James the Brother of Jesus and the Dead Sea Scrolls II (66 page)

These parallels being as they may, now complimenting ‘
Simon
’ in Luke 7:43 – in the style of Platonic dialogue – as ‘
having judged rightly
’, Jesus nevertheless then turns and, in 7:44, addresses – in the self-centered style we have now come to expect (the style of Hellenistic gods visiting mere mortals on Earth) – ‘
Simon the Pharisee
’ with a complaint we were not expecting at all: ‘
Do you see this woman? I entered your house
,
but you gave me no water for my feet. Yet she washed my feet with tears and wiped them with the hairs of her head
.
You gave me no kiss
,
but since I came in she has not ceased lovingly kissing my feet. You did not anoint my head with oil
,
but she anointed my feet with ointment
(Luke 7:44–46).’
As we noted, this is about the fifth, sixth, or seventh such episode to use these themes but, I think we can safely say, this one just about says it all.

Miriam’s Hair, Casting Martha’s Silver into the Street, and the Stink of R. Eliezer’s Bad Breath

To go back to Lamentations
Rabbah
, after the material about R. Eleazar ben Zadok swearing on ‘
the Consolation of Zion
’
if he did not see the Romans binding Boethus
’
daughter
’
s hair
‘
to the tails of Arab horses and making her run from Jerusalem to Lydda
’, the narrative switches back in the very next passage to Nakdimon ben Gurion’s daughter
Miriam
(
Mary
). It is here that it noted how ‘
the Rabbis allowed her five hundred dinars daily to be spent on her store of perfumes
’ – the ‘
five hundred dinars
’ we just saw in Luke 7:41 in Jesus’ rebuke to ‘
Simon the Pharisee
’ over another unnamed ‘
woman in the city
’ with ‘
an alabaster flask of ointment
’ washing Jesus’ ‘
feet
’ again ‘
with her tears
’ and ‘
wiping them with her hair
’ (the ‘
feet
’ of both the
Shiloh
Prophecy and
the Standing One
?). Nor is this to say anything about the ‘
daily
’ self-indulgent luxury engaged in by Luke 16:19’s ‘
Rich Man
clothed in purple and fine linen
’ while
the
‘
sores
’ – which ‘
Poor
’ Lazarus’ body ‘
were
full
of’
– were ‘
licked by
dogs
’.

It is here Lamentations
Rabbah
quotes the passage from the Song of Songs 1:8, ‘
O thou fairest among women
,
go your way forth among the footsteps of the flock and feed your offspring
’ (in the original, this is literally ‘
gediyot
’/‘
kids
’ – which for some reason is reinterpreted here in the text as ‘
geviyot
’/‘
bodies
’
40
). The same oath about ‘
seeing the Consolation of Zion
’ is uttered again by R. Eleazar ben Zadok, this time in connection with his having seen Nakdimon’s daughter ‘
gathering barley grains from beneath the feet of horses in Acco
’ – here, of course, ‘
the feet
’ are now ‘
the feet of horses
’ but, as ever, it is i
m
portant to have regard for the ‘
feet
’, ‘
footsteps
’, ‘
barley grains
’, and ‘
hair
’ motifs we have been following above. Nor is this to forget the possible echo of this ‘
go your way
’ phraseology in the several Gospel passages remarked above as well.

In this material in Lamentations
Rabbah
, which follows the note about
the Rabbis granting
Boethus
’
daughter
‘
Miriam
’ (
sic
) the widow’s allowance of ‘
two
se
’
ah
s of wine daily
’ (again, the ‘
daily
’ motif) after the death of her husband, Josephus’ friend ‘
Jesus ben Gamala
’ (here the evocation about ‘
the camel
’ and ‘
his burden
’ that will be applied to this situation in
Gittin
below will be of more than ordinary import – nor do the Rabbinic sources evince very much concern over the circumstances of this Jesus’ death), now the ‘
feet
’ will be ‘
her
feet
’, not ‘
the feet of horses in Acco
’, and here occurs the note about ‘
carpets being laid for her from the door of her house to the entrance of the Temple
so her feet would not be exposed
’ – the Talmudic narrator then sardonically adding, ‘
nevertheless they were exposed
’.
41

In case the reader is unfamiliar with or confused by these various sources, it is important to realize that the same tradition is related in Tractate
Kethuboth
, but there it is rather attributed to R. Yohanan ben Zacchai, ‘
leaving Jerusalem riding upon an ass
,
while his Disciples followed him
’ (R. Yohanan too, it seems – just like Jesus and Rabbi Akiba –
had
‘
his Disciples
’ and he, too, ‘
rides upon an ass
’ or ‘
donkey
’, though unlike Jesus entering Jerusalem on Good Friday,
he is
leaving
Jerusalem
). Again it should be noted how even here in this version of Jesus ‘
riding on an ass
’/‘
the colt of an ass
’ material in Mark 11:2 and Luke 19:30 – though not in Matthew 21:7 – Jesus appears to be using the equivalent in Greek of the expression ‘
go your way
’ above in Hebrew.

Here in
Kethuboth
the exchange between Rabbi Yohanan and Nakdimon’s daughter, ‘
picking barley grains out of the dung of Arab cattle
’, is more detailed and focuses even further on the utter reversal of her fortune and the complete obliteration of the ‘
Riches
’ of both her father and her father-in-law’s house (whoever he may have been – thus seemingly continuing the mix-up in Rabbinic sources between
Boethus
’
daughter Martha
’ and ‘
Nakdimon
’
s daughter Miriam
’
42
). Moreover, here too the everpresent motif of ‘
her hair
’ is added. Now ‘
standing up
’ to answer the ‘
Master
’’s questions (
n.b
.
, Rabbi Yohanan like Jesus is also being called ‘
Master
’ here), ‘
She
wrapped herself with her hair
and stood before him’
.
It is in this context that the Talmudic narrators asked the question concerning whether Nakdimon practised ‘
true charity
’, itself related to complaints by Judas
Isca
r
iot
,
the Disciples
, the ‘
some
’, and characters like ‘
the Pharisee
’ named ‘
Simon
’ above about why Jesus’ ‘
feet
’ were being either ‘
washed
’, ‘
wiped with hair
’, ‘
anointed
’, or ‘
kissed
’ and the
dinar
equivalent of the ‘
precious spikenard ointment
’ which should have ‘
been sold and given to the Poor
’.

It is at this point in
Kethuboth
, too, that the now familiar description, ‘
when he walked from his house to the house of study
,
woollen clothes were spread beneath his feet and the Poor followed behind him gathering them up
’ (perhaps not co
m
pletely unrelated to the matter of Jesus’ entry into Jerusalem) is added which not only includes the ‘
feet
’ and ‘
the Poor
’ themes, but after which the narrators comment that this was not ‘
true charity
’ but, rather, ‘
he did it for his own Glorification
’. It is at this point too, just as in Lamentations
Rabbah
, that the proverb is cited, ‘
in accordance with the camel is the burden
’ – this last linking up with the familiar New Testament aphorism, ‘
easier would it be for a
camel
to go through the eye of the needle than a
Rich Man
to enter the Kingdom of God
’ (Matthew 19:24 and
pars.
).

In the ‘
Mary daughter of Boethus
’ material from Lamentations
Rabbah
above, for whom ‘
the carpets are laid
’ so ‘
her feet
’ would not touch the ground and about whom R. Eleazar ben Zadok is pictured as remarking concerning ‘
not living to see the Consolation (of Zion) if (he) did not see the Romans bind her hair to the tails of Arab horses and make her run from Jerus
a
lem to Lydda
’; it was rather one of the Mosaic woes, Deuteronomy 28:56, evoking, ‘
The tender and delicate woman among you who would not adventure to put the
sole of her feet upon the ground
for tenderness and delicateness’
that is being cited to point out Boethus’ daughter’s precipitous reversal of fortune and how she died a beggar – not Song of Songs 1:8, as in the version that immediately follows in Lamentations
Rabbah
relative to this same R. Eleazar ben Zadok’s comments about the downfall of ‘
Miriam the daughter of Nakdimon
’ whom he now rather sees, as just pointed out, ‘
gathering barley corns from beneath the feet of horses in Acco
’.

The confusion over the names of these two
daughters
, whoever’s daughters they are, also appears to drift – as we have been showing – into both John’s ‘
Lazarus
’ story and the segments of it that reappear in the Gospel of Luke where, instead of being two
daughters
, they now appear as two
sisters
who are either
anointing
Jesus’ head with ‘
precious spikenard ointment
’ or ‘
wiping his feet with their hair and bathing them with their tears
’; and even, according to what is basically the final present
a
tion,
preparing his body for burial
. As we proceed, we will see how this brings us back to the
Nakdimon
/
Nicodemus
duality, who will
himself be involved in the preparation of Jesus’ body for burial
according to the Gospel of John.

The shift here from ‘
anointing
’ Jesus, presumably either for
King
or
Messiahship
, to preparing his body for burial takes place in the response Jesus is pictured as making to
Judas Iscariot
’s complaint to him over the value of the precious spikenard ointment which
Judas
– and, in the encounter at ‘
Simon the Leper
’
s house
’, the ‘
some
’ or
the Disciples
– thinks ‘
should have been given to the Poor
’ (John 12:5 and
pars
.). It is in this context that Jesus evokes the burial theme replying, ‘
Let her alone
. She has kept it for the day of my burial
’ (the ‘
leave them alone
’ of Matthew 15:14).