James the Brother of Jesus and the Dead Sea Scrolls II (163 page)

But, of course, this is the very same passage the
Talmud
says Queen Helen of Adiabene’s two sons were reading when the teacher
from Galilee
identified by Josephus as ‘
Eleazar’
gainsaid Ananias’ and his associate’s previous tuition, asking them r
a
ther (just as
Philip
in Acts 8:30)
whether they
‘
understood the meaning of what
’ they were reading. It is at this point, having understood the true nature of
the conversion
they had undertaken
‘
to fulfill
’ that, in both Josephus and the
Talmud
– ‘
on that very day
’ they, too,
immediately went out
and
circumcised themselves
.
98

As already pointed out, the very words attributed to
Eleazar
here are being parodied in Acts’ version of ‘
Philip
’’s encou
n
ter with ‘
the Ethiopian Queen
’
s
eunuch
’ who asks the very same question. The caricature of
circumcision
as
castration
here is certainly purposeful, as is that of the
Queen
as a ‘
Black
’ or an ‘
African
’ – much like
Agbar
Uchama
(her putative ‘
husband
’ or descendant). Only now the ‘
eunuch’
, as we saw, is reading Isaiah 53:7–8 (central lines in the fundamental ‘
Christian
’ proof-text Isaiah 53:1-12) not Genesis 17:10–14 and, in Acts 8:38, he likewise ‘
orders the chariot to stop
’ and
immediately proceeds to be ba
p
tized
. In fact, the creation of this canny caricature can undoubtedly be dated within the complex of notices we are discussing regarding this subject.

To go back to CD XVI.1–8, there can be little doubt of the aggressive and uncompromising ferocity of this passage and others like it in the Scrolls where even ‘
the Avenging Fury of the Angel of
Mastema
’
99
and ‘
a person vowing another to death by the laws of the Gentiles being put to death himself
’
100
are also evoked. The ferocity in question is more in keeping with Hi
p
polytus’ description of ‘
the
Sicarii
Essenes
’ who would either ‘
threaten to kill a man’
or ‘
forcibly circumcise him’
if they heard him discussing
God and His Laws
but who, by the same token, would ‘
submit to any death or endure any torture rather than violate
(
their
)
conscience
’ (
i.e.
, ‘
blaspheme the Law
’ in Josephus and Paul’s ‘
conscience
’ language again) or ‘
eat that which was sacrificed to an idol’
.

We have continually stressed how this issue of ‘
abstaining from things sacrificed to idols
’ is the backbone of James’ dire
c
tives to overseas communities at the conclusion of
the Jerusalem Council
in Acts 15:20 and 15:29. It is reiterated in Acts 21:26 when Paul is sent into the Temple by James for a
Nazirite
-style penance because the majority of James’ supporters are ‘
Zealots for the Law’
. Not only does the subject preoccupy Paul from 1 Corinthians 8–11, where he uses it as a springboard to intr
o
duce his idea of ‘
Communion with the Blood of Christ
’; but also to affirm that ‘
an idol is nothing in the world
’ (8:4 – nor is ‘
that which is sacrificed to an idol anything
’) and to insist that one should ‘
not inquire on account of conscience
’ (10:25–29).

As already described, the subject forms the background to the whole section in
MMT
on bringing gifts and sacrifices on behalf of Gentiles into the Temple
(a ban, according to Josephus, of which ‘
our Forefathers were previously unaware
’ and the issue which, according to him, triggered the War against Rome in 66
CE
101
) – ‘
sacrifices by Gentiles
’ in the Temple, in partic
u
lar, being treated under the expression that ‘
we consider they sacrifice to an idol
’ or ‘
they are sacrifices to an idol
’ generally.
102
Though the exemplars are a little fragmentary here, the meaning is clear and the words ‘
sacrifice to an idol
’ shine clearly through.

The conclusion should probably be that the picture of
the
Sicarii
in Josephus, as descending from the teaching of ‘
Judas and Sadduk
’ during the unrest of 4 BCE–7 CE (coincident with what the Gospels picture as ‘
the birth of Christ
’) and at the forefront of the unrest in the Fifties–Sixties CE in the Temple, when Josephus is finally willing to explain – however tende
n
tiously – the meaning of their several denotations, is only partly accurate. As these events transpire, these same
Sicarii
are also the ones who commit mass suicide at Masada while others flee down to Egypt, resulting in the additional destruction of the Temple at Leontopolis there
103
– and finally into Cyrenaica in North Africa where unrest continues well into the Nineties and beyond, as Josephus also reports.
104

But Josephus is perhaps only being partially forthcoming when he tells us that
the
Sicarii
derived their name from the beduin or Yemeni-style dagger (which resembled the Roman
sica
) they carried beneath their garments to dispatch their en
e
mies, thus giving the impression that they were simply cutthroats or assassins and nothing more. As just underscored, this pi
c
ture is picked up in Acts – probably also somewhat tendentiously – where Paul, after disturbances provoked by the perception of his having brought Gentiles and, presumably, their gifts into the Temple (
cf
. the outcry in Acts 21:28 that ‘
he has brought Greeks into the Temple and polluted this Holy Place
’), is queried by the Roman Chief Captain, who rescues him from the Je
w
ish mob ‘
seeking to kill him’
,
‘Are you not the Egyptian who recently caused a disturbance and led four thousand
Sicarii
out into the desert
?’

This is only true as far as it goes. In the light of the materials from Hippolytus, Origen, Dio Cassius, and Jerome designa
t
ing those who circumcise or forcibly circumcise others as being
Sicarii
too, we can perhaps go further. As we have seen, this designation was based on the eponymous body of Roman traditional law forbidding castration and other similar bodily mutil
a
tions particularly of the
genitalia
, the
Lex Cornelia de Sicarius et Veneficis
, which grew evermore onerous from the time of Nerva to Hadrian and beyond so that, by Origen’s time, Third-Century Roman magistrates were applying it as a matter of course.

This law evidently bounced back on the Revolutionaries of the Bar Kochba Period – who were, obviously, also seen as
Sicarii
– to the extent that a Regulation, known in the
Talmud
as ‘
the
Sicaricon
’, was applied to them which allowed the Go
v
ernment to confiscate their property in the aftermath of the Uprising. The conclusion would appear to be that
the
Sicarii
ev
e
ryone always talks so confidently about were also known for
forcible circumcision
– or rather (something like the
Islam
of a later incarnation), they offered those having the temerity to discuss the validity of Mosaic Law without first entering ‘
the Covenant
’ (
whether converts or foreigners
)
the choice of circumcision or death
.

Judging by the severity of the efforts expended against them in this period, this conduct does not seem to have been very well received by their Roman Overlords, who abrogated all the privileges the Jews had previously enjoyed regarding this pra
c
tice, at least where those perceived of as being
Sicarii
Revolutionaries
were concerned. Since the Romans looked upon
circu
m
cision
as little more than a variety of bodily mutilation, this is something of the private joke shining through Acts’ tendentious picture of the convert characterized as ‘
the Ethiopian Queen
’
s
eunuch
’
. Based on the somewhat incomplete and perhaps even dissembling picture in Josephus – he certainly seems to have known more, as his furious remonstrances and self-justifications in both the
War
and the
Vita
on the subject of
Sicarii
unrest in Cyrenaica at the end of the First Century indicate
105
– readers have concluded that the ‘
knife
’ from which the Greek version of their name was derived (this could hardly have been what they called themselves in Hebrew or Aramaic) was simply that of ‘
the Assassin’
. In the light, however, of the picture arising out of the new material we have assembled above, there is no justification whatever for this conclusion.

So great was the attachment of
the
Sicarii
to and their insistence on
circumcision
that they probably were far better known as ‘
the Party of the Circumcision
’
par excellence
,
as Paul seems to so contemptuously dismiss them. Not only is this the name Paul seems to give in Galatians 2:12 to the
Party
led by James, but it is an issue with which he wrestles, as we have seen, with extremely high emotion throughout Galatians, including his final contemptuous jibe at those he claims in 5:12
are
disturbing
his communities
(presumably with
circumcision
): ‘
would they would themselves cut off’
. Even the expression ‘
cut off
’ in this context is but a thinly disguised play on
Essene
and Qumran
excommunication
practices and a euphemism, as we have seen, in wide use in the Damascus Document, particularly where ‘
Backsliders from the Law
’ were concerned.
106

Therefore this
knife
, which some saw as the assassin’s, probably doubled as that of the circumciser’s. In fact, the emphasis should probably be the other way round. The
knife
Sicarii
Essenes
were using
to circumcise
or
forcibly circumcise those they heard discussing the Law in an illegitimate manner
probably doubled as
the one they used to assassinate
; and, just as Origen who had himself mutilated his own sexual parts reports, this is how such ‘
Mutilators
’ or ‘
Circumcisers
’ were known in the Greco-Roman world. In our view this is a more insightful way of understanding the literature found at Qumran which, as we have been demonstrating, did contain a contingent of Gentile believers in associated status, referred to in CD, for instance, as
the
Nilvim
/
God-Fearers
/or
Joiners
.
107

As stated in Column XX.19f. and 34 of the Damascus Document, it was for such persons – to whom ‘
God would reveal Salvation (
Yesha
‘
)
and who would ‘
see His Salvation
’ (
Yeshu
‘
ato
)
because ‘
they reckoned
’ and ‘
took refuge in His Holy Name
’ – that ‘
a Book of Remembrance would be written out’
. It is this which, we contend, is parodied in the words, ‘
Do this in
reme
m
brance
of me’
, attributed to Jesus by Paul in 1 Corinthians 11:25 and echoed in
Last Supper
scenarios in the Synoptics (Luke 22:19 and
pars
.).