James the Brother of Jesus and the Dead Sea Scrolls II (30 page)

Crucially, this Talmudic tradition attributed to ‘
Eliezer ben Hyrcanus
’ about ‘
Jacob of Kfar Sechania
’ or ‘
Sihnin
’ in the name of ‘
Jesus the Nazoraean
’ parallels and, in the writer’s view, is the actual basis for Matthew 27:3–10’s depiction of Judas
Iscariot
’
s
‘
thirty pieces of silver
’ as ‘
the price
’
of
‘
innocent Blood
’ – a portrait which embodies the three motifs of ‘
wages
’, ‘
gifts to the Temple
’, and ‘
Blood
’, and, by implication, a fourth, the Damascus Document’s ‘
pollution of the Temple
’.

Though not paralleled in any of the other Gospels, the version in Matthew is extensively revised in Acts 1:18–20. In Acts, Judas doesn’t ‘
hang himself
’, but rather dies somewhat mysteriously and, something like James in early Church accounts, after ‘
a headlong fall’
– from where is unclear, but
into a
‘
Bloody Field
’
they called
‘
the
Akeldama
’,
78
– ‘
his guts
(like James’ head, previously)
all bursting open and blood gushing out
’ (
thus
– Acts 1:18). Matthew 27:6’s ‘
wages
’ or ‘
price of Blood
’ now met
a
morphose into Acts 1:19’s ‘
the Field of Blood
’ (‘
called in their language
Akeldama
’) and, instead of a proof-text
allegedly from
‘
the Prophet Jeremiah
’, which Matthew 27:9 quotes as: ‘
I took the thirty pieces of silver
,
the price of him on whom they priced
,
on whom they of the Sons of Israel priced
’ (
sic
); Acts 1:20 rather applies passages from Psalms 69:25 and 109:8 – the second, in our view, leading into the
palimpsest of the missing election of James as
‘
Bishop
’
of the early Church
.
79

However this may be, the problem is that
Matthew
27:9–10
is
not quoting from
‘
the Prophet Jeremiah
’, as it mistakenly thinks or claims, but rather
from
‘
the Prophet
Zechariah
’ – and this not a little
disingenuously
– a matter which will, however tangentially, also have to do with the not-unconnected issue of
the missing introduction of James
in Acts.
The extant passage in Matthew – which is a loose quotation of Zechariah 11:12–13 – was, in its original context, actually an extremely angry one. Invoking the language of ‘
breaking My Covenant
’ in Zechariah 11:10, this had to do with God instructing the Prophet to contemptuously ‘
cast
’
the paltry
‘
wages
’
owed him for services rendered in shepherding His flock
‘
into the Temple Treasury
’.

Not only is this the proof-text which somehow Matthew 27:3–6 manages to apply to Judas
Iscariot
’s ‘
betrayal of innocent Blood’ and suicide
(always an appropriate theme, however distorted, where ‘
Sicarii
’
are concerned, and quite a feat by any lite
r
ary measure), but it is from this, too, that Matthew gets its proverbial ‘
thirty pieces of silver
’, which becomes such a useful quantitative element in its narrative but, once again, not paralleled in any of the other Gospels – though it will be pivotal for materials connected with Judas’ criticism of Jesus in the ‘
Mary
’/‘
Martha
’ affair and interlocked with Rabbinic tradition we shall delineate further below.
Furthermore, it is as a result of the evocation of this citation in Matthew that the High Priests respond and are able to explain that:
‘It is not lawful to place them
(‘
the pieces of silver
’)
into the Treasury for it is the price of Blood’
(27:8).

For their part, the two passages Acts 1:20 quotes from Psalms will immediately give way to the election to replace ‘
Judas
’, in which the individual with the curious name of ‘
Joseph Barsabas Justus
’
was the defeated candidate
. Psalm 69, the source of the first citation, is also a source of many familiar proof-texts including: ‘
zeal for Your House consumes me
’ (69:9 – ‘
My F
a
ther
’
s House
’ in John 2:16) and ‘
when I was thirsty
,
they gave me vinegar to drink
’ (69:21 – Matthew 27:34, 48 and
pars
.) – this, despite the fact that the Psalm is a completely ‘
Zionistic
’ one, which ends with the assertion that ‘
God will save Zion and rebuild the towns of Judah
’, which will be ‘
handed down to His Servants
’
descendants and lived in by those who love His Name
’ (69:35–36). This last, of course, is exploited in James 2:5 above in ‘
the Kingdom prepared for those who love him
’ and throughout the Damascus Document.
80

The original passage, as it appears in Psalms, calls out for the Lord’s even more terrible ‘
vengeful fury
’ and ‘
hot anger
’ on the narrator’s persecutors
in the plural
, so that ‘
their camp would be reduced to ruin and none would inhabit their tents
’. This passage which in its original context
is at all times plural
is pointedly changed to singular in the citation in Acts 1:18–20 where it is applied, as we saw, to
the
‘
headlong fall
’
Judas Iscariot takes
in the
‘
Field of Blood called Akeldama
’.

The second, from Psalm 109:8, reads: ‘
Let another take his Office
’ (
Episcopate
) which, as we have already seen as well, has more to do with the position occupied by James in the progression of these events than any position ever held by the ephemeral individual the Gospels denote as ‘
Judas
’ – whomever he may have been. What is, however, equally interesting is that the Psalm in question not only refers to ‘
Lying
’/‘
a Lying Tongue
’ (109:2), a favorite usage both at Qumran and in the Le
t
ter of James,
81
but it is completely ‘
Ebionite
’ – meaning, like the Qumran Hymns, it repeatedly refers to ‘
the Poor
’ (
Ebion
) as well as ‘
the Meek
’ (
‘
A
ni
) – but even more to the point, to ‘
the soul of the Poor One
’ (once again, ‘
Ebion
’ – 109:16 and 22).
82

In fact, the last two lines are classic in this regard and therefore, worth citing in full: ‘
I shall praise Him among the
Many
,
for He shall
stand
at the right hand of the
Poor
,
to
save
him from the Judgements of his soul
(109:30–31).’
One can imagine what the exegetes at Qumran would have made of this Psalm which, in substance, so much parallels Psalm 37 expounded there.
83
In the writer’s view, Psalm 109 probably was too, that is, expounded at Qumran. Therefore it was on the basis of such vocabulary – namely
Zaddik
(Righteous One),
Rasha
‘
(
Evil
),
Ebion
(
Poor One)
,
Belial
/
Ba
-
La
-
‘
a
,
Shamar
(
Keep)
,
Sheker
/
Chazav
(
Lying
),
Rabbim
(
Many)
, etc. – that they appear to have selected the texts they chose to expound, the commentary on it either not having been written down, not preserved, or not so far been found.

Nor is it insignificant that a Psalm – the Greek rendering in which, of the Hebrew
Pekudato
(
His Command
)
or ‘
Office
’, is ‘
Episcopate
’ (109:8) – which makes so many references to both ‘
Lying
’ and the ‘
Salvation of the Poor
’ (this last,
the name of James
’
Community in whatever the source
), is evoked in Acts just at the point where the introduction and/or election of James as successor to his ‘brother’
should or would have occurred in a more
‘
Ebionite
’
text
. One should note that in 109:6–7 introducing this, the
Judgement
upon those ‘
returning Evil for Good
,
hatred for Love
’
is to be executed
– just as in the D
a
mascus Document which invokes ‘
the Angel of
Mastema
’
upon those neglecting circumcision
–
by
‘
Satan standing at his
(
the Evil Person
’
s
)
right hand
’
to assure he will
‘
be condemned
’.

Matthew 27:10 also adds the curious phrase, ‘
as the Lord commanded me
’ – nowhere to be found in the original of the r
e
ceived Zechariah 11:12 either in the Masoretic or the Septuagint – deformed, as this passage from Zechariah may be to suit the exegesis the Matthean artificer desired.
Not only does Matthew 27:9 render this, ‘
the price of him who was priced, on whom they of the Sons of Israel set a price
’, again nowhere to be found in the original in Zechariah (in particular, ‘
the Sons of Israel
’ has been purposefully introduced – curiously in place of ‘
the Meek
’ or ‘
the Poor
’ in Zechariah 11:11 – to serve the ignoble aims of the artificer. In fact, ‘
the Sons of Israel
’ is nowhere to be found in the received version of Zechariah at all), but Ma
t
thew 27:10 does add – obviously attempting some conformation with Acts picture of ‘the
Akeldama
’ – ‘
and gave them
( ‘
the thirty pieces of silver
’)
for a Potter
’
s Field
’. Once again, however, ‘
Potter
’
s Field
’ as well nowhere appears in the original of Zechariah 11:13, upon which it is ostensibly claiming to be based, which only conserves: ‘
and cast them to the Potter in the House of the Lord
’ – in the context, as is generally agreed, carrying the meaning of ‘
Temple Treasurer
’ or ‘
Treasury
’).
Nor can this be in any way reconciled with what appears in Matthew
27:10
however one chooses to rework it
!

Nevertheless, at this point Matthew 27:10 does conclude laconically with the addition of the single phrase, ‘
as the Lord commanded me
’, again nowhere appearing in the original Zechariah but, in our view, pointing the way towards resolving the complex of issues surrounding these proof-texts. In order to understand this, one must appreciate that what was originally being described
in the document underlying Acts
was the election to succeed Jesus
not the one
‘
to succeed Judas
’. It is
Jesus
who is really ‘
missing
’ at this point and in need of succession, not the ephemeral ‘
Judas
’. The latter’s disappearance or demise is rather made up on the basis of the absurd use of this Biblical passage, bowdlerized and mistaken-attributed as it may be. Nor is the use of this emblematic name ‘
Judas
’ – the name of a series of revered Jewish leaders including
Judas Maccabeus
,
Judas the Galilean
, and evocative of the very nation itself – to say nothing of the secondary title ‘
Sicarios
’
either accidental or incidental, but rather
insightfully calculated to incite intense anti-Jewish feeling
, which it has not failed to do over the millennia, its originators ha
v
ing doubtlessly succeeded beyond even their wildest dreams! It is this, perhaps, that the Gospel of Judas may help alleviate – since, while nevertheless still antinomian, it tries to portray
Judas
as Jesus’
favorite Disciple
– but, of course, probably never to the extent necessary.