James the Brother of Jesus and the Dead Sea Scrolls II (9 page)

This is the kind of startling originality one encounters in this first section of the
Recognitions
. Not only do we have the notice of an attack on James by the ‘
Enemy
’ Paul, from which James will still be limping a month later when it came to sending out Peter on his first missionary journey –
from somewhere outside of Jericho
– to Caesarea (and not to Samaria) where he does however, encounter Simon
Magus
; but who would have thought to place
the entire Early Christian
Community to the number of some five thousand
in these environs, that is, before the discovery of the Dead Sea Scrolls some nineteen hundred years later just a few miles south of Jericho at Qumran?

Yet here we have just such a testimony in these incomparable notices in the Pseudoclementines which do not simply, in the writer’s view, parallel but are rather based on the same source as Acts – to which they are the more faithful. This is certainly the case concerning the
Recognitions
, the First Book of which, as already observed, links up with Acts in a point-for-point ma
n
ner, albeit from a completely opposite ideological orientation. Then, of course, there is the common vocabulary, not only with Acts but also the Damascus Document from Qumran – as, for instance, the phraseology, ‘
remembered before God’
, in the
Recognitions
at the end of the last part of the historical exposition of the Damascus Document where, as with the
Angel
’s words to Cornelius in Acts,
the thrust is primarily directed at
‘
those who fear God
’ or ‘
who are God-Fearers’
.

Dating the Scrolls: Internal vs. External Data

It has been my position from the beginning that there are two kinds of data at Qumran,
external
and
internal
. ‘
External
’ are things like archaeology, palaeography, and carbon dating, but these rather turn out to often be either imprecise or unreliable. In a situation of the kind represented by the materials and discoveries at Qumran, when there is a contradiction between the results of such disciplines and
the
internal
data
– meaning,
what the documents themselves say
, to which the rest of this book will be dedicated – then
the internal data
must take precedence, given the quality and kind of
external data
that exists for Qumran.

What, for instance, might be considered ‘
internal data
’? Primarily the most important allusions at Qumran. These include references such as ‘
making a Straight Way in the wilderness’
, alluded to twice in the Community Rule and, as is well known, associated with the teaching and coming of John the Baptist
in the wilderness
in the Synoptic Gospels.
100
A related terminology is ‘
the New Covenant’
, a phrase originally based on Jeremiah 31:31 and a central theme of the Damascus Document, known of course as the basis of the phrase the ‘
New Testament
’ (
i.e.
, the ‘
New Covenant
’).
101
Equally important is the allusion to and exposition of Habakkuk 2:4, perhaps the climax of the Habakkuk
Pesher
and perhaps the central Scriptural building block of early Christian theology as set forth by Paul in Romans, Galatians, and Hebrews and, of course, in James.
102

Related to these and, in particular, this last are the repeated reference to the two ‘
Love Commandments
’ of
Piety
and
Righteousness
(I will capitalize important concepts throughout this book) – in Josephus defined as, ‘
loving God
’ and ‘
loving your neighbor as yourself
’ – and
Justification
theology generally. Not only are these the essence, allegedly, of Jesus’ teaching in the Gospels and James’ in the Letter ascribed to his name in the New Testament and in early Church literature generally,
103
but they are also the basis in the picture provided by Josephus of John the Baptist’s teaching and a central category of ‘
Essene
’ doctrine as well.
104

Then there is the wide use of ‘
Zealot
’ and ‘
Nazirite
’ terminology (in the sense of
Nazoraean
or
Nazrene
), designations known to the First Century but not clearly attested to in any consistent manner earlier.
105
Related to these is ‘
the Poor
’ (in early Church literature, ‘
the Ebionites
’), the only really clearly identifiable term of self-designation in the Dead Sea Scrolls, a nome
n
clature also designating the followers of James
par excellence
and the group succeeding or basically coeval with ‘
the Essenes’
.
In a controversial reference in the Habakkuk
Pesher
– a document which, together with the Psalm 37
Pesher
, definitively denotes the followers of
the Righteous Teacher
as ‘
the Poor’
, that is, we are definitely in the realm both of
the Ebionites
and of
Ebionite
literature. Not only would both of these be ‘
destroyed
’ or ‘
swallowed
’ by
the Wicked Priest
but he would be made to ‘
drink the Cup of the Wrath of God
’ and ‘
paid the Reward which he paid the Poor
’ (
i.e.
,
the
Ebionim
)!
106

Here ‘
the Cup of the Lord
’ relates to Divine Vengeance which is also the sense of parallel allusions in the New Testament Book of Revelation. Again there is an allusion to the same theme in the Psalm 37
Pesher
and, as opposed to the superficial analyses early on in Qumran Studies, the allusion – as we shall see more fully – has nothing whatever to do with the ‘
drunke
n
ness
’ of the Wicked Priest or consonantly
any
‘
banquet
’ or ‘
dinner party
’
he might have been attending
,
107
except
metaphorically
in that, as in Revelation 14:8–10 and 16:19, ‘
drinking his fill
’ of such a
Cup
has to do with ‘
drinking his fill of the
Cup of the Wrath of God
’ or
the
Divine Vengeance
which would be visited upon
or ‘
paid
’
the murderer of the Righteous Teacher for what he
(
the Wicked Priest
)
did to him and his followers among
‘
the Poor’
.
108
The attestation of this usage in Revelation, not to me
n
tion the allusion to ‘
the Poor
’ connected in some manner with James in Galatians 2:10, again, should be seen as chronologica
l
ly definitive
internal
data
no matter what the
external
.

To name a few other such First-Century dating parameters: there is the insistence on ‘
fornication
’ as descriptive of the b
e
haviour of the Ruling Establishment in the ‘
Three Nets of
Belial
’ section of the Damascus Document. In it, regardless of its meaning in any other context, ‘
fornication
’ is specifically defined in terms of
polygamy
,
divorce
,
marrying nieces
and, curiously enough,
sleeping with women during their periods
, all things that, taken as a whole, can be said to be descriptive of
Herodians
and not
Maccabeans
.
Among Herodians, in particular
niece marriage
was rampant
and an aspect of purposeful family policy.
109

Another of these ‘
Nets
’ had to do with ‘
pollution of the Temple’
. Not only was this a matter not unrelated to ‘
things sacr
i
ficed to idols’
, and in relation to Hippolytus’
Sicarii
Essenes
and in the Qumran document known as
MMT
, it is likewise a ma
t
ter connected to
James’ directives to overseas communities
, where it is also expressed in Acts 15:20 in terms of the variation ‘
poll
u
tions of the idols’
. Interestingly enough, too, this condemnation of ‘
eating things sacrificed to idols
’ is even found and grouped together with both ‘
fornication
’ and the language of ‘
being led astray
’ in Revelation 2:20.
110
These are additional
First-Century
dating parameters.

Much debate, too, has crystallized about the term ‘
the
Kittim
’, so important to the literature and outlook of Qumran esp
e
cially in the Commentaries (
Pesharim
), the War Scroll, and those documents related to it.
91
Several references are absolutely cri
t
ical for the correct elucidation of this seemingly purposefully obscure allusion and archaism. The first is in the Nahum
Pesher
where ‘
the
Kittim
’ are specifically identified as ‘
coming after the Greeks’
.
111
Several others come in the Habakkuk and Psalm 37
Pesher
s
where, in the former anyhow, they are specifically described as ‘
pillaging the Temple’
.
112
Josephus is very specific about this point and makes it quite plain that there was
no
‘
pillaging of the Temple
’
by the Romans
either in 63 BCE under Pompey because they wished to ingratiate themselves with the People; nor by Herod in 37 BCE who, Josephus tells us, actually had the soldiers paid out of his own pocket expressly to avoid such a happenstance.
113

That leaves only Vespasian and his son Titus who
did, in fact,
plunder the Temple
in
70 CE, and
used the proceeds afterwards to pay for the abomination now famously referred to worldwide as
‘
the Colosseum’
.
114
There can be a no more definitive chronological placement of the Habakkuk
Pesher
than this extremely telling allusion and this is what is meant by a proper a
p
preciation of
the internal data
being frustrated or rendered meaningless by inept and over-inflated interpretation of and rel
i
ance upon
the external
. Of course, in this context there is also the decisive reference to
the
Kittim
‘
sacrificing to their standards and worshipping their weapons of war’
, which we shall further discuss in due course as well.
115
It has been pointed out by n
u
merous commentators, but seemingly to little avail, that this is
Roman military practice
not Hellenistic
or
Greek
– and, specifica
l
ly,
Imperial Roman from Augustus
’
time forward
, since the Emperor whose bust was on the standards had, commencing in that p
e
riod, been deified and worshipped as a God.
116

Just as telling is the reference, immediately following this in the same document, to how these same violent and brutal
Kittim
,
who conquered
‘
Nation after Nation’
,
had
‘
no pity even on the fruit of the womb
’ – Josephus describes just such ca
r
nage by the Sea of Galilee in 67 CE in the run-up to the siege of Jerusalem two years later, where the Romans did actually kill just such infants – and ‘
whose eating was plenteous’
, ‘
parcelled out
’
their taxes like
fishermen catching fish in their nets
.
117
Here, to be sure, one has a combination of motifs familiar in the ‘
fishermen
’ and ‘
nets
’ themes in the Gospels – of course, as always, with reverse or trivializing signification. Matthew 17:25–27 even goes so far in response to matters concerning
the paying of tribute
(in this case, delineated in terms of
paying the Temple tax
) to actually portray Jesus as sending
Peter
(also a Galilean ‘
fisherman
’) to the Sea of Galilee to retrieve the required coinage
out of the mouth of a fish
!