James the Brother of Jesus and the Dead Sea Scrolls II (98 page)

James in the
Anabathmoi Jacobou
and ‘
Pollution of the Temple
’

The evocation above of ‘
doing according to the precise letter of the
Torah
’ in the Damascus Document not only parallels James 2:8–10 about ‘
keeping the whole Law
,
but stumbling on one point
’ but also the passage in Jesus’
Sermon on the Mount
regarding ‘
not one jot or tittle passing away from the Law
’ (Matthew 5:18 and
pars
.). Just as the sequence found in the Letter of James, this section of the Damascus Document ends in an allusion to ‘
the Royal Law according to the Scripture
’ as we have just seen.
24

We have just seen too how, following this third allusion to ‘
keeping away from the People
’ (one should possibly read ‘
Peoples
’ here) and in connection with
entering both
‘
the New Covenant in the Land of Damascus
’ and ‘
the Well of Living Waters
’, ‘
setting up the Holy Things according to their precise specifications
’ is now alluded to.
25
It should be appreciated that ‘
Holy Things
’ is synonymous with ‘
Consecrated Things
’ not only, for instance, as regards the Temple Priesthood – which was in fact considered ‘
Holy to God
’ or ‘
consecrated
’ – but also where those following the regime of lifelong
Naziritism
were co
n
cerned.
26

This new Community ‘
in the wilderness
’ also involved a reunion of the wilderness ‘
Camps
’ under the supervision of an i
n
dividual referred to as ‘
the
Mebakker
’ or ‘
Overseer
’ (a more relevant English equivalent would probably be ‘
the Bishop
’) or ‘
the High Priest Commanding the Many
’ at Pentecost time – both, roles James is accorded in Christian tradition.
One should also note here the vocabulary of ‘
the Many
’, just encountered in a more derogatory vein above in Paul – this, in particular, in fra
g
ments of the Damascus Document not found in the Cairo
Genizah
version, themselves first published by the author.
27

Pentecost
is precisely the festival Acts 20:16 pictures Paul as hurrying to Jerusalem to attend with the contributions he has so assiduously gathered overseas (
cf
. too, 2 Corinthians 1:15–19, 8:13–9:15, Philippians 4:15–19, etc. in this regard). In these fragments, two of which clearly comprising the actual last Column of the Damascus Document,
28
the oaths taken in conne
c
tion with
this reunion of
‘
the Wilderness Camps
’ involve
a total rededication to the Law
and
not
‘
deviating to the right or to the left of the
Torah
’, which is exactly the sense of James’ directive to Paul in Acts 21:24 above on Pentecost about ‘
still wal
k
ing undeviatingly keeping the Law
’.

Of course, the parallel to all this in Acts 2:1–6 is the descent of the Pauline ‘
Holy Spirit
’ like ‘
a rushing violent wind
’ and ‘
Godfearing men from every People
’ – presumably in preparation for the Pauline Gentile Mission too – ‘
speaking with other Tongues
’.
It should be appreciated that the kind of ‘
separation
’ both
‘in the Temple
’ and ‘
from the People
’/‘
Peoples
’ being recommended in these passages in the Damascus Document, is during such time when it (the Temple) was perceived of as ‘
being polluted
’ by ‘
polluted Evil Riches
’ and, for example, by what was being ‘
robbed from the Poor
’
–
not
an abandonment of ‘
Torah
’ altogether.

But this passage based on Malachi 1:10 about ‘
not entering the Temple to light its altar in vain
’ which begins this whole string of allusions in the Damascus Document and brings us full circle back to the
Anabathmoi Jacobou
, Acts, and the Letter of James, also gives us something of the idea of what the issues really were here. What is so exercising Malachi in the background to this quotation is ‘
putting polluted food on My Altar
’ (1:7); in James’ directives,
MMT
, and Hippolytus’ picture of ‘
Sicarii
E
s
sene
’ willingness to martyr themselves,
66
this is
expressed rather in terms of ‘
things sacrificed to idols
’, not the abolition of the Law of Sacrifice
per se
. Again, the problem is ‘
polluted things
’ (in the version of James’ directives quoted in Acts 15:20, ‘
the pollution of the idols
’) or ‘
pollution of the Temple
’ as in the Damascus Document.

Malachi is also the prophet who alludes to ‘
sending My Messenger
’
to
‘
prepare the Way before Me
’ (3:1) and ‘
sending El
i
jah the Prophet before the coming of the Great and Terrible Day of the Lord
’ (4:5), again our ‘
Day of Vengeance
’ in the Community Rule and War Scroll above. Interestingly enough, in Ezekiel 38:22 and even in the Nahum
Pesher
, this is expressed in terms of ‘
torrential rain
’, which actually closes the circle with all these
rainmaking
Zaddik
s we have detailed previously.
30
Now we
are
in a more recognizably Judeo-Palestinian milieu. Though this is the Prophecy that is exploited in the presentation of John the Baptist in the Synoptic Gospels, it should be appreciated that ‘
remembering the Law of My Servant Moses
,
which I commanded him at Horeb for all Israel
’, is the line directly preceding this in Malachi 4:4, a passage which obviously would not have failed to leave its impression on the sectaries at Qumran – but, as should be easy to comprehend in view of all the foregoing, not on Paul nor in the way its follow-up is exploited in the Synoptics.

But we do not need these passages from Malachi and the Damascus Document to make sense of the material about James which Epiphanius cites from the
Anabathmoi Jacobou
. No doubt, the issues really did center – as in
MMT
31
– on ‘
the sacrifices and the Temple
’, but what kind of ‘
sacrifices
’ and what was the concern regarding ‘
the Temple
’? After the destruction of the Temple, a situation seemingly alluded to in Peter’s speech in the first book of the Pseudoclementine
Recognitions
,
32
it was easy to reframe or transform these issues in the manner we are seeing in the
Anabathmoi
or the
Recognitions
’ debates on the Temple stairs that appears to have relied upon it.

Where the Temple is concerned, the issue is pretty straightforward. I think we can safely say that James complained not simply ‘
about the Temple
’, as Epiphanius somewhat superficially reduces it, but about ‘
pollution of the Temple
’, as this is framed in the Damascus Document, and the manner in which ‘
Temple service
’, as the Rabbis for their part would have it, was being conducted by the Herodian Establishment and its
Sadducean High Priests
, that is,
Priests
appointed by corrupt foreign Governors and a Royal Family that the more extreme groups considered to be foreigners of Greco-Arab descent and not even, for the most part,
Jewish at all
.
33

This is what makes the Talmudic episode in the
Mishnah
so poignant
when it depicts the most respected member of this family, King Agrippa I (37–44
CE
–
whose grandmother had been a Maccabean Princess
),
weeping in the Temple on the Fe
s
tival of Tabernacles
, when the Deuteronomic King Law: ‘
You shall not put a foreigner over you who is not your brother
’ (17:15) was read. Here the Pharisees, who redacted this material, ‘
cry out
’ – as is usual in these stories – three times, ‘
You are our brother
!
You are our brother
!
You are our brother
!’ when, of course, in actuality (except for one matrilineal grandmother) for the most part he was not.
34
For the ‘
Simon’
depicted in Josephus at exactly the same time as
wanting to bar Herodians from the Temple just because they were foreigners
,
Agrippa I was a foreigner
.

Not only is this episode clearly related, on the one hand, to this passage in the
Mishnah
above; but, on the other, it is also related to the descent of ‘
the Heavenly tablecloth
’ episode (‘
by its four corners
’!) in Acts 10:17–48 depicting, as we have several times had occasion to remark, another ‘
Simon
’ – in this instance, the so-called ‘
Simon Peter
’ on a rooftop in Jaffa – learning that
he
‘
should not call any man profane
’ and
to be more accepting of foreigners
just in time to receive the deputies of and visit in Caesarea the household of the new
Christian
convert, the Roman Centurion Cornelius, a man Acts also describes – somewhat comically, as already observed – as ‘
a Pious God-Fearer
...
doing many good works to the People and praying to God continually
’ (10:2).

Not only is ‘
Peter
’ portrayed here as making one of the many ‘
blood libel
’ speeches we have already outlined above (10:39), but the visit Peter makes to the Roman Centurion Cornelius’ household – having just learned that he is now ‘
allowed to come near a man of another race
’ (10:28 – this inaccurate characterization is certainly written by a non-Jew, being the way such an individual would have perceived Jewish purity regulations) – is the
mirror reversal
of the one the ‘
Simon
’ portrayed in Josephus makes to Agrippa I, the most ‘
Pious
’ of all Herodian Kings, a man who
really did try
to ‘
do many good works for the People
’, ‘
to see what was done there contrary to Law
’.
35
Of course, as to some degree previously explained, what Acts has done here is simply substitute the Roman Centurion from ‘
the Italica Regiment
’ (a town in Spain which was the birthplace of both Trajan and Hadrian – two of the most-hated enemies of the Jews
36
) for Agrippa I. In our view too, the historical ‘
Simon
’ is
someone who really would have been arrested after the untimely and mysterious death of Agrippa I
(
cf.
Acts 12:21–23).
37

Of course, the Deuteronomic King Law, which was the passage to be
read in the Temple on Tabernacles, has now been found enshrined in the Temple Scroll.
38
If we had not found it, we would have had to predicate it. It was statutes such as these and their derivative,
the illegality of foreign appointment of High Priests
, that were, for groups like ‘
the Zealots
’, the ‘
jots and tittles
’ that should not be deleted from the Law – these together with other basic requirements like
circumcision
in the matter of conversion and
not divorcing
or
marrying nieces
. As the Temple Scroll puts this last with regard to ‘
the King
’, ‘
he shall not take a second wife during the lifetime of the first, for she shall be with him all the time of her life
’, nor ‘
shall he marry a wife from the daughters of the Peoples
’ (this last being particularly relevant where
Herodians
were concerned).
39