James the Brother of Jesus and the Dead Sea Scrolls II (56 page)

In Mark, Jesus’ activity comes right before 8:1–9 and 14–21’s second and third versions of Jesus’ ‘
multiplication of the loaves
’ miracle. So, not only is the performance of miracles on behalf of
Gentiles
continued, but so obsessed is Mark with this metaphor from the Damascus Document of ‘
unstopped ears
’ and, in the process, trivializing it and reducing it to the level of banality, that he is now prepared to depict Jesus as performing yet another miracle in a predominantly Gentile area – and this, despite the fact that in both 8:10–13 and Matthew 16:1–4 to follow, in response yet again to more ‘
Pharisee
’ prodding he i
m
patiently asserts: ‘
Why does this generation seek a sign
?
Verily I say unto you
, t
here shall be no sign given unto this gener
a
tion.’
What is this miracle? Mark 7:33–34 now depicts Jesus as ‘
unstopping the ears
’
of
‘
a deaf man
’ in the following manner: ‘
Putting his fingers into his ears and having spit
,
(he) touched his tongue
(thus)
and
,
looking up to Heaven
,
he groaned and said
‘
Ephphatha
’,
that is
, ‘
be opened
’ (this is real Hellenistic magic, the language being Aramaic, but even explained and tran
s
lated for the benefit of
the
Greek audience
),
and imm
ediately his ears were unstopped
!
Need one say more?

However the reader might respond to the imbecility of the picture of this ‘
miracle
’ – based, as we contend it is, on redu
c
ing serious allusions in the Damascus Document to the level of idiocy – to go back to Matthew 15:16: there the rebuke about ‘
being yet without understanding
’
is directed at Peter alone
. Notwithstanding, prior to this, after ‘
calling the Multitude
’ or ‘
the Many to him
’ (15:10, reprised in Mark 7:14), Jesus does actually address ‘
the Disciples
’ in Matthew in 15:12 as well. There the reproof he gives ‘
the Disciples
’ concerning staying away from ‘
the Pharisees
’ and ‘
leaving them alone
’ – which includes the ‘
Blind Guides
’, ‘
planting
’, and ‘
uprooting
’ allusions – comes in the wake of his enunciation of the following famous doctrine: ‘
Not that which enters the mouth defiles the man
,
but that which proceeds out of the mouth
,
this defiles the man’
(15:11).

This allusion to ‘
the Pharisees
’, the evocation of whom initiated the whole series of encounters right from the beginning of Mark 7:1 and Matthew 15:1, comes – as Matthew 15:12 now phrases it – because ‘
the Disciples
’ reported to Jesus that ‘
the Pharisees were offended by what they heard him saying
’ (the reader should appreciate, it would be so easy to read here, ‘
what they heard Paul saying
’). It must be reiterated that expressions like ‘
the Pharisees
’, regardless of their overt meaning in any ot
h
er context, have a covert meaning as well and this is the key to understanding ‘
The New Testament Code
’ such as it is. They – like ‘
the Scribes
’/‘
some
of the Scribes who came down from Jerusalem
’ coupled with them in Matthew 15:1 and Mark 7:1 above – are, in this context in the Gospels, a stand-in for ‘
the James Community
’ in Jerusalem. Not only did this
Community
insist on
circumcision
, but also its legal consequences, such as purity regulations that included measures of bodily hygiene like ‘
washing their hands
’ that seem, in the picture Mark and Matthew are presenting, to so upset their ‘Jesus’ here.

It is also perhaps not without relevance that an expression like ‘
Pharisees
’–
Perushim
in Hebrew – carries with it the mea
n
ing of ‘
splitting away
’ or ‘
separating themselves from
’, the implication being that, in some contexts, it can even be understood as ‘
heretics
’ which, in fact, is one of the appositions Acts applies to it in 15:5. Nor should the reader overlook the fact that Matthew’s picture of Jesus reproving the Pharisees follows his exhortation to ‘
the Many
’/‘
the
Rabbim
’ in 15:10 to ‘
hear and understand
’ (in Mark 7:14, ‘
hear me all of you and understand
’) – a phrase, as we just saw, that has to be seen as comparable to CD I.1’s: ‘
Now hear
,
all you who know Righteousness and understand the works of God
’. Matthew 15:14 also pictures Jesus as calling these
Pharisees
‘
Blind Guides
’ (an allusion we shall presently show to be charged with significance) because of their complaints against his teaching that ‘
eating with unclean hands does not defile the man
’ (15:20), as well as related matters co
n
cerning purity and dietary regulations, themselves having a bearing on the key issue in Galatians 2:11–14 of
table fellowship with Gentiles
.

It is at this point that Jesus in Matthew 15:14 then cautions
his Disciples
(none of this paralleled now in Mark) to ‘
leave them alone
’ – the sense of which allusion will be of particular importance when it comes to discussing the exegesis of ‘
the Way in the wilderness
’ of Isaiah 40:3 in the Community Rule below. Before doing so, however, it would be well to point out that even the line in Matthew 15:19, preceding 15:20 on ‘
eating with unclean hands not defiling the man
’, enumerates ‘
the things which proceed out of the mouth
’ (thereby, according to the discourse being attributed here to Jesus, ‘
coming forth out of the heart
’ and, most famously, therefore ‘
defiling the man
’) as: ‘
Evil thoughts
,
murders
,
adulteries
,
fornications
,
thefts
,
lies
,
bla
s
phemies
–
these are the things that defile the man
’ (Mark 7:22 adds ‘
greedy desires
,
Wickednesses
,
deceit
,
lustful desires
,
an Evil eye
,
pride
,
and foolishness
’).

But this catalogue of ‘
Evil
’ inclinations almost precisely reprises one of the most famous passages in the Community Rule – ‘
the Two Ways
’: ‘
the Ways of Darkness
’
and
‘
the Ways of Light
’. In this document, ‘
the Spirit of Evil
’/‘
Ungodliness
’ or ‘
of Darkness
’ is depicted even more lengthily as: ‘
greediness of soul
,
stumbling hands in the Service of Righteousness
(cf. 2 Cori
n
thians 11:15),
Wickedness and Lying
,
pride and proudness of heart
,
duplicitousness and deceitfulness
,
cruelty
,
Evil temper
,
impatience
,
foolishness
,
and zeal for lustfulness
,
works of Abomination in a spirit of fornication
,
and ways of uncleanness in the Service of pollution
(as opposed to the proper ‘
Service of Righteousness
’ of ‘
true
’ Apostles),
a
Tongue
full of blasphemies
,
blindness of eye and dullness of ear
,
stiffness of neck and hardness of heart
in order to walk in all the Ways of Darkness and Evil inclination’
.
35

Blind Guides
, the
Maschil
, and
Walking in the Way of Perfection

This is quite a catalogue, but the parallels with Matthew and Mark do not stop here. Even the allusion to ‘
Blind Guides
’, to say nothing of ‘
leave them alone
’, which Matthew depicts Jesus as applying to
the Pharisees
, actually seems to parody the pi
v
otal character evoked at Qumran (in particular, in the Community Rule again, but also in the Hymns), ‘
the
Maschil
’ or ‘
the Guide
’. He is defined, just like ‘
the Teacher of Righteousness
’), as instructing ‘
the Many
’
in the Ways of Righteousness
.
36

In the Community Rule this
Maschil
or
Guide
is pictured,
inter alia
, as ‘
doing the will of God
’ (that is,
being ‘a Doer
’ not ‘
a Breaker
’ in the manner of the recommendations in James 1:22–25) and ‘
studying all the Wisdom that has been discovered from age to age
’,
to
separate
and evaluate the Sons of the Righteous One according to their spirit
and fortify the Elect of the Age according to His will as He commanded and
,
thereby
,
to do His Judgement on every man according to His spirit’
.
37
This does begin to become New Testament-like. Not only does it hark back to the ‘
Two Spirits
’, with which we began this discu
s
sion, and Paul’s ‘
knowing the things of man according to the spirit of man which is in him
’ of 1 Corinthians 2:11–15, but this description of ‘
the Guide
’ in the Community Rule then goes on to actually evoke two allusions, ‘
clean hands
’ and ‘
not arguing with the Sons of the Pit
’ – in other words, the ‘
leave them alone
’ just encountered in passages from Matthew 15:14 and, perhaps even more strikingly, yet another – the third, ‘
the Pit
’, an allusion known throughout the Dead Sea Scrolls and which we shall presently encounter in Jesus’ further disparagement of these ‘
Blind Guides
’ as we proceed: ‘
(
The
Maschil
shall allow
)
each man to draw near according to the
cleanness of his hands
and his wisdom and
,
thus
,
shall be his love together with his hate. Nor should he admonish or argue with the Sons of the Pit
.’

Furthermore, the
Guide
or
Maschil
is commanded in this telling concluding exhortation of the Community Rule to rather: ‘
c
onceal the counsel of the
Torah
(that is, ‘
the Law
’)
from the Men of Evil
,
confirming the Knowledge of the Truth and Righ
t
eous Judgement to the
Elect of the Way
…
comforting them with Knowledge, thereby guiding them in the Mysteries of the Marvelous Truth
…,
that is
,
to walk in Perfection each with his neighbor’.
38
We shall hear more about all these concepts pre
s
ently.