James the Brother of Jesus and the Dead Sea Scrolls II (64 page)

But these ‘
woes
’ are also reminiscent of the ‘
woes
’ R. Yohanan pronounces to
his Disciples
when he goes forth from Jer
u
salem in the
ARN
.
Of course, these ‘
woes
’ too, like those continually pronounced by ‘
Jesus ben Ananias
’ – however prepo
s
terous they may be – are far more credible than any of these ‘
woes
’ being pronounced in the Gospels, since at least they are not happening forty years before the events in question, but actually consonant with the occurrences. Furthermore, they are not a vicious and even incendiary attack on such ‘
Blind Guides
’ and all of its associated innuendo in which our Gospel artif
i
cers – which, though supposedly talking about ‘
Love
’ (Matthew 22:36–40 and
pars
.), actually seem full of hatred – put all their favorite anti-Semitic invective, including the one about ‘
Serpents
,
Offspring of Vipers
’ (23:33 and
pars
.) and that about ‘
Jerus
a
lem
,
Jerusalem
,
who kills the Prophets and stones those who have been sent to her
’ (note, even ‘
Jesus ben Ananias
’ here was neither stoned or killed – at least not by Jersualemites!). In fact, the
AR
N
at this point even recounts a tradition that echoes the one about either James or Jesus being tempted to jump or actually ‘
being
cast down
from the Pinnacle of the Temple
’. This is Vespasian’s General who was forced to ‘
cast himself down from the roof of the Temple
’ because he disobeyed and refused to carry out an order from Vespasian to destroy the Temple, but rather left the Western (or ‘
Wailing
’) Wall as a sign of the Emperor’s great strength!
33

However this may be, at the end of this ‘
Little Apocalypse
’ in Matthew, there occurs (uniquely in Matthew 25:14–30) a
n
other one of these ‘
talents
’, ‘
servants
’, ‘
lord
’ and, this time even, ‘
digging in the earth
’ scenarios – this one involving delivering ‘
five talents
’ to the one ‘
good and Faithful servant
’ and to another ‘
two
’ (our ‘
seven cisterns
’ of the Nakdimon bartering with his ‘
lord
’ earlier?) and a third one who will get only ‘
one
’ (numbers which seem completely arbitrary – any seemingly will do). After much bantering and business psychology (obviously representing the Mediterranean bourgeois of the day) and even mentioning ‘
money-lenders
’ and ‘
interest
’ (25:27); again, as in Nakdimon’s doubling the amounts of his ‘
lord
’
s cisterns
’, the amounts are also somehow doubled to ten and four (25:20–28) while the ‘
wicked and slothful servant
’, who only ‘
dug
in the ground
and buried his lord
’
s money
’, would have his ‘
taken from him and given to him with ten talents
’ (the other ‘
Faithful servant
’, who with smart business sense doubled his to ‘
four
’, now seemingly having gone by the boards!).

Of course, parabolic or otherwise, this is monetary venture capitalism with a vengeance, well-suited to the ethos of the
I
m
perium Romanum
, however manifestly at odds with ‘
the Poor of this world
’ and ‘
Heirs to the Kingdom promised to those who love him
’ of James 2:5. In any event, there was to be much ‘
weeping and gnashing of teeth
’ and this ‘
worthless bondservant
’ was ‘
to be
cast out
into the Darkness
’ (25:30 – most violent and a little sad that ‘
the servant
’ who did not go to ‘
the money-lenders
’ and double ‘
his lord
’’s investment should be treated so harshly even if only symbolically). It is hard to imagine, even if uttered completely symbolically or interpreted allegorically in the most Philo-like manner, that this had anything to do with Palestinian
Messianism
whatsoever, nor ‘
the Blessed of (the) Father inheriting the Kingdom prepared for them from the Foundation of the World
’ of Matthew 25:34 that follows, but as just noted, Roman and Herodian venture capitalism with a vengeance.

The
Only-begotten Son
,
God Visiting His People
, and
the Sign
of
the Coming of the Son of Man

On the other hand – since Jesus is not ‘
going forth from the Temple
’ at this point in Luke, but simply continuing on from his ‘
widow
’
s two mites
’ homily – Luke 21:5–6, unlike Matthew and Mark, uses the ever-recurring ‘
some
’ to provoke him into uttering the dire prognostication above about the destruction of the Temple – ‘
there not being left one stone upon stone that shall not be thrown down
’ – as simply part of the discourse which continues relatively seamlessly, then too, from 21:8–36 into its version of ‘
the Little Apocalypse
’. But the ‘
some
’ who provoke this and, in the manner of ‘
the Righteous Teacher
’ in the Scrolls, call Jesus ‘
Teacher
’ as well (21:7), do so because they were speaking, seemingly admiringly, about the pivotal question of ‘
sacred gifts to the Temple
’
–
which, as just remarked, acted as the immediate cause of the War against Rome – and expe
n
sive decorations obviously being given to the Temple by ‘
the Rich
’, doubtlessly meant to include and specifically aimed at, in particular, those given by persons such as the celebrated Queen Helen of Adiabene.

Even more importantly, in describing the implications of this ‘
raising
’ of the ‘
only begotten son
’ of the ‘
widow of Nain
’ (probably
Adiabene
; no one has pointed out a geographical locale in
Palestine consonant with this ‘
Nain
’ and we have already underscored how Josephus calls Queen Helen’s son her ‘
only begotten
’), Luke 7:12–14 actually pictures ‘
the bier
’ of the ‘
only-begotten son
’ of this ‘
widow’
outside ‘
the Gate of the City
’. In this regard, one should pay particular attention to the well-known tomb – built by Queen Helen’s second son, Monobazus, for her and Izates,
who did in fact pre-decease her
, near the Gate of the City of Jerusalem where it is still extant today – then decorated, as is meticulously described by Josephus, with three large pyramids!
34

Moreover, Luke 7:16 then uses exactly the same allusion we have already encountered in the opening lines of the Dama
s
cus Document, picturing the crowd as crying out – on seeing Jesus’ miracle and taking him for ‘
a Prophet
’ – ‘
God has visited His People
’.
In the Damascus Document, in the context of ‘
the Root of Planting
’ passage highlighted above, this is God ‘
visi
t
ed them and caused a Root of Planting to grow from Israel
’. But the allusion ‘
visited them
’ is often used throughout the D
a
mascus Document, usually implying retribution or the execution of Divine Judgement.
35
Nothing probably could represent a greater distortion or reversal of Qumran ideology, as far as the import of this expression ‘
God visited
’ is concerned, than what one finds here in Luke 7:16. Of course, in reality, there probably never was any ‘
Poor widow of Nain
’ either but, as just r
e
marked, this is a veiled attack on the illustrious Queen of Adiabene herself, probably perceived by ‘
some
’ (no pun intended) as a ‘
Rich widow
’, her husband – whoever he might have been – having already died by the time of her emergence as an i
m
portance presence on the Palestinian scene.

For its part, Luke 7:16 employs this allusion to ‘
God
visiting
His People
’ in the context of having the crowd crying out ‘
a Great Prophet has
arisen
among us
’. Once again, we have the verb ‘
arising
’ here, used throughout the Damascus Document where the ‘
arising
of the Messiah of Aaron and Israel at the End of Days
’ is concerned but also, as we shall presently see, in the ‘Messianic’
Florilegium
regarding ‘
the Branch of David who will arise
/stand up
in Zion together with the
Doresh ha-Torah
in the Last Days
’ – ‘
the Tent of David which is fallen
’ of Amos 9:11 who ‘
will
arise
to save Israel
’ too.
36
Furthermore, in speaking about such a ‘
Great Prophet
’, the crowd’s exclamation once again echoes ‘
the True Prophet
’ ideology of the Ebionites, Elchasaites and, in succession to these, the Manichaeans and Islam
37
– an ideology definitively evoked as well, not only in the build-up to this evocation of ‘
the fallen Tent of David
’ here in the ‘Messianic’
Florilegium
, but also in the climactic Column Nine of the Community Rule
.
38

In fact, playing on this ideology of ‘
the True Prophet coming into the world
’ (as, for example, in John 6:14, ‘
This is truly the Prophet that is coming into the world
’ – which is probably the reason for all these ‘
coming
’ allusions so proliferating the notices we have been highlighting), this ‘
coming
’ allusion, like the ‘
casting
’ ones just alluded to in Luke 21:1–4 as well, is played on three times in just three lines in the prelude to Jesus’ discussion in Luke 7:24–30 of the ‘
Greatness
’, ‘
baptism
’, and ‘
Prophethood
’ of John the Baptist who, for some reason, irrupts into the text at this point both in it and the Gospel of Ma
t
thew. This occurs in the question Luke 7:18–20 has now John allegedly send to Jesus – ‘
Are you the One who is
coming
?’ – again (as in the case of the ‘
two servants’
of Acts 10:7’s
Pious Centurion
) via ‘
two certain ones
’ – now two ‘
of his
(
John the Baptist
’
s
)
Disciples
’.

Not only will John (like James later) be portrayed in 7:31–34 as ‘
neither eating meat nor drinking wine
’ (Luke 7:33–34/Matthew 11:18–19), but it is at this point in the narrative, as we just saw, that John’s
Disciples
, ‘
coming to
’
Jesus
, ask him, ‘
Are you the One who is coming
’ and here Jesus is made to answer as well ‘
Go your way
’ (Luke 7:22/Matthew 11:4;
cf
. the same kind of remark in Mark 7:29 to the ‘
Syrophoenician woman
’ in the matter of ‘
the demon having left
’ her daughter!).

To return to Luke 7:22’s picture of how Jesus responds to John’s
two Disciples
(in Matthew 11:2, only ‘
his Disciples
’) by preaching about ‘
the
blind seeing
’, ‘
the dumb hearing
’, again ‘
the lepers being cleansed
’, ‘
the dead being raised
’, and ‘
the Poor
having the Gospel preached to them
’; both Luke and Matthew use patently Paulinizing language to present him as blessing those who find ‘
no occasion of
stumbling
’ or ‘
being
scandalized
in
’ him (clear counterparts of Paul’s ‘
stumbling block
’ and ‘
sca
n
dal of the cross
’ aspersions in 1 Corinthians 1:23, 8:9, Galatians 5:11, and Romans 9:32–3, 11:9, 14:13, etc.).