James the Brother of Jesus and the Dead Sea Scrolls II (86 page)

Agrippa II had received this Tetrarchy, which even Josephus allows was so rich that ‘
anything planted there grew immed
i
ately
’ – true even to this day – in succession to his father Agrippa I (himself, seemingly portrayed in Acts 12:21–23), who had been given it and his other domains after Herod the Tetrarch (Herodias’ husband ‘
Herod Antipas
’) had been banished to Southen France by Caligula.
56
Actually Matthew 4:15, in describing the activities of its ‘Jesus’, quotes Isaiah 8:23–9:1 on ‘
the
Galil
of the Gentiles
’ (literally, ‘
Circle
’ or ‘
Wheel of the Gentiles
’, rephrased slightly here in Matthew to ‘
Galilee of the Peoples
,
the Way of the Sea beyond Jordan
’), pictures him as ‘
withdrawing
’ to Nazareth and thence, ‘
departing Nazareth and coming to dwell
’
along the Sea of Galilee
.

The original of this in Isaiah, which does seem to refer to ‘
the far side of the Jordan
’, would be better approximated by terms like ‘
the Decapolis
’, ‘
Perea
’, Syria, and what today goes by the name of ‘
the Fertile Crescent
’ and the Peoples, mostly ‘
Arab
’, living along its sweep. Nor is there any ‘
wilderness
’ or ‘
desert
’ around
the Sea of Galilee
or near it, the great fertility of which was just indicated, where Jesus on several occasions, already underscored above, is portrayed either as ‘
multiplying the loaves and the fishes
’ for his followers or sermonizing to them. On the contrary.

In this picture of Jesus’ appearance by the Sea of Galilee, he calls his principal Disciples, who,
being fishermen
, ‘
were cas
t
ing a net into the sea
’ (
ballontas
– once more, the vocabulary of ‘
casting
’, this time combined with ‘
net
’ imagery of the kind e
n
countered in the Damascus Document and Revelation relative to ‘
Balak
’, ‘
Balaam
’, or ‘
Belial
’) or ‘
mending their nets
’. Matthew 4:25, in fact, speaks of Galilee in the same breath as ‘
the Decapolis
,
Jerusalem
,
Judea
,
and beyond the Jordan
’, which confuses things even more and shows an almost complete lack of geographical knowledge of this area. Mark 3:8 adds to this, ‘
from Idumaea and beyond the Jordan
’ as well as ‘
those around Tyre and Sidon
’. Luke 6:17, for his part trying to make sense of all this, now drops the ‘
Decapolis
,
Idumaea
,
and across the Jordan
’ and transforms it into ‘
the Sea Coast of Tyre and Sidon
’, whatever this was supposed to mean!

Regardless of these several non sequiturs, for Mark 3:9–10 the ‘
Many
’ that he had cured were so great ‘
that they pressed upon him so
they might touch him and the unclean spirits
,
when they beheld
,
fell down before him
,
crying out
, “
Truly you are the Son of God”
’.
The marvelousness of this portrait notwithstanding, adding some more effusiveness about ‘
being cured of unclean spirits
’, Luke now employs the ‘
Elchasaite
’ language of ‘
Hidden Power
’, averring that ‘
Power came forth from him and healed them all
’ (6:18). Then, like Matthew, it immediately moves on to its version of ‘
the Beatitudes
’ of the Sermon on the Mount (6:20–6:49). For its part, Mark rather closes this episode with Jesus now angrily charging the masses – like James in the preface to the Pseudoclementine
Homilies
57
or the Sabaean ‘
Keepers of the Secret
’, or even ‘
the Way in the wilderness
’ po
r
tion of the Community Rule
58
– ‘
not to make this known
’, that is,
what the unclean spirits cried out when they were cured
(more phantasmagoria – 3:12)!

One should contrast the historical reality or, rather, unreality of episodes such as these with the one from Josephus above about
the brutal
,
bloody
,
and uncompromising warfare that basically devastated settled life around the Sea of Galilee
. If there ever was an ‘
Historical Jesus
’ around ‘
Gennesareth
’ at this time (Luke 5:1 – the name Josephus also accords this Lake, the overlap of which with the term ‘
Nazareth
’, as it appears in Scripture, should not be overlooked) – on the face of it, a rather dubious proposition – this ‘
Jesus son of Sapphias
’,
the Leader of the Galilean
boatmen
and ‘
the Poor
’
on the Sea of Galilee
, who together with his followers
poured his blood out into it
, was almost surely he.
59

In fact, the whole picture in the Gospels of evangelical and religious activity around the Sea of Galilee at this time more likely reflects the situation circulating around the shores of the Dead Sea, which does seem to have been much busier than most would have thought,
60
Gennesareth
and/or
Galilee
-type allusions perhaps acting as geographical stand-ins for design
a
tions like ‘
Nazirite
’, ‘
Nazoraeans
’, or ‘
Galileans
’. Nor is this to say anything about the phrase ‘
Cana in Galilee
’ in John 2:11 and 4:46, almost certainly representing such a circumlocution – ‘
Cana
’ (
kana
’/‘
zeal
’), it will be recalled, in other contexts standing for ‘
Cananaean
’ or ‘
Zealot
’ and being where Jesus first ‘
turned water into wine
’,
cured another
‘
little child
’, and, paralleling J
o
sephus’ descriptions of ‘
magicians
’, ‘
Impostors
’, or ‘
pseudo-prophets
’, ‘
did the first of his signs and revealed his Glory
’ (John 2:11), ‘
having come
out of Judea into Galilee
’ (John 4:54).

Elsewhere, after the incident about the Greek Syrophoenician woman and ‘
casting down crumbs
’ to dogs – almost ce
r
tainly playing on and inverting
MMT
’s
barring of
‘
dogs from the Holy Camp because they might eat bones with the flesh still on them
’
61
– Mark, showing an almost total lack of geographical precision, has Jesus going from Tyre and Sidon to the Sea of Galilee ‘
through the midst of the coasts of the Decapolis
’ (7:31). For his part, Matthew 19:1 has Jesus ‘
withdrawing from Gal
i
lee and coming to the coasts of Judea beyond Jordan
’, geographically speaking, again almost an impossibility. John 3:26 and 10:40, on the other hand, echoing Luke 3:3 on John the Baptist going ‘
into all the country around the Jordan
’, often has both John and Jesus as habitués of
these same regions beyond Jordan
.

Basically, however, the areas referred to in all of these notices are the ones we have been encountering in Hippolytus’ and Epiphanius’ testimonies to these
Essene
or
Ebionite
-like ‘Judeo-Christian’
sects
, including the various
Arab
Kingdoms r
e
ferred to by contemporary Latin and Greek authors –
Arab
Kingdoms in ‘
the Land of the Osrhoeans
’ around Haran in Syria and Northern Mesopotamia as well as finally in Southern Mesopotamia, where Ananias first encounters Izates in the story of his and his mother Queen Helen’s conversion and where, a century or
two later, Mani was born.

The Regime of Extreme Purity in the Camps

The War Scroll also pictures what it considers to be the regime in these camps, this at the time it designates as ‘
the time of
Yeshu
‘
a
’ – ‘
the time of Salvation for the People of God and Eternal destruction for all of the lot of Belial’
.
This time would appear to be consonant with the return of ‘
the Dispersion of the Sons of Light from the Desert of the Peoples
to
the camps in the wilderness around Jerusalem
’
62
– ‘
the Desert of the Peoples
’ now clearly being synonymous with what Matthew 4:15 is cal
l
ing ‘
Galilee of the Nations
’ or ‘
Peoples
’ (
Ethnon
). For the War Scroll, ‘
no boy or woman is ever to enter the camps
’ during the whole period of their going out to what can only be described as ‘
Holy War
’. Rather ‘
they shall all be Volunteers for War
,
Pe
r
fect in Spirit and body
,
preparing for the Day of Vengeance
’!
63

The expression ‘
Volunteers for War
’ is similar to that found in 1 Maccabees 2:42’s description of Judas Maccabee’s army (Daniel’s
Kedoshim
/‘
Holy Ones
’ or ‘
Saints
’), described at this point as ‘
Hassidaeans
’ (‘
Pious Ones
’) ‘
each one a stout Volunteer on the side of the Law
’. Despite the conflicting testimony in 1 Maccabees 7:13, which portrays these same
Hassidaeans
– who appear to make up the bulk of Judas’ most committed military contingent – as pacifistic, more compromising, and
willing to accept a High Priest appointed by foreign power
(in this case, by the Seleucids), in the view of the author this must be ba
l
anced against 2 Maccabees 14:6 which implies just the opposite. I have treated this seeming contradiction at length in my short monograph
Maccabees
,
Zadokites
,
Christians and Qumran
in
The Dead Sea Scrolls and the First Christians
(Barnes and Noble, 2004), concluding that what we have here are rather terminological confusions and, actually,
the birth moment of
‘
the Pharisee Party
’ – the latter, more-compromising ‘
Hassidaeans
’, being rather nascent ‘
Pharisees
’ who
split away
from more aboriginal ‘
Zealot
’ or
Zadokite Sadducees
over the issue of
foreign appointment of High Priests
.
64

Another parallel is to be found in the ‘
Paean to King Jonathan
’, the pro-Maccabean attitude of which is patent.
65
Greeting its addressee – who can either be thought of as Alexander Jannaeus
(d. 76 BCE); his great uncle, the first Maccabean Priest-King, Jonathan (
d
. 142 BCE); or Alexander Jannaeus’ own son Aristobulus II (
d
. 48 BCE) – in adulatory terms, this text found by perspicacious Israeli scholars is really
a Hebrew Poem of Praise
or panegyric.
66
Not only this: it mysteriously alludes, in what can only be construed as the most approving terms, to ‘
the Joiners
’ once again – the ‘
Nilvim
’ of the Damascus Doc
u
ment’s exegesis of Ezekiel 44:15 – this time, ‘
the Joiners
’ or ‘
Volunteers in the War of..
.’.
67
There the text breaks off.