James the Brother of Jesus and the Dead Sea Scrolls II (69 page)

Directly following these expositions of
Ben Zizzit
’s name,
Gittin
goes on to tell its stories about ‘
Martha the daughter of Boethus
’ (unlike Lamentations
Rabbah
it gets the patronym right), a name that time and time again inevitably seems to bring us back, as we have been suggesting, to the Gospel of John’s stories about
Lazarus
’ two sisters,
Mary
and
Martha
and, in partic
u
lar, the preciousness of the ‘
measure
’ or ‘
weight of ointment of pure spikenard
’ they used to minister either to Jesus’ ‘
head
’ or ‘
his feet
’. It is in illustrating how far
Martha
had sunk from her previous high station that
Gittin
gives us its version of the ep
i
sode – also remarked, as we have seen, by Josephus – of how ‘
the Zealots
’
had burned all the stores of wheat and barley
.
10
This is the background it uses to illustrate how out of utter desperation,
because there was no grain left in the market
, ‘
she took off her shoes
’, apparently because she didn’t want to get them (the ‘
shoes
’) dirty in the mud, whereupon the ‘
dung stuck to her foot
and she died
’.
11

In
ARN
, interestingly, the same story is told about how ‘
the Zealots
’ burned all the grain in Jerusalem or ‘
mixed it with mud
’ – this time directly connected to the name of
Ben Kalba Sabu
‘
a
and the one about how, if ‘
one came to his door hungry as a dog
,
one went away filled
’.
12
Furthermore, not only is it explicitly connected to his ‘
twenty-one
’ or ‘
twenty-two
y
ears
’ of grain storage for Jerusalem, but also that of the themes of ‘
the loaves
’ and ‘
dung
’/‘
excrement
’ as well. This is achieved by ha
v
ing ‘
the Zealots
’ use ‘
the loaves
’ which
Ben Kalba Sabu
‘
a
had baked for all the citizens of Jerusalem and ‘
brick up the walls with them
’. Then, directly following this, another story connected with the city’s fall about how, ‘
when Vespasian examined the dung of the besieged men
’, who were by this time (because of
the famine
and because ‘
the Zealots
’
had burned all Ben Kalba Sabu
‘
a
’
s stores
)
eating nothing but straw
, ‘
and saw that it was without a trace of barley or corn
,
he said to his soldiers
’: ‘
If these men who eat nothing but straw can kill so many of you
,
how many more of you would they kill if they were to eat and drink like you
?’

It is at this point, too, that
Gittin
then launches into its climactic story about
Martha
, the one we have been following about how, when she ‘
was about to die
,
she brought out all her gold and silver and cast it into the street
’, thereby fulfilling the prophecy from Ezekiel 7:19 about
the destruction of Jerusalem and the fall of the (First) Temple
and how the people would then have to ‘
cast their silver into the streets
’. Of course, not only do we have the tragedy being so graphically illustrated by all events connected with these times (except in the Gospels, where it takes second place to other considerations), but the fact that the fall of the First Temple is being echoed in these traditions connected to the fall of the Second.

Of course, too, this story is certainly echoed, as we have been at pains to point out, by the one found in the Gospels about Judas
Iscariot
‘
casting down (his) pieces of silver into the Temple
’, itself supposed to be a variation of Zechariah 11:12–13’s ‘
casting (his) silver to the silversmiths
’. Not only does the ‘
silver
’/‘
silversmith
’ motif, in turn, find an echo in the
ARN
’s
Sisit Hakkeset
‘
sitting on silver cushions
’, as already highlighted too, but also in the ‘
twelve thousand silver dinar
’ value of the be
d
spread
Nakdimon
’
s daughter Miriam
used or the ‘
twelve talents of silver
’ he promised to pay the foreign lord as surety for his ‘
twelve water cisterns
’.
13

In
Gittin
, these notices are immediately followed again, not surprisingly, by another about ‘
the
Sicarii
’ referred to as ‘
the
Biryonim
’ and, picking up this theme of
the destruction of Jerusalem
, then moving into another series of stories about R. Eliezer ben Hyrcanus, R. Yohanan ben Zacchai, the Romans, the destruction of the Temple, and ultimately, once more, even R. Akiba.
14
But the sequence is parallel and worth remarking since, just as the Gospels connect their ‘
Judas Iscariot
’ ‘
casting his silver into the Temple
’ to the destruction of Jesus (in Paul in 1 Corinthians 3:9–17 and 12:14–27, Matthew 26:61, and Mark 14:58
equivalent to
the Temple
), so too
Gittin
connects Martha’s ‘
casting her silver into the streets
’ of Jerusalem with its stories about ‘the
Biryonim
’ (its ‘
Sicarii
’) and their direct role in bringing on
the destruction of Jerusalem
.

The story
Gittin
is telling, also recorded in Lamentations
Rabbah
in even more detail, is about ‘
Abba Sikkra
’ (in the Lame
n
tations and Ecclesiastes
Rabbah
tradition, ‘
Ben Battiah
’
15
), the head of
the
Sicarii
or ‘
Biryonim
in Jerusalem
’ and ‘
the son of the sister of Rabbi Yohanan ben Zacchai
’ – that is, Rabbi Yohanan’s nephew. Even
Abba Sikkra
’s name here implies a connection to such ‘
Sicarii
’.
This is also basically made explicit in Ecclesiastes
Rabbah
where the corruption ‘
Kisrin
’ – not unlike similar co
r
ruptions such as ‘
Iscariot
’ – has manifestly been substituted for ‘
Sikrin
’ (
cf
. the village, called in some traditions ‘
Sihnin
’, see
m
ingly in Galilee, where James’ stand-in ‘
Jacob
’ – who tells Rabbi Eliezer the story about ‘
the High Priests
’
latrine
’ – comes from).
16

When Rabbi Yohanan sends for his nephew and berates him for ‘
killing all the People with starvation
’ (because of having earlier burned all the stores), R. Yohanan requests a plan from him to enable him to escape from Jerusalem. His nephew then recommends he escape by means of a casket, presumably the only way out of the city at the time –
i
.
e
., to be or pretend to be dead. This ‘
Abba Sikkra
’, a pseudonym if ever there was one, then tells him to even ‘
bring something that smells putrid
’ and put it in the coffin so people would think he is dead.
17
The reader will immediately recognize the ‘
putrid smelling
’ or ‘
stink
’ motif of John 11:39’s depiction of Lazarus’ corpse (‘
four days in the grave
’ according to
Martha
), to say nothing of ‘
the dung
’ Rabbi Eliezer puts in his mouth so that his breath will smell ‘
putrid
’, we have already mentioned previously, but will have cause to discuss more definitively below.

In another such story about ‘
privies
’, illustrating the
physicality
of Rabbinic tradition as opposed to the ofttimes extreme
spirituality
of the Greek, it is related that the heroic Rabbi Akiba, Rabbi Eliezer’s student in the next generation, once followed Rabbi Joshua (Jesus?) ‘
into the privy to see how he conducted himself
’ and observed that, ‘
entering sideways
,
he exposed hi
m
self only after he sat down and wiped himself
(
too
)
only after he had sat down and this solely with the left hand
’ (a practice still followed throughout the Middle East to this day).
18

However this may be, going back to R. Yohanan, when the guards at the gate want to ‘
pierce his casket with a lance
’ (to make sure who or what was inside was dead),
his Disciples
in consternation prevent them, saying, ‘
Shall (the Romans) say
,
they have
pierced our Master
?’
The guards then open the gates and allow the entourage to pass unimpeded and R. Yohanan goes on – not unlike Jesus both in Gospel ‘
Little Apocalypse
’ and Matthew 24:2’s ‘
not one stone upon another that shall not be cast down
’ passages – to evoke a passage from Isaiah 10:34, ‘
Lebanon shall fall by a Mighty One
’, to predict Jerusalem’s imminent downfall. In doing so, since passages such as this, employing exactly the same ‘
Lebanon
’ imagery in multiple contexts, are e
x
tant and expounded at Qumran, he thereby solidifies the First
Century
CE
sitz-im-leben
of all these types of ‘
Lebanon shall fall by a Mighty One
’ allusions as
relating to the Temple and the First Century
CE
ambiance of this fall
and another hotly-vexed problem in the field of Qumran Studies is basically solved.
19

This story itself also has a clear counterpart and possible parody in John 19:34’s famous picture of a Roman soldier ‘
piercing
(Jesus
’
) side with a lance
’. Once again John, to say nothing of Luke and the others, certainly seems to be showing knowledge of or contact with – even perhaps dependency upon – the kind of allusions one finds in curious Talmudic traditions of this kind. Certainly Luke does in his portrait of the ‘
Rich Man dressed in purple
’ and ‘
Poor Lazarus
’ with ‘
his sores licked by dogs
’ at ‘
his doorstep
’ – but so, in our view, do the other Gospels in their various ‘
raising
’, ‘
curing
’, ‘
feeding
’, ‘
basket-filling
’, ‘
grain
’ and ‘
loaves
’-multiplication, ‘
feet-kissing
’, ‘
hair-wiping
’, ‘
spikenard ointment
’, and ‘
Disciples
’ stories we have so often been highlighting above.

But the Scriptural warrant John quotes for this is, once again (as in Matthew 27:3–10 above in Judas
Iscariot
‘
casting the thirty pieces of silver into the Temple
’) a passage again from
Zechariah
– this time Zechariah 12:10, ‘
they shall look upon him whom they pierced
’.
Curiously the proof-text quoted with it in John 19:36 is from Exodus 12:46, ‘
not a bone of it
(that is,
the lamb
)
shall be broken
’, which has to do with eating the paschal meal and again referencing the matter of
taking Jesus
’
body down from the cross before nightfall without
‘
breaking his legs
’. But here the resemblance ends. In the context in Exodus, it is preceded in 12:43–45 and followed in 12:48 by an
absolute insistence on
circumcision
and ‘
no foreigner who is not circumcised
’ ta
k
ing part in such a ceremonial meal. To be sure, this is the very opposite of the way John, the other Gospels, and, of course, Paul insist on putting such passages to use, but anything goes where the use of Philo’s method of ‘
allegorical interpretation of Scripture
’ as applied to the purported ‘
Passion of the Christ
’ is concerned.