteristics. This conundrum is resolved if we take Hippolytus’ a
d
ditions to Josephus
at face value
– additions which, as already argued, Hippolytus would have been
incapable of inventing or fabrica
t
ing himself
in the Third Century but which were either suppressed or diffused in alternate versions of Josephus’
Jewish War
, e
i
ther by himself in Rome or others, as the true apocalyptic
Messianism
of the
Essenes
, represented by the literature that has now been found at Qumran, came to be more fully realized.

Therefore, it should be clear that what we have before us in this literature are the documents of the
Sicarii
Essene
or
Zea
l
ot Essene Movement
(for Hippolytus, they are the same), a
Movement
which (as the First Century progressed) became indi
s
tinguishable from those Paul is identifying as
the representatives
or ‘
some from James’
, those who were insisting – to use the language of Acts 15:1 – that, ‘
unless you were circumcised according to the Custom of Moses
,
you could not be saved
’ or, as Paul characterizes them too, ‘
the Party of the Circumcision’
.

When one takes Dio Cassius, Origen, and Jerome at face value – understanding
the
Sicarii
in the light of
the
Lex Cornelia de Sicarius
– not as ‘
Assassins
’ or ‘
Cutthroats’
, as their enemies would have us see them, but as
Circumcisers
utilizing
the Circumciser
’
s knife
and even sometimes – as at Qumran and Masada – as
Messianists
(‘
Christians
’ according to some vocabularies or, as we have also described them, ‘
Messianic Sadducees
’) – then, I submit,
most of the difficulties hitherto surrounding these issues in considering the Dead Sea Scrolls evaporate
.

‘
The Cup of the Lord’
and ‘
the Blood of Christ
’

Let us close by recapitulating the arguments for the relationship of Paul’s and the Synoptics’ ‘
Cup of the New Covenant in
(
the
)
Blood
’ of Christ and the Damascus Document’s ‘
New Covenant in the Land of Damascus’
. At first glance there is no relationship between the two at all except the reference to
the New Covenant
. On further analysis, however, there is – a lingustic and/or an esoteric one. This will depend, as we have been demonstrating, on letters that have a certain signification in the Hebrew moving over into the Greek to produce a slightly different one.

Earlier, we pointed out that letters with unusual significance in Hebrew – for example,
B
-
L
-
‘
/‘
swallowing
’ and the root of
Belial
,
Bela
‘
, and
Balaam
– moved over into the Greek with entirely different signification as if the letters themselves (
balla
‘
in the Hebrew/
ballo
in Greek) carried some special importance whatever their meaning. In particular, this usage – which had to do in both languages with a sort of ‘
Devilishness
’ – was important. To illustrate this, we showed that the ‘
swallowing
’ language applied in Hebrew in the Habakkuk
Pesher
to the destruction or death of
the Righteous Teacher
and his followers among ‘
the Poor
’ (as well as to
the Wicked Priest
) had a certain linguistic relationship to the ‘
casting out
’/‘
casting down
’ language in New Testament, Josephus, and early Church accounts of the deaths of Stephen, Ananus, James, and Zachariah ben Bariscaeus r
e
spectively.

This ‘
casting out
’ language was also to be found in ‘
Nets
’ and exorcism symbolism generally in the New Testament, not to mention the ‘
expulsion
’ language Josephus employs in his description of
Essene
banishment practices. In addition, it was easy to see how
Belial
and his
Nets
, in the language of Qumran allusion, moved into
Balaam
,
Balak
, their
Nets
,
Babylon
, and even
Beelzebul
in Revelation and the Gospels. As an aside to this,
Belial
itself connects in the Greek with
Diabolos
– in English, ‘
the Devil
’ – and, in Arabic, with
Iblis
in the Koran.
108

When considering ‘
Damascus’
, as in ‘
the New Covenant in the Land of Damascus
’ in CD VI.19 and VIII.21/XIX.33–34, the Hebrew for ‘
Blood’
, as previously explained, is
Dam
and, for
Cup
, it is
C
hos
, both forming the two parts of the transliter
a
tion into Greek of the Hebrew place name ‘
Damascus
’. Though in Hebrew, this particular homophone appears only to work for the first syllable, ‘
Dam
’ or ‘
Blood
’; if the second part of the Hebrew expression for ‘
Damascus
’ – ‘
Dammashek
,’ namely
mashek
/
mashkeh
, a fourth form verbal noun, meaning, ‘
to give to drink
’ – is taken into consideration, it also works out for the second syllable even in Hebrew.

Not only will this ultimately link up with the same phraseology, ‘
giving to drink
’ or the command to ‘
drink this’
, a staple of New Testament accounts of these solemn pronouncements, attributed by all
–
except the Gospel of John
–
to Jesus himself, but it is also an allusion Paul seems to take particular (if malicious) pleasure in enunciating when – after picturing in 1 Cori
n
thians 11:24–25 ‘
the Lord Jesus
’, ‘
having dined
’ and ‘
saying’
, ‘
This Cup is the New Covenant in my Blood
.
Do this as often as you drink it in Remembrance of me
’;
and proceeding in the typical
strophe-antistrophe-epode
style to affirm: ‘
For as often as you eat this bread and drink this Cup
,
you proclaim the death of the Lord until he comes
’;
he then, seemingly, parodies these ‘
drinking
’ connotations with the belligerent and intolerant passages: ‘
So that whosoever
…
shall drink the Cup of the Lord unworthily shall be guilty of the body and Blood of the Lord’
(11:27)
– and, once again, reaffirming this: ‘
For he who eats and drinks unworthily
,
eats and drinks Judgement to himself
,
not seeing through to the body of the Lord’
(11:29).
Whatever one may think of the theological and personal attitudes he displays here, these denotations in Hebrew at the root of the Greek transliteration ‘
Damascus
’ become the essence of the New Testament theological approach of ‘
the New Covenant
’ – now not ‘
in the Land of Damascus
’ – but ‘
in the Cup of
(
the
)
Blood
’ of Christ. Though the arguments in support of this insight are linguistic and textual, given the importance of the material under consideration, one would be unwise to ignore or pass over the correspondence between these two formulations, treating it as if it did not exist or was simply a fortuitous accident. Even if only the ‘
Blood
’ part of the equivalence were to be entertained – which in itself would be sufficient corroboration – what is the probability of such a surprising correspondence being accidental? Is it logical to think that a focus such as this on the twin concepts of ‘
Cup
’ and ‘
Blood
’ – the homophonic equivalents in Hebrew of the syllables
Dam
and
Chos
composing the Greek transliteration ‘
Damascus
’ – is simply accidental?

But the second part of the designation ‘
Damascus’
, involving the Hebrew root ‘
Sh
-
K
-
H
’ – in its verbal morphology,
mashkeh
, meaning ‘
give to drink
’ – works out as well; and, in addition to the self-evident
Dam
/
Blood
and
Chos
/
Cup
equiv
a
lences in the Greek, this additional
mashkeh
/‘
give to drink
’ equivalence in Hebrew would appear to be definitive.

Even if it should be granted that New Testament writers such as Paul, to say nothing of those producing the Synoptic Gospels – understood an esoteric or allegorical equivalence such as this (the fusion of
Damascus
/
Dammashek
providing an especially bountiful harvest for those interested in esoteric exegesis of this kind), the question remains whether those who composed the documents found at Qumran understood the allusion
Damascus
/
Dammashek
in this manner as well. From the perspective of the interpretation of texts (if not philology itself), the only plausible way to answer a question such as this is to look at the texts themselves and see how the expression ‘
the New Covenant
’ is used in them.

Allusion to ‘
the New Covenant
’ is first found in the prophecies of Jeremiah 31:31–34 which are, as it turns out, quoted in full in the sections of Hebrews 8:8–12 already alluded to above. These are followed up by ‘
new heart and new Spirit
’ imagery in Ezekiel 11:19 and 36:26 which Paul variously adopts to his own purposes while conveniently discarding the phrase ‘
keep My Laws
’ associated with the phrase in almost all original contexts.
109

The usage is then picked up again in ‘
Last Supper
’ scenarios in the Synoptics (though not in John) and 1 Corinthians 11:25. Thereafter it is fleshed out definitively in Hebrews 8:13, 9:14–15, 10–20, and 12:24 (here not ‘
New
’ but ‘
fresh
’ Cov
e
nant), though in these last with an emphasis on the ‘
Blood
’ aspect of the phraseology rather than the ‘
Cup’
. In the Dead Sea Scrolls, aside from the one negative evocation of ‘
the New Covenant
’ in the context, seemingly, of an allusion to ‘
Traitors
’ attached to it in 1QpHab II.3 already called attention to above, it is found almost exclusively in the Damascus Document and, there, almost never unaccompanied by allusion to ‘
the Land of Damascus’
.

In the Damascus Document, the first allusion to ‘
Damascus
’ occurs in Column VI.19 in the extension or recapitulation of the earlier exegesis of
the Zadokite Covenant
in III.21–IV.4. Though in the latter exposition – ‘
waw
’ constructs seemingly ha
v
ing been deliberately added to break up the original appositive of ‘
the Priests
,
the Sons of Zadok, Levites
’ in Ezekiel 44:15 – ‘
the Priests
’ were defined (somewhat esoterically) as ‘
the Penitents of Israel who went out from the Land of Judah and the
Nilvim
with them
’ (seemingly in exposition of or esoterically-equivalent to the term ‘
Levites
’ in Ezekiel). The third group, of course, were ‘
the Sons of Zadok
’ who were defined both more eschatologically and, as we have seen, in terms of ‘
standing’
.