James the Brother of Jesus and the Dead Sea Scrolls II (52 page)

Jesus’ response – seemingly
playing on the non-Jewish origins of this mother and her daughter
– turns on the following statement: ‘
First to be
filled
(or ‘
sated
’/‘
satisfied
’)
should be the
children
.
It is not good to take the children
’
s bread and cast it (
balein
) to the little dogs
(paralleling ‘
the little children
’
above
, increasing the ‘
Gentile Christian
’ overtones of this episode).’
This is from Mark 7:27, the fuller exposition. Matthew 15:26, for its part, omits the allusion to ‘
filled
’ and, therefore, the first reference to ‘
children
’, but it does pick up the second, that is, ‘
it is not good to take the children
’
s bread and cast it to the little dogs
’, as well as the reference to ‘
balein
’. Moreover, in Mark 7:25, the ‘
daughter
’ is actually even
her
‘
little
daughter
’ and 7:24–25 also includes the usual telltale introductory usage ‘
a certain woman
’, the fact that Jesus ‘
could not be hidden
’, and the mother, once again, both ‘
coming
’ and ‘
falling at his feet
’.

Not only does the omnipresent ‘
casting
’ language permeate the episode but Mark’s use of the ‘
satiated
’ or ‘
filled
’ vocab
u
lary mirrors or, at least, evokes that in Luke’s account of the ‘
Poor Man Lazarus longing to be filled
’ – to say nothing of his ‘
dogs
’ – again showing the basic interconnectedness of these three encounters, not to mention the
Talmud
’s
Ben Kalba Sabu
‘
a
, the cognomen of whom in Aramaic, as we saw, actually means ‘
filled
’ and to whose ‘
door one came hungry as a dog and went away filled
’!

We shall ultimately also actually encounter this same language of ‘
being filled
’, ‘
sated
’, or ‘
satiated
’, in the Habakkuk
Pesher
’s description of the final destruction of
the Wicked Priest,
in which the latter is depicted – as in Revelation – as ‘
drinking the Cup of the Wrath of God to
filling
’ or ‘
to satiation
’.
22
This last means ‘
to the dregs
’ or – paralleling similar significations in Revelation 14:10 and 16:19
23
– that ‘
he would drink his fill
’ of the Divine Vengeance which ‘
would come around to him
’ for what he had done to ‘
the Righteous Teacher
’ and those of his followers (
called
‘
the Poor
’ or
Ebionim
– in our view, James and his Community, pointedly referred to in early Church literature, as will by now have become crystal clear, as ‘
the Ebionites
’ or ‘
the Poor
’).

There is a slight hint here, should one choose to remark it, of Nakdimon ‘
filling
’ his own ‘
baths
’ or ‘
water cisterns
’ or those of the
master
or
lord
with whom he is negotiating. Nor is this to mention ‘
the six stone water-vessels
’ at the wedding ‘
in Cana of Galilee
’, which
Jesus
‘
filled
,
revealing his Glory
’ in John 2:6 or ‘
the twelve handbaskets of fragments from the five ba
r
ley loaves
’ which ‘
the Disciples
’
will
‘
fill
’
from the
‘
overflow
’ or ‘
remains
’ in
the
‘
feeding the five thousand
’ (
on the other side
‘
of the Sea of Galilee
’) in John 6:13 and other various spin-offs.

In fact, this decisive encounter with the
daughter
of the
Canaanite
/
Greek Syrophoenician woman
in Mark and Matthew is sandwiched between two others, the first in both Matthew 14:13–23 and Mark 6:30–46: the feeding of
the
‘
five thousand in a place in the desert
’ involving this same overflow in John 6:9–13 of ‘
twelve baskets full of fragments
’, meaning, of course, as in John, of ‘
barley loaves
’ or ‘
grain
’. So important was this episode evidently thought to be that now one even finds it in Luke (9:10–17). In fact in Matthew 14:20 and Luke 9:17, it is the ‘
multitudes
’ or the telltale ‘
Many
’ who are again characterized as
being
‘
satisfied
’ or ‘
sated
’, while in John 6:12 this comes across as ‘
when
’ or ‘
after they were filled
’.

Each now also includes the additional motif of ‘
five loaves and two fishes
’, adding up to the number ‘
seven
’, a numeration that will grow in importance as we proceed,
and, of course, all have the characteristic allusion to ‘
and they did all eat and they were satiated
’ or ‘
filled
’ (Matthew 14:20 and
pars
. – in John 6:12, as just alluded to, ‘
when they were filled
’). To these Mark 6:37 and John 6:7, in line with their respectively more extensive storylines, add the additional
pro forma
important allusion to ‘
two hundred
dinar
s of bread
’ – again, the ‘
bread
’
of
‘
the children
’ above – or ‘
loaves
’ (in John 6:13, ‘
loaves
’ – more intelligibly, no doubt, of ‘
barley
’ or ‘
wheat
’). Once again then here, not only do we have another indication of intertextuality between John and Mark as against the other Synoptics, but also, an additional variation on both the ‘
hundreds
’ and the ‘
dinar
s
’.

Interestingly enough, in John 6:1-5’s account of these ‘
twelve handbaskets
’ and ‘
two hundred
dinar
s
’ – where, as in all four (at this point), it is the same ‘
five thousand
’
who are being fed
– the time is specifically denoted as being ‘
near Passover
,
the Feast of the Jews
’ (6:4). Once again this is clearly being aimed at non-Jews, and for the same reasons, the whole episode in John 6:3 being equated with Moses’
Exodus
sojourn in the desert – Jesus being portrayed as ‘
going up into the mountain
’ ‘
with his Disciples
’ (repeated in Matthew 14:23 and Mark 6:46, but with different sequencing). This time in John, however, it is ‘
Phi
l
ip
’ rather than ‘
the Disciples
’ (as in the Synoptics) who – in response to Jesus’ question, on ‘
seeing a great crowd
’, ‘
whence shall we buy loaves that these may eat
?’ – replies in terms of the ‘
two hundred
dinar
s
’ (6:5-7). In the Synoptics this is turned around and it is ‘
the Disciples
’ who raise this question not Jesus (Mark 6:36 and
pars
.). Notwithstanding, in Luke 9:12 it is
the Twelve
who recommend sending ‘
the Many
’ away.

Be these things as they may, it is here Philip responds that even ‘
two hundred
dinar
s (worth) of loaves are insufficient for them.
In Mark 6:37 it is ‘
his Disciples
’ who again make this response, but note, in particular, the ‘
dinar
s
’/‘
pieces of silver
’ motif – this time in a factor of ‘
two hundred
’s not ‘
three
’, ‘
four
’, or ‘
five
’. Here, too, ‘
Andrew the brother of Simon Peter
’, ‘
one of his Disciples
’, suddenly also appears. One wonders what would be the effect of switching one or another of the other ‘
Simon
’s in here,
e.g.
, ‘
Simon the Cananaean
’, ‘
Simon the Leper
’, or even ‘
Simon Iscariot
’ – ‘
Andrew
’ basically being a derivative of the Greek ‘
Andros
’/‘
Man
’ (
Enosh
/
Bar-Adam
in Aramaic and
Ben-Adam
in Hebrew)?
24
He brings forward ‘
a little boy
’, not the ‘
little daughter
’ of Mark 7:25 above (here too, the variation on the ‘
little children
’ theme, we just saw above, in Jesus’ request to ‘
his Disciples
’, ‘
to let the little children to come unto
’
him in order that he should
‘
lay hands on
’ or ‘
touch them
’ in the run-up to the ‘
Rich man
’, ‘
camel
’, and ‘
eye of the needle
’ scenario in all three Synoptics, now reduced to just
one small boy
and acco
m
panied, this time, by the ‘
wheat
’ or ‘
barley
’ motif). It is he,
the
‘
little boy
’ as opposed to
the Disciples
or
the Twelve
in the Sy
n
optics, who now has the ‘
five barley loaves and two small fishes
’, out of which Jesus
will perform another of his great
‘
signs
’ (John 6:9–14).

It is interesting that these portraits of Jesus
feeding the five thousand
in Mark 6:30–46 and Matthew 14:13–23 come d
i
rectly after the description of John the Baptist’s execution by ‘
Herod
’ (Mark 6:14–29/Matthew 14:1–12), in particular, their depiction of John’s ‘
head
’
being brought to Herodias
’ ‘
daughter
’ (unnamed) ‘
upon a platter
’. Not only is this a completely ina
c
curate portrait, but it is probably based on the picture in Josephus of how Nero’s Jewish-leaning wife Poppea – who, accor
d
ing to him, in the period just prior to the Revolt against Rome, ‘
was interested in religious causes
’ – prevailed upon Nero to
behead his former wife
, whom he had previously only exiled, and, thereafter, have
her head
brought to
her
‘
on a platter
’!
25
If this is so, then we have in this Gospel rewrite, yet another marvelous example of pro-Roman and Hellenizing, anti-Jewish di
s
information.

In any event, Jesus then takes ‘
the loaves
’ and ‘
the little fishes
’ (
sic
) and gives them to his Disciples and ‘
when they were
full
’, ‘
they gathered up the fragments
’ or ‘
broken pieces
’, ‘
filling up twelve handbaskets with broken pieces
’
from
‘
the overflow
’ (John 6:11–13 – here of course the ‘
overflow
’ theme, together with yet another allusion to ‘
filling
’, as in the Nakdimon story and his ‘
filling up
’
the lord
’
s
‘
twelve cisterns to overflowing
’, which is to say nothing of ‘
the twelve handbaskets
’, that is, Nakdimon’s ‘
twelve water cisterns
’, etc., etc.).