James the Brother of Jesus and the Dead Sea Scrolls II (51 page)

Just as the rebuke to the woman
who came to him with an alabaster cask of very precious ointment
at ‘
Simon the Leper
’
s house
’ in Matthew 26:7 later and that to ‘
his Disciples
’ about ‘
planting
’, ‘
uprooting
’, and ‘
Blind Guides
’ in Matthew 15:12 earl
i
er, this is once again
aimed at the Disciples
, now pictured as
objecting to
Jesus’
having
‘
laid hands
’
on
‘
little children
’ (Matthew 19:13-15 and
pars.
). In response, in what is now becoming something of a pattern, Jesus immediately rebukes these same
Di
s
ciples
, making the now celebrated remark: ‘
Suffer the little children to come unto me
.’ Similarly, preceding this there is yet a
n
other, equally proverbial rebuke –
again directed against the Disciples
– insisting that, ‘
unless you become as the little children
,
you shall in no wise enter the Kingdom of the Heavens’
(Matthew 18:1-4 and
pars.
)

Not only should the interconnectedness of all these ‘
Kingdom of Heaven
’ allusions be obvious, but that all have to do with castigating those – as, for example, the unnamed
circumcisers
‘
confusing
’ or ‘
troubling
’
Paul
’
s new Gentile Christian
communities
in Galatians 5:12 – throwing up inconsequential legal barriers (such as ‘
circumcision
’) should be obvious as well. We mean ‘
inconsequential
’
as deemed by Paul
since, as he also puts this in Galatians 5:14 – again clearly both alluding to and pre-empting the sentiment expressed in James 2:
8
-2:10: ‘
For the whole of the Law is fulfilled in one sentence
,
you shall love your neighbor as yourself
.’
Here too, strikingly, he evokes his ‘
freedom
’ ideology, by which he always means ‘
freedom from
the Law
’ and not ‘
freedom from Rome
’, and pointedly
characterizes his opponents as
‘
biting and devouring one another
’.
16

It should be obvious that these are all anti-
Jerusalem Church
aspersions, since they are usually followed up by and tied to equally proverbial statements like ‘
the First shall be Last and the Last shall be First
’ (Matthew 19:30, 20:16 and pars.) – again patently having to do with Paul’s new
Gentile
communities and those, like him, making no such insistences on seemingly
pic
a
yune legal requirements for
‘
Salvation
’. Why ‘
patently
’, because Paul first made the allusion to being ‘
last
’ in his 1 Corinthians 15:8 Jesus sighting-order determinations – also, importantly enough, citing James even if albeit defectively
– ‘
And last of all he appeared, as if to one born out of term
(or ‘
to an abortion
’),
also to me’
.

But ‘
the First
’ is an extremely important expression at Qumran, carrying with it the signification of ‘
the Forefathers
’ or ‘
the Ancestors
’ and the sense is always
those who observed
or
gave the
Torah
, while ‘
the Last
’ – aside from Paul’s evocation of it regarding his own post-resurrection appearance role – usually has to do with ‘
the Last Times
’ or ‘
the Last Days
’, denoting the ‘
present
’ or ‘
Last Generation
’ as opposed to ‘
the First
’.
17
In the Gospels, once again turning Qumran ideology on its head, ‘
the Last
’ are these ‘
simple
’ or ‘
little children
’ – representative of Paul’s new
Gentile Christians
, knowing or required to know little or nothing about such onerous legal requirements, yet still in a state of ‘
Salvation
’, or, as it were, ‘
in Jesus
’. The ‘
simile
’, ‘
symbolism
’, ‘
parable
’, or ‘
allegory
’
– as the case may be – in all these allusions is not hard to figure out, despite endless scho
l
arly attempts at evasion or posturing to the contrary.

Mark 10:13–14, followed by Luke 18:16–17,
is even more severe, rather expressing Matthew’s ‘
little children
’ incident as follows: ‘
And they brought little children to him that he might touch them
,
but the Disciples rebuked those who brought them
.
But when Jesus observed this, he was very displeased and he said unto them
,
“
Suffer the little children to come to me and do not hinder them”
.’
Not only is this a good deal stronger than Matthew and one would have to be completely simplistic not to realize it was directed both
against Jews and the the Jerusalem Apostles
and
for the new Gentile Mission
of Paul
, but we have the ‘
touching
’ motif too that we have already encountered in several
miraculous
‘
curing
’ episodes above (when ‘
the Po
w
er
’ often ‘
goes out of him
’
– and, even more importantly, in Jerome’s testimony regarding James concerning how ‘
the little children
’ or ‘
the People used to run after him and try to touch the fringes of his garment as he passed by
’.
18

Nor is this to say anything about the statement, following the rebuke comparing Rabbi Akiba’s dedication to ‘
Torah
study
’ to that of those
claiming to be
‘
too Poor
’ or
making the excuse of having
‘
little children
’ above, ‘
that Rabbi Akiba started stu
d
ying
Torah
and by the end of thirteen years he taught
Torah
in public
’. For whatever it’s worth, like the picture of Rabbi Akiba’s wife about to give birth to a child in a quasi-manger and being visited by ‘
the Prophet Elijah
’ having points in common with Luke 2:7, this is not completely unrelated to the picture in Luke 2:46 of Jesus
teaching in the Temple
– though the age cited in the Lukan tradition
is
‘
twelve years old
’ and that in the Rabbi Akiba one, ‘
thirteen
’ – close enough. Of course in Luke, the number is always ‘
twelve
’, as it is for the age of Jairus’ ‘
little daughter
’, the number of years the ‘
certain woman
’
had been sick
‘
with a flow of blood
’ and, as it will be, for ‘
the twelve baskets full of broken pieces
’ below.

We have also already encountered several usages in John not dissimilar to ones found in the Rabbi Akiba tradition, parti
c
ularly concerning his wife. This is most in evidence in the picture both of how she and ultimately her father – Rabbi Akiba’s father-in-law
Ben Kalba Sabu
‘
a
– ‘
falls on his
(or ‘
her
’
) face and kisses his
(
Rabbi Akiba
’
s
) feet’.
19
The parallel this represents, however far-fetched, with John’s portrayal of Lazarus’ sister Mary ‘
falling down at his feet
’ in John 11:32 and similar portrayals of the unknown female ‘
Sinner
’ with the ‘
alabaster flask of ointment
’ at ‘
the Pharisee
’
s house
’ in Luke 7:37, ‘
falling at his feet
’, ‘
wiping them with the hairs of her head
’, and ‘
kissing them lovingly
’ should not be overlooked.

In John too, as should by now be indelibly fixed, it is ‘
Judas
(
the son
or
brother
)
of Simon Iscariot
’ who makes the co
m
plaint about not
giving the price of the precious ointment
‘
to the Poor
’, whereas the ‘
plotting
’ normally associated with his name and evoked in 12:10, interestingly enough is not between Judas and the High Priests, as in the Synoptics (Matthew 26:15 and
pars
.).
20
Rather, the ‘
plotting
’ takes place only between
the High Priests
themselves since, in John, the Synoptic ‘
thirty pieces of silver
’ or ‘
dinar
s
’ motif is entirely missing in favor of the ‘
three hundred
dinar
s
’ for the value of the ‘
precious spik
e
nard ointment
’.

In John 11:50, too, the motive of the High Priests – since ‘
many of the Jews were coming to Mary and seeing what Jesus did
(
to Lazarus
)’ – is rather that,
it was better that one man should die for the People than that the whole Nation should pe
r
ish.
Nor is the ‘
plotting
’ or ‘
betrayal
’ at this point in John 12:10–11, as we have seen, about
identifying
or
betraying Jesus
per se
as in the Synoptics; but rather the ‘
plotting
’ is about
putting Lazarus back to death
, since it was on his account that ‘
many of the Jews were leaving and believing on Jesus
’! This ‘
plotting
’ theme will also be conspicuous in the Scrolls, most notably in the Habakkuk
Pesher
and the ‘
plotting
’ evoked there on the part of ‘
the Wicked Priest
’ is rather to ‘
consume
’, ‘
eat
’, or ‘
destroy the Righteous Teacher
’.
21
Once again, it should be clear that what we are witnessing here are numerous rewrites of the same or similar material as one tradition reworks, absorbs, or transforms another.

Feeding
Five Thousand
with
‘Five Loaves and Two Fishes’,
‘
Filling Twelve Baskets
’, and ‘
the Children First being Filled
’

To go back to the presentation of Jesus’ encounter with the
Cananaean
/
Greek Syrophoenician woman
in Mark and Ma
t
thew: the exchange between the two of them has to do with another of these ‘
daughter
’s who, like her mother – though she comes from ‘
the border areas
’/‘
parts of Sidon and Tyre
’ (in other words,
she is supposed to be a Gentile
, which Mark 7:26 makes clear) – goes unnamed. Notwithstanding, what she wants Jesus to do in Mark 7:25 is ‘
to cast
’ (
ekballe
) ‘
an unclean spirit
’ – ‘
a demon
’ in both Mark 7:26 and Matthew 15:22 – ‘
out of her daughter
’.