James the Brother of Jesus and the Dead Sea Scrolls II (49 page)

Not only does the description of this first miracle in John include a possible esoteric play on James’ ‘
drinking no wine
’ and
cold water
‘
bathing
’ habits, but it is in this context and following that John 2:1 and 2:12, too, actually evokes ‘
his
(
Jesus
’)
mot
h
er and his brothers
’. It is also as a consequence of these ‘
signs
’ or ‘
miracles
’ that John, unlike the Synoptics, portrays ‘
his Di
s
ciples as believing on him
’ because ‘
he revealed his Glory
’ (2:11).

Furthermore, it is directly after this episode that John 2:13–17 – perhaps not insignificantly – positions its version of the expulsion of the money-changers from the Temple. To this, it is – once again – ‘
his Disciples
’ who apply the famous line from Psalm 69:9, ‘
zeal for Your House consumes me
’. We have already seen a variation of this line applied in Tractate
Ta
‘
anith
and
ARN
in the prayer Nakdimon makes to God regarding his own ‘
miracle
’ of ‘
filling
’ the water cisterns of the Temple. Probably not coincidentally, it is at this point that John 3:1 first introduces the character it calls ‘
Nicodemus
,
a Ruler of the Jews
’, a cha
r
acter missing from the other Gospels with whom John 3:3–22 pictures Jesus as carrying on a sophisticated discussion about ‘
Christology
’, ‘
Light and Darkness
’, and ‘
born-again
’ theology.

Again this discussion begins with Nicodemus, who ‘
comes
to Jesus by night
’, saying to him (in quasi-parallel to the words the
Talmud
uses to describe Nakdimon, ‘
for whose sake the sun delayed its setting
’): ‘
no one is able to do the miracles that you are doing unless God is with him
’ (John 3:2).
3
It also contains an allusion like the one Paul uses in 2 Corinthians 12:2–4 in speaking about ‘
knowing a Man in Christ fourteen years ago
’ (the same timeframe as in Galatians 1:19 and 2:1 between the two meetings he has with James), who ‘
was caught away to the Third Heaven
’ or ‘
Paradise
’, where ‘
he heard unutterable things
’. In John 3:12–13 this is: ‘
Will you believe if I say to you Heavenly things
?
No one has gone up into Heaven
’
except
‘
the Son of Man who is in Heaven
’.

But more arresting than any of these and, in our view, further indicative of dependence on Rabbinic tradition – if one a
c
tually examines the prayer Nakdimon is pictured as making in both
Ta
‘
anith
and
ARN
(and, one might add, the one Honi is pictured as making prior to this too in
Ta
‘
anith
), the words Nakdimon is portrayed as using
to
fill
the Temple water cisterns and
bring the rain
are as follows: ‘
Master of the Universe
,
it is revealed and known to You that not for my own glory did I do this
,
nor for the Glory of my Father
’
s House did I do this
,
but only for Your Glory I did it
,
so that there might be water for the pilgrims
.’
4
In the Honi episode in
Ta
‘
anith
that precedes this, it will be recalled, it was because Honi added the words ‘
b
e
cause I am looked upon as one of Your Household
’, meaning God’s ‘
Household
’ (it is this which is almost exactly the gist of Nicodemus’ introductory declaration to Jesus above: ‘
no one is able to do these miracles unless God is with him
’), that the Pharisee ‘
Father
’, Simeon ben Shetah, is said to have declared: ‘
If he were not Honi
,
I would have excommunicated him
.’

But here in
ARN
/
Ta
‘
anith
, the matter of ‘
Glory
’, whether God’s or Nakdimon’s, forms the backbone and basis of the prayer. It cannot be accidental that in the sequence in John 2:2-2:11 above, after ‘
filling
six stone water-vessels with water
’ in 2:6–7 at the marriage ‘
in Cana of Galilee
’, which Jesus then promptly
turns into wine
, the following words are added by the narrator:
‘This was the beginning of the miracles Jesus did at Cana in Galilee
,
revealing his Glory
,
and his Disciples believed on him’
(2:11).
What should be immediately clear is that the ‘
Glory
’ Jesus ‘
reveals
’ here goes right back to the ‘
Glory
’ that was ‘
revealed
’ and ‘
known to
’
God
in the matter of Nakdimon’s rainmaking – in his case, so that ‘
the pilgrims would have enough water for the Festival
’, if not ‘
wine
’ for the ‘
Cananaean
’
marriage celebration.

The resemblance is uncanny; the sequencing precise; and, in the writer’s view, this unexpected result of comparing the ‘
Glory
’ evoked in both episodes is proof on the order of that achieved concerning the dependence of Luke’s presentation in Acts of the conversion of ‘
the Ethiopian Queen
’
s eunuch
’ (who was reading Isaiah 53:11 when ‘
Philip
’ jumped up on the back of his chariot and asked him whether he knew the significance of what he was reading) on the Talmudic presentation of the conversion of Queen Helen’s two sons, who were reading Genesis 17:10–14 on
how Abraham circumcised his whole hous
e
hold
‘
including the foreigner not born within it
’ which formed the climax of
James the Brother of Jesus
(Penguin, 1998).

The Unfaithful Servant
and
the Twelve Water Cisterns

In Luke, ‘
the dogs under the table who lick Poor Lazarus
’
sores’
in 16:19–31 – the Synoptic counterpart to ‘
casting the children
’
s crumbs to the dogs under the table
’ in Matthew and Mark – follows directly upon the abbreviated version in 16:15–18 of Matthew 5:17–18’s ‘
not one jot or tittle
’ allusion.

The idea in Luke 16:16–17 of ‘
one tittle of the Law not failing
’ is not only preceded by its version of Matthew 6:24’s ‘
a servant not serving two lords
’ (Luke 16:13), but the whole sequence, leading up to this ‘
Poor Lazarus on the Rich Man
’
s doo
r
step’
episode, follows another tortuous parable in 16:1–15, ‘
the Parable of the Unfaithful Servant
’, which actually begins with the introduction of the whole theme of the rest of the Chapter 16 to follow – namely, ‘
a certain Rich Man
’. Not only is this
Rich Man
, as in the
Nakdimon
episodes, once again alluded to as ‘
lord
’ or ‘
master
’ in 16:5, but the Parable includes for our purposes the key motifs of haggling over the numbers of his
bath
-storage facilities just alluded to in the
Nakdimon
parallels, but also of ‘
grain
’ or ‘
wheat
’-provision amounts (16:6–8, which are, of course, part and parcel of all these ‘
Rich Men
’ supplying Jerusalem with enough ‘
grain
’ or ‘
barley corns
’ for ‘
twenty-one
or
twenty-two years
’ in the
Talmud
and Josephus above
5
).

This convoluted ‘
Unfaithful Servant Parable
’ must ultimately be seen as another variant or spin-off of these ‘
Nakdimon’
-miracle tales from Rabbinic tradition, themselves turning on the theme of
haggling with the Rich
lord
over ‘
twelve talents of silver
’ and ‘
filling the twelve water cisterns
’ – the same amounts, of course, as the ‘
twelve handbaskets of wheat and barley
’ encountered in John. Not only does this seemingly purposefully obscure parable include the same genre of personage again referred to by the ‘
master
’ or ‘
lord
’ denotation (in 16:5 and 8,
kurios
/
kurion
), but from the outset in 16:1 it raises the same tel
l
tale
concern over their
‘
wastefulness
’ – here that the manager or representative was ‘
wasting his
(the ‘
master
’’
s
)
goods
’. In th
e
se abstruse exchanges we already saw that another important Qumranism, ‘
the Sons of Light
’ (16:8), was incorporated – but there are also additional allusions to ‘
digging
’ in 16:3 and ‘
scoffing
’ in 16:14.

No less telling, the whole discussion from 16:8–14, supposedly between ‘
the master
’ and
his
‘
unjust servant
’ and dealing with ‘
false Riches
’, ‘
the Unrighteous
’, ‘
the Pharisees
’, ‘
making yourselves friends of this world
’ (compare with James 4:4), and ‘
servants
’, reflects not a little Paul’s own barely concealed attack on the Jerusalem
Apostles
in 2 Corinthians, called by him in 11:22 ‘
Hebrews
’ and ‘
Super Apostles
’ or ‘
Apostles of the Highest Degree
’ in 12:11.

In making this attack Paul uses the quasi-Qumranism, ‘
Satan transforming himself into an Angel of Light
’, and compares this to how ‘
pseudo-Apostles
(clearly meaning the ‘
Super Apostles
’)
turn themselves into Servants of Righteousness
’. This last, too, is almost a total Qumranism.
It is co-extensive as well with what Paul is also referring to in 2 Corinthians 11:13 as ‘
Apo
s
tles of Christ
’. Furthermore, this in turn is preceded in 11:12, one should note, by the additional important Qumranism ‘
cu
t
ting off
’, which we shall see to be of such consequence in the Damascus Document’s historiography – to say nothing of its parody as well by Paul in Galatians 5:12, who uses it somewhat crudely to attack those who ‘
are troubling
’
his communities with
‘
circumcision
’!

It is, therefore, during the course of this rather tortured
Parable
in Luke 16:1–16, ending with ‘
not serving two masters
’ and ‘
forcing the Kingdom of Heaven
’, that the twin motifs of ‘
baths
’ and ‘
grain
’/‘
wheat
’ are raised and over which ‘
the unjust servant
’
bargains with
‘
his master
’
s debtors
’. It is these motifs which so parallel those in the Nakdimon ‘
rainmaking
’ tradition of
bargaining over
‘
the lord
’
s
’
water cisterns
(in our view, Luke 16:6 transforms this into ‘
a hundred baths of oil
’) or his ‘
su
p
plying Jerusalem with enough grain for twenty-one years
’ –
e.g.
, the ‘
hundred cores of wheat
’ that Luke 16:7 here considers
owing
‘
the master
’
s servant
’. Both amounts actually incorporate the ‘
hundred
’ numeration, multiples of which form so much a part of the ‘
perfume
’/‘
precious ointment
’ traditions and their further adumbration in the various Gospel ‘
dinar
’ descriptions.