James the Brother of Jesus and the Dead Sea Scrolls II (47 page)

As these expand in other directions to encompass Luke’s the ‘
Poor man Lazarus longing to be filled from the crumbs that fell from the Rich Man
’
s table
’, the issue turns – as it did in John – into
one involving Resurrection
. In fact, Luke 16:19–31’s version of the scenario of the ‘
certain Poor Man Lazarus
’
under
‘
a certain Rich Man
’’
s
‘
table
’, ‘
his sores licked by dogs
’, does not quite end up in a discussion of whether this was ‘
true charity
’, as in the case of ‘
Nakdimon
’ in Talmudic tradition above; but rather it does go on to picture the Rich Man’s torment in ‘
Hades
’, ‘
suffering in this flame
’, moving on into the anti-Semitic attack on the stiff-neckedness of
the Jews
and the presentiment of Jesus’ coming resurrection and ‘
return from the dead
’, to which the pointed comment is attached: ‘
even then they would not be persuaded
’ (16:31).

For its part, in John’s picture of these all-important goings-on at Lazarus’ house, paralleled by what takes place in Luke
at
‘
Martha
’
s house
’ (in Matthew/Mark,
at
‘
Simon the Leper
’
s house
’), the Synoptic presentation of ‘
Judas Iscariot going to the Chief Priests
’
to
‘
deliver him up
’ (Matthew 26:14–15 and pars.)
is included
; but now rather in the characterization of Judas as ‘
the son
’ or ‘
brother of
Simon
Iscariot
’ (John 12:4 and 13:29–31 – the second, pivotally, at ‘
the Last Supper
’) – in other words, the ‘
Simon
’ characterized as ‘
the Leper
’ in both Matthew and Mark (or even ‘
Simon the Pharisee
’ earlier in Luke), only now with completely different signification. Put in another way, in place of ‘
Simon the Leper
’ or ‘
Simon the Pharisee
’ in these Go
s
pels, as already remarked, we should now have to probably read
Simon the Cananaean
,
Simon
Zelotes
, or even
Simon Iscariot
.

Though the complaints about ‘
the Poor
’ that
Judas
is pictured as making against Jesus in John 12:4–8 are folded into those ‘
the Disciples
’ and the ‘
some
’ make against
the woman who anoints
Jesus
’
head at
‘
Simon the Leper
’
s house
’ in Matthew and Mark – only in John they are far more theoretical or theological – they also mirror
Nakdimon
’
s daughter Miriam
’
s
(or
his u
n
named daughter-in-law
’
s
)
complaints
, albeit reversed.
Now the amounts are not too little
as in Talmudic tradition,
but too costly
as in the Gospels. It is worth observing, yet again, that this is often the way this kind of data moves from one tradition to the other – much in the way the whole ethos of the Dead Sea Scrolls is largely reversed in New Testament reformulation.

Of course, in Luke’s abbreviated and clearly secondary version of these encounters, Martha is pictured as
complaining about Mary
‘
sitting at Jesus
’
feet
’
while she has to do all the
‘
serving
’; whereas her Talmudic counterpart rather
complains e
i
ther about the paltriness of her
‘
daily perfume allowance
’ or
the stinginess of the weekly
‘
widow
’
allocation the Rabbis are pr
e
pared to allot her
. On the other hand in John, ‘
Judas of Simon Iscariot
’ is rather
complaining about Mary
’
s profligacy in was
t
ing such
‘
expensive perfume
’ or ‘
pure spikenard ointment
’
and not
‘
giving it to the Poor
’. In John as well, it should be recalled that the famous ‘
thirty pieces of silver
’ of Matthew 26:15/27:3’s
Judas Iscariot
’s ‘
price of blood
’/‘
suicide
’ scenario (itself signi
f
icant) – in Mark 14:11, this was only the more indeterminate ‘
silver
’ or ‘
money
’ and no numerical amount was attached, all the rest being the same –
is now augmented some tenfold
. Thereupon Judas is depicted as crying out, ‘
Why was this ointment not sold for three hundred dinars and given to the Poor
?’ – a noble sentiment, but the amount in the one is basically reconfiguring the amount of the other.

Notwithstanding, in Mark 14:5’s ‘
Simon the Leper
’
s house
’ scenario, we now rather get
John
12:5’
s more precise formul
a
tion
for the value of
the
‘
precious spikenard ointment
’ of ‘
three hundred
dinar
s
’ (the ‘
some
’ now ‘
complaining
’ or ‘
murmuring
’ – not either
the Disciples
in Matthew or
Judas
in John
)
as opposed to the vaguer ‘
much
’ in Matthew 26:9 or the ‘
money
’, Mark 14:11
then goes on to designate as Judas Iscariot
’
s betrayal
‘
price
’. This is not surprising as only Matthew had the precise amount of this last (supposedly taken, it will be recalled, from ‘
the Prophet Jeremiah
’ when it was, in fact,
Zechariah
!). Accor
d
ingly and unlike in John and Mark, therefore, in Matthew 26:9 the price of ‘
the precious ointment
’ now becomes somewhat less precise: ‘
For what, this waste? This ointment could have been sold for much and given to the Poor
.’
Were one to ask which of these multiple variations and spin-offs came first, it would be perhaps impossible to say. Still, it should be observed, that the relationships are far more complex than is generally thought, since Mark here is clearly dependent on John and not Matthew. But in the writer’s view, it doesn’t really matter, since almost all are secondary anyhow – most probably actually g
o
ing back to these hyperbolic amounts conserved in Talmudic tradition about these ostentatiously
Rich Men
’s
daughters
or
daughters-in-law
.

‘
Remember the Poor
’ and
‘the Camel and the Eye of the Needle
’

We may see this ideological exchange in John on the subject of ‘
the Poor
’ as symbolic of the whole period, while Judas ‘
the Iscariot
’ in John 14:22 represents the more historical ‘
Judas the Galilean
’, the founder of both ‘
Zealot
’ and
Sicarii
Mov
e
ments
as far as Josephus is concerned
45
– and, in our view,
the entire
‘
Messianic
’
Movement contemporary with them
. One can see in John’s concern to counter-indicate Judas’ rebuke of Jesus over Mary’s ‘
wastefulness
’ that
taking the wealth of the Rich
and
giving it to the Poor
was a cornerstone of the ideology of these ‘
Movements
’ – therefore the designation ‘
the Poor
’. Furthermore, this same ideology was, in
Jesus
’ retort to this same
Judas
(in John later, ‘
the Iscariot
’ – in Matthew, ‘
his Disc
i
ples’
; in Mark, the ubiquitous ‘
some
’), at the same time now being aggressively undermined, Hellenized – the kind of obeisance being demanded by
Jesus
here being typical of that paid to any number of Hellenistic Deities
46
– and, in the interests of
the
Pax Romana
, pacified.

Though this historical point just barely shines through the patent attempt at dissimulation on the part of these New Te
s
tament narratives, so layered and artfully constructed are they, still, it is exactly what one would expect since even Josephus makes it clear that ‘
the Innovators
’ (
Revolutionaries
)
responsible for the War against Rome
– aside from
burning the palaces of the
‘
Rich
’
Herodians and High Priests and burning all the debt records –
‘
wished to turn the Poor against the Rich
’,
47
mea
n
ing, one has in his account one of the first
clearly-documented class struggles in written history
.

One should also appreciate in these ideological exchanges between
Judas
and
Jesus
on the subject of ‘
the Poor
’ the echo of James’ admonition relative to the continuance of Paul’s
Gentile Mission
in Galatians 2:10 that he (Paul) should
only
‘
r
e
member the Poor
’, which he says he ‘
was most anxious to do
’.

Not surprisingly, this occurs right after the allusion in Galatians 2:6–9 to ‘
James, Cephas, and John
’ – ‘
these reputed Pi
l
lars
’, not that ‘
their importance
’ or ‘
repute meant anything to
’ him. Echoing Jesus’ declaration to the
Canaanite
/
Cananaean woman
in Matthew 15:24: ‘
I was not sent except to the lost sheep of the House of Israel
’, these ‘
Pillars
’, according to him, were to be ‘
the Apostleship of
’ and supposed only to go ‘
to the circumcision
’, while he and Barnabas were ‘
to go to the uncircumcision
’ or ‘
the Gentiles’.

Also, not surprisingly, it is followed two lines later by the note about the ‘
some
from James
’ who came down from Jerus
a
lem (2:12) and how Peter,
whose habit before had been to
‘
eat with the Gentiles
’, then immediately ‘
separated himself
(that is,
from Paul
and
from
‘
table fellowship with Gentiles
’
generally
)
for fear of those of the circumcision
’.

In this context too, then, one sees both
Judas Iscariot
and
Simon
Zelotes
as representing the more ‘
Zealot
’/
Sicarii
orient
a
tion of the
Essenes
/
Judeo-Christians
, particularly if ‘
Sicarii
’ also carries with it the sense of ‘
forcible circumcisers
’ in the sense of the Roman ban on such ‘
bodily mutilations
’ generally, ‘
the
Lex Cornelia de Sicarius et Veneficis
’, while Jesus embraces the more overseas Hellenizing and Paulinizing line – including displaying not a little derisive contempt – ‘
the Poor
’ being
unimportant as compared to him,
that is, to put it in the manner of the three above-mentioned Gospels, ‘
the Poor you have with you always, but you do not always have me
’.