James the Brother of Jesus and the Dead Sea Scrolls II (22 page)

This idea of participation in final apocalyptic Judgement is outlined in the Habakkuk
Pesher
from Qumran with regard to ‘
the Elect of Israel
’ and dominates climactic portions of the presentation in the War Scroll.
18
In fact, in this document, one can actually find a description of
the coming of the Messiah with the Heavenly Host in final apocalyptic Judgement
. But this is also the case in the Damascus Document’s crucial exegesis of Ezekiel 44:15, where the all-important ‘
Sons of Zadok
’ are identified as ‘
the Elect of Israel called by name who will stand in the Last Days
’ (‘
stand up
’, if the sense is that of resurrection), and ‘
just
i
fy the Righteous and condemn the Wicked
’ – all allusions which must be considered eschatological.
19

In Hegesippus’ portrait, James is pictured as calling down this Judgement in the Temple in terms of the imagery of the Messiah coming on the clouds of Heaven (described in terms of the coming of ‘
the Myriads of Angels and Spirits
’ or ‘
the Heavenly Host
’ in the War Scroll from Qumran
20
), first evoked, as just noted, in apocalyptic visions of Daniel 7:13–14. The same proclamation is attributed to Jesus, albeit perhaps retrospectively, in several key places in the Gospels.
21
There Jesus is described in two separate contexts – first in ‘
the Little Apocalypses
’ – as proclaiming that ‘
they shall see the Son of Man co
m
ing on the clouds of Heaven with Great Power and Glory
’ (Luke 21:27). Both Mark 13:27 and Matthew 24:31 add the ‘
sending of His Angels
’ and ‘
Elect from the four winds
’ to this array. Not only should one note the overlap in general with the ‘
Elect
’ language in various contexts in the Scrolls in which ‘
the Holy Angels
’ also appear, but the
Elchasaite
/Simon
M
a
gus
/Pseudoclementine-like language of the
Power
/
Great Power
.
22

The same proclamation is repeated at ‘
the
High Priest’s house
’ in response to the question, ‘
are you the Christ, the Son of God
’:
‘and you shall see the Son of
Man
sitting at the right hand of Power and coming on the clouds of Heaven’
(Matthew 26:63–64/Mark 14:61–62).
Not only is this the exact proclamation attributed to James in the Temple in 62 CE, three and a half years before the outbreak of the War against Rome, in response to basically the same question (here attributed to ‘
the Scribes and the Pharisees
’;
cf
. too its reflection, not surprisingly, in the speech attributed to James’ stand-in ‘
Stephen
’ in Acts 7:55–56), but it will also be the kind of visionary proclamation that will be set forth in climactic portions of the War Scroll from Qumran, both in terms of ‘
cloud
’ imagery and
the
coming of rain
. This is the same ‘
coming
’ and ‘
sending of rain
’ which as ‘
the Sermon on the Mount
’ in Matthew 5:45 too will aver – in describing how to be ‘
Sons of Your Father who is in the Hea
v
ens
’ (plural ‘
Divine Sonship
’ as at Qumran
23
) and ‘
Perfect as Your Father who is in the Heavens is Perfect
’ (plural, too, as in the Hebrew ‘
Shamaim
’ – ‘
Heavens
’ is plural) will ‘
fall on the Just and Unjust alike
’.
24

The Rabbinical catalogue of traditions called
The Abbot de Rabbi Nathan
(
The Fathers according to Rabbi Nathan
) associates
rainmaking
or rains coming in their proper season with
proper Temple service
.
25
This theme of
proper Temple service
, performed by unpolluted Priests and expressed in terms of ‘
choosing a High Priest of higher purity
’, is a favorite one in this period.
26
In these important passages in the
Abbot de Rabbi Nathan
, there is just the slightest hint of a link to the kinds of sacrifice and o
f
fering of thanks Noah made to God after the Flood in Genesis 8:15–9:17. At the very least, Noah’s salvationary activities in this episode are connected to the coming of rain, and, in the ‘
rainbow sign
’ material at its close, its cessation. In some sense, therefore, where these very obscure concepts of ‘
eschatological rain
’ or ‘
flood
’ are concerned, Noah can be viewed as the first atoning Rainmaker and his salvationary activities associated with the coming of rain and its cessation.

The repetition of both of these themes, that is, the coming of rain and its cessation, will also be ascribed to the prototyp
i
cal prophet Elijah, as they will to the odd person we shall discuss more fully below, ‘
Nakdimon ben Gurion
’ – James’ conte
m
porary, who at a time of drought is also pictured as ‘
making rain
’ like James.
27
Both themes, that is, the bringing of rain and its cessation, will be evoked too in apocalyptic portions of the Letter attributed to James where, to come full circle, the whole ideology of bringing and halting rain is connected to ‘
the
efficacious prayer of the Just One
’ (5:17–18).
28

Not only was Noah the first ‘
Righteous One
’ or ‘
Zaddik
’ (‘
Righteous and Perfect in his generation
’), a fact that our liter
a
ture is not slow to remark, but, for the Rabbinic sages, so ‘
Perfect
’ was he that
he was
born circumcised
!
29
However bizarre this claim might seem to us today – the Rabbis still contend such persons, while rare, do exist – it connects the ‘
circumcision
’ ideal to the ‘
Perfection
’ one and, by implication, that of the
atoning
,
rainmaking
Zaddik
– all themes in one way or another related to the extant picture of James. In another sense, the Primordial Flood that wiped all life from the earth except ‘
Noah the Righteous
’
30
and his family can be seen as an eschatological one and there is certainly a note of this in Genesis 9:8–9:17’s a
c
count of the promise God makes to Noah after his ‘
Righteous
’ sacrifice when He displayed for him
the Rainbow Sign
.

Canny as ever, the Gospels pick this eschatological sense up as well, in apocalyptic statements attributed to Jesus in the ‘
Little Apocalypses
’ again though the ‘
sign
’ for Matthew 24:17/Mark 13:14 is Daniel’s ‘
Abomination of the Desolation stan
d
ing where it ought not to stand
’
;
while for Luke 21:20, prescient as ever too, it is ‘
Jerusalem surrounded by armies
’ – fairly convincing evidence that all three were written after the fall of the Temple.
This is how Kabbalistic Jewish documents like the Medieval
Zohar
– that itself may go back to Second Temple sources – see the
Flood
as well, asserting that Noah ‘
who sought Righteousness
’, ‘
withdrew
’ or ‘
hid himself in the ark
’.

In other notices in the
Zohar
, this is expressed as:
‘Noah was
hidden
in the ark on the Day of the Lord
’
s Anger and was placed beyond the reach of the
Adversary
.’
In this passage, not only do we have hints of the ‘
Hidden
’ terminology that will so permeate the New Testament and apocryphal texts associated with John the Baptist, but also ‘the
Enemy
’ sobriquet so stri
k
ingly applied to the assailant who attacked James on the Temple Mount in the Pseudoclementine
Recognitions
. Not only is this ‘
Enemy
’ fundamental to ‘
Jewish Christian
’ or ‘
Ebionite
’ theology about Paul, but it is also to be found in Matthew’s ‘
Parable of the Tares
’ – probably the single instance of a pro-‘
Jewish Christian
’ or
Ebionite
parable in the Gospels (13:25–40). It is a
p
plied, too, to the opponent of the author of the Letter of James 4:4
31
(‘
by making yourself a friend of man, you turn yourself into an
Enemy
of God
’) and known to Paul in Galatians 4:16 (‘
your
Enemy
have I then become by speaking Truth to you
’), most likely in debate with or response to James where, by implication, it is reversed.

All lead into a new, albeit ephemeral, ideology from this period – also reflected in the War Scroll from Qumran as just si
g
naled – ‘
eschatological rain
’. Not surprisingly – aside from James’ related proclamation in the Temple in early Church witnes
s
es to the circumstances surrounding his death – ‘
rainmaking
and the theme of ‘
coming eschatological Judgement
’ are also i
n
trinsic to James’ Letter, not to mention the one ascribed to ‘
Jude the brother of James
’ – his putative brother.
32
As we shall see in more detail as we proceed, in some of the most splendid eschatological imagery of any biblical document, James 5:8–11, – following its condemning ‘
the Rich
’
for
‘
killing the Righteous One
’ (5:6) and just before evoking Elijah’s saving activity of both
bringing and stopping the rain
– evokes the theme of the imminent ‘
coming of the Lord
’ or ‘
the Lord of Hosts
’, that is, of coming eschatological Judgement.

Here not only does one find an extremely aggressive apocalypticism, asserting that ‘
the cries of the reapers have reached the ears of the Lord of Hosts
’, but also a double entendre playing off the parallel theme of ‘
the Last Judgement
’, ‘
the Rich have amassed for themselves treasure in the Last Days
’ (5:3). It ends amid the splendid imagery of ‘
spring
’ and ‘
late rain
’ (5:7) – imagery known, as we shall see, in similar contexts to the
Talmud
33
– by evoking
final eschatological Judgement on all ma
n
kind
and, along with it, the just-mentioned
efficacious
Power
of the
‘
prayer of the Just One
’ (James 5:9–16). This last theme is connected in James to the ‘
Zealot
’ priestly forerunner Elijah – ‘
Zealot
’ because of the repeated description of him in Kings and derivative notices as having ‘
a
burning zeal
for God
’ (1 Kings 19:10).
34
As James 5:17–18 puts this – he both ‘
prays for it not to rain
’ and then, after ‘
three years and six months
’, to rain again.
35

In other words, James’ activity is being compared to that of Elijah, who, in 1 Kings 18:1–45, brings on a whirlwind – i
m
agery duplicated in introductory portions of the Nahum
Pesher
from Qumran not originally available in earlier translations of Qumran documents, not to mention in Ezekiel (aside from Isaiah, perhaps Qumran’s favorite prophet).
36
In such a context, therefore, James too can be viewed as a ‘
Zealot
’ and, indeed, he is indisputably presented as such – or at least the majority of those who follow him are – in the last notice about him in Acts 21:21. There James is presented as explaining to Paul that the majority of his followers in the so-called ‘
Jerusalem Assembly
’ or ‘
Church
’ are ‘
Zealots for the Law
’.