James the Brother of Jesus and the Dead Sea Scrolls II (74 page)

To go back to the story of R. Eliezer ben Hyrcanus in
ARN
who, when only a young man (some say twenty-two – others say twenty-eight), was also pressed by R. Yohanan to discourse about
Torah
before ‘
all the Great Ones of Israel
’, obviously meaning before a Synod or Sanhedrin of some kind. For Genesis
Rabbah
, the discourse R. Eliezer is pressed to present is b
e
fore ‘
the Great Ones of the Land
’ whom it names as including ‘
Ben Zizzit Hakeseth
,
Nikodemon ben Gurion
–
i
.
e
.,
Nakdimon
or
Nicodemus
–
and Ben Kalba Sabu
‘
a
’. By the same token, it is this incident – plus the story of ‘
the cattle dung
’ which he put into his mouth the night before he was to give this, ‘
causing a putrid smell to rise from his mouth
’ – which the
ARN
also uses to introduce its stories about the three grandees there: ‘
Sisit Hakkeset
’, ‘Nakdimon ben Gurion’, and ‘Ben Kalba
Sabu
‘
a
’.
56
For Ecclesiastes
Rabbah
in its discussion of R. Yohanan’s nephew ‘
Ben Battiah
’, the Head of
the
Sicarii
of J
e
rusalem, it was four such ‘
Councilors
’ in Jerusalem at this time, ‘
each capable of supplying the city with grain for ten years
’: ‘
Ben Zizzit
,
Ben Gurion
,
Ben Nakdimon
,
and Ben Kalba Sabu
‘
a
’.
57
In fact,
A
RN
then goes on to say something similar about ‘
Ben Sisit Hakkeset
’’s name to what it did in its story, just preceding this, about both R. Eliezer ben Hyrcanus and R. Yohanan, that is, that they called him this ‘
because he used to recline on a silver couch before the Great Ones of Israel
’ (for
Gittin
, it will be recalled, it was rather ‘
because his seat was among the Great Ones of Rome
’).
58
Such are the inconsistencies of Rabbinic literature as well.

For Genesis
Rabbah
, which like
ARN
starts off with the note about ‘
the clods of dung Rabbi Eliezer used to put into his mouth until it emitted a putrid smell
’, now these three – as just indicated – are called ‘
the Great Ones of the Land
’ (in
Gittin
, which has no ‘
dung
’ incident, they were – something like Luke notes about its various ‘
Rich Men
’ – ‘
three Men of Great Ric
h
es
’) and R. Eliezer’s lecture is delivered just as his father, who has come to disinherit him for studying
Torah
, sees him so el
e
gantly holding forth in such exalted company and then rather bequeaths his whole fortune to him. The perceptive reader will immediately see that there are overtones here of the initial estrangement between R. Akiba and
his
father-in-law, ‘
Ben Kalba Sabu
‘
a
’ – whom we have already identified as a scion of some kind of the Royal House of Adiabene – before an eventual re
c
onciliation occurs for not unsimilar reasons. This too results in R. Akiba’s eventual great wealth. Of course in the latter’s case, there is always the additional curious story of his second marriage – Rachel, the putative descendant of Queen Helen’s family, having already disappeared somehow from his biography by this point – to the wife, clearly in the time of either Trajan or H
a
drian, of a wealthy Roman aristocrat
who had converted for his sake
!
59

However this may be, the description of this scriptural exegesis session – before what almost resembled ‘
a Sanhedrin
’ of important personages (when R. Eliezer b. Hyrcanus – ‘
whose face
’, as we saw, ‘
shone like the beams of light emanating from Moses
’
face
’ – was reconciled with his father) – in Genesis
Rabbah
reads almost like a
Pesher
on Psalm 37, a
Pesher
extant at Qumran. Moreover, Genesis
Rabbah
makes it very clear that the actual verse he is expounding (before ‘
the Great Ones of the Land
’) is a verse
actually subjected to exegesis at Qumran
. Be this as it may, now Eliezer ben Hyrcanus (not ‘
Ben Zizzit
’) is ‘
sitting before them
’ – ‘
the Great Ones of the Land
’ – expounding a verse from Psalm 37:14–15: ‘
The Wicked have drawn the sword and bent the bow to cast down the Meek and the Poor
(
Ebion
)
and to slay the Upright of the Way
(
Yesharei-Derek
).’
But, of course, this is a classic Qumran-style ‘
wilderness
’ passage including not only allusions to ‘
Ebion
’ (‘
the Poor
’), ‘
the Meek
’ (
‘
A
ni
), and ‘
the Way
’/‘
the Upright of the Way
’, but also another important variation on the ‘
casting down
’ language, imagery which – as we shall presently also see – is to be found in the Habakkuk
Pesher
as well.
And what is so marvelous about all this is that, as just observed,
a
Pesher
on the same verse is actually extant at Qumran
– palaeographically speaking, as already ind
i
cated, contemporary with the Habakkuk
Pesher
.
60

As far as Eliezer is concerned, the verse, ‘
the Wicked have drawn the sword and have bent the bow
’, refers to ‘
Amraphel and his companions
’ (Genesis 14:1–15), which is the reason for the placement of this incident at this point in Genesis
Rabbah
. However in the Psalm 37
Pesher
at Qumran, more to the point, the exegesis of this passage has to do with ‘
the Wicked of Ephraim and Manasseh
’ – in any event, the first of these is both a homophone and an anagram of the ‘
Amraphel
’ above.
61
This is immediately followed up in the
Pesher
by references to both ‘
the Doers of th
e
Torah
’ and ‘
the Penitents of the Desert
’ (‘
the Congregation
’ or ‘
Church of God
’
s Elect
’ – later ‘
the Church of the Poor
’ or ‘
the Ebionites
’), ‘
who shall possess the High Mountain of Israel forever
’ – also defined in Psalm 37:20 that follows as ‘
those who love the Lord
’ and ‘
the pride of His pa
s
tures
’.
62

There is no telling what R. Eliezer might have made of these further allusions and why his surprising exposition, ‘
this r
e
fers to Amraphel and his companions
’, should have so impressed the assembled grandees (including his father, who immed
i
ately bequeathed him his whole estate whereas earlier he was on the point of disinheriting
him), but if it has anything to do with Qumran, then its exposition would concern: ‘
The Evil Ones of Ephraim and Manasseh
,
who sought to lay hands on the Priest
(
i
.
e
., ‘
the High Priest
’ – a synonym at Qumran for ‘
the Righteous Teacher
’)
and the Men of his Council
(‘
the Community Council
’)
at the time of the testing
(or ‘
trial
’ – literally, ‘
refining
’ as in metal work)
that came upon them
.
But God will redeem them from their hand and later they will be given over to the hand of the Violent Ones of the Gentiles for Judgement’
63
–
by anyone’s standard, a crucial exposition we shall evaluate further below when it comes to analyzing the Habakkuk
Pesher
, b
e
cause of the numerous overlaps and commonalities in vocabulary between the two
Pesharim
.

Not only is this yet another testimony – if such were needed – of the chronological provenance of these Qumran allusions as relating to the First Century and not before, in particular, the period of the War against Rome, but almost all commentators see these references as covert allusions to the Establishment, possibly Herodians or Romans – possibly Pharisees and Sadd
u
cees. Nor can it be emphasized too much that the finding of this pseudonym ‘
Amraphel
’ here in the Genesis
Rabbah
, placed in the mouth of Eliezer ben Hyrcanus, the one rabbi whose sympathies with sectarian movements in Palestine has always been suspected, is a striking reminder of the uniqueness of these scriptural expositions, and that the knowledge of them and the events they represented continued after the generally-assumed deposit-date for the Scrolls in the Qumran caves – in the period around 70
CE
and the fall of either the Temple or Masada or both (of course, there is no reason they could not have been d
e
posited later, as I have argued, any time up to the Bar Kochba Revolt of 132–36
CE
and its suppression
64
).

Furthermore, when talking about ‘
the Simple of Ephraim fleeing their Assembly
’ and ‘
those who mislead them
’ and, once more, ‘
joining
(
themselves to
)
Israel when the
Glory
of Judah shall arise
’ in another
Pesher
,
that on Nahum, this ‘
joining
’ all
u
sion can mean ‘
Gentiles
’ generally in the sense of ‘
God-Fearing
’
Nilvim
(or ‘
Joiners
’), pro-Revolutionary Herodians, or even ‘
Samaritans
’
per se
as, for instance, in the way this latter term is used in the Gospels.
65

But also at the conclusion of all these
Mary
/
Martha
/
Lazarus
activities in John 12:23 and 12:28, when Andrew and Philip – again ‘
two Disciples
’ – tell him that ‘
certain Greeks
’ are also coming ‘
to worship at the Feast
’, Jesus is pictured as responding in 12:23 using similar language, ‘
the time has come for the Son of Man to be
Glorified
’ (
cf
. this same theme repeated in Acts 11:18 after Peter explains to ‘
those of the circumcision
’ why he ‘
went in and ate with uncircumcised men
’ – who upon ‘
hearing these things were silent and
Glorified God
,
saying
,
truly God gave repentance unto life to the Gentiles too
’), and again in 12:28, when he is pictured as crying out, ‘
Father
,
Glorify
Your Name
’, yet one more ‘
Voice out of Heaven
’ materializes and calls down, ‘
I both have
Glorified
it and will
Glorify it again
’! So obviously, this ‘
arising of the Glory of Judah
’ was very much on the mind of Gospel craftsmen.