James the Brother of Jesus and the Dead Sea Scrolls I (29 page)

Now, following a discussion of ‘loving God’ (Piety), ‘love building up’ and his adversaries’ ‘weak consciences being polluted’, he concludes: ‘Food does not commend us to God; neither if we eat do we have any profit, nor if we do not eat do we fall short’ (8:8). Here Paul also introduces the language of ‘causing to stumble’ or ‘stumbling block’ – ‘causing offence’ or ‘scandalizing’ in 8:13 – the same language the Letter of James used to refer to those ‘who keep the whole Law, but stumble over one point, being guilty of (breaking) it all’ (2:10). Now it is directed against those objecting to ‘reclining in an idol Temple’ and synonymous with causing ‘the weak brother’s fall’ or even more pointedly, ‘wounding their weak consciences’ (8:9–12).

But who is Paul’s strength a ‘stumbling block’ to or ‘scandalizing’ here? Who are these ‘weak brothers’ with ‘their weak consciences’ (always a euphemism for those observing the Law), who make issues over table fellowship and consuming unclean foods when these things do not matter – who worry over ‘things sacrificed to idols’, when they, too, do not matter? ‘Then, concerning the eating of things sacrificed to idols, we know that an idol corresponds to nothing in the world and that there is no other God except One … but some with
conscience of the idol
, even now eat as of a
thing sacrificed to an idol
, and
their conscience
,
being weak
,
is polluted’
(8:4–7). This has to be seen not only as a discussion of James’ directives to overseas communities, enumerated in Acts and refracted here, but also as a
direct attack
on James, even though it is delivered in the most evasive manner conceivable.

Paul’s Attack on James’ Naziritism and Vegetarianism in Romans

Paul reinforces the ‘love’ theme and connects it to ‘eating’ in his Letter to the Romans, again turning both against James. Paul actually quotes the second of the two Love Commandments in 13:9, ‘you shall love your neighbour as yourself’. James, on the contrary, discusses it in the context of being ‘a
Doer
’, not ‘a
Breaker
’, ‘
keeping the whole Law
’, ‘Judgement without mercy’ for those who don’t, and condemnation of ‘making oneself a Friend of the world’, not a ‘Friend of God’. The Damascus Document, too, evokes this commandment, called in James ‘the Royal Law according to the Scripture’ and the second part of the Righteousness/Piety dichotomy.

For Paul, however, in another tortured yet clear riposte to James, one should: ‘owe nothing to anyone, except to
love one another
, for he who
loves the other has fulfilled the Law
… Love does not work any ill to one’s neighbour, therefore love is the fulfillment of the Law’ (Rom. 13:8–10). This too has become part and parcel of Jesus’ teaching in Scripture. Continuing in this vein, Paul again raises the issues of eating and foods, turning them around, as per his wont, from the Jamesian position:

Do not let the one who eats despise the one who does not eat … do not
put a stumbling block, a cause of offence
, before your brother … I know and am persuaded in the Lord Jesus that
nothing is unclean in and of itself – except to him who judges things to be unclean
. To him it is unclean. But if, on account of meat, your brother is aggrieved, you are no longer walking according to love. Do not with your meat destroy him … do not destroy
the work of God for the sake of meat
. (Rom. 14:3–20)

Almost all the themes we have been following can be found in these words.

Discussing the issue of ‘consuming meat’, Paul inadvertently expresses the opinion, clearly his own basic one: ‘One believes he may eat all things; another,
being weak, eats
(
only
)
vegetables’
(13:2). That this is an attack on James seems also almost irrefutable. That its author is cloaking the issue in an attempt to appear accommodating should also be clear. But the basic position here does once again redound to the situation of James’ vegetarianism. For Paul, this is just
weakness
. His basic position is that such things do not matter, that
all
the food, as he has told us, in the marketplace
is clean
.

That Paul makes the same claim as James – being ‘separated’ from his mother’s womb – for himself, while all the time adopting the very opposite position to him on the issue of ‘separation of clean from unclean’, makes all these allusions all the more interesting, and his position regarding them all the more disingenuous.

So, once again, we may see that these traditions about James, preserved via Hegesippus in Eusebius, Jerome, and others, do have substance behind them. These had to do with the manner in which James was seen as ‘Holy’ or ‘consecrated from his mother’s womb’, or a certain concept of being a life-long Nazirite that seems to have been important to the Jerusalem Assembly and even early Christianity as a whole.

Not only then do we have, in this passage in Paul’s Letter to the Romans, collateral verification of James’ vegetarianism – insisted on in all the ancient sources – but also something of the reason for it. This, undoubtedly, had to do with following a regime of extreme purity or, as both Paul and the Damascus Document from Qumran put it, of ‘Perfect Holiness’ or ‘Perfection of the Way’, and this, in turn, was related to – however obliquely – the issue of accepting or rejecting
polluted gifts and sacrifices in the Temple
.

Pollution in the Wilderness Camps

Similar concerns are in evidence at Qumran, at least where the issue of
gifts
and
sacrifices in the Temple
is concerned. John the Baptist, even in the fragmented and garbled accounts that have come down to us, would seem to have had tendencies in this direction. The problem in John the Baptist’s case is the idea that he ate ‘locusts’ (Matt. 3:4 and Mark 1:6). If he did, he probably would not have survived very long. Luke omits this and there is little about it in other sources about John; it has been suggested that the word ‘locusts’ is based on a garbled translation.
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One suggestion is that John ate ‘carobs’; there have been others. Epiphanius, in preserving what he calls ‘the Ebionite Gospel’, rails against the passage there claiming John ate ‘wild honey’ and ‘manna-like vegetarian cakes dipped in oil’.
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In any event, John would have been one of these wilderness-dwelling, vegetable-eating persons Josephus regards as either impostors, magicians, or Deceivers, fomenting revolt under the guise of religious ‘Innovation’. Josephus says as much in his description of John in the
Antiquities
– though his treatment of John is much gentler than is his normal wont. This is also the inference to be drawn from Luke’s testimony, including the note about John’s being Holy ‘from his mother’s womb’ (1:15).

As it turns out, one of the first of these vegetarian, insurgent or subversive leaders was Judas Maccabee himself. 2 Maccabees 5:27, describing the founding moment of Judas’ revolutionary activities – also in the wilderness – in 167 BCE, has this to say: ‘Judas, called Maccabaeus, however, with about nine others,
withdrew into the wilderness
and lived like wild animals in the hills with his companions,
eating nothing but wild plants to avoid contracting defilement’
. This statement just about says everything where these wilderness-dwelling ‘Zealots’ were concerned, and one has here much of what was behind such behaviour in this period, the issue once again being ‘contracting defilement’ or ‘pollution’ from unclean persons.

For 2 Maccabees, Judas is the legitimate successor to the previous High Priestly line, which was destroyed by a
foreign power
, in this instance, the Seleucid heirs of Alexander the Great. Judas is a kind of Messianic Priest-King of the kind Jesus is presented as being in later literature. This probably explains Judas’ vegetarianism, as it does John the Baptist’s, if we see John in succession to Judas as an insurgent, Prophet–like leader demanding a Priesthood of greater purity devoid of pollution by foreigners. For Judas,
the Temple has been polluted
. The sacrifice in the Temple has been polluted, then halted. In the time of John the Baptist, ‘the Zealots’, James, and Qumran, this will be seen as being because of the acceptance of gifts and sacrifices on behalf of or by Gentiles in the Temple.

Something of this even emerges in the account of Paul’s unceremonious ejection from the Temple after James imposes the
Nazirite-
style penance upon him in Acts 21:23–24. This episode connects
Temple pollution
to the
admission of Gentiles in the Temple
: ‘He has brought Greeks into the Temple and polluted this Holy Place’ (21:28) – a matter very much argued over in this period, as the erection of inscribed stone warning-markers in the Temple barring foreigners from the Temple on pain of death verifies. Two of these have since been found.
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In the version of events prompting Judas Maccabee’s ‘wilderness’ sojourn, ‘the Abomination of the Desolation’ referred to in Daniel has been set up in the Temple by the invading Seleucid King, Antiochus Epiphanes, thereby desecrating it. In this ‘Abomination’ we probably have a Hebrew play on a Greek name, in this case characterizing the statue of the Olympian Zeus that Antiochus erected in the Temple – or what was left of it. So not only is the Temple in ruins and abandoned, but
polluting idols have been erected in it
. This is the background to Judas’ ‘wilderness vegetarianism’. He should be seen as not simply a warrior, but a ‘Priestly Zealot’ of sorts – one probably observing, as well, the extreme purity regulations of the Nazirite regimen or, at least, the one connected to Holy War. The two are not very different in any case.

For elucidation of this, the War Scroll at Qumran is probably one of our best guides. Here the picture is very simple –
extreme purity regulations are in effect in the wilderness camps
because the Heavenly ‘Holy Ones’, the Angelic Host of Daniel and other prophetic visionaries, were seen to ‘be with’ the Holy warriors in these camps. As the War Scroll vividly puts it:

No boy or woman shall enter their camps from the time of their leaving Jerusalem to go to war until their return. And no one who is lame, blind, crippled, or a man who has a lasting bodily sore in his flesh or is afflicted with pollution in his body – all of these shall not go with them to war, but rather, all of them shall be men
voluntarily enlisted for war
and
Perfect in Spirit and body
. And no man who is
sexually impure
on the day of war shall go down with them,
because the Holy Angels are together with their hosts
.
(1QM 7.3–6)

The persons barred from these Holy ‘camps’, for instance, the blind, lame, crippled, or sexually impure, are just the people Jesus is pictured as keeping company with in the Gospels.

Extreme purity regulations associated with temporary or life-long Naziritism, wilderness sojourns, or the kind of wilderness-camp regime described at Qumran are, doubtlessly, also connected to what is implied under the notion of ‘the
Zaddik
’ or ‘
Righteous One
’ in this period. It also helps to understand the ideology behind this vegetarianism, which is comparatively simple and straightforward.

The First
Zaddik
Noah and Being ‘Called by Name’

Both vegetarianism and the
Zaddik
ideal go back to the Noah story in Genesis. In this episode, Noah is described as ‘Righteous and Perfect in his generation’ and, because of this and for Jewish mystical ideology ever after, he is the first redeemer of mankind. Not only is Noah the first
Zaddik
, but the scriptural warrant for a second ideology is also provided – ‘Perfection’. This is very often missing from Rabbinic ideology, but it is a concept Jesus is pictured as teaching in the Sermon on the Mount in Matthew: ‘Therefore, be Perfect as your Father in Heaven is Perfect’ (5:48).

Earlier Jesus is portrayed as saying this: ‘Unless your Righteousness
exceeds
that of the Scribes and Pharisees, you shall in no wise enter the Kingdom of Heaven’, coupled with the James-like – and, in this case, anti-Pauline – condemnation: ‘Whoever shall break the least one of these Commandments and teach men to do so shall be called
least in the Kingdom of the Heavens
’ (5:19–20). Noah saves mankind because of his ‘Righteousness’ and ‘Perfection’ and all mankind descends from him – at least in the mythology of Genesis the bibliophiles of the Second Temple Period seem to have been so enamoured of.

The Book of Ecclesiasticus too, called ‘
Ben Sira
’
after its author, in its famous enumeration of ‘the Pious Men’ (
Anshei-Hesed
) presents Noah as ‘the (first)
Zaddik
’ (44:17). This praise includes Phineas and his ‘
zeal for the Lord
’ and ends, at least in the Hebrew version, with an evocation of ‘the Sons of Zadok’.
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To explain what was meant by ‘
Perfect
’ with regard to Noah, Rabbinic literature contended that he was ‘born circumcised’!
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Not only does this show the high regard in which he was held and primitive attempts to wrestle with the ‘Perfection’ ideology, but not even Christianity went so far as to make such claims for Jesus, a successor among these primordial Righteous Ones who are presented in the literature as Supernatural Redeemer figures.
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