James the Brother of Jesus and the Dead Sea Scrolls II (123 page)

There is no way that any of these descriptions can apply to any earlier assault on the Temple and a destruction of Jerus
a
lem prior to that of 70
CE
– and certainly not the two of 63 and 37
BCE
. In these earlier attacks, there was not the slightest implication of any ‘
booty given over to
’
foreign Armies
of the kind being alluded to here in the
Pesher
and in Titus’ triumphal parade following his 70
CE
conquest. These
notices probably cannot even be said to relate to the incursions in the time of Antiochus Epiphanes and the Maccabean War, because this was hardly on the scale of the Roman one and nothing else in the text can be thought of as relating to it.

Before continuing the analysis of this crucial material in Column Twelve, it would be well to return to that in Columns 9–10, following the descriptions of the Vengeance ‘
they took upon the corpse
’ of the Wicked Priest and the coming of the Army of the
Kittim
. The actual words of the second description of this ‘
Vengeance
’ or ‘
chastisement
’ at the end of Column Nine are that
‘as a consequence of the Evil he did to the Righteous Teacher and the Men of his Council
,
God delivered him into the hand of his enemies to torture him
’. ‘
His enemies
’ are unspecified here, but they are clearly not the Righteous Teacher and his confederates, but individuals additional to these, or, as we have been attempting to explain employing the parallel material in the Psalm 37
Pesher
, ‘
the Violent Ones of the Gentiles
’ (‘
Idumaeans
’ in Josephus).

These ‘
torture him
’ or ‘
bring him low
,
with punishment unto destruction
’ or ‘
to consume him with
(
mortal
)
soul-embittering
(
torments
),
because he condemned His Elect
’. The ‘
consuming
’ or ‘
destroying
’ vocabulary here anticipates and plays off the ‘
consuming
’, ‘
destroying
’, and even ‘
swallowing
’ imagery we shall encounter in Columns Eleven and Twelve when it comes to describing both what he (‘
the Wicked Priest
’) ‘
did to the Righteous Teacher and the Men of his Council
’ – clearly identified with ‘
the Poor
’, that is, ‘
he consumed
’ or ‘
destroyed them
’ – and what would be done in return to him. Furthermore, the note about ‘
condemnation
’ again carries something of a judicial meaning here, should one choose to regard it.

Not only is it clear that what is being done to the Wicked Priest is to ‘
pay him back
’ for something he did and a ‘
Veng
e
ance
’ of some kind, but again it is
being done by others to him
, in particular, ‘
Violent
’
third parties such as
‘
the Idumaeans
’ who, for some reason, treat him ‘
abominably
’. We shall presently be able to connect this up with ‘
the Sanhedrin proceedings
’ this same Ananus ‘
pursued
’ against James the Just and several of his companions as Josephus records it.

The play of ‘
causing Evil to
’ or ‘
condemning God
’
s Elect
’ on the idea of ‘
condemning the Righteous
’ is clear. Not only is ‘
condemning the Righteous
’ the characteristic activity of ‘
those who sought Smooth Things
’, but it is the opposite of the kind of ‘
justifying
’ activity predicated of ‘
the Righteous Teacher
’ and those ‘
of his Council
’ in documents like the Damascus Doc
u
ment and Community Rule. This is implicit in the way Hebrew works, Hebrew having a causative verb – in this case, ‘
justif
y
ing
’ connected to the underlying root-meaning of ‘
Righteousness
’, namely, ‘
making Righteous
’ (as in ‘
making Many Righteous
’ in Isaiah 53:11) or ‘
justifying
’ as opposed to the ‘
making Evil
’ or ‘
condemning
’ here in the Habakkuk
Pesher
and the Damascus Document – that is,
whereas the Wicked Priest
‘
condemns
’
people
,
the Righteous Teache
r ‘
justifies
’
them
.

This is the kind of exposition one encounters as well in the interpretation of the designation ‘
the Sons of Zadok
’ in CD IV.3–10, who are referred to there – just as the Righteous Teacher and his Council are here in the Habakkuk
Pesher
– as ‘
the Elect of Israel
’. ‘
Righteousness
’ is the actual root of the designation ‘
Zadok
’. In the Damascus Document ‘
the Sons of Zadok
’, as will be recalled, are ‘
the Elect of Israel called by Name
who will stand in the Last Days
’, the characteristic activity of whom is ‘
justifying the Righteous and condemning the Wicked
’ – that is, as in early Christianity and fragments of other materials at Qumran,
27
they participate in
the
‘
Last Judgement
’, a ‘
Judgement
’ about to be evoked in the Habakkuk
Pesher
as well.

This connection of the name ‘
Zadok
’ (‘
Justus
’ in Latin) with the person of the Righteous Teacher (who can be looked u
p
on as ‘
the Son of Zadok
’ or ‘
the Zaddik
’
par excellence)
is exactly what one gets in early Church literature with the constant a
t
tachment of the name or title ‘
Justus
’ to James’ person. The best example of this comes in Hegesippus’ narrative of James’ death, where the designation is sometimes used in place of James’ very name itself – for example, when the Scribes and the Pharisees place James on the Pinnacle of the Temple and cry out to him ‘
O Just One
,
whom we all ought to obey
,
since the People are led astray after Jesus the Crucified One
,
tell us what is the Gate to Jesus
?’
28

The use of the language of ‘
consumed
’/‘
destroyed
’ here in the description of the Vengeance inflicted on the ‘
soul
’ of the Wicked Priest because of ‘
the Evil he had done to the Righteous Teacher and the Men of his Council
’, will have a variation in the ‘
swallowing
’ language, which the Habakkuk
Pesher
will now use to describe the destruction of the Righteous Teacher by the Wicked Priest at the beginning of Column Eleven (Column Ten having been devoted to a description of ‘
the House of Judgement God would
’
pronounce in the midst of many Nations
’ and the Spouter of Lying’s ‘
building
’
a worthless
‘
Assembly upon Lying for the sake of his
(
own
)
Glory
’.
29

The presentation of this death plays off this ‘
Ba-La-
‘
a
’ vocabulary of ‘
swallowing
’ or ‘
consuming
’ – a circle-of-language, as we saw, related to the ‘
Balaam
’/‘
Balak
’/and ‘
Belial
’ language, not to mention parallel notions circulating about the allusion in Greek, ‘
ballo
’, that is, ‘
casting
’ or ‘
throwing down
’, usually in a violent manner. When the Greek preposition, ‘
kata
’/‘
down
’, is ad
d
ed, the signification then becomes that used to describe James being ‘
thrown down from the Pinnacle of the Temple
’ in almost all early Church sources – although this event probably never happened. In the Pseudoclementines
Recognitions
, as we saw, this becomes his being ‘
thrown down the Temple steps
’, which probably really did happen.
30

As just indicated too, in the aftermath of the attack by ‘
the Zealots
’ and ‘
Idumaeans
’ on the High Priests in Jerusalem, something resembling this ‘
casting down
’ (
kataballo
) from the Pinnacle of the Temple probably really
did
happen in this case. This was the death of ‘
Zachariah ben Bariscaeus
’ (probably, ‘
Zachariah ben Barachias
’ in Matthew 23:35), whom Josephus describes rather improbably as being both ‘
very Rich
’ and a ‘
lover of liberty
’. He uses the same allusion, ‘
lover of liberty
’, to describe Ananus, as just signaled as well, whose murder both preceded and was, no doubt, in some manner connected to
Zachariah
’s.

The execution of
Zachariah
by ‘
the Zealots
’ in the Temple after a mock Sanhedrin trial by ‘
the Seventy
’ not only parodies James’ trial and execution, but was probably connected to it – perhaps even part of the retribution for it. Tradition always l
o
cates ‘
the Tomb of Zechariah
’ right beside James’ in the Kedron Valley directly beneath the Pinnacle of the Temple.
31
When ‘
ballo
’ is coupled with a different preposition, ‘
dia
’, for instance, or ‘
against
’, the expression then turns into the Greek ‘
Diabolos
’, meaning ‘
to throw against
’ or ‘
complain against
’, the basis of our modern word ‘
the Devil
’. To be sure, many of the usages connected to these crucial allusions to ‘
swallow
’ (
leval
‘
o
/
leval
‘
am
/
teval
‘
eno
) in the Habakkuk
Pesher
, on how
the Wicked Priest
‘
swallowed
’
the Righteous Teacher and his followers among
‘
the Poor
’, are obscure even in the Hebrew but by elucidating them, as we have shown, we shall be able to tie this description very closely to the death of James as described in early Church sources.

Aside from this ‘
ballo
’/‘
balla
‘
’ language complex, the exegesis also plays on another word, ‘
Hemah
’/‘
Venom
’ or ‘
Wrath
’, which we encountered in CD VIII.9–11/XIX.21–24’s description of ‘
the Princes of Judah
’ and ‘
the Kings of the Peoples
’. This is evoked relating to an underlying text from Habakkuk 2:15 about ‘
making his neighbor drink and pouring out His Fury
’ (‘
Venom
’). All these denotations will be used in the
Pesher
. It also contains another phrase, ‘
looking on their festivals
’, which will be applied, thereafter, to problems relating to ‘
their
’
Yom Kippur
observances. ‘
Hemah
’ can mean ‘
Venom
’ (as in ‘
the Ve
n
om of Vipers
’ in Deuteronomy 32:33) or it can mean ‘
Anger
’, as in the Wicked Priest’s ‘
Hot Anger
’ or ‘
Wrath
’, which will be the sense 1QpHab XI.2–15 will utilize. But, as we shall see, it can also mean, ‘
dregs
’, which is the sense of the Received Ve
r
sion of 2:15, which actually reads, ‘
your dregs
’ in the sense of the ‘
dregs of the Cup
’ not ‘
His Venom
’ – nor is this to say an
y
thing about the ‘
Divine Wrath
, which is also the sense of the passage.
The
Pesher
on it reads as follows: ‘
Its meaning (
‘
pouring out Anger
’
) concerns the Wicked Priest who pursued after the Righteous Teacher to
his House of Exile to swallow
him in his Hot Anger
.’
The allusion to ‘
his Hot Anger
’ or ‘
Furious Wrath
’ will be extremely important for understanding the delineation of the Vengeance upon ‘
the Wicked Priest
’ that follows. So is the allusion to ‘
swallow
’ or ‘
consume
’, the sense of which is clearly ‘
destroy
’ (regardless of the fact that some translators give the patently absurd reading, ‘
confuse him
’ here which is sim
p
ly wrong). ‘
The Wicked Priest
’ did not wish to ‘
confuse the Righteous Teacher
’, he wished ‘
to destroy
’ him.