James the Brother of Jesus and the Dead Sea Scrolls II (28 page)

For his part, Josephus calls John ‘
a good Man
’, and both he and Mark apply the same word in Greek to him, ‘
Man
’/
Andros
, a term that fairly permeates the sections of the Koran and other like-minded documents where John and Jesus are being referred to.
51
John is also referred to as ‘
Enosh
’ – ‘
Enosh
’ meaning ‘
Man
’ in Aramaic – in Mandaean Scripture, which is probably the origin of Muhammad’s several references to him using a similar vocabulary. ‘
Man
’, of course, in Hebrew is ‘
Adam
’, so once again, whether coincidentally or not, we are in the framework of the ‘
Primal
’ or ‘
Secret Adam
’ tradition.
52
Of course Jesus is portrayed in Gospel tradition, figuratively or literally, as ‘
the
Son of Man
’. This characterization may be at the root of the confusion between ‘
the Son of Man
’ as it has come down to us in Christian Scripture and Daniel 7:13’s original allusion to
seeing
‘
one like a son of man coming on the clouds of Heaven
’, on which it is supposed to be based, meaning lite
r
ally, someone who
looked like
a
‘
man
’ but who – since he
was riding on the clouds of Heaven
– was
not really a man but something more
.
53

This ideology of ‘
the Last
’ or ‘
Secret
Adam
’, in turn, bears an eschatological dimension of ‘
the Lord out of Heaven
’
shedding Judgement
that brings us back both to James’ proclamation in the Temple of
‘the coming of the Son of Man with the Heavenly Host in Glory
’ and the scenario of final apocalyptic War led by the Messiah – also expressed in terms of ‘
the clouds shedding Judgement like rain
’ as we saw – in the War Scroll.

Peculiar as it may seem, this kind of phraseology is also reflected in the Qumran Hymns, which asserts that God appeared to its author
in His
‘
Power as Perfect Light
’.
54
It is in this context that it refers to
both
‘
Man
’ (
Enosh
)
and
‘
the Son of Man
’ (
Ben-Adam
), while at the same time alluding to ‘
Perfection of the Way
’ and ‘
Justification
’, concluding: ‘
The Way of
Enosh
(
Man
)
is not established
,
except by the Spirit God created for him to make Perfect a Way for the Sons of Man
(
Adam
)
in order that they will know all His works with His Mighty Power
(here, the Elchasaite ‘
Hidden
’ or ‘
Great Power
’ language yet again)
and the abundance of His Mercies on all the Sons of His Choice
.’
55

In Mark, it is rather Herod the Tetrarch who calls John ‘
a Just Man and Holy
’ (that is, in Hebrew, ‘
Zaddik
and
Kedosh
’) – however incredible this may seem – and it is he who, ‘
hearing him gladly
’,
supposedly wished to
‘
keep him safe
’ (‘
hide
’
him?
)! It would be hard to refrain from guffawing were it not for concern over what some might call their ‘
Faith
’. It should be appr
e
ciated that the words ‘a
Just Man and Holy
’ are almost precisely those used in Early Christian tradition to describe James who was not only referred to as a ‘
Just One
’, but also as
wearing the High-Priestly diadem with the words
‘
Holy to God
’
inscribed upon it
. Moreover the texts go even further than this in the contention that he was ‘
considered Holy from his mother
’
s womb
’. But so too, probably, was John the Baptist, particularly in Mark 6:20 above, but even more so in Luke.

Though Luke 1:15 does not use precisely this terminology, it is almost the same:
‘For he shall be
great
before the Lord and shall
never drink wine or strong drink
and he shall be
filled
with the Holy Spirit even from his mother
’
s womb’
. T
hat is, not only did John like James ‘
not drink wine or strong drink
’ but, like James too,
he was
‘
a Nazirite
’ or ‘
Holy from his mother
’
s womb
’.

This allusion to ‘
being Holy from
(
one
’
s
)
mother
’
s womb
’ is actually replicated with even more pertinence in sections of the Hymns. These not only include the sobriquet ‘
Oblias
’ or ‘
Protection of the People
’, but an allusion also to providing Jerus
a
lem with ‘
a Bulwark
’ – both undoubtedly connected to characterizations such as the one above.
56
In fact, the language of this ‘
extreme Holiness
’ regime permeates the Damascus Document which even goes so far as to employ the nuance and metaphor of Naziritism or, what we shall call as we proceed, the language of ‘
N-Z-R
’ – the root, that is, of ‘
the
Nazir
’.
57

These, then, are the categories of the ‘
Opposition
’,
rainmaking
Zaddik
or ‘
redivivus
’ tradition. So
Righteous
, for instance, is Elijah and so ‘
consumingly zealous
’, as 1 Kings 19:10–14 would put it, that he does not die but is
taken up to Heaven alive
(2 Kings 2:1–11) – ‘
in a whirlwind
’ no less. It is perhaps for this reason that, prefiguring Jesus, he was seen as being able to come back to earth and alive again or, as it were, become incarnated. We have already seen how the Jerusalem
Talmud
actually co
m
pares Honi to Elijah, even to the extent – incomprehensibly in our view – of applying the same ‘
ban
’ or ‘
blasphemy
’ charge Simeon ben Shetach leveled against Honi
to Elijah
! Notwithstanding, in the style of Noah, Elijah is perhaps the paradigmatic primordial
Rainmaker
and
Zaddik
. It is perhaps for this reason that James 5:16–18 in conclusion refers to him as a ‘
Man
,
who in a prayer
,
prayed for it
’
both to rain and
‘
not to rain
’ and, perhaps even more to the point, as an example of
the saving Power
‘
of the prayer of the Just One
’.

The fact of Elijah’s ‘
consuming zeal for the Lord of Hosts
’ is twice referred to in 1 Kings 19. Here the reference is specif
i
cally to ‘
the Lord God of Hosts
’. Again, this is almost exactly the language of the proclamation of James 5:1–8, following its allusion to how the workers, being cheated in the fields by ‘
the Rich
’, were advised
to wait
‘
patiently until the coming of the Lord
’ (the ‘
of Hosts
’ part already specifically evoked in 5:4). This is varied slightly, but significantly in the light of new co
n
cerns over martyrdom in time of Holy War, in Mattathias’ final testament to his sons in 1 Maccabees 2:49–94, which rather asserts: ‘
This is the time to have a
consuming zeal for the Law
and
to give your lives for the Covenant of our Forefathers
’.
58
To this, 2:58 added the pivotal, that ‘
for his consuming zeal for the Law
,
Elijah was caught up into Heaven itself
’.

Curiously, it was in 1 Kings 19:4–15 that Elijah was not only described as
taking
refuge in a cave
– ‘
hiding himself’
once again? – to escape from Jezebel and King Ahab after having just made rain and slaughtering all their prophets of ‘
Baal
’, but also as ‘
going
into the wilderness
’. There, he ‘
sat under a carob tree
’ and ‘
wished to die
’ (a feature of the tradition complex that will also reappear in ‘
Honi
’ stories in Rabbinic literature)
before significantly, as this is put in 1 Kings 19:15,
making his way to
‘
the
wilderness of Damascus
’. This motif of ‘
sitting under a tree
’ will also resurface in these
redivivus
-type stories about Honi, as it will in their mutation in the one about ‘
Nathanael
’ –
a stand-in
, in our view,
for
James in the New Testament in the Gospel of John 1:49–51. Notices such as these show Honi, just like John, to be another of these
Elijah
redivivus
es
, not only in the matters
of being placed under ban
and
being a Rainmaker
,
but also as to his basic persona
.

In an additional tradition stemming from this period Elijah, in turn, is considered to have been the incarnation of another of these High-Priestly primordial Rainmakers, the archetypical ‘
Zealot
’
High Priest Phineas
.
74
It is possible, therefore, to co
n
clude that this ‘
redivivus
’ or incarnationist
rainmaking
tradition is in some manner connected to the parallel one about High-Priestly ‘
zeal
’ and/or
Perfect Holiness
and
Righteousness
as
determining one’s qualifications to serve
at the altar of God in the Te
m
ple.

In Numbers, it was this Phineas who killed backsliders and persons intermarrying with foreigners
to prevent
‘
pollution
’
in the archetypical desert camp
.
59
But just as Elijah’s ‘
consuming zeal for the Law
’ is referred to in the speech attributed to Mattathias in 1 Maccabees 1:58 above, Mattathias himself – whose own
Phineas-like
‘
zeal
’
in killing collaborating backsliders
was already depicted earlier in 1 Maccabees 1:24 – likewise, invokes Phineas’ paradigmatic ‘
zeal for the Law
’ in this farewell Testament to his sons (1:54). This he puts as follows – in the process tacitly declaring his own legitimate ‘
Zadokite
’ ancestry and, consequently, that of his family descending from Phineas:
‘Phineas our father
,
in return for his
burning zeal
,
received a Covenant of Everlasting Priesthood
(the incongruously-designated ‘
Covenant of Peace
’ again)’.
60

Abba
Hilkiah Makes Rain

The Babylonian
Talmud
also refers to another mysterious,
rainmaking
grandson of
Honi the Circle-Drawer
contemporary with James, ‘
Abba Hilkiah
’.
61
These ‘
Abba
’-names, which signify ‘
Father
’, are very curious. It has been suggested that ‘
Abba
’-names such as these may in some manner denote ‘
Essenes
’ which, in the more general way the term seems to be used, prob
a
bly has an element of truth to it.