James the Brother of Jesus and the Dead Sea Scrolls II (89 page)

Paul not only repeatedly plays on the ‘
laying the Foundation
’ symbolism one encounters in documents like the Commun
i
ty Rule and Hymns above,
but by picturing himself as the ‘
architect
’, the Community he ‘
planted
’ as ‘
God
’
s building
’ (compare this with ‘
God visiting them and causing a Root of Planting to grow out of Israel and Aaron to inherit His land and prosper on the good things of His earth
’ in the famous introduction to the Damascus Document, regarding Jesus’ alleged insistence in Matthew 15:13 on ‘
uprooting
’
the things His
‘
Heavenly Father has not planted
’
29
) and, over and over again by speaking of ‘
the Holiness of the Temple of God
’ (1 Corinthians 3:9–17).

Paul continues this imagery in 2 Corinthians 5:1, again tying it to some extent to discussion at the end of 1 Corinthians (12:12–27) of Jesus
as Temple
and ‘
the members
’
of the Community as
‘
the parts of Christ
’
s body
’ (that is, the imagery of ‘
the Community as Temple
’ again). Here, once again – echoing this same simile in the Scrolls – he picks up the ‘
building
’ imagery by referring either to the Community or one’s own body or both as ‘
a building from God
,
a House not made with human hands but Eternal in Heaven
’, which brings us right back to the Community Rule’s language of ‘
the House
’ as ‘
a Holy Co
m
munity – the Sons of the Everlasting Foundation
’.

‘
Loving God
’ and ‘
Inheriting the Lot of the Holy Ones
’

The ‘
loving Piety
’ – on which this ‘
Community of Truth
’, ‘
thoughtful Righteousness
’, and Divine ‘
Sonship
’ is supposed to be based – is important as the first of the two ‘
Love
’ Commandments Scripture also attributes to Jesus
30
– namely, ‘
loving God
’. As we just saw, both 1 Corinthians 2:9 and James 2:5 pick up the same formulation in ‘
the Hidden Wisdom of God in a Mystery
’ (clearly a variation of the ‘
Logos
’ doctrine of the Gospel of John and the equivalent in Greek of ‘
the Primal Adam
’ in languages and cultures further East) or ‘
the Kingdom He prepared for those who Love Him
’, the latter in James preceding its enunciation in 2:8 of the second of these two ‘
Love
’ Commandments (attributed to Jesus in the Synoptics): ‘
Love your neig
h
bor as yourself
’ or, as Josephus would have it in his description of John the Baptist, ‘
Righteousness towards one
’
s fellow man
’.

Paul alludes to such ‘
love of God
’ – albeit very subtly – once again later
in 1 Corinthians 8:3, this time in an attack on the Jamesian Leadership of ‘
the Jerusalem Church
’, denoted by him somewhat facetiously as ‘
those who have Knowledge
’ (
Gnosis
). This is yet another of those rhetorical flourishes, this time centering around this same celebrated Greek word
Gnosis
, meaning, ‘
knowing
’ or ‘
known by
’, in the sense that ‘
if anyone loves God
,
then he is known by him
’.

This bravura rhetorical performance employs the same language of ‘
being puffed up
’ that the Habakkuk
Pesher
applies to one of its two nemeses (in the sense of asserting that
his
– in this case,
the Wicked Priest
’
s
– ‘
punishment will be multiplied upon him
’
because he
‘
destroyed
’
the Righteous Teacher
31
), and the ‘
building
’ imagery the
Pesher
also applies to the other (‘
the Liar
’ – in 1 Corinthians 8:1, Paul now caustically ties this same ‘
building
’ language to the ‘
love
’ metaphor, that is, ‘
but love
builds up
’), to once again attack this same ‘
Jerusalem Church
’ Leadership
32
– then leads into Paul’s own tortured rejection in 8:3–13 of James’ prohibition of ‘
things sacrificed to idols
’ and his self-serving explanation of why such ‘
idols
’ are ‘
nothing in this world
’.

Aside from portraying this
Righteousness
/
Piety
dichotomy as the essence of the teaching of both James and Jesus in early Church literature, a variation based on a more Romanizing interpretation and allegiance is also to be found in Paul. For i
n
stance, in Romans 13:5–10 – in a characterization which, no doubt, would have sent his more ‘
Zealot
’ critics or opponents into paroxysms of indignation, Paul uses the command to ‘
love one another
’ (cf. John 13:34–35 and 15:12) and the ‘
Royal Law according to the Scripture
’ in James, ‘
love your neighbor as yourself
’,
to recommend paying taxes to Rome
!

Not only do both commandments permeate the Scrolls, but Josephus picks them up in his references to the group he de
s
ignates as ‘
Essenes
’ to divide up his description of its practices on their basis.
33
Under ‘
Piety towards
’ or ‘
loving God
’, he groups all the peculiarly ‘
Essene
’ duties towards God, including daily bathing practices, extreme ritual cleanliness, and other ceremonial activities. Under ‘
Righteousness towards your fellow man
’, he groups all the others.
Moreover, he unequivocally denotes in his
Antiquities
these two commandments as
the
essence
of John the Baptist
’
s teaching
‘
in the wilderness
’, that is to say, ‘
John taught Piety towards God and Righteousness towards one
’
s fellow man
’.

In addition to this he appends a description of John’s baptism as ‘
a water cleansing
’ or ‘
immersion
’ for the body only, ‘
provided that the soul had already been previously purified by the practice of Righteousness
’.
34
A more precise description of John’s baptism is probably not to be found. Furthermore, it could not agree more with the description found in Columns 4–6 of the Community Rule – but not with the more Paulinized portrait of these things we encounter in the New Testament, which includes ‘
Grace
’ and ‘
baptism via the Holy Spirit
’. Though ideas such as these are alluded to to some extent in the Community Rule as well, nowhere in the New Testament do we find anything about ‘
daily baptism
’ for bodily cleanliness or ritual purification as we find it in Josephus, Rabbinical literature, and/or in the Scrolls.
35

As the Community Rule progresses, it also speaks both of a ‘
Visitation
’ and the notion of ‘
concealing the Truth of the Mysteries of Knowledge
’ (
Gnosis
),
36
which we have just encountered almost word-for-word in Paul above. Not only does it use the language he uses of ‘
Mystery
’ and ‘
Victory
’, but it adds that of ‘
a Crown of Glory
’ (imagery applied to ‘
Stephen
’ in early Church literature, whose name in Greek, it will be recalled, literally translates out as ‘
Crown
’
37
) and ‘
Eternal Light
’: ‘
These are the Secrets of the Spirit for the earthly Sons of Truth
and
the Visitation of all the Walkers in
(
the Holy Spirit
)
will be for hea
l
ing and healthiness
for long days
…
and Eternal joy in a Victorious life and a Crown of Glory with the imperishable clothing in Eternal Light
.’
Here too is the theme of ‘
long-lived Essenes
’, which so permeates Josephus’, Philo’s, and Hippolytus’ descri
p
tions of the members of this group, a theme also characteristic of the ‘
Jamesian
’ Jerusalem Church and ‘
Ebionite
’ literature generally, where James was supposed to
have lived for
‘
ninety-six years
’ and Simeon bar Cleophas, his
successor
, ‘
a hundred and twenty
’.
38

One should also compare the language of ‘
a Crown of Glory
’ and ‘
the imperishable clothing in Eternal Light
’ in these pa
s
sages of the Community Rule with Paul’s view of ‘
being raised up incorruptibly
’ above in 1 Corinthians 15:52 and ‘
Ebionite
’/‘
Elchasaite
’ literature, generally, of being ‘
clothed with Adam
’ or ‘
the Secret
’ or ‘
Primal Adam
’
putting on the clot
h
ing of men
’
s bodies in multitudinous incarnations
and, then,
taking it off again
.
39
In earlier descriptions of ‘
Holy Spirit
’ ba
p
tism, the Community Rule
finally reaches a climactic highpoint and wrestles with these ‘
Eternal
’ matters with the words: ‘
Then Truth
,
which wallowed in the Ways of Evil in the Government of Unrighteousness until the time of the appointed Judgement
,
will emerge Victorious in the world
,
and God with His Truth will refine all the works of man and purify for Himself the sons of men
,
perfecting all the Spirit of Unrighteousness within his flesh and purifying it by means of the Holy Spirit from all Evil actions
.
He will pour upon him the Spirit of Truth like cleansing waters
(
washing him
)
of all the Abominations of Lying
.’
40
Not only is this last indistinguishable from what goes by the name of ‘
the descent of the Holy Spirit
’ or ‘
Holy Spirit Baptism
’ in New Testament parlance, but it is aimed squarely at the individual with ‘
the Lying Spirit
’ or, in other words, a genus of ind
i
vidual characterized by ‘
the Abominations of Lying
’. Once again, too, we have copious allusion to the language of ‘
Judgement
’ (‘
the Last Judgement
’), ‘
works
’, ‘
Truth
’, ‘
Victoriousness
’, ‘
purification
’, ‘
baptism
’, and ‘
Perfection
’. The text continues as fo
l
lows: ‘
And he shall be plunged into the Spirit of Purification
,
so
as
to illumine the Upright with Knowledge of the Most High and the Wisdom of the Sons of Heaven to teach the Perfect of the Way
(language exactly paralleling Paul in 1 Corinthians 2:4–8),
whom God has chosen as an Everlasting Covenant
,
and all the Glory of Adam will be theirs
,
without any Unrighteousness
.’
Again, not only do we have here a variation on what goes by the name of ‘
Holy Spirit baptism
’ according to New Testament characterization, but it is not difficult to recognize a version of the
Primal Adam
ideology, also to be found at critical junctures of the War Scroll and Damascus Document
41
and so characteristic of all baptizing groups across Jordan up into Northern Sy
r
ia and down into Southern Iraq. In our view, this yet again demonstrates the basic homogeneity and contemporaneity of all these documents (palaeographic and/or carbon testing dating parameters notwithstanding).