James the Brother of Jesus and the Dead Sea Scrolls II (53 page)

It is at this point, showing just how important the implications of all these various numbers were to the authors of these traditions, that John 6:14 actually has ‘
the men
’ – seemingly meaning
his Disciples
– overtly identify Jesus, once again ‘
seeing the sign that he had done
’ (certainly not meant as ‘
works of the
Torah
, but rather more magical, Greco-Roman, god-like ‘
mir
a
cles
’), as
the Ebionite
‘
True Prophet who is coming into the world
’. Here, in the enigmatic wording of this obscure prophecy, perhaps the real sense and basis of all these ideological allusions to ‘
coming
’ we have been repeatedly encountering throughout these traditions.

Now only
Seven Loaves and a Few Small Fishes
to Feed
Four Thousand,
and Queen Helen’s
Famine-Relief
Activ
i
ties

More interesting even than this, the whole episode from Mark 6:32–44 and Matthew 14:15–21 is repeated a chapter or two later in Mark 8:4–9 and Matthew 15:33–38, where the number ‘
seven
’ will begin to take on its definitive signification (in fact, a third version, as we shall see, will occur in Mark 8:16–21 and Matthew 16:7–12 that will try to explain the discrepancies b
e
tween the first and the second), in a direct follow-up to the curing of the Canaanite/Greek Syrophoenician woman’s daughter.

Not surprisingly, this repetition is not to be found in either John or Luke. In other words, the healing of this ‘
daughter
’ in Mark and Matthew – also not to be found in John or Luke, at least not in the form of Mark and Matthew – is couched b
e
tween two episodes basically saying or repeating the same thing only, as we shall now see, the figures are different. It is here that the curious mix-ups or overlaps between ‘
five
’ and ‘
four thousand
’ occur (
the number of
‘
the Essenes
’ in Josephus,
the followers who flee with James after Paul’s attack
in the Pseudoclementines, and ‘
the number of the men who believed
’
after
‘
Peter and John
’
were first arrested
in Acts 4:4 – in Acts 2:41, after ‘
Peter
’’s earlier speech referring to ‘
the True Prophet
’, it was ‘
three thousand
’), which we have already identified as of the same genre as those in Rabbinic accounts of the ‘
daily
’
amounts of four–five hundred
dinar
s required
‘
to fill
’
Nakdimon
’
s daughter Miriam
’
s
(or
his daughter-in-law
’s) ‘
perfume ba
s
ket’.
Again, the figures are different, but only by a factor of ten, and the point is more or less the same.

It is immediately made clear in this second version of this picture of those ‘
fainting away
’ from hunger and ‘
needing to be fed in the wilderness
’ in Mark 8:2 and Matthew 15:33 – yet a third in Mark 8:16–21 and Matthew 16:7–12, as just remarked, will by way of explanation directly follow this second – that we are dealing with the same
Messianic
‘
signs in the wilderness
’, also just underscored in John 2:18, 4:48, and 6:30 and which Jesus discusses in detail in the intervening material in Mark 8:11–15 and Matthew 15:12–14 and 16:1–12. In the same manner as Jesus’ attack on
the Pharisees
as ‘
Blind Guides
’ and dietary re
g
ulations in Matthew 15:12–20 (both of which we shall directly analyze below) in the prelude to his encounter in Matthew 15:21–28 and Mark 7:24–37 with the ‘
Greek Syrophoenician
’/‘
Canaanite woman
’
s daughter
’; these second and third ‘
signs from Heaven
’/‘
feeding
’/‘
filling
’ episodes occur in the context of an attack in Matthew 16:6 (reprised in Matthew 16:11–12) on what Jesus now refers to as ‘
the
leaven
of the Pharisees and Sadducees
’ – in Mark 8:15, ‘
the leaven of the Pharisees and the leaven of Herod
’!

It is these same ‘
signs and wonders
’ about which Josephus becomes so agitated in his condemnations of those he calls ‘
Impostors
’ and ‘
miracle-workers
’ who were ‘
showing the People the signs of their impending freedom
’ or – depending on which of his two works one is quoting – ‘
the signs of their Redemption
’ and whom he considered ‘
more dangerous even than the Revolutionaries
’. As we have seen as well – even this ‘
freedom
’, Paul much abuses and allegorizes into something anti-Mosaic, turning it against those he refers to in 1 Corinthians 8:7–13 as ‘
having scruples
’ or ‘
with conscience
’ – his code, it will be recalled, for ‘
observing the Law
’.

It should also be appreciated that all these ‘
feeding
’ episodes and any other ones evoking ‘
barley
’, ‘
wheat
’, or ‘
grain
’ usually reflect to some degree the celebrated ‘
famine relief
’ efforts of Queen Helen of Adiabene (in Josephus, for instance, grouped together – as we have seen above – with the performance of just such a miraculous ‘
sign
’ or ‘
wonder
’, that is, ‘
parting the Jo
r
dan River in reverse
’ – by the curious character he denotes only as ‘
Theudas
’
26
), who sent her ‘
treasury agents
’ to buy grain for Jerusalem to places as far away as ‘
Egypt and Cyprus
’.
27
Activities such as these are, in turn, reflected in Paul and Barnabas’ Antioch activities in Acts 11:28–30 and 12:25, where ‘
Christians
’
were
‘
first called Christians
’ (11:26).
28

Of course, Acts promises to tell us this story of Paul and Barnabas’ ‘
famine relief’
mission but, in the space between these two notices, does nothing of the kind. However this may be, the interesting thing is that Acts follows up its original notice about ‘
all the Disciples deciding to send relief to the brothers dwelling in Judea
’ (also referred to as ‘
the Elders
’/
Presbyterous
– note the parallel, too, here with
those
‘
dwelling
’
in
‘
the Land of Judah
’ in the Damascus Document above
29
) ‘
by the hand of Barnabas and Saul
’ in 11:29–30 with the note about ‘
Herod the King
’
beheading
‘
James the brother of John
’ in 12:1–2 (
i.e.
,
executed him
‘
with the sword
’).

Of course, if we follow Josephus’ sequencing, what the author of Acts probably originally overwrote here was ‘
Judas the brother of James
’, not ‘
James the brother of John
’ – or rather even, ‘
Theudas
’ (elsewhere, as we have already also suggested, ‘
Thaddaeus
’), the delineation of whose ‘
signs
’ in
leading the People out in the wilderness
comes in Josephus in between his two notices about ‘
the Famine
’ and
the undying fame of Queen Helen of Adiabene’s
‘
famine relief
’
activities
.

In Mark 8:5–6 and Matthew 15:34–35, however, the picture of ‘
five loaves and two fishes
’ of the first ‘
feeding
’ episode (of course, childishly mythologized so as to appeal to the reader’s
grossest credulity
) disappear in favor of their sum, that is, ‘
seven loaves and a few little fishes
’ (in Mark 8:5–6, only ‘
seven loaves
’, Matthew 15:34–36’s ‘
and a few little fishes
’ – note the inc
i
dence of the adjective ‘
little
’ – having already dropped away!). Of course, in Matthew 15:37/Mark 8:8, after ‘
the Multitude
’ or ‘
the Many
’ had eaten ‘
and were
filled
’, there is the matter again of ‘
the overflow
’
of all the
‘
broken pieces
’ which – instead of the ‘
twelve handbaskets full
’ of the earlier delineation (Matthew 14:20/Mark 6:43) – are now reckoned as ‘
seven handbaskets
full
’ (Matthew 15:37/Mark 8:8), evidently absorbing by a kind of refraction the number ‘
seven
’ from the quantification ‘
seven loaves
’ just preceding it.

This last, as we have already explained, patently corresponds to the ‘
overflow
’ in the Nakdimon story of his ‘
twelve ci
s
terns filled to overflowing
’, which, in a twist that only a Talmudic mind would appreciate, Nakdimon
then tries to resell back to the
‘
lord
’ or ‘
master
’. To be sure, in all four Gospels previously, this was ‘
twelve baskets filled with broken pieces
’ (Matthew 14:20/Mark 6:43/Luke 9:17/and John 6:13, the latter adding ‘
from the five barley loaves
’) and it will be ‘
twelve
’ again when the third version in Mark 8:19 makes the final reconciliation and recapitulation of all these materials!

In the Nakdimon story, it will be recalled, it was when the ‘
lord
’
hesitated to repay the surety of
‘
twelve talents of silver
’ that Nakdimon (like
Joshua
)
made the sun reappear after it had already set
, because of which he allegedly received his
nom à clef
‘
Nakdimon
’, meaning ‘
Shining Through
’. But more significant even than this – just like ‘
those who went to Ben Kalba Sabu
‘
a
’s
door hungry as a dog and went away filled
’, the ‘
Poor man Lazarus wanting to be filled from the scraps that fell from the Rich man
’
s table
’ and, still more germane at this point perhaps, ‘
the children who should first be filled
’ before ‘
the dogs under the table
’ in the
Syrophoenician woman
’
s daughter
episode – Jesus is asked in the matter now of the ‘
seven handbaskets full
’,
could all these
‘
be filled
’ or ‘
satisfied
’ (Mark 8:4/Matthew 15:33)? In both Gospels, as we saw, the right answer is given – this time by the narrator – ‘
and they did eat and were
satiated
’ or ‘
filled
’ (Mark 8:8/Matthew 15:37).

For good measure both episodes are then, as just remarked,
recapitulated
yet a third time
– though here the ostensible venue of the action is ‘
on a boat
’ going across the Sea of Galilee from ‘
Dalmanutha
’ to ‘
Bethsaida
’ in Mark; in Matthew, only som
e
where called ‘
the borders of Magdala
’
– because ‘
they had forgotten to take the bread
’! (Matthew 16:5–11/Mark 8:17–21). But the whole point is obviously to reconcile the two earlier versions in some way, so one has the clear indication in both Gospels that the narrator is not only well aware of the contradictions, but views all three episodes as part of a single whole.