James the Brother of Jesus and the Dead Sea Scrolls II (23 page)

This is also the implication behind Paul’s defensiveness over the ‘
Enemy
’ epithet in Galatians 4:15–19, an allusion which flows directly into just such an evocation and three times in the next two lines plays off and clearly displays Paul’s obsession with the idea that
those opposing him are consumed by
‘
zeal
’, that is,
they were
‘
zealous to exclude
’, (as of course those called ‘
Zealot
’ or ‘
Sicarii
Essenes
’ in Hippolytus would have been
37
), not – as he then puts it so disingenuously
38
– ‘
zealous for the right thing
’. Not only were they, therefore, ‘
Zealots for the Law
’; they were certainly ‘
zealous for circumcision
’.

Also in the allusion to Elijah in the Letter of James above, there is just the slightest hint of the kind of prefiguration, in the ‘
zeal
’ being referred to in ‘
the efficacious prayer of the Just One
’, of James’ own ‘
efficacious prayer
’ and ‘
zeal
’. In the same way that Synoptic tradition represents Elijah as prefiguring John the Baptist – both, as it were, fulfilling the same kind of incarnationist function – the implication of this evocation of Elijah’s powerfully ‘
zealous
’ rainmaking in this Letter is that James, too, is one of these pre-existent ‘
Priestly
’ Rainmakers, ‘
consumed by a burning zeal
’ and an ‘
Elijah
redivivus
’. Nor should it be forgotten that the evocation in it of both ‘
early and late rain
’ (5:7), once again,
has to do with coming eschatological Judgement
.

Numerology, ‘
Eating and Drinking
’, and the Pre-Existent
Zaddik

In the subject matter of the Letter of James, therefore, there are hints of both the kind of atonement James (‘
the Just One
’) is depicted as making in all early Church sources in the Holy of Holies on at least one particular Day of Atonement – if not many – and the proclamation ‘
on the Pinnacle of the Temple
’ he is pictured in these same sources as having made just before he was killed.
39
This last, as we just saw, is that of ‘
the Son of Man sitting on the right hand of the Great Power
’ – one of the actual definitions in Aramaic, it will be recalled, that Epiphanius gives of the term ‘
Elchasai
’, namely ‘
Great Power
’ – and ‘
about to come
(in the manner of Daniel 7:13)
on the clouds of Heaven
’.

While the timeframe spoken of in James 5:17 of ‘
three years and six months
’ is not precisely the more general one 1 Kings associates with Elijah’s rainmaking when it speaks of how ‘
after three years
’
Elijah commanded that the drought be ended
(18:1), still the two are basically the same and this is clearly the point the writer of James is intent on conveying. For its part, Luke 4:24–25, which now has Jesus
compare his own miracles to Elijah
’
s
, also evokes ‘
three and a half years
’ to describe the period when ‘
Heaven was shut up and there was a great famine throughout the land
’.

Even more significantly, whether coincidentally or otherwise, this timeframe is also that of Daniel 12:7’s chronology of ‘
a time
,
two times
,
and a half
’ or, as this is more or less repeated in Daniel 8:14 earlier, ‘
two thousand three hundred evenings and mornings
’. In Daniel, this timeframe is usually thought of as relating to the interruption of the perpetual sacrifice at the time of the Maccabean Uprising, when Antiochus Epiphanes erected ‘
the Abomination of the Desolation
’
in the Temple
– thought to have been a statue of the Olympian Zeus
40
– alluded to as well in Daniel 8:13 and 12:11 together with allusions to ‘
the End Time
’ (1 Maccabees 1:55).

But an alternative scheme of reckoning could just as easily have seen this chronology as applying to the time between the death of James in 62 CE and the stopping of sacrifice in the Temple on behalf of Romans and other foreigners and the reje
c
tion of their gifts by the ‘
zealous
’ lower priesthood
approximately three and a half years
later, an event which started the Uprising against Rome and the cataclysmic events unleashed thereby.
41

If one accepts the relationship of this with Daniel, then this whole cluster of notices can throw light on how the timeframe in Daniel was seen in the Second Temple Period. The presence of this reference to ‘
three and a half years
’ at this juncture in the Letter of James – an important yardstick in Daniel’s eschatology – might be an indication both of
how James
’
death was seen by his followers
and
how the coming of this final apocalyptic Holy War
,
represented by the Uprising against Rome
,
must have been seen by its participants
.
42

Even early Church sources like those collected by Eusebius take a similar view of the relationship of James’ death to the cataclysmic events that, as far as they were concerned, immediately followed his death and were not unrelated to it.
43
It should be appreciated that even earlier than Eusebius, Origen claims to have seen – in the copy of Josephus’ works he too evidently found in the library of Caesarea – a statement connecting James’ death and not Jesus’ directly to the fall of Jerusalem that fo
l
lowed it, to which he, like Eusebius thereafter, took great umbrage – the reason perhaps why the notice has disappeared from all normative copies of Josephus ever since.
44

However these things may be, the
Talmud
devotes a whole section of one of its oldest and most accurate books,
Tractate
Ta
‘
anith
, to the subject of ‘
rainmaking
’. In doing so, it evokes Isaiah 45:8 about
‘the Heavens pouring down Righteousness
(
Zedek
)
and the Earth opening and bringing forth Salvation
(
Yesha
‘
),
and Justification
(
Zedakah
)
growing up together
(
with them
)’.
This is clearly one of the most triumphant ‘Messianic’ passages in Scripture, culminating in the assertion in Isaiah 45:17 of Israel’s redemption or, as the text expresses it, ‘
Israel will be
saved
in the Lord with an everlasting
Salvation
’ (
Yeshu
‘
a
). A number of Qumran texts emphasizing precisely this kind of ‘
saved
’/‘
saving
’/‘
Salvation
’ (
Yesha
‘
/
Yeshu
‘
a
/
yizzil
) have come to light – these in addition to the several known notices of this kind in the Damascus Document, the Community Rule, and the Habakkuk
Pesher
.
45
The rich vocabulary of the passage quoted above – in fact, the whole section of Isaiah in which it is found – is important regarding the subject of such ‘
Messianism
’ as well.

Talmud
Ta
‘
anith
specifically interprets this passage from Isaiah to mean that ‘
rain will not fall unless Israel
’
s sins are fo
r
given
’ which, by implication, associates these matters somewhat with
Yom Kippur
or, at least, the central activity of that co
m
memoration,
atonement
. Here we are beginning to encounter not one but several of the themes connected to James’ activities in our sources, including one that we have already highlighted above,
his
praying for the forgiveness of the People in the Templ
e
, and the other, of course,
his rainmaking
.

In the same passages,
Ta
‘
anith
compares ‘
the day on which rain falls to the day on which Heaven and Earth were created
’, evoking the same imagery of ‘
spring rain
’ which we encountered in the Letter of James regarding
the imminent
‘
coming of the Lord
’.
46
This not only ends by alluding to
Elijah
’
s efficacious rainmaking
, but also evokes another allusion related to Isaiah 45:8, that of ‘
the farmer waiting for the precious fruit of the Earth
’ (James 5:7).

The word
Ta
‘
anith
uses in connection with the coming of such ‘
spring rain
’ is
yoreh
, the primary meaning of which is ‘
pou
r
ing down
’. ‘
Yoreh
’ is, of course, homophonic for the designation
moreh
or ‘
teacher
’ in Hebrew; and exactly the same usage a
p
pears on at least one occasion in the Damascus Document as a variation on the
Teacher of Righteousness
, that is, instead of his being a ‘
Moreh ha-Zedek
’, he is a ‘
Yoreh ha-Zedek
’ – meaning, ‘
he
pours down Righteousness
’ just as, presumably,
these
‘
spring rains
’
do
.
47

These are admittedly complex imageries but the reader will, at least, appreciate the fertility of the ancient artificer’s mind and that they are certainly present in the documents before us where they are being formulated with great precision. Jerome, in his work, also interprets this passage in Isaiah in terms of
coming eschatological Judgement
. In his translation, however, it does not simply involve ‘
letting the clouds pour down Righteousness
’, but ‘
let the clouds
pour down the Just One
’, an important variation where James is concerned – to say nothing of
the Teacher of Righteousness
!
In the War Scroll too, as we shall deli
n
eate further below,
these clouds
‘
pour down Judgement
’ (
Mishpat
).
48

In connection with these themes of ‘
Heaven and Earth
’ and James’
rainmaking
, not only do these words have to do with James’ pre-existent
Zaddik
-status but the ‘
Pillar
’ imagery Paul employs to designate the Leadership of ‘
the Jerusalem Assembly
’ in Galatians 2:9, itself probably based on ‘
the
Zaddik
the Pillar
’ or ‘
the
Zaddik
the Foundation of the world
’ phraseology found in Proverbs 10:25 – again, as Paul uses the term, therefore alluding to James’
Zaddik
-status.

The same kinds of references to ‘
Heaven and Earth
’ also appear in the Synoptic Gospels. In a variation in ‘
the Little Apocalypses
’ above, all three Gospels – in the context, it should be emphasized, of alluding to ‘
seeing the Son of Man coming on the clouds of Heaven with Power
’ – speak of ‘
Heaven and Earth passing away
’
but not Jesus
’
words
.
49
The version in Ma
t
thew 24:30–34 goes, however, even further because it actually compares – not insignificantly – ‘
the coming of the Son of Man
’
to
‘
the days of Noah
’, then evoking obscure imagery about how ‘
they were eating and drinking
,
marrying and giving in ma
r
riage
,
until the day when Noah entered into the ark
’ (24:37–38).