James the Brother of Jesus and the Dead Sea Scrolls I (85 page)

In Luke 24:35. these two ‘Disciples’ then return to Jerusalem and report ‘
to the Eleven
’ and
those with them ‘the things in the Way and how he was known to them in the
breaking of the bread
’. At this point, ‘Jesus’ is portrayed as ‘
standing among them
’. What he now teaches this ‘
Assembly of the Eleven and those with them
’, in the manner of an Interpreter of Scripture, is exactly what Paul says he received ‘
according to the Scriptures
’ in 1 Corinthians 15:3–4, right before his testimony about Jesus’ post-resurrection appearance to James: ‘It behoved the Christ to suffer and rise from among (the) dead on the third day, and repentance and remission of sins should be proclaimed in his Name to all Peoples (
Ethne
again) beginning at Jerusalem’ (Lk 24:46–47). In 1 Corinthians, Paul puts this: ‘I transmitted to you in the first instance what I also received, that Christ died for our sins according to the Scriptures … and that he was raised from the third day, according to the Scriptures.’ One should also note here the Pauline cast of the proclamation, ‘
to all Peoples
’ – already presaged in Matthew 12:21 above.

In this appearance by ‘Jesus’ in Jerusalem, as reported by Luke, the ‘Doubting Thomas’ material from John – where Jesus shows them the nail holes in his hands and feet – is once more combined in one and the same episode with the theme of ‘
eating
’; but instead of commanding the Disciples to ‘eat’ as in John – and by refraction, Peter’s vision of the tablecloth in Acts where the Heavenly voice instructs ‘Peter’ three times to ‘
eat
’ – Jesus asks, ‘
Have you anything that is eatable here
?’ (24:41). They then produce ‘
a broiled fish and part of a honeycomb
’!

Not only is this immediately recognizable as the ‘
and some fish too
’ of the episode following Jesus’ appearance by the Sea of Galilee in John, where Jesus tells the Disciples to ‘
come and eat
’; but to this is then added, not only the note about the Apostles ‘being witnesses of these things’, but the command ‘
to tarry’ or ‘remain’ in Jerusalem until ‘you are clothed with Power from on High
’ (again our ‘Great Power’ vocabulary – Lk 24:49). This is the third iteration of the ‘tarrying’ or ‘remaining’ theme, connected in John with ‘the Disciple Jesus loved’.

Interesting enough, this is also basically the implication of the Gospel of Thomas text about Jesus’
direct appointment
of James as successor, i.e., ‘
in the place where you are to go
(presumably Jerusalem),
go to James the Just
’. In effect, ‘Jesus’ is telling his Disciples here, in going to seek James,
to return to Jerusalem and remain there
. Like these others, too, the statement in Thomas is essentially eschatological because it describes James as being of such importance that for his ‘
sake Heaven and Earth came into existence
’!

To conclude – instead of ‘
coming down from Heaven
’ as James is pictured as proclaiming it in Hegesippus before the riot in the Temple that leads to his death; in Luke’s denouement, Jesus is rather ‘
carried up into Heaven
’ (24:51). As Mark would have it, he ‘
was received up into Heaven and
sat down at the right hand of God
’ (16:19). In Luke, however, all the Apostles then ‘
returned to Jerusalem with great joy and were continually in the Temple praising and blessing God
’ (24:53).

This return to Jerusalem is not paralleled in the other Gospels, which are more interested in their view of the Pauline ‘going forth’ and ‘making Disciples of all the Peoples’ of Mt 28:19 and pars. Notwithstanding, it is paralleled by the sense of the notice from the Gospel of Thomas above and, even more importantly, in how James’ Community is pictured as
being in the Temple every day
in early Church testimony and by refraction in Acts. This note about
being continually in the Temple
is, once again, both striking and ‘Jamesian’ in ethos and probably true.

This post-resurrection appearance by ‘Jesus’ to his most well-known Disciples along the shores of Lake
Gennesaret
in John lends further weight, then, to the fact that all traditions – those of the early Church, Qumran, and New Testament raconteurs – are operating within the same ‘
B–L–‘
’/‘
Balaam
’/‘
Belial
’ parameters. In addition, the New Testament and early Church writers appear to have had full knowledge of both James’ death scenario and the tradition of
a first post-resurrection appearance to him
, now altered and overwritten though, on the surface, sometimes seemingly playfully – in the end, always disparagingly whether in the tradition of the Synoptic or the Johannine Gospels.

Chapter 21

Last Supper Scenarios, the Emmaus Road,
and the Cup of the Lord

Breaking Bread
and
Eating
in Other Gospels

We should now return to other ‘eating’ and ‘breaking-bread’ scenarios in the Gospels. These not only incorporate the essence of this appearance by the Sea of Galilee in the Gospel of John in a more Jerusalem-oriented framework, but bear a direct relationship to Paul’s ‘Communion with the blood’ of Christ, announced in 1 Corinthians 10:14–11:13 amid further allusions to ‘eating and drinking’ (11:29). In doing so, Paul addresses his discussion also to ‘Beloved Ones’ – this time his own (10:14).

In John, Jesus appears in Jerusalem preceding the appearance along the shore of the Sea of Galilee.
This is
reproduced to some extent in Mark’s documentation of an appearance by Jesus in Jerusalem ‘to the Eleven as they were reclining’ (Mk 16:14). Another of these manifestations in Jerusalem is Luke’s Emmaus Road appearance, which also incorporates yet another allusion to ‘reclining’ (Lk 24:30).

Circumscribed as it may be, Mark also alludes to this appearance in Luke to the two ‘walking on their way into the country’. But, derogatory as ever, he emphasizes the lack of Pauline-style ‘
belief
’; for him, Jesus is, once again, censuring his core Apostles for ‘
their unbelief and hardness of heart
, because
they did not believe those who had seen him risen
’ (16:11–13). In these appearances, Jesus also generally shows ‘his hands and his feet’ so, like Thomas, they can see the holes, or, as in Luke 24:41, when he asks for ‘
something eatable
’, they give him ‘
a piece of broiled fish and a honeycomb’
!

Luke’s description of Jesus’ appearance on the Emmaus Road, preceding his ‘
standing
’ in the midst of the Eleven as they were ‘
assembled
’ in Jerusalem, not only parallels Paul’s vision along another road – this, ‘
to Damascus
’
– but actually ties all our themes together. It is that important and also almost completely paralleled by the description of the
first appearance
to James in the Gospel Jerome calls, ‘according to the Hebrews’. This latter described how, ‘
after the Lord had given the linen clothes to the Servant of the Priest, he went to James and appeared to him. For James had sworn that he would not eat bread from that hour in which he drank the Cup of the Lord until he should see him risen again from among those that sleep
.’

Not only does this clearly play on James’ seeming proclivity for Nazirite oath procedures (not to mention his Rechabitism), it appears to replace ‘Last Supper’ scenarios where the Gospels picture ‘Jesus’ announcing Paul’s ‘Holy Communion’ doctrines. Here too ‘the Servant of the Priest’ clearly means ‘of the High Priest’ bearing out Qumran usage to similar effect. Curiously enough, this ‘Servant of the High Priest’ reappears in the Gospels as the one
whose ear Peter lops off
in the struggle when Jesus is arrested (Mt 26:51 and pars.)! Finally, the excerpt from the Gospel of the Hebrews continues in Jerome:

And again, a little later, it says, ‘The Lord said, “Bring a table and bread!”’ And immediately it adds, ‘He took the bread, blessed it, broke it, and
gave it to James the Just
and said to him, “My brother, eat your bread, for
the Son of Man is risen from among those that sleep
.”’

Not only do we have here a parallel to both ‘Jesus’’
breaking the bread and giving it to ‘Cleopas’ and the unnamed other
along the Emmaus Road in Luke and
to his principal Disciples along the Sea of Galilee
in John; but something of the actual wording Paul uses in 1 Corinthians 11:24, in delineating his doctrine of ‘
Communion with’ the body and blood of Jesus Christ
– the basis too of these Gospel presentations of ‘the Last Supper’. Bringing all these allusions full circle, these Gospel ‘Last Supper’ scenarios also incorporate the references to ‘Judas
the
Iscariot
’ or ‘Judas
(“the son”
or
“brother”) of
Simon Iscariot
’, which will be so telling when it comes to unraveling all these ‘
brother
’ allusions.

Before returning to this appearance on the Road to Emmaus in Luke, it would be well to look at these ‘Last Supper’ scenarios in the Gospels – the language of which is paralleled both in Paul’s 1 Corinthians and in this excerpt about James from the lost Gospel of the Hebrews. In the Gospels, these ‘Last Supper’ scenarios are always introduced by references to ‘Judas
the
Iscariot
’ in the Synoptics (Mk 14:10) and ‘Judas (the son or brother)
of
Simon
Iscariot
’ in John 13:2. He, in turn, is almost always described as he ‘
who would deliver him up
’ or ‘
betray him
’ – language repeatedly recapitulated in the Scrolls, but always with a completely differing signification usually meaning God’s ‘
Wrath
’ on Israel for ‘
rebelliousness
’ or ‘
Covenant-breaking
’.
1

These descriptions of ‘Judas
Iscariot
’ also generally include a reference to ‘
Satan
’ (Lk 22:3) or ‘
the Devil
’ (
Diabolos
– Jn 13:2 – Jn 13:27 even interchanging both allusions in the same context). Characteristically, Luke also contains an attack on ‘
those who recline
’ and does so in the context of evocation of ‘
the Kings of the Peoples
’ (
Ethnon
) – a term in the Damascus Document almost undoubtedly denoting
Herodian Kings
– which again introduces another of these seemingly completely unjustified attacks on ‘Simon’ (that is, ‘Peter’) as someone ‘
Satan has claimed for himself
’ (22:25–31).

Since this very phraseology, ‘
Kings of the Peoples
’, also appears in Roman legal practice where it is used to denote puppet kings in the East of the genre of these Herodians and others, this is yet another concrete philological link between the Gospels and the Scrolls. One cannot help but think of the parallel allusion in Josephus’ picture of Agrippa II ‘
reclining’ while eating and watching the Temple sacrifices from his balcony
. In this connection, it should not be forgotten that it was the visit to the household of his father Agrippa I by the ‘
Simon
’ in Josephus,
who wanted to bar him and
Herodians generally
from the Temple
as foreigners
, that we believe is historical rather than some of the other visits and positions, the New Testament pictures the individual it is calling ‘
Simon
’ as taking.

In Luke’s picture of Jesus’ repartee with and his aside to Simon at the Last Supper, contemptuously dismissing Simon’s expressed willingness to be imprisoned and die with him,
Jesus rather throws up to Simon his coming denial
. This, according to Jesus, will occur
three times
or is it to be
the cock that crows
three times
– another favourite piece of Gospel folklore (Lk 22:33–34 and 22:60)? Again, it is hard to conceive that in some esoteric manner all these citations are not connected. How ironic it would be if this favourite episode of Jesus at ‘the Last Supper’ teaching ‘his Disciples’ what amounts basically to the Greek Mystery Religion practice of consuming the body and blood of the living and dying god was connected in some manner to Agrippa II’s eating and reclining while viewing the sacrifices in the Temple in a state of some kind of uncleanness in the Temple Wall Affair (which we have already specified as
leading directly and inexorably to the death of James
).