James the Brother of Jesus and the Dead Sea Scrolls II (55 page)

Moreover, vocabulary such as ‘
lips
’, ‘
heart
’, and ‘
vain
’/‘
vanity
’ is absolutely fundamental to the Qumran lexicon, as it is some extent the Letter attributed to James.
32
In fact, as we have been trying to illustrate, to unravel these things takes quite a good deal of sophistication – which is why history before the discovery of the Dead Sea Scrolls has been so slow to do so (the key or ‘
Rosetta Stone
’, as it were, just not being available) – because the people who put them together were extremely clever and, if the truth were told, artful. Nor did we have the rudimentary data to deconstruct them. Now we do. Here, once again, the last word belongs to Plato who wished to bar just such persons from his ideal ‘
Republic
’, that is, the people who spun th
e
se kinds of ‘
mystery
’-oriented miracle tales about the ‘gods’ by which the average people lived, and in so doing, misled them.
33

Both Mark 7:6–7 and Matthew 15:7–9 picture Jesus as using this passage to attack the ‘
vanity
’ of those who ‘
teach as their doctrines the commandments of
men
’, meaning, ‘
the Traditions of the Elders
’ just mentioned in Mark 7:5 and Matthew 15:2 above. Not only is this clearly an attack on what in Rabbinic parlance would be called ‘
oral tradition
’, but it turns around the parameters of Paul’s debates with those of the ‘
Jamesian
’ school or, if one prefers, inverts their arguments turning them back against themselves.
Again, the meaning both Mark and Matthew are clearly ascribing to their Jesus from the start here is that ‘
Hypocrites
’ of this kind, following ‘
the Tradition of the Elders
’, are ‘
forcing people to wash their hands before eating
’, som
e
thing which most people nowadays would consider as not only normal, but hygienic; however in Paul’s inverted invective something
Paul
(to say nothing about Jesus) would obviously consider
quite reprehensible
.

In Galatians 2:13, as we just pointed out, Paul uses the word ‘
hypocrisy
’ to attack ‘
Cephas
’ in the context of referring to the proverbial ‘
some from James
’ who ‘
came down
’ from Jerusalem to Antioch. He even accuses him ‘
and the rest of the Jews
’ with him (
sic
) – including his erstwhile traveling companion ‘
Barnabas
’ (whoever he may have been) – in 2:13 of, not just
propagating
‘
their hypocrisy
’ but ‘
not walking Upright
’ and ‘
jointly dissembling
’ as well. The reason for this last, it will be r
e
called, is that prior to the ‘
coming
’ of these ‘
some from James
’
down to
‘
Antioch
’, ‘
He
(‘
Cephas
’)
was eating with the Peoples
;
but when they came, he drew back and
separated himself
for fear of those of the circumcision’
(Galatians 2:12).

This allusion to ‘
those of the circumcision
’ is also intrinsic to Acts 11:2–3’s description of how these same ‘
those of the circumcision
’ complained that Peter ‘
ate with uncircumcised men
’ (the ‘
table fellowship
’ theme again coupled with the ‘
ci
r
cumcision
’ one). This came after Peter’s ‘
heavenly tablecloth
’ vision, in which he learned to call ‘
no man
’ or ‘
no thing
’ either ‘
profane or unclean
’ (10:15 and 28), after which he promptly went to visit the house of the Roman Centurion Cornelius – d
e
scribed in Acts’ own inimitable way as a ‘
Pious One and Righteous
’, ‘
fearing
’
and
‘
supplicating God continually
’ (that is, ‘
a God-Fearer
’), and ‘
esteemed by the whole Nation of the Jews
’ (
sic
), whose ‘
works were remembered before God
’ (11:2 and 11:30)!

This whole episode in Mark 7:1 and Matthew 15:1, as already alluded to, also begins with this same idea of ‘
the Pharisees and some of the Scribes
coming down from Jerusalem
’ (in Mark 8:15 and Matthew 16:6, it will be recalled, this allusion morphs into the polemical derogation of ‘
the leaven of the Pharisees and the leaven of Herod
’ or ‘
the leaven of the Pharisees and Sadd
u
cees
’). Here the ‘
some of the scribes
’ clearly corresponds to the ‘
some from James
’ and ‘
those of the circumcision
’ in Galatians 2:12 and Acts 11:2 above. Their complaint is now portrayed as being about ‘
seeing
some
of his
Disciples
eating with unwashed
’ or ‘
polluted hands
’ (Mark 7:2; in Matthew 15:1, this becomes ‘
not washing their hands when they eat bread
’).

But of course we have already seen that these same allusions to ‘
coming down from Jerusalem
’ and ‘
circumcision
’ recur in Acts 15:1’s picture of events triggering the celebrated ‘Jerusalem Council’ above. Not only do they basically recapitulate the scenarios just highlighted in Acts 11:2 and Galatians 2:12 about the objections of the ‘
some
’ or ‘
those of the circumcision
’ to the Gospel Paul was ‘
proclaiming among the Gentiles
’ (compare with Paul’s own words to this effect in Galatians 2:2), but once again they are followed up by allusion in Acts 15:2 – as in Mark 7:1 and Matthew 15:1 – to ‘
the Elders in Jerusalem
’ (
Presbyterous
) and in 15:5, ‘
the Heresy/Sect of the Pharisees
’, to say nothing of Peter’s being, as usual, the first to speak, though here somewhat more conciliatorily than in previous speeches attributed to him and even though he had according to Acts 12:17–19 already fled the country with a presumable death sentence on his head.

Acts 15:1 reads – it will be recalled though it bears repeating – ‘
And some
,
having come from Judea
,
were teaching the brothers that
,
unless you are circumcised
,
you cannot be saved
.’
Here the usage ‘
Judea
’ is substituted for ‘
Jerusalem
’ in Mark and Matthew above (in Acts 11:2 this is rather turned around and
Peter
goes
‘
up
to Jerusalem
’), but this is made good by the mention of ‘
the Elders in Jerusalem
’ in the very next line 15:2 and then again in 15:4. Even more importantly, the same all
u
sion to ‘
teaching
’ being employed here is repeated twice each in Mark 7:7 and Matthew 15:9 – presumably, just so we would not miss the point and forms the basis of the whole polemic there. Therefore and in this manner, the whole circle of all these interconnected allusions is complete.

‘
Spitting on the Tongue
’, ‘
Unstopping Ears
’, and ‘
Declaring all Things Clean
’

As in all of the previous episodes above, the denouement of this
abolishing purity requirements
/
table fellowship
episode in Mark 7 and Matthew 15, which sets the stage for the
Canaanite
/
Greek Syrophoenician woman
/
dogs under the table
e
n
counter that follows in the same chapters and further legitimatizes the Pauline Gentile Mission, once more has Jesus in 7:17
entering a
‘
house
’ (as he does yet again in Mark 7:24). In Mark 7:17, this is typically ‘
away from the multitude
’
to rebuke the Disciples
. In Matthew 15:15
there is no house
34
and the rebuke is – because of Galatians 2:11–14 –
only to Peter
. Still, ‘
the
multitude
’ from Mark 7:17 are the ones already portrayed earlier in Mark 7:14 and Matthew 15:10 as the ones being addressed by Jesus on the subject of ‘
pure foods
’, ‘
unwashed hands
’, ‘
Blind Guides
’, and ‘
Uprooted Plants
’.

In both Gospels, Jesus’ discourse begins with the words, ‘
hear and understand
’, again seemingly playing off the opening exhortations of the Damascus Document which read, ‘
hear
,
all you who know Righteousness
,
and understand
’ (1.1) – ‘
and now listen to me all who enter the Covenant and I will unstop your ears’
(2.2).
But in Mark 7:16 in the midst of Jesus’ attack on ‘
the Tradition of the Elders
’ and ‘
purifying all food
’ preceding this, the same ‘
ears
’ metaphor from Column Two of the Damascus Document, just reproduced above, actually appears, to wit, ‘
If anyone has ears
,
let him hear
’.

This is not the only place it appears in this episode. Mark’s Jesus repeats this in 8:18, in the midst of the third and harm
o
nized version of ‘
the feeding of the four thousand
’ episode: ‘
Having eyes
,
do you not see? Having ears
,
do you not hear?
’ But Mark even goes further than this. It also appears in the nonsense material that intervenes in 7:32–37, following his version of ‘
the dogs under the table
’ episode in 7:24–30, in the miracle that Jesus is then pictured in 7:33–35 as doing in ‘
laying hands
’
on a deaf and dumb person
,
curing him
. For its part, Matthew 15:29–31 omits this and, at this point in 15:31, only depicts ‘
the
Rabbim
’ as, once again, ‘
glorifying the God of Israel
’ after
having
‘
thrown down at his feet
’
the
‘
dumb
’, ‘
maimed
’, ‘
blind
’,
and
‘
lame
’,
they
‘
had with them
’,
for him to cure
.

These things also involve the process of ‘
unstopping someone
’
s ears
’, but Mark now rather proceeds to dramatize it in the form of a deaf and dumb person
whose
‘
ears
’
will literally now be
‘
unstopped
’ (7:32). This miracle – not specifically depicted in Matthew except by the more general allusion to their ‘
seeing the dumb speaking
’ in 15:31 – takes place after Jesus
left
‘
the borders of Tyre and Sidon
’ and, the unnamed Greek Syrophoenician woman’s daughter, ‘
lying on the bed
’, ‘
the demon having departed
’ (7:30–31). Jesus then somehow ‘
came to the sea of Galilee
’ from ‘
the borders of Tyre and Sidon
’ (in the manner in which Philip, somewhat disembodiedly, in Acts 8:26-40
gets to Caesarea after having taken the road from Jerusalem to Gaza
) – this, after going ‘
through the midst of the borders of the Decapolis
’, that is, on the other side of the Sea of Galilee and known to Gospel writers, as well as to the readers of Josephus, as another predominantly Gentile area!