James the Brother of Jesus and the Dead Sea Scrolls II (130 page)

Such ‘
Zealots
’ are, in fact, referred to as the partisans of James in Acts 21:21 and earlier, as we have remarked, Acts 6:7 speaks of ‘
a large number of the Priests
’ coming over to the nascent ‘
Faith
’ – not that it is able to make any sense of this n
o
tice. It is these
Priests
, called by some ‘
the Lower Priesthood
’, who win the right to wear the High-Priestly linen following James’ death at the end of the
Antiquities
8
and who are at the core of the events leading up to stopping sacrifice on behalf of Romans and other foreigners in the Temple, the signal for the start of the final War against Rome. Since Daniel seems to have been so instrumental in so many of the prognostications relating to this War, calculations in Daniel may have been part of the process of deciding the time and date of such steps as were called for. For instance, the year 66 CE also has the virtue of co
m
pleting the 70–year ‘
Period of Wrath
’, referred to in Daniel 9:24, reverberating in references at Qumran in documents like the War Scroll and the Damascus Document.
9
This was perhaps thought of as coming into play with the outbreak of ‘
the
Zea
l
ot
’/‘
Sicarii
Movement
’ in the 4 BCE disturbances following Herod’s death until the final purification of Temple sacrifices in these events surrounding the beginning of the War in 66 CE. These are only possibilities – they are not realities, but they are sensible within the framework of the Scriptural mindset being evinced here.

‘
The Cup of the Wrath of God
’ and ‘
the Blood of Man
’ in the Habakkuk
Pesher

This now brings us to the destruction of the Wicked Priest, as vividly delineated in the
Pesher
in interpretation of the pa
s
sage that follows the allusion to ‘
giving his neighbor to drink
’ and ‘
pouring his Fury
’/‘
Hamato
’ in the underlying text. The u
n
derlying Biblical text that follows this from Habakkuk 2:16 is quoted as follows: ‘
Drink also and stagger.
The Cup of the right hand of the Lord shall come around to you and shame shall cover your Glory
.’
10
The key allusion here, of course, is ‘
Cup
’ (
Chos
). We have seen this usage relating to James in Jewish Christian sources, that James would ‘
not eat or drink from the time he drank the Cup of the Lord
,
until he should see Jesus
’ – this is in the so-called ‘
Gospel of the Hebrews
’ reported by Jerome. At Qumran the allusion is almost always to ‘
Wrath
’ (
Cha
‘
as
), as it is here in the
Pesher
– ‘
Chos
’ and ‘
Cha
‘
as
’ being
homophonic
. Here, in the
Pesher
, quite rightly, ‘
the Wicked Priest
’ is going to ‘
drink to the dregs
’ or ‘
drink to satiety
’. He would be ‘
drunk
’, but his ‘
drunkenness
’ would be from ‘
the Cup of the Wrath of God’
, of which ‘
he would drink his fill
’. Here again, of course, we see the sort of word-play and metaphor that so fascinated our militant exegetes. Nor is this to say anything about the ‘
gi
v
ing to drink
’ and the various plays we shall encounter in Gospel portraits and the one in Paul of Jesus’ words at ‘
the Last Su
p
per’
, ‘
taking the Cup and giving them to drink
’ (in 1 Corinthians 11:26–27, connected to ‘
Blood
’ and called ‘
the Cup of the Lord
’) at the end of this book in our analysis of ‘
the New Covenant in the Land of Damascus
’.

The phrase, as it is given at the end of Column XI.13–15, is: ‘
but the Cup of the Wrath of God shall swallow him
’ (
teval
‘
eno
). Once again we have our play on the language of ‘
swallowing
’ that so permeates these Scriptural exegeses. The mea
n
ing here is clear, as we have underscored: just as ‘
he swallowed the Righteous Teacher
’ and his associates (possibly connected to observances they were conducting on their
Yom Kippur
) so, too, would he himself be ‘
swallowed
’,
i.e.
, ‘
consumed
’.

That this, in fact, involved ‘
the destruction’
of ‘
the Righteous Teacher and the Men of his Council
’, called in what follows ‘
Ebionim
’ or ‘
the Poor
’, is made clear in the next two columns ending in the climactic finale about ‘
the Last Judgement
’ in XII.13–XIII.4. Because the word being used there is now ‘
destroy
’ (
lechalot
) not ‘
swallow
’, this reads quite straightforwardly as we saw: ‘
He will be paid the reward he paid the Poor
.’
Just so there should be no mistaking the import here, this is repeated using the language of ‘
conspiracy
’: ‘
as he plotted to destroy the Poor
,
so too would God condemn him to destruction
’.
As no
t
ed, the language of ‘
the Poor
’ is introduced into the
Pesher
, though it nowhere occurs in the underlying Biblical passage, just as the language of ‘
swallowing
’, ‘
being cast down
’, and ‘
paying the reward
’ was previously. The sectarians
want
this language in the exegesis;
therefore they put it there
. They do the same with the language of ‘
Chos-Hamato
’/‘
the Cup of His Wrath
’, the variation of which has already preceded its use here in the description of the Wicked Priest’s ‘
angry wrath
’/‘
cha
‘
as hamato
’. (transformed from ‘
Your Fury
’ in normative Habakkuk 2:15).
11
The word-play here should be obvious.

There is no ‘
Cha
‘
as
’/‘
Wrath
’ as such in the underlying text from Habakkuk 2:15 (though there is ‘
Hamatchah
’ – ‘
Your Fury
’ as we just saw). This is purposefully introduced into the
Pesher
by the exegetes, in the same manner that they introduce i
m
portant words like ‘
Festivals
’, ‘
staggering
’, ‘
swallowing
’, and ‘
the Poor
’. An additional variation on this ‘
Hemah
’ (‘
Venom
’ or ‘
Poison
’) and itself connected to ‘
wine
’, is the way the ‘
Vipers
’ or ‘
Kings of the Peoples
’ are portrayed in the exegesis of De
u
teronomy 32:33 in CD VIII.9–11/XIX.21–25. Where ‘
the
Wicked Priest
’ is concerned, it is his ‘
hot wrath
’/‘
cha
‘
as hamato
’ or ‘
venomous fury
’ that – in the manner of ‘
the Pursuer
’ in Deuteronomy 19:6 – drives him to ‘
pursue the Righteous Teacher to swallow him
’. In the case of God’s ‘
Vengeance
’ and ‘
Punishment on the Wicked Priest
’ that follows, it is ‘
the Cup of the Wrath of God
’ that ‘
will swallow him
’ (
the Wicked Priest
), meaning, just as the latter ‘
swallowed
’ the Righteous Teacher and his followers ‘
with
’ or ‘
in his House of Exile
’ so, too, would he be ‘
swallowed
’/‘
consumed by God
’
s Wrath
’, of which – as just made clear – ‘
he would drink his fill
’ or ‘
drink to satiety
’/‘
to the dregs
’.

‘
The Cup of the Wine of the Wrath of God
’ and ‘
the Scarlet Beast
’ in Revelation

The best exposition of this vivid metaphor is to be found in
The Book of Revelation
, itself drenched in language and i
m
agery of this kind and revelling in it. In the context of repeated allusion to ‘
blaspheming the Name of God
’ (13:1–6) and ‘
One like a Son of Man sitting upon the cloud
’ (14:14), it reads: ‘
He shall also
drink
of
the wine of the Wrath of God
,
which is poured out full strength
into
the Cup of his Anger
.
And he shall be tormented in fire and brimstone before the Holy Angels and before the Lamb
(14:10).’
These allusions should all be by now familiar, and there can be no doubt that we are speaking about ‘
the Wrath of God
’ and ‘
Divine Vengeance
’. It will be immediately appreciated that the allusion here even incorporates the underlying la
n
guage of Habakkuk 2:15, just used in CD XI.3–8 to develop the exegesis concerning how the Wicked Priest ‘
swallowed the Righteous Teacher
’, ‘
causing his neighbor to drink
,
pouring out His Venom
’ or ‘W
rath to make them drunk
’. This was even preceded in CD X.3–5 and 13 by allusion to executing ‘
Judgement upon him with fire and brimstone
’ in ‘
the House of Judg
e
ment which God would deliver
’.
Revelation, of course, fairly overflows with this language of ‘
pouring
’ and ‘
Judgement
’, just as it does that of ‘
blasphemy
’. An example: ‘
And the third Angel
poured out his bowl
onto the rivers and onto the Fountain of w
a
ters
(language present in CD VIII.22/XIX.34),
and they become blood
....
For they
poured out the blood o
f the Holy Ones and the Prophets
,
and You
gave them blood to drink
,
for they deserve it
(16:4–6).’

Not only was this ‘
Fountain
’ or ‘
Well of Living Waters
’ referred to in the Damascus Document in the context of the all
u
sion to ‘
the Yoreh
’/‘
Guide
’, ‘
betraying the New Covenant in the Land of Damascus
’, ‘
the Assembly of the Men of Perfect Hol
i
ness
’, and the ‘
standing up of the Messiah of Aaron and Israel
’, but these are the same accusations about the Jews ‘
killing all the Prophets
’.
There is also the variation on James’ directive to ‘
abstain from blood
’. Nor is this to say anything about what we shall see at the end of the book as the Hebrew esoteric exposition of ‘
Damascus
’ as ‘
to
give blood to drink
’ and what we have further seen as the additional play on and reversal of these matters by Paul in 1 Corinthians 10:21 and 11:27–29.