James the Brother of Jesus and the Dead Sea Scrolls I (47 page)

Similar passages are present in other documents from Qumran, for instance, at the beginning of the Habakkuk
Pesher
, where the words ‘
the Wicked encompasses the Righteous’
basically begin the exegesis (Hab. 1:4 but also note Habakkuk 1:13 where the usage ‘
swallowing
’ occurs as well). Passages such as these at Qumran are usually interpreted in terms of something terrible happening to the Righteous Teacher. The same is true in this parallel early Church account relating to James. This is persuasive evidence that this kind of scriptural exegesis involving the same vocabulary was in use at Qumran regarding the Righteous Teacher as in early Christianity regarding James. Hegesippus himself says as much in elucidating James’ cognomens with the comment, ‘
as the Prophets declare concerning him
’.

For the Habakkuk
Pesher
, ‘
the Zaddik is the Moreh ha-Zedek
’ (that is, ‘
the Righteous Teacher
’). In the
Pesher
on Psalm 37 – another ‘
Zaddik
’ text – passages like ‘
the Wicked plots against the Righteous
’ (Ps. 37:12) or ‘
the Wicked watches out for the Righteous and tries to put him to death
’ (37:32) are subjected to this same kind of exegesis. Therefore, the usage ‘
Zaddik
’ in any underlying text from Scripture is almost without exception exploited in Qumran exegesis to mean ‘
the Righteous Teacher
’. This is parallel to the way Isaiah 3:10 is being interpreted in early Church accounts having to do with James – not to mention others being applied to ‘Jesus’ in the New Testament. Again, this is what Hegesippus seems to have meant by asserting ‘
as the Prophets declare concerning him
’.

However, if one looks at the other usages contained in these key passages about these deaths, one can go further than this. ‘Righteous’ and ‘Evil’ in any biblical text are almost always interpreted in the Scrolls to mean ‘the Righteous Teacher’ and ‘the Wicked Priest’ respectively. Where the biography of James is concerned, these would be James and his nemesis
the High Priest Ananus
. On one occasion, ‘
Evil
’ in the underlying text (Hab. 1:13) is applied to another adversary of the Righteous Teacher, ‘
the Liar
’; and others of his persuasion seemingly ‘
the Traitors
’ – terminology also not unknown in the Gospels. The former is described as ‘
rejecting the Torah in the midst of their whole Congregation
’. In James’ biography, such an individual would be equivalent to his ideological adversary Paul.

The actual usage in Habakkuk 1:13 is, ‘
the Wicked swallows up one more Righteous than he
’ (‘
balla‘
’ – used in the sense of ‘destroying’ and paralleling our ‘eating’/‘consuming’ allusions).
23
As we have been remarking, these letters,
B–L–‘
, also at the root of the Hebrew names ‘Belial’ and ‘Balaam’, strangely as it may seem, appear to go into parallel accounts of the death of James in the Greek. To say nothing of the usage we have been highlighting with regard to these, ‘
ballo
’ (‘
casting
’ or ‘
throwing down
’) as well as the Greek parallel embodied in the peculiar nominative, ‘the
Diabolos
’ or ‘
Devil
’. These parallel usages fairly permeate Gospel narratives and the New Testament generally.

At Qumran, important usages like these are legion and seem to provide the
modus operandi
the sectaries used to choose the texts they wished to interpret. These include ‘
the Poor
’ (
Ebion
), ‘
the Meek
’ (
‘Ani
, a synonym for ‘
the Poor
’ in Psalm 37:15), ‘
Lebanon
’ (Hab. 2:17), ‘
plotting
’, ‘
booty
’, ‘
Riches
’, ‘
Anger
’/‘
Wrath
’, ‘
Perfection
’, etc. Psalm 37, for instance, contains allusions to: ‘
though he falls, he shall not be cast down
’ (24) and ‘
the Salvation of the Righteous Ones is from the Lord. He is their Protection
’ (39). A not unsimilar phrase, ‘
Protection on the day of trouble
’, occurs in Nahum 1:7 in passages also subjected to exegesis at Qumran.
24

If one looks at Isaiah 3:10, a passage applied to the death of James, one finds similar vocabulary – for instance, ‘
Lebanon
’ (Isa. 2:13) – another favourite at Qumran particularly where
the fall of the Temple and the Priesthood is concerned
. In fact, almost every occurrence of ‘
Lebanon
’ in the Bible is subjected to exegesis at Qumran even in the extant corpus. These occur mostly in Isaiah and Habakkuk, but also in a particularly pregnant context of apocalyptic final ‘Judgement’, ‘whirlwind’, and ‘Flood’ from Nahum 1:4. In Rabbinic literature, ‘
the fall of the cedars of Lebanon
’ is a metaphor for the fall of the Temple, specifically the one in 70 CE, the ‘
whiteness
’ inherent in the Hebrew word,
playing on the white linen the Priests wore in the Temple
, not to mention the fact that
the Temple had originally been constructed out of
cedar wood
.

There is also reference to causing the people ‘to go astray and swallowing the Way of Your Paths’ (3:12), ‘Tongue’ imagery (3:8), ‘grinding the face of the Poor’ and ‘robbing the spoils of the Poor’ (3:14–15),
‘the Lord of Hosts taking away from Jerusalem and Judah the stay and the staff’ (3:1), ‘foreigners devouring’ the country (1:7 – ‘
eating it
’, again the exact sense of the Habakkuk
Pesher
and Isaiah 31:8 in the War Scroll), ‘washing clean’ (1:16 and 4:4), and ‘idolatry’ (2:18). There is even the tell-tale allusion to the favourite usage at Qumran,
B–L–‘
or ‘
swallowing
’, in Isaiah 3:12. This occurs
directly following
the verses applied to James’ death in Hegesippus and, following this, ‘
leading the people astray
’ – an allusion also found at both the beginning of and in the Last Column of the Damascus Document where the teaching of ‘
the Liar
’ is being described.

It is hard to believe that such a fortuitous conjunction of images would not have appealed to our sectaries. This crucial
B–L–‘
language circle, as we have been implying, is pregnant with meaning when discussing the destruction of ‘the Righteous Teacher’ at Qumran, as it will be when discussing James. At Qumran, it will not only be applied to what the Wicked Priest did to the Righteous Teacher, but also
the Vengeance God, in turn, would take on him for ‘swallowing the Righteous Teacher
’.

As the Habakkuk
Pesher
pointedly puts it, just as the Wicked Priest ‘swallowed him’ or ‘swallowed them’ (the followers of the Righteous Teacher, called ‘the
Ebionim
’, even though ‘
Ebionim
’ nowhere appears as such in the underlying text at this point); so too ‘would he be paid the reward which he paid the Poor’, always combined with the reiteration of the idea of God’s Vengeance – ‘God would condemn him to destruction’ – for what he had done to the Righteous Teacher
25
This is also expressed in terms of another important genre of imagery – ‘Cup’ imagery, symbolizing God’s retribution and which we shall elucidate further as we proceed – or ‘
the Cup of the Wrath of God would come around to
’ or ‘
swallow him
’ as well.

This notion of retribution is also the context of these lines applied by early Church exegetes to the death of James, ‘Let us remove the Just One, for he is abhorrent to us.’ Taken according to the received version, the line following this reads: ‘Woe unto the Wicked. It shall be ill with him, for the Reward (
Gamul
) of his hands will be done to him’ (3:11). The very same word, ‘
Gamul
’ or ‘
Reward
’, used in exactly the same way, is brought into the crucial description of the destruction of the Righteous Teacher in the Habakkuk
Pesher
and how the Wicked Priest, who ‘
plotted to destroy the Poor’
, ‘
swallowed’ the Righteous Teacher
.

As this is then put, ‘
the Reward which he paid the Poor would be paid to him
’. Here the word ‘
Gamul
’ again comes into play, as in Isaiah 3:11 and as we saw it above in the War Scroll on ‘
the Poor
’. That we are, in these lines surrounding Isaiah 3:10 applied in early Church literature to the death of James, in a similar exegetical framework to that of Qumran should be patent.

The conclusion is, therefore, simple. Since this material about the Wicked ‘
being paid the Reward he paid
’
others
from Isaiah 3:10–11 nowhere appears in the materials from Habakkuk under consideration, it is clear that the writers at Qumran knew this material from Isaiah 3:10–11 and were incorporating it into their presentation of
the death of their ‘Righteous Teacher’
. In other words, the Community of James in Jerusalem and the Community at Qumran were using
the exact same passage in exactly the same way and applying it to the destruction respectively of two leaders, James the Just and the Righteous Teacher
. One could not ask for more powerful proof of their identity than this.

James’ Death in the Account of Hegesippus

As the Eusebius extract from Hegesippus finishes the account of the stoning of James the Just: ‘So they went up and
cast down the Just One
, saying to one another, “Let us
stone
James the Just,” and they began to stone him, since
the fall
had not killed him.’

This parallels almost completely the account in Acts of Stephen’s stoning, including the very same repetitions of the words ‘
stoning
’ and ‘
casting
’, not to mention the tell-tale allusion to the ‘
fall
’ James took, which reappears in both Stephen’s ‘
falling
to his knees’ and the bloody ‘
fall
’ Judas
Iscariot
takes at the beginning of Acts.

It will be recalled that Acts’ account is preceded by Stephen’s verbal attack on the Jews as ‘receiving the Law and not keeping it’ (7:52–53) – this as part and parcel of his charge that
they ‘killed all the Prophets’ and were ‘Traitors’ because they put ‘the Just One’ to death
. It is interesting that just as Stephen hurls the charge of being ‘uncircumised in heart’ against the Jews generally (7:51), in the Habakkuk
Pesher
this is hurled against the Wicked Priest (in the Damascus Document on Ezekiel 44:15, its root, its reversal is the basis of who ‘
the Sons of Zadok
’ are).
26

In looking at the description of Stephen’s death again, it would be well to repeat the echo one finds there of James’ words to the assembled Passover crowds about the Son of Man coming on the clouds of Heaven. The account of Stephen’s last words in Acts reads:

Looking up to Heaven, he (Stephen) saw the Glory of God and Jesus standing at the right hand of God. He
cried out
, ‘Look, I see the Heavens opening and the Son of Man standing on the right hand of God. And
crying out in a loud voice
, they … rushed on him with one accord, and
casting him out
of the city, they
stoned him
… And they stoned Stephen
as he prayed
… and
falling down on his knees, he cried out in a loud voice, ‘Lord, do not account this sin to them.’
(Acts 7:55–60)

For its part, Hegesippus’ account of James’ stoning continues as follows: ‘But he turned and
fell to his knees
, saying, “I beseech You, O Lord God and Father,
forgive them, for they know not what they do
.”’ There are so many important overlaps in these brief descriptions of the two stonings that it is difficult to know which ones to stress more.

Where the ‘
casting down
’ or ‘
falling
’ goes, we shall have occasion to inspect such language further to determine whether at some point James ‘was cast down’ or ‘fell’, or both. In fact, this element probably first appears in the story of the attack by Paul on James in the Pseudoclementine
Recognitions
. The attack on James by Paul that it presents –
in the 40’s not the 60’s
–
takes the place of the attack on Stephen in the Book of Acts
, after which, even in Acts Paul is pictured as going berserk in a frenzy of riotous behaviour. As the
Recognitions
vividly pictures it, this attack is a physical one too and results in the tell-tale ‘fall’ James takes, but this time
not his death
. The ‘fall’ in the allusion to James’ and Stephen’s death in Hegesippus and in Acts really paves the way to connecting the two attacks and sorting out some of the conflicting elements.