James the Brother of Jesus and the Dead Sea Scrolls I (65 page)

I think we can safely say that this is where the idea of people
beating James’ brains out with a club
in early Church literature comes from – not to mention the whole scene of James being put into a hole in the Second Apocalypse of James, which echoes Talmudic parameters for such alternative stoning methods in Tractate
Sanhedrin
almost precisely – this, plus the very real likelihood that this was the
coup de grâce
after being stoned for blasphemy as the
Talmud
attests. That James, under such circumstances and in the course of a
Yom Kippur
atonement, would have
pronounced the forbidden Name of God
– and this in the
Inner Sanctum
of the Temple – would only have increased the determination of his opponents to destroy him in this manner.

James
Broke His Legs
in a Fall

It is now possible to turn to the new data Jerome has provided us regarding James’ ‘being cast down’ from the wall or Pinnacle of the Temple and ‘still half alive’, his legs only having been broken in the fall. That Jerome combines this point with the picture from early Church sources about the final attack on James in 62 CE and the convening of a full Sanhedrin to try him has to do with Jerome’s understanding or, perhaps, misunderstanding of the sources before him. In providing us with this note about his ‘
legs being broken’ in the fall
, he took,
prior to his stoning
, Jerome – no doubt unwittingly – supplies us with the key datum to sort out all these traditions and overlaps.

As already remarked, this theme has been absorbed in a most macabre manner and combined with similar material in Josephus in accounts of Jesus’ crucifixion and death. The Gospel of John, for instance, shows an intense interest in whether Jesus’ ‘
legs were broken’ or ‘not broken
’, repeating the point three times in as many lines (19:31–33). For John,
because ‘bodies might not remain on the cross on the Sabbath, for the Festival Day was a Sabbath’, the soldiers went and broke the legs of the ‘two Robbers’ (Lestai again), with whom he was crucified, but Jesus’ legs didn’t need breaking because ‘he had already expired
’ (19:32).

Curiously enough, this follows a note about Jesus’ ‘
clothes
’ again. To focus momentarily on this ‘
clothes
’ issue – first, as vividly described in Scripture, the Roman soldiers ‘
divided
’ these among themselves and then ‘
cast lots for’ his cloak
. For the Gospel of John, however, because Jesus’ cloak was ‘
seamless, woven from the top throughout’, they could not divide it
(19:23)!

Not only was
the division of these clothes and the casting of lots for his cloak
supposedly the fulfillment of a prophecy from Psalm 22:18: ‘they divided my garments among them and cast lots for my clothes’; for John 19:28, the point that follows about Jesus crying out concerning his thirst is based on Psalm 22:15 as well.

However, Psalm 22 – which also begins with the famous words attributed to Jesus on the cross as well, ‘
My God, my God, why have you forsaken me
’ – actually contains the key passage, we have been following throughout, about the ‘adoptionist’ or ‘Divine Sonship of the Righteous Ones’ and about James’ life-long Naziritism: namely, ‘You drew me
out of the womb
. You entrusted me to my mother’s breasts. Cast out upon Your lap from my birth,
You have been
my God from my mother’s womb
’ (22:9–10). Clearly a wellspring of scriptural proof-texts, this Psalm also focuses throughout on the terminology ‘
the Meek
’, synonymous at Qumran with ‘
the Poor
’, both so important to that form of Christianity called therefore ‘Ebionitism’.

But John also uses this point about their ‘breaking Jesus’ legs’ or, rather, their ‘not breaking’ them, to proceed to give some extremely gruesome details about Jesus’ death
in order that several additional scriptural passages could ‘be fulfilled’
. In the first of these, to fulfill Zechariah 12:10 referring to ‘
being pierced
’, the Roman soldiers now pierce Jesus’ side in the famous passage about ‘blood and water coming out’ (19:34). Next, both of these occurrences – not pictured in any of the Synoptic Gospels – are presented as fulfilling another scriptural passage, ‘
not a bone of him shall be broken
’ (19:36), combining materials from Psalm 34:20 and Exodus 12:46.

Interestingly, the first-named is another of these Psalms centering around the fate of ‘the
Zaddik
’, to whom three references are made in some six lines (34:15–21). Like Psalm 22, it makes repeated reference to ‘
the Meek
’ as well as to his ‘
soul
’ and ‘
the soul of His Servants
’ (34:3 and 23) – language also permeating the Qumran Hymns. Even more importantly, in the First Column of the Damascus Document, the ‘Liar’ and his confederates are described as attacking ‘
the soul of the
Zaddik
’
and some of his colleagues
. For Psalm 34, ‘the Angel of the Lord encamps round about’ these ‘Meek’ and ‘Righteous’, saving them and delivering the Righteous One – ‘not one of whose bones, therefore, was broken’.

It is also interesting to note that in the Talmudic passages dealing with executions, such as stoning for blasphemy and the like, the rationale given for such alterations in the execution scheme – as, for instance, pushing a man off a precipice above – was the dictum that
it was preferable that the outward appearance of the accused’s body should look, for all intents and purposes, undamaged
! It is interesting to remark, as well, the Talmudic insistence that
an individual be stoned
naked
– having to do with the ‘clothes’ issue again, an issue that then looms large in subsequent discussion about what to do in the case of the stoning of a lewd woman, whose body her executioners might find attractive!
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But John neglects to tell us that the context of the second of these two passages about ‘no bones being broken’ – the one from Exodus 12:46 – has to do with the
barring of foreigners and those ‘who are not circumcised’ from taking part in
the Passover meal
! Not only does this passage, then, have to do with the eating of the Passover meal; but the implication of quoting it is that ‘Jesus’ is now he new Passover meal – that is, Paul’s ‘Communion’ with the body and blood of Christ Jesus again.

Here in Exodus, it is laid down that
the meat thereof ‘shall not be carried out of the house, nor shall a bone of it be broken
’, which is about verbatim the quotation from John above, although here meaning
the Paschal lamb
. But the context in Exodus is, quite specifically, that
no
‘
foreigner
or hired servant shall eat thereof’ – only ‘the sojourner’ or ‘resident alien’, on the condition that he
be circumcised
(12:45–48). Exodus continues in this vein in the following manner: ‘No
uncircumcised person
may take part.
This same law applies to the native and the resident alien among you
…
All the males of his household must be circumcised
.
He may then be admitted to the celebration, because he becomes, as it were, a native-born
’ (12:48–49).

Nothing could be further from the spirit of Christianity, as we now know it, than this – in fact, it is
the very opposite of it
. Why, then, does John feel free to take it out of context from a passage with the exact opposite sense of the one he is giving it? No doubt, he considered himself to be following the same allegorical approach to Scripture which Paul employed in his Letters to similar effect.

Materials of this kind were undoubtedly part of a compilation of Messianic proof-texts of some kind. One of these is still known today and called ‘Pseudo–Epiphanius’. Shorter such compilations have also been found at Qumran, whose exegetes would have reveled in the above materials. The same is true for those teachers, Paul so fulminates against – in Galatians 2:12 ‘
some from James
’; in Acts 15:1 ‘
some who came down from Judea’
– who, in particular, are
teaching circumcision
to his Communities (Gal. 5:11–12). John, however, is not particularly interested in the true import of the materials he is employing – and, typically, reversing – which, in their original context, have nothing whatever to do with the point he is making – only that they can be used to propel his narrative forward and make his choice of key words or turn-of-phrases seem either legitimate or portentous.

The same is true for the other Gospel writers. Nevertheless nothing could be more disingenuous than the manner in which they feel free to take material out of an original scriptural context that
has just the opposite sense of what they now intend it to have
, relying on the relative ignorance of their audience and
that it, satisfied by their analyses, would not normally go or be able to go to the original
. This is clear in the manner in which John pretends he has proved the point about
Jesus’ legs not ‘being broken’ on the cross
because he had
already died
and, in any event,
it was improper that the Paschal lamb should be so defiled
.

Josephus, too, raises this issue when comparing how the Idumaeans treated
the corpse
of the High Priest Ananus by throwing it naked (perhaps this very
nakedness
, retribution for the stoning of James) outside the city without burial as food for jackals. In doing so, he remarked the scrupulousness with which Jews usually took care of the dead,
observing how they even ‘broke the legs’ of those being crucified so they would not remain on the cross past nightfall
.
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In the Talmudic passages we remarked above about crucifixion and stoning from
Tractate Sanhedrin
, the same point is made quoting Deuteronomy 21:23: ‘His body shall not
remain all night upon the tree
, but you shall surely bury him the same day, for he that
is hanged is a curse of God
.’

Even this, John garbles, making it seem as if the point had something to do with ‘
the Sabbath
’ (not the ‘
night
’) – probably because he has heard or knows that the Jews begin the Sabbath at nightfall – that is, that ‘
the bodies should not remain on the
cross
on the Sabbath
’ (19:31). This he then links to ‘
preparing for the Passover
’, calling it ‘
the Sabbath
’. This in itself has sent biblical scholars throughout the centuries to calendrical sources to determine when the Passover fell on a Sabbath, so they could then determine the true date of the crucifixion of Jesus.

Though, as just observed, this does recall the material in the Habakkuk
Pesher
about the Wicked Priest’s attack on ‘
the Poor
’ partisans of the Righteous Teacher, ‘
causing them to stumble
’ or ‘
casting them down’ on ‘the Sabbath of their rest’
; the issue of breaking the bones in crucifixion probably has little or nothing to do with any ‘Sabbath’ or ‘Feast Day’ but is probably a garbling by John of the above comment Josephus makes about how ‘
the Zealots
’ along with their ‘
Idumaean
’ allies treated the corpse of James’ nemesis Ananus ben Ananus.

The same is true for the point in the Synoptics about
the sun growing dark for three hours ‘until the ninth hour
’ (Mt 27:46 and pars.) – again more fantasy, but this time again probably based on another note Josephus makes at the end of the
Jewish War
saying more or less
just the opposite
. In giving the portents for the fall of the Temple, Josephus lists:
a cow ‘giving birth to a lamb in the midst of the Temple’ at Passover time
(
thus
), ‘
a star which resembled a sword and a comet standing over the city for a whole year’, ‘chariots and armoured battalions running through the clouds and surrounding cities
’, and one of the Temple gates, which was fixed in iron and bolted firmly to the ground, notwithstanding
opening by itself
in the middle of the night
.

Among other such inanities, he also includes how, yet again, at Passover:

At the ninth hour
of the night (the repetition of the
actual
hour in the Synpotics just about proves literary interdependence on this point or, more accurately, literary
gamesmanship
),
so great a light shone around the altar and the Temple, that it appeared to be the brightness of midday
. This light continued for half an hour … and was interpreted by the sacred scribes
as a portent of events that immediately followed upon it
(meaning, God leaving the Temple and its destruction).
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