James the Brother of Jesus and the Dead Sea Scrolls II (79 page)

Nor is the the Treasury agent’s ‘
eunuch
’ status a practice having anything to do with any African Kingdom at this time, but only Iraq and Persia and a hold-over from earlier Persian dynastic practices. As already alluded to, it is more than likely simply a poetic euphemism for
circumcision
– in particular the
circumcision
of Queen Helen’s two sons, Izates and Monobazus (already sufficiently remarked above) –
circumcision
in Roman eyes being looked upon as a kind of
bodily mutil
a
tion
or
castration
.

In this regard, as already noted, one should pay particular attention to the traditional body of Roman law, collectively known in this period as the
Lex Cornelia de Sicarius et Veneficis
(c. 50
BCE
–150
CE
) which even uses the term
Sicarius
in conne
c
tion with the ban on ‘
bodily mutilations
’ of this kind, the penalty for which was death.
31
This ban really only came into serious effect under Nerva (96–98
CE
) following the assassination of Domitian (81–96) and – it is important to add – in the wake of the ongoing unrest in Palestine/Judea,
32
and all the more so during and after the reign of Hadrian (117–136
CE
) when another body of legislation also came into effect. This was known in the
Talmud
(perhaps defectively) as ‘
the
Sicaricon
’ and involved the confiscation of enemy property, in particular, of those participating in the Bar Kochba Revolt against Hadrian and presumably earlier ones, and has to be associated in some way with this ‘
Lex Cornelia
’ and anti-circumcision legislation generally.
33

We have also already emphasized the possible echo of this name in that of the ‘
Pious
’ Roman
Centurion
in Acts to whose house
Peter
finally receives the command
from Heaven
to visit, abolishing Mosaic Law for all time (meaning, of course too, that Jesus never taught any such thing or why would
Peter
, his closest associate, have been unaware of it
of, for that matter, require a Paul-type
vision
to learn of it?).

Even Origen in the Third Century was referring to himself, in precisely the same manner, as a ‘
Sicarius
’ because of the ca
s
tration or bodily mutilation he was said to have performed upon himself!
34
But in his case, he was probably following an equa
l
ly tendentious statement Matthew 19:12 portrays Jesus as making after ‘
withdrawing from Galilee and coming into the borders of Judea beyond Jordan
’ (
thus
) and leading into the above material about allowing ‘
the little children to come unto him to touch him
’ – in response to some very tough questioning from ‘
the Pharisees
’ once again and similar to the Dead Sea Scrolls about different grades of
marriage
,
divorce
,
fornication
, and
adultery
35
– about ‘
eunuchs making themselves eunuchs
for the sake of the Kingdom of Heaven
’.

Nor in regard to this should one forget those whom Hippolytus calls ‘
Sicarii
Essenes
’ who offered the choice of forcible circumcision or death to anyone they heard discussing the Law who was not circumcised. Not only is this a forerunner of sim
i
lar later Islamic alternatives,
i.e.
, ‘
Islam or the sword
’, but it must also be seen as the other side of the coin to Josephus’ derivation of the ‘
Sicarii
’ terminology – the curved knife upon which he claimed the designation was based not, therefore, being just the assassin’s knife as
per
the sense of his exposition of it, but also that of the circumciser. Moreover, among the practitioners of this ‘
Way
’ the two, no doubt, functioned as one.
36

This has to be seen as throwing a good deal of light on Galatians 2:12’s reference to ‘
the some from James
’ as ‘
the Party of the Circumcision
’ and the ‘
some
’ whom Acts 15:1–4 insists ‘
came down from Judea
’
to Antioch
– whichever the Antioch i
n
tended – ‘
and were teaching the brothers that
unless you were circumcised
according to the law of Moses you could not be saved
’ triggering, according to its historiography,
the ‘Jerusalem Council
’.

Of course, the whole issue of whether to circumcise or not to circumcise brings us right back to Josephus’ and the Ta
l
mudic story about the conversion of Queen Helen, as well as that of her two sons Izates and Monobazus, their circumcision, and Helen’s own apparently deep-seated, overtly expressed opposition to the practice.
37
This last, in turn – as just highlighted – bears on Luke’s caricaturizing portrait of the conversion of ‘
the Ethiopian Queen
’
s eunuch
’ who chooses to be baptized a
f
ter
Philip
encounters him reading a passage from Isaiah 53:7’s ‘
Suffering Servant
’. But where the circumcision of Queen He
l
en’s two sons in Talmudic tradition and Josephus are concerned, they are reading, as already explained, a passage about Abr
a
ham both ‘
circumcising himself
’ and ‘
all the members of his household
’, including ‘
the foreigner dwelling among them
’ –
the
Ger-Nilveh
or ‘
Resident Alien
’ of the Nahum
Pesher
and a passage from Genesis 17:23–27 actually alluded to in the Damascus Document where Abraham was concerned as well
38
– which would have had more than a passing significance for persons in an ‘
Abrahamic
’ locale, even perhaps those in the neighborhood of Haran such as
Edessa
in Northern Syria, as it did the Koran as well.
39

This brings us back to the Gospels of Luke and John on the issue of
Dogs
,
Lazarus
, his Resurrection, and
the Poor
, clea
r
ly combining in new ways and reflecting all the various Talmudic materials delineated above. The same can be said for Acts’ picture of its ‘
Ethiopian Queen
’
s eunuch
’ reflecting both materials in Josephus and the
Talmud
about the conversion via
ci
r
cumcision
of Queen Helen’s two sons. The ‘
Poor Man
Lazarus’
at the ‘
Rich Man
’
s door’
in Luke moves on directly into the discussion of both his and ‘
the Rich Man
’’s state after the Resurrection in Luke 16:22–31, whereas in John 12:9–11, the events circulating around Lazarus’
Resurrection
end up in the picture of ‘
Many
of the Jews
going astray
and believing in Jesus because of (Lazarus
’
) Resurrection
’ and the High Priests, therefore, ‘
plotting together how they might also put Lazarus to death
’ (
sic
).

For its part, it will be recalled, this rather anti-Semitic follow-up picture in Luke 16:22 depicts
Lazarus
– as seemingly the representative of all ‘
Jews believing in Jesus
’ – now rather in some
Angelic
abode ‘
on the bosom of Abraham
’, not the real world as in John, whereas ‘
the Rich Man in Hades
’ (seemingly meant to depict the state of most other Jews
not
‘
believing in Jesus
’) is now – like Lazarus earlier – longing to be ‘
comforted
’ (16:24 – in the case of Lazarus earlier, it was ‘
longing to be filled
’). The conclusion is then reached in 16:30, clearly reflecting the picture in John 11–12, that ‘
even if one should go to them
(‘
the Jews
’)
from the dead
,
they would not repent
’. This is repeated in the next line as ‘
even if one should rise from the dead they would not believe
’ (16:31 – now clearly implying the Resurrection
both
of Lazarus
and
Jesus), varying the report worrying the High Priests in John 12:9–11 above about ‘
the Jews believing on Jesus
’
because of ‘
Lazarus whom he had raised from the dead
’ and, again, plainly demonstrating the one Gospel to be but a variation of the other.

One should also note that in the Gospel of John’s presentation of the whole story, Lazarus and the two Apostles, ‘T
ho
m
as called the Twin
’ (11:16) and ‘
Judas Iscariot
’, figure prominently, as do the stories about Martha’s ‘
serving
’ and Mary’s costly ‘
anointing ointment
’, not only for the purposes of ‘
anointing him
’ (11:2) or ‘
washing his feet
’, but also for his burial (12:3–7) – the first account in Chapter Eleven clearly distinct from the second in Chapter Twelve, the second only reproducing the ‘
S
i
mon the Leper
’ and ‘
Simon the Pharisee
’ stories elsewhere in the Synoptics.

But nothing could better demonstrate that we are in the Talmudic context of determining the meaning of
Ben Kalba Sabu
‘
a
’s name than the way Luke describes its ‘
Poor man Lazarus
’ as ‘
covered with sores
’ and ‘
longing to be filled by the crumbs that fell from the Rich Man
’
s table
’ (here the ‘
longing to be filled
’, ‘
the crumbs falling from the table
’, and the ‘
Rich Man
’ motifs now combined in different ways than in Talmudic tradition, Matthew, and Mark). To nail home the circularity of all these allusions, of course ‘
the Dogs
’, too, now appear in the whole configuration ‘
and come to lick his sores
’. Once again, one must reaffirm that the presence of this odd – and, of course, not only utterly fantastic, but mean-spirited and completely absurd – allegorical episode in Luke proves, as almost nothing else can, the accuracy of our understanding of the polemics i
n
volved in all these materials.

In fact, the whole episode regarding this Greek Syrophoenician/Canaanite woman’s rejoinder to Jesus, as we saw, is d
i
rectly counter-indicated in Matthew 7:6’s own version of
the Sermon on the Mount
earlier. It not only provides
the real mea
n
ing
of all these matters – both that in
MMT
and what
the Greek Syrophoenician
/
Cananaean woman
, with evident Gospel a
p
plause, is anxious to rebut. It reads as already partially reproduced earlier: ‘
Do not give Holy Things to dogs
,
nor cast down your pearls before swine
,
lest they trample them under their feet
.’
Of course this whole statement, again attributed to Jesus, is completely in line with the essence of the Qumran approach, particularly that of the Damascus Document’s ‘
separating the Holy Things from the profane
’, as it is the ethos of the prohibition in
MMT
about banning ‘
the dogs
’ from the Temple and Jerusalem, defined in terms of ‘
the Holy Camp
’ and ‘
the Chief of the Camps of Israel
’.