James the Brother of Jesus and the Dead Sea Scrolls II (26 page)

In Josephus’ account, not only did Honi
once pray for rain in the midst of a famine
,
but God also
‘
took vengeance upon them
’ (the Pharisees who stone him) by sending the most violent hurricane or cyclone. This is the same ‘
whirlwind
’ symbolism from the story of Elijah, ‘
a whirlwind
’ also signaled in Ezekiel’s prophecies and evoked in detail in the First Column of the Nahum
Pesher
from Qumran. In Ezekiel 13:12–14, this will be directed against ‘
the wall upon which the daubers slapped pla
s
ter
’, a crucial image in the Damascus Document too, for those it calls ‘
the Seekers after Smooth Things
’ (
the Pharisees
) as well
11
– in Ezekiel 13:10 ‘
those who lead
(
the
)
People astray
,
crying “Peace” when there is not peace
!’
It should be appreciated that Honi’s death is clearly the work of the Pharisees (those who backed Salome Alexandra’s older, more Pharisee-minded son, Hyrcanus II – c. 76–40 BCE) – therefore doubtlessly too, the
Talmud
’s reticence as heir to Pharisaic tradition in speaking of it. Both
Talmud
s hint at the reasons for Honi’s stoning, but do not in fact mention that he was stoned. It is left to Josephus to apprise us of this.
12

The circumstances behind this stoning in Josephus are important both in that
they exactly prefigure the death of James
and in the insight they provide into the political configurations of the time.
13
According to Josephus, Honi is stoned by these Pharisaic supporters of both Salome Alexandra and her son Hyrcanus II. The disapproval of Honi by Pharisaic leaders, in pa
r
ticular Salome Alexandra’s ‘
kinsman
’ Simeon ben Shetach, will also emerge in these same Rabbinic sources and, by implication too, the reason for his stoning.
14
Ostensibly, this was his refusal to condemn Hyrcanus’ younger and more nationalist brother Aristobulus II (c. 67–49 BCE), the Priestly supporters of whom had taken refuge in the Temple after Aristobulus’ untimely capture by deceit by the Romans and were refusing to surrender.
This is the background to Honi’s stoning.
15

The time is Passover, 65 BCE, two years before the Romans under Julius Caesar’s associate-to-be Pompey stormed the Temple with the help of these more collaborationist Pharisees, thereby putting an end to an independent Jewish State.
16
The attitude of
Aristobulus
’
Priestly supporters in the Temple
must be seen as ‘
proto-Zealot
’ or, what should perhaps be called, ‘
Purist Sadducee
’, and even later – as, for instance, like those at Qumran – ‘
Messianic Sadducees
’
17
(‘
Sadducee
’ being a transli
t
eration into Greek of the Hebrew,
Zadduki
or
Zaddoki
, the
Z-D-K
root of which also carrying the secondary meaning of ‘
Righ
t
eousness
’ or ‘
being Righteous
’). This is, also, the sense clearly of ‘
the Sons of Zadok
’/‘
of the
Zaddik
’ at Qumran.
18

Ranged against these
Purist Sadducees
is a newer more accommodating or compromising group, familiar from portraits in the New Testament and Josephus purporting to depict the First Century CE, that should be called ‘
Herodian Sadducees
’ or even ‘
Boethusian Sadducees
’ after the High Priest of that name (
Boethus
) whom Herod brought in from Egypt after doing away with most, if not all, of the Maccabees. Those he did not murder he married!
19

Aristobulus’ supporters patently have an attachment to national independence and oppose any accommodation to foreign rule in Palestine while the proto-Pharisees who oppose him – even at this time – just as patently do not. The same can be said of Aristobulus’ father, Alexander Jannaeus (c. 104–76 BCE), who was opposed as well by the same kind of
Pharisees
and must be seen as one of these
original Purist
or
more nationalistic Sadducees
.
20
Nor was Alexander a collaborationist or accomm
o
dating
Sadducee
of the stripe of the later ones in the Herodian Period we have just highlighted above. Nor, certainly, was his father John Hyrcanus (c. 134–104 BCE).
21

On the other hand, Alexander Jannaeus’ wife, Salome Alexandra (d. 67 BCE), the kinswoman of the ‘
Simeon ben Shetach
’ who was one of the original foundational ‘
Pairs
’ and transmitters of Pharisee tradition according to the
Abbot
literature (
The Pirke Abbot
and
The Abbot de Rabbi Nathan
we shall have cause to refer to further below), is manifestly pro-Pharisaic. Josephus makes it very plain that even her husband Alexander Jannaeus knows this.
22
Moreover he is very straightforward in identifying as ‘
Pharisees
’, the people who were responsible for the stoning of Honi the Circle-Drawer and the collaborators who coope
r
ated with the Romans the first time they stormed the Temple in 63 BCE. So is Salome’s oldest son Hyrcanus II, executed by Herod in 29 BCE, meaning ‘
a Pharisee
’. He allies himself with Herodian family interests and together with such
Herodians
must be seen as primarily responsible for bringing the Romans into the country and paving the way for the Roman/Herodian takeover and an end of Jewish independence.
23

For his part Aristobulus – later poisoned by Pompey’s supporters on his way back to Palestine with two legions after Ca
e
sar had freed him in 49 BCE – had earlier been
unable to debase himself before Pompey
in the 65–63 events. As Josephus – no friend of resistance-minded Maccabeans, though proud of his own well-advertised Maccabean blood
24
– describes the episode at that time (in fact, a fateful one and perhaps a turning point in Jewish history
25
): Aristobulus ‘
turned sick of servility
’,
returned to Jerusalem to take refuge with his
‘
purist Priestly
’
supporters in the Temple before his duplicitous capture by the Romans
. Aristobulus, therefore, is patently not a ‘
Pharisee
’, nor an accommodating or collaborationist
Sadducean
of
the Herodian Per
i
od
thereafter – the one most are familiar with through the rather distorted historical lens of the Gospels and the Book of Acts. This later breed of
Sadducees
, as Josephus makes clear,
were
‘
dominated by the Pharisees in all things
’
and supported and were supported by the Herodian Dynasty
,
even paying bribes to Roman Governors for the privilege of serving as High Priests
.
26
This is clearly
not
the behaviour of any truly credible
Maccabean
High Priest.

These matters are very complex. Plus they have been highly polemicized over the last two millennia. Nevertheless in this context Honi the Circle-Drawer or Onias the Just emerges as supporting, not opposing Aristobulus’ ‘
Purist Sadducean
’ Pries
t
ly followers who had taken refuge in the Temple. One should keep this in mind when it comes to considering the deaths of James and other like-minded Messianists in the next century. Just as Honi’s James-like cognomen ‘
the Just
’ implies – so a
d
mired was Honi by the general population
because of his Righteousness
and
Piety
that, when the Pharisees outside the Temple attempted to force him to condemn the supporters of Aristobulus within, he refuses to do so. Whereupon they (the Pharisees) immediately stone him.
27
As already suggested, this refusal is the ostensible reason for his stoning, but the legal justifications at this point for this are hazy. The real reasons however, which are similar to those behind the stoning of James (his putative d
e
scendant and heir) one hundred and twenty-seven years later, will emerge in the Talmudic sources we shall note below.
28

In the picture provided by Josephus (certainly based on a source like Nicolaus of Damascus – an Herodian diplomat in Rome – and not his own view), Aristobulus’ ‘
Purist Sadducean
’ supporters are the
lower priests
in the Temple responsible for the daily sacrifices. As Josephus describes it, they have paid the Pharisees outside the city besieging them in the Temple (with help from the ‘
Arab
’ King of Petra in support of Hyrcanus II, itself arranged by Herod’s father Antipater
29
) in good faith for animals to make the necessary sacrifices prescribed for Passover.
30
As usual, in these pivotal situations, the time is Passover and, once again – if such were needed – we have a good example of the scrupulousness of such ‘
nationalist
’ or ‘
Purist Sadd
u
cees
’ even under extreme duress, their unwillingness to resort to bribery, and their
Piety
,
putting proper Temple service
even above their own safety
.

Even in the picture provided by Josephus – not someone who would normally be very sympathetic to their cause (as a
l
ready noted, certainly based on a source and probably not his own perspective) – the Pharisees cheat them and refuse to hand over the animals Aristobulus II’s supporters besieged inside the Temple had already paid for.
31
These are key moments and turning-points in the history of the period and even perhaps Jewish history as a whole. Not only does Josephus (or his source) literally describe the behaviour of these presumable ‘
Pharisees
’ who betray their trust – even if to their opponents – as ‘
Impiety towards God
’ (the opposite of the ‘
Piety towards God
’ so highly sought after by such opposition groups as ‘
Sicarii
Essenes
’ or ‘
Proto-Christians
’),
32
but
these points are, not surprisingly, missing from Talmudic accounts.

It should also be borne in mind that these Priestly supporters of Aristobulus
in the Temple
are the same hold-outs who, one or two years later, are ultimately cut down while faithfully
proceeding with the sacrifices in the midst of the Roman assault on the Temple
– another example of their extreme
Piety
and what, once again, has to be considered ‘
proper Temple service
’
according to a Righteousness-oriented
‘
Purist Sadducean
’ or ‘
Zealot
’
mentality in this period
. In fact, so ‘
zealous
’ were they in this regard,
even at the expense of their very lives
, that, as Josephus himself avers, the Romans were themselves amazed.
33

For his part, Josephus also notes, rather laconically and almost as an afterthought, that most of the killing in the assault as it was finally conducted by Pompey on the Temple Mount was carried out by the opponents of these ‘
Torah
-doing’, ‘
Covenant-keeping
’, Priestly partisans of Aristobulus (and, by extension, Honi), who
have to be seen as Pharisees
. It is they who
actually cooperated with the Romans in storming the Temple
.
34
These
Pharisees
, Talmudic attempts at heroicization or idealization notwithstanding, have to be seen as characterized over the next hundred and thirty years – even in the picture Josephus, a self-professed Pharisee, himself provides –
by unstinting support for Herod
,
his heirs
,
and Roman rule in Palestine generally
.