James the Brother of Jesus and the Dead Sea Scrolls II (122 page)

Nor can there be much doubt that what one has in these graphic scenes in Josephus is vengeance for the death of James, whose memory seems to have been held in particular regard by these so-called ‘
Idumaeans
’ – including, obviously, some pro-Revolutionary Herodians like Niger of Perea – which also seems to have been the case among other ‘
Arabs
’ like Queen He
l
en’s family and kinsmen from either Edessa or Adiabene.
18
In fact, these passages extolling Ananus to such a degree that
Jos
e
phus has the temerity even to call him ‘
a lover of Liberty and enthusiast for Democracy
’ may even have overwritten something else Josephus originally said at this point in the version of the
War
in the East – prepared, as he told us in his Preface, for his own countrymen in these areas in their native language –
about the death of James
.
19
Little else can explain the ‘
Violence
’ these so-called ‘
Zealots
’ and ‘
Idumaeans
’ exhibited and their single-minded and extreme animus towards Ananus. What else could have infuriated them to such a degree as to commit such ‘
Impieties
’ and to violate Ananus’ body in this manner?

Whatever these violations might actually have been, the Qumran document refers to them with approval while the pro-Roman collaborator Josephus is outraged – at least he makes out that he is for the purposes of public consumption. He even goes on, in the same breath that he does about Ananus’ ‘
love of Liberty and enthusiasm for Democracy
’, to extol
the dignity of his rank
and
the nobility of his lineage
but notes that, despite these, ‘
he treated even the humblest of men with equality
’ and ‘
ever preferred the public welfare to his own advantage
’ – unctuousness that would make anyone but a Josephus blush.
20

Once again, however, this is exactly the point made in all early Church sources about
Jame
s, that as ‘
Zaddik
’, he ‘
did not d
e
fer to
’ or ‘
consider persons
’, the very charge Paul is so anxious to parry in Galatians 1:10 of ‘
attempting to please persons
’ – expressed in James 4:4 as ‘
making himself a Friend to the World
’. Again, an overlap of this kind, when speaking of the death of the man responsible for James’ death, can hardly be considered accidental. One might even conclude that we have here the very place in the text where Origen and Eusebius saw their Josephus’ testimony that ‘
Jerusalem fell because of the death of James
’. In addition, it is hard to gainsay the parallels in this account with New Testament materials about Jesus who, of course, is ‘
the Saviour
’
par excellence
, not to mention those about James as ‘
the Righteous One
’ and ‘
Protection-of-the-People
’.

In perhaps the cruelest cut of all, in emphasizing how much Ananus ‘
preferred Peace above all things
’ and ‘
was sensible that Roman Power was irresistible
’, Josephus concludes, ‘
I cannot but think that
,
because of its pollutions
(meaning the des
e
cration of Jesus ben Gamala’s and Ananus’
corpses
, language absolutely echoing the Habakkuk
Pesher
above – only reversed),
God had condemned this City to destruction
.’ In the Habakkuk
Pesher
,
God ‘
condemned the Wicked Priest to destruction
’. In fact, these are the very words it uses in 1QpHab XII.5–10 where it is the Wicked Priest who ‘
polluted the Temple of God
’ because of ‘
the works of Abomination he committed
’ there. So, actually Josephus turns the thrust of the implied accusation in the Gospels about Jesus around here and, in the process, gives vivid testimony as to why persons in the Third, Fourth, and Fifth Centuries thought he said ‘
Jerusalem fell because of James
’. There is certainly something very peculiar going on in these various like-minded testimonies, so perhaps he did.

Josephus closes with the aside, ‘
and He
(
God
)
was resolved to purge the Temple by fire
,
that He cut off these its greatest defenders and benefactors
’. Not only is this last basically the charge being made in early Church texts with regard to James’ death but, taken as a whole, it is generally the charge that Eusebius or other early Church writers are making against ‘
the Jews
’ for killing Jesus.
21
It also employs the ‘
cutting off’
language we have been following and just seen used in the Psalm 37
Pesher
applied to similar events. Paul does not make this charge as such, though he does use the ‘
cutting off
’ language, as we have seen, probably because the events had not yet transpired at the time of his writing. Nevertheless, to reiterate, in Josephus we get the interesting anomaly that
the charge is being made against
‘
the Zealots
’
and their confederates
, ‘
the Idumaeans
’
for kil
l
ing Ananus and Jesus ben Gamala
and ‘
casting
’
their corpses out of the city without burial
. For Josephus, these actions are comparable to the ‘
profanation
’ or ‘
sacrilege
’ of leaving the bodies of those crucified on the crosses without taking them down to bury them before nightfall, a singular and most unexpected comparison.

But for Qumran, the group resembling these unruly ‘
Idumaeans
’, ‘
the Violent Ones of the Gentiles
’, is praised for ‘
inflic
t
ing the Judgements on Evil upon the Wicked Priest
’ and their behavior is considered justified and applauded ‘
because of what he did to the Righteous Teacher
’.
22
We can only assume that in the early Church in Palestine the same attitude would have prevailed regarding what was done to James. Nor can there be any doubt that what is being described at this point in the Ha
b
akkuk
Pesher
are
these monstrous
‘
defilements
’
inflicted on
‘
the body
’
of
‘
the Wicked Priest
’. That Josephus also then goes on to compare the ‘
Impiety
’ and sacrilege
involved in
violating the corpses of the dead in this manner
to the revulsion Jews felt about leaving bodies up on crosses without taking them down and burying them before nightfall brings the whole complex to a kind of conclusion. If this connection is, in fact, real and not just a coincidence, then, once again, we have an echo of themes circulating about James’ life – in this case relating to his death or demise reappearing in material relating to that of Jesus in Scripture.

The reason for all these pollutions,
e.g.
, severing the head from the body as in John’s case, the ‘
curse
’ of crucifixion, or ‘
i
n
flicting the disgusting abuses of Evil pollutions
’ on Ananus’ naked body, was probably because they were seen as impediments to resurrection, the ultimate reason for their perpetration. It is a ‘
curse
’ of this kind, namely the ‘
curse
’ of being ‘
hung upon a tree
’, whether applied to the object as in Deuteronomy or the action as at Qumran that, as already explained, Paul in Galatians 3:10–13 develops into the basic ‘
Saving
’ ideology of Christianity as we know it, that Jesus, in taking this ‘
curse
’ upon himself freed him (Paul) from ‘
the curse of the Law
’ (here an additional bit of reversal) and, thereby, all ‘
Christians
’ following him – a most astonishing piece of exegetical acrobatics.

The Death of the Righteous Teacher in the Habakkuk
Pesher

The Habakkuk
Pesher
now goes on in Columns Eleven and Twelve to discuss the destruction of the Righteous Teacher and some members of his Council or ‘
the Poor
’. It is here it uses Josephus’ words about the Temple, ‘
God condemned him
(the Wicked Priest)
to destruction
’. It is in this context as well that it goes on to delineate how he ‘
plotted to destroy the Poor
’,
robbing them of their sustenance in the Cities of Judah
,
committing
‘
his Abominable works
’
in Jerusalem
, and ‘
polluting the Temple of God
’.
23
The sequence here is very close to the one in early Church texts where the death of James is immediately followed by the appearance of Roman Armies outside Jerusalem. The coming of these ‘Armies
of the
Kittim’
in 1QpHab IX.6–7 follows the description of the predatory actions of the Wicked Priest, ‘
profiteering from the spoils of the Peoples
’ and/or ‘
Violent Ones
’ and ‘
the Judgements on Evil being inflicted upon the flesh of his corpse
’.

Because the underlying text of Habakkuk 2:8 is speaking of ‘
the blood of Men and the Violence done to the Land
’, this is followed by a repeat of the description of ‘
the Evil the Wicked Priest committed against the Righteous Teacher and the Men of his Council
’ and ‘
the Vengeance
’ which would be visited upon him. In these passages about ‘
the handing over in the Last Days of the Riches and booty of the Last Priests to the Army of the
Kittim
’, the destruction of Jerusalem and, with it, the Temple is certainly implied.
24
This is also true for the additional descriptions in Columns Eleven and Twelve, culminating in that of ‘
the Day of Judgement
’ – also referred to in Column Ten after the description of the Vengeance ‘
they meted out
’ to the corpse of the Wicked Priest as ‘
the House of Judgement
(
Beit ha-Mishpat
)
which God would deliver in His Judgement in the midst of many Peoples
’.
25

In this second set of descriptions about the destruction of the Wicked Priest in Column Twelve, it is simply stated that since the Wicked Priest ‘
robbed the sustenance of the Poor
’ and ‘
plotted to destroy the Poor
’, ‘
so too would God condemn him to destruction
’. The same idea is stated again in slightly differing fashion in the previous sentence, ‘
the Wicked Priest would be paid the reward which he paid the Poor
’. Of course, the introduction of ‘
the Poor
’/‘
Ebionim
’ terminology is purpos
e
ful here, as the usage nowhere occurs in the underlying text of Habakkuk at this point. But what is really interesting about all this is that this usage, ‘
the reward of his hands
(that is, ‘
the hands of the Wicked
’)
would be paid back to him
’, actually occurs in the passage following that of Isaiah 3:10: ‘
Let us take away the Righteous One
,
because he is offensive to us
’ (this in
Septu
a
gint
reformulation), applied to James’ death in all early Church literature.
26

The idea is very clear. Since this phrase about ‘
the Wicked being paid the reward he paid the Poor
’, too, nowhere appears in the text of Habakkuk at this point; the implication is that it is being deliberately imported from Isaiah 3:10–11 (another ‘
Wicked vs
.
the Righteous’
text – just as in Habakkuk 1:4–2:20), so once again in our view we have ‘
QED
’. Again, too, the note of ‘
Vengeance
’ in all of this is unmistakable. Nor can there be any doubt that we are speaking about ‘
destruction
’ here, that is, the ‘
destruction
’
of
‘
the Righteous Teacher
’ and ‘
the Wicked Priest
’ – one succeeding the other.