James the Brother of Jesus and the Dead Sea Scrolls I (80 page)

As we saw, Peter uses the following language to characterize this in this ‘Letter’ prefacing the
Homilies
: ‘
Some among the Gentiles have rejected my preaching about the Law, attaching themselves to a certain Lawless and trifling preaching of the Man who is my Enemy
’(1.2 – Paul or Simon
Magus
). In Matthew’s charges by Jesus to
his Apostles
, however, this now becomes – instead of ‘
the man who is my Enemy
’ – ‘
a man’s Enemies shall be those of his own household
’ (10:36).

Once again, the polemical reversal here is patent. That this is an attack
on the brothers and family of Jesus
needs no further elucidation. The parallel to this in Luke 14:26 now adds the Qumran language of ‘
a spirit of hatred against the Men of the Pit
’ turning it, too,
against the family of ‘Jesus’ instead
, reading: ‘If a man comes to me and
does not hate his own father and mother and wife and children and brothers and sisters
…
he cannot be my Disciple
’ (
thus
!). This attack in Luke comes after the picture of ‘Jesus’ having just attacked
‘
dining with brothers, kinsmen, and the Rich
’ rather than ‘
the Poor, blind, and the lame
’
(14:12–21) – the last two, anyhow, comprising a part
of the classes of persons
forbidden to enter the Temple
according to the Temple Scroll from Qumran.

In turn in Luke rather, it is preceded by evocation of ‘
the Last being First and the First being Last
’ and aspersions on
Jerusalem for
‘
killing the Prophets and
stoning them that are sent to her
’ – the import of which should be clear – followed by allusion to ‘
the resurrection of the Righteous
’ (13:30–14:14). Nothing could better illustrate the manner in which the Gospels reverse themes found, for instance, in the Pseudoclementines and in the Scrolls, turning them into thinly disguised attacks on the
family of Jesus, the Jews, and even ‘the Jerusalem Church’ Leadership
!

In Matthew, these attack rather come directly after ‘Jesus’ begins his charges to ‘the Apostles’, paralleling the opposite genre of imprecations James makes to ‘the Elders of the Community’ after receiving Peter’s letter in the
Homilies
. So awe-inspiring was James in the sight of these ‘
Elders’
that they  are pictured, as we have seen, as ‘
being in an agony of terror
’, calming down only after James speaks about how those ‘
keeping this Covenant’ and ‘living Piously’ have ‘a part with the Holy Ones
’ (1.4–5)!

That versions of this material, along with documents with the vehemence of those at Qumran, were circulating in some manner among ‘Opposition’ Groups
before
the present documents we call ‘
the Gospels
’ achieved their final form begins to emerge as the inescapable conclusion. Only the additional ‘
Truly you shall not have gone through the cities of Israel till the Son of Man be come
’ in Matthew’s version of ‘Jesus’’ admonitions to
his
Apostles has an authentic ‘Jamesian’ ring to it.

In another reversal and in regard to how ‘Simon’ and ‘Simeon’ are slightly different names in Hebrew, one should note Luke’s presentation of the ‘Jerusalem Council’ in Acts – ending in James sending out his rulings about ‘
Gentiles … keeping themselves from the pollutions of idols, fornication, strangled things, and blood
’ in the form of an ‘epistle’ again (15:20) – how, just before
sending his emissaries with this letter
‘
down to Antioch
’ and
right after Paul and Barnabas report about the ‘miracles and wonders God had done by them among the Gentiles
’, James is portrayed as referring to how Peter, like himself,
opposes those who believed ‘it was necessary to circumcise themselves and to keep the Law
’ (Acts 15:5). This is, not only just about totally at odds with the picture in the Pseudoclementines, but also that Paul’s Letters – in particular, Galatians.

Post-Resurrection Appearances to
Cephas
or Peter in 1 Corinthians or the Gospels

Having covered all these things including ‘
Communion with the blood of Christ’
; as Paul now explains it, leading up to his last mention of James, ‘
the Gospel’
which he announced to his communities was what he himself ‘
received, that Christ died for our sins according to the Scriptures and that he was buried, and that he was raised on the third day according to the Scriptures
’ (1 Cor. 15:4). In connection with his ‘announcement of this Gospel’, he uses the words, ‘
in which you also stand’ and ‘are being saved’, ending with the phrase, ‘unless you believed in vain
’.

Paul put this as follows: ‘
But, brothers, I reveal to you the Gospel which I preached, which you also received, in which you also stand (and) by which also you are being saved – if you hold fast to the Word which I preached to you, unless you believed in vain – for I delivered to you in the first place what I also received
… ’ (1 Cor. 15:1–3).  All of these expressions just about exactly parallel, as we have seen, vocabulary in use at Qumran – the ‘
standing
’, in particular, directly preceding the ‘
Three Nets of Belial
’ condemnations in the Damascus Document.

Relating to the elaboration of ‘
the Sons of Zadok’
, the last was expressed in terms of there being ‘
no more joining to the House of Judah
(i.e., no more ‘
Jews
’
per se
)
, but each man standing on his own net
’ or ‘
watchtower
’. Either of these would be equivalent to what Paul is intending by ‘
Word
’ or ‘
Gospel
’ here. This is not to mention the relationship of this word ‘standing’ generally to the ‘
Standing One
’ doctrine of the Ebionites and other Jamesian groups, we have already been calling attention to above, and elaborations of the doctrine of Resurrection generally.

Paul’s allusion to ‘
believing in vain
’, whicvh he goes on to use repeatedly in this Chapter particularly as regards this same Resurrection, that is,
Christ having been ‘raised from the dead’
(15:14–17). Both this and mention of ‘
saved
’ parallels materials in the Habakkuk
Pesher
as well, in particular, the doctrines of the individual it designates as ‘
the Spouter of Lying
’.
7
In describing these last, the Habakkuk
Pesher
uses the same set of words, ‘Empty’ and ‘Vain’ or ‘Worthless’, to describe what ‘the Man of Lying’ is ‘building’ and the ‘vainglory’ of his ‘mission’ or ‘service’.

One should also appreciate that in the course of these references to ‘speaking in Tongues’, ‘building up the Assembly’, ‘being zealous (
zelotai
) of Spirits’, and ‘being zealous to prophesy’; Paul twice parodies the ‘Zealot’ terminology, reversing normal Palestinian usage of this term and connecting it instead now to his idea of ‘
prophesying
’ and ‘
speaking in Tongues
’. As he puts it, one should not forbid such things, as most
‘Zealots for the Law’ like James
would undoubtedly have done,
but ‘be zealous’ for them
(1 Cor. 14:11 and 39).

In mentioning Christ ‘being resurrected and dying for our sins’, Paul is clearly signaling something of what must have been extremely early doctrine in Palestine. The ‘
Resurrection
’ part of this is from Hosea 6:1–2, but there it occurs in the plural – in the sense of a
plural
restoration: ‘
After two days He will restore us to life, the third day will He raise us up to live before Him
’ (
thus
)! The interesting allusions that follow in Hosea 6:3–5, to both ‘Ephraim’ and ‘Judah’ – widespread in the Scrolls, the ‘coming of rain’, and
the Prophets ‘slaying them by the words’ of their mouth
, are noteworthy as well. This last, for instance, as it becomes transformed in Gospel usage and transmitted – as it turns out – into the Koran, appears to develop into,
the Jews ‘killed all the Prophets’
!
8

The notion of ‘dying for our sins’ harks back to Isaiah 53:10–12, a typical scriptural ‘
Zaddik
’ passage. There, it is applied to ‘
justifying the Many
’ or ‘
making them Righteous
’ and ‘
Justification
’ generally. Not only are these the basis of the presentation of the Jesus’ crucifixion in Christianity, they are also typical Qumran doctrines and very likely provide the basis for the organizational framework found there of the rank and file of the Community – called ‘
the Many
’ – being ‘
made Righteous
’ or ‘
Justified
’ by ‘
the Sons of Zadok’
or ‘
the Righteous Teacher
’.
9

To this, Paul now attaches his list of post-Resurrection appearances by ‘Jesus’. In modern times, this has always been thought of as containing an interpolation.
10
It probably does since it is composed of
two distinct parts
. The only real question has been which part contains the fabrication and which does not – the first, having to do with ‘
Cephas and the Twelve
’, or the second, referring to ‘
James then all the Apostles
’. These are clearly parallel denotations and cannot really be seen as separate, but they do contradict one another.

The second, of course, is less doctrinaire and more general, but those of an orthodox and unquestioning mindset have always assumed the first to be authentic and more accurate; and the second, the interpolation, representing a sinister attempt by the ‘Jewish Christian’ supporters of James not only to insinuate him into Apostle lists,
but to gain equal status for him
with the Apostles
. It was impossible for persons of this outlook even to conceive of another scenario. We, of course, favour the second as the authentic history and consider the more orthodox to be the interpolation since, however one parses it, there were only ‘
Eleven
’ at the time – ‘Judas
Iscariot
’ purportedly having self-destructed or removed himself.

The passage in its interpolated form is already known at the end of the Fourth Century to Jerome who is not embarrassed and, in his usual meticulousness, is anxious to cite materials from Jewish Christian sources giving support to this testimony of an appearance by ‘Jesus’ –
even a ‘first’ appearance
– to James, although not perhaps completely grasping the import of what he was reporting. The passage from 1 Corinthians 15:5–9, in which Paul seems to be claiming he was taught this in addition to the two doctrines mentioned above, reads as follows:

and that
he appeared to Cephas
,
then to the Twelve
(the orthodox part, only there were supposedly only ‘
Eleven
’ at the time).
Then he appeared to over five hundred brothers at once
, most of whom now still remain, but
some have also fallen asleep
.
Then he appeared to James
, then to all the Apostles (indeterminate – the unorthodox part), and
last of all, as if to one born out of term
(literally, ‘
an abortion
’) he appeared also to me.
For I am the least of the Apostles, who is not fit to be called an Apostle
, because I persecuted the Assembly of God.
11
But by the Grace of God, I am what I am, and
His Grace towards me has not been Empty
(gainsaying the ‘
Empty Man
’ attacks in the Letter of James and at Qumran?)

Not only do we have here terminology, ‘
the Last’
or ‘
least of the Apostles
’, important for determining the historical provenance of polemical statements in the Gospels attributed to ‘Jesus’ like ‘
the First shall be Last and the Last shall be First
’ – also reflecting Qumran ‘
Last
’ versus ‘
First
’ parameters – but also the ‘
Empty
’ or ‘
vain
’ language, which the Habakkuk
Pesher
, as just suggested,
uses when discussing
the ‘Worthless Service’ of the Liar
. Here, too, the number of ‘Apostles’ is indeterminate and simply plural again.