James the Brother of Jesus and the Dead Sea Scrolls II (78 page)

This is also the way the allusion to
the barring of such
‘
dogs
’ on the basis of their not having ‘
kept away from carrion
’ is presented in
MMT
. Nor is this to mention the strictures in the Temple Scroll
barring
‘
skins sacrificed to idols
’
and unclean persons generally from the Temple related to it
– a ban, curiously enough, in this passage alluding in some manner to the pe
r
son or word ‘
Bela
‘
’.
23
Both of these matters, namely the ban on ‘
things sacrificed to idols
’ and that on ‘
Gentile gifts in the Temple
’, make up the bulk of
MMT
’s concerns up to the point of its consideration of Jerusalem as ‘
the Holy Camp
’ which it also describes, as we saw, as ‘
the Place which He chose from among all the Tribes of Israel as a resting place for His Name
’ and ‘
the Chief of the Camps of Israel
’.
Furthermore the ban on ‘
Dogs
’, ‘
because they might eat the bones with the flesh still on them
’, also
directly relates in its own way to the Temple.
24

On the other hand and seen in the light of problems with Gentile conversion in this period generally, it doesn’t take much imagination to see Matthew and Mark’s version of the retort of the
Cananaean
/
Greek Syrophoenician woman
as encompas
s
ing the kind of response a person like Queen Helen of Adiabene or one of her descendants might have made to someone cri
t
icizing their expensive gifts in the Temple or, as the case may be, referring to them as ‘
Dogs
’ – in this sense, Queen Helen would take the place of the
Canaanite
/
Greek Syrophoenician woman
just as, in our view, ‘
Ben Kalba Sabu
‘
a
’ is a name for one or another of her descendants or those of her sons.

In our view, too, just as the
Queen Helen of Adiabene
material reemerges, however tendentiously, into Acts 8:27’s story of ‘
the Queen of the Ethiopians
’ and her ‘
eunuch
’ treasury agent, so too Helen’s legendary presence hovers, however obscur
e
ly, in the background of these Gospel materials as well, not only because of her and her family’s wealth, legendary largesse, and
famine relief
efforts, but also because of there being in her story just the slightest suggestion of the ‘
prostitute
’ or ‘
adultery
’ motif – a motif present as well, as we have seen, in the matter of Jesus having ‘
cast seven demons
’
out of Mary Magdalene
(the ‘
harlot
’ character of whom is always lurking somewhere in the background of most traditions surrounding her) as it is with regard to Simon
Magus
’ legendary traveling companion – the ‘
Queen
’ named ‘
Helen
’ he, too, supposedly
retrieved out of the bordellos of Tyre
!
25

To go back to the original point behind these two issues –
the ban on Gentiles in the Temple and the rejection of their gifts and sacrifices from it
(
including those on behalf of the Emperor
) – these according to Josephus were the essential last straws triggering the Uprising against Rome in 66
CE
.
Josephus, as we have seen, disingenuously terms the banning of both of these by the more ‘
Zealot
’-minded lower priest class as ‘
an Innovation which our Forefathers were before unacquainted with
’. We say ‘
disingenuously
’ here because he knows full well that these same persons – along
presumably with their sacrifices – had been explicitly banned long before in Ezekiel 44:5–15’s pointed ‘
Zadokite Covenant
’, the very same passage of central i
m
portance as well to the Damascus Document at Qumran which both delineated who and what these true ‘
Sons of Zadok
’ were.
26

Nor is it coincidental or accidental that when Paul comes to speak about such ‘
sacrifices on the part of Gentiles in the Temple
’ in his likewise pivotal arguments in 1 Corinthians 10:14–22, he cautions his opponents in 10:22 in the same breath as he evokes ‘
drinking the Lord
’
s Cup and the cup of demons
’ and ‘
eating of the Lord
’
s table and the table of demons
’ with the threat of the very same ‘
zeal
’ with which they probably had threatened him. Yet again, in invoking this ‘
zeal of the Lord
’, he is
reversing
in his usual rhetorical manner
the language of his presumed interlocutors against themselves
(in this case, seemingly, James’ ‘
Zealots for the Law
’ as
per
Acts 21:20). It is in such passages that one can be sure that Paul’s opponents really were ‘
Zealots
’ or
Sicarii
who had, of course, a diametrically opposed view of such ‘
idolatry
’ to his own.

One should recall how in Hippolytus’ description of those denoted as ‘
Zealot
’ or ‘
Sicarii
Essenes
’ – Hippolytus conserving in the author’s view an earlier and perhaps even more incisive version of Josephus’ testimony on these matters – Hippol
y
tus/Josephus emphasizes this very point, namely, the unwillingness of such ‘
Sicarii
Essenes
’
to eat
‘
things sacrificed to idols
’
even under the threat of the direst Roman torture or death
.
27
In the received version of Josephus – in which the latter acknowledges that these very same ‘
Essenes
’ had participated and had distinguished themselves by their bravery in ‘
our recent war against the Romans
’ – the unwillingness on their part to eat such fare even in the face of the direst torture or death is characterized only under the classification of the more general ‘
not eating forbidden things
’.
28

It is in passages such as these that the account attributed to Hippolytus distinguishes itself by its greater precision and i
n
sight. In other words, putting Hippolytus and Josephus together, it is in connection with this ban – found both in
MMT
and James’ directives in Acts, alluded to as well in the ban on ‘
skins sacrificed to idols
’ in the Temple Scroll and worried over by Paul – that such ‘
Zealots
’ or ‘
Essenes
’ (good ‘
Jamesian
’s that they were) were prepared to martyr themselves. The testimony to their unwillingness to eat such fare is even backed up in Asia Minor in the correspondence between Pliny the Younger and Trajan about Revolutionary unrest in that area at a somewhat later period – the period in which Simeon bar Cleophas and the grandsons of Jesus’ third brother Judas reportedly met their ends – and seemingly for precisely the same reasons.
29

To close the circle again: aside from the fact that Acts 21:20 knows the majority of James’ ‘
Jerusalem Church
’ supporters were ‘
Zealots for the Law
’, the issue of ‘
Zealots
’ is already present in the episode about Jesus’ encounter with the ‘
Greek Syrophoenician woman
’ in Mark and Matthew as it stands. While Mark 7:25, which places the whole episode in ‘
the neighbo
r
hood of
Tyre
’ (again
n
.
b
., ‘
the brothels of Tyre
’ allusion in the slur about Simon
Magus
’ consort above), identifies her in this latter manner, as we have seen; Matthew 15:22, on the other hand, identifies her as ‘
a Canaanite
’ or ‘
Cananaean woman
’ and for him, the region is now ‘
Tyre and Sidon
’. Elsewhere, the same appellation is given in Mark 3:18 and Matthew 10:4 to Jesus’ supposed Apostle ‘
Simon the Cananaean
’, another euphemism Luke 6:15 definitively unravels in its designation of ‘
Simon
the Zealot
’.

It should also be appreciated that in Acts’ incomprehensible arguments in the early Church between ‘
Hebrews
’ and ‘
He
l
lenists
’ over who is ‘
to wait on
’ or ‘
serve tables
’ and
the distribution of the common fund
, which we have already analyzed above, this term ‘
Hellenists
’ (6:1, reappearing too in 9:29 and 11:20) clearly conceals something more fundamental, that is, as in the matter of the ‘
Canaanite woman
’ above, ‘
zealotry
’ or ‘
Zealots
’. In the context of such ‘
zealotry
’, one should also recall the additional play in the Greek on the same usage in Mark and Matthew’s
kunaria
/‘
little dogs
’ (in Luke’s related version about Lazarus’,
kunes
or simply ‘
dogs
’) on
Kanna
’
im
, the Hebrew for ‘
Cananaeans
’/‘
Zealots
’.

Queen Helen’s
Eunuch
, Circumcision, and
the
Lex Cornelia de Sicarius

One can go further than this. We have already seen that even though the whole episode regarding the
Greek Syrophoenician
/
Canaanite woman
seems to be missing from the third Synoptic account, in reality it is not.
Rather it reappears in the last of Jesus’ parables about the
Rich
Men in Luke 16:19 about the ‘
certain
’ one, ‘
who used to dress in purple and fine linen and feast in luxury every day
’. Nor is this parable paralleled in any of the other Gospels except for the name of the ‘
Poor Man who wished to be filled from the Rich Man
’
s table crumbs
’ –
Lazarus
, about whose ‘
sisters
’ and the ‘
stink
’ of whose body John goes on to give additional and not insignificant particulars.

As also analyzed previously, these details bring us right back to Talmudic stories about its
Rich Men
, Nakdimon,
Ben Kalba Sabu
‘
a
, Boethus, and their
daughters
. For its part, the ‘
daughter
’ theme then takes us back even further, closing the ci
r
cle of all these usages and returning us, yet again, to Mark and Matthew’s
Canaanite
/
Greek Syrophoenecian woman
’
s
daughter
. As already suggested too, this woman has much in common with Josephus’ and Talmudic stories about Queen Helen and her legendary largesse or
Riches
who, in turn, has interesting connections with Simon
Magus
’ alleged consort also called ‘
Helen
’. The circle of these overlaps then even widens to include in Luke’s Acts 8:27 another such ‘
Rich
’ foreign woman with an inte
r
est in Jerusalem and apparent charitable giving, but now identified as ‘
Kandakes the Queen of the Ethiopians
’.

This story about ‘
Kandakes
’, aside from alluding to her fabulous wealth, describes the Pauline-style conversion through baptism of her
Treasury agent
or
eunuch
(8:36–37). This is not to mention the note of ‘
Zealotry
’ seemingly present in the first syllable of her name, ‘
Kan
’/‘
Ken
’, and echoed as well in the name of that descendant of Queen Helen, ‘
Kenedaeus
’ (another of these seeming ‘
‘A
rizei-Go
’
im
’ in the Habakkuk
Pesher
we shall hear more about as we proceed) who played a part in the 66
CE
Uprising against Rome and apparently lost his life in its first serious engagement – the battle at the Pass at Beit Horon.
30
Linguistic connections and plays of this kind, however unlikely they may seem at first glance, should not be ignored, just as a similar correspondence in the name of ‘
the
Canaanite
woman
’ should not be ignored, nor blinds like so-called or alleged ‘
He
l
lenists
’.