James the Brother of Jesus and the Dead Sea Scrolls II (81 page)

But, as Josephus reports this affair, Honi was actually stoned by his opponents – an assortment clearly of anti-nationalist Pharisees basically collaborating with the Roman forces, whose entrance into the country had been connived at by Herod’s father – when he refused to condemn the proto-‘
Zealot
’ partisans (who had taken refuge in the Temple) of the Maccabean pretender Aristobulus II, who had for his part refused to humble himself before Pompey.
50
It is for these reasons that Honi (‘
Onias the Just
’) was stoned, the ostensible justification for which, ‘
addressing God like a son
’, having, it would appear, a
l
ready been provided (however disingenuously) in the
Talmud
above. Finally, as we saw and as Josephus reports too, it is rather his supporters besieged inside the Temple and not actually Honi who,
like Elijah,
pray for rain and bring on a whirlwind
!
51

Whatever one wishes to make of all these apparent correspondences and overlaps, where ‘
Nakdimon
’ at least was co
n
cerned, the climax of the affair was that ‘
immediately the sky was covered by clouds until the twelve wells were filled with w
a
ter
’ even, as it is put, ‘
beyond overflowing
’! Again, this picture of Nakdimon likely conceals a story relating to someone of the religious significance of a James. Even this the
Talmud
, in its own inimical way, seems to suggest in virtually the very next statement, wherein it now states ‘
his name was
not Nakdimon but Boni
’
, opining that he was only called Nakdimon ‘
because the sun broke through on his behalf
’ (
nikdera
).
52

Aside from the primeval stupidity herein evinced and the absurdity of this explanation for such denominative sleight-of-hand, there is no doubt that in the tradition now before us we are dealing with Honi’s prefiguration of subsequent
Zaddik
s and the
redivivus
tradition associated with his name and that of his family. Nor is this to mention the underlying motif of the reason for his stoning and, of course, the related traditions surrounding the
rainmaking
of James and his stoning – the
blasphemy
charge having to do with ‘
addressing God as a son
’ and ‘
imploring Him
’ like this, to say nothing perhaps of the more ove
r
arching one,
pronouncing the forbidden name of God
in the atonement James was pictured as performing in almost all sources in the
Inner Sanctum
of the Temple.

For the
Talmud
, this ‘
Boni
’ together with one ‘
Thoda
’,
i
.
e
., obviously ‘
Thaddaeus
’ or ‘
Theudas
’, becomes one of ‘
Jesus the Nazoraean
’’s five
Disciples
;
53
so it becomes clear that ‘
Boni
’ must be thought of as a double for someone. In our view, this is either James – not only because of the allusion to his
rainmaking
in Epiphanius, but because of the emphasis on such rain
ma
k
ing
, so intensely evoked regarding Elijah, along with the ‘
fervent saving Power of the prayer of
’ other ‘
Just Ones
’ in the apoc
a
lyptic conclusion of the New Testament
Letter of James
(5:16–18) – or ‘
Nicodemus
’ in John, a Gospel which also includes yet another stand-in for James, ‘
Nathanael
’ (John 1:45), missing from the Synoptics.

Interestingly enough in John 1:48–50, this last is portrayed as sitting ‘
under a fig tree
’, which would seem to include just a hint of the manner in which the
Talmud
portrays Honi or his descendant ‘
Hanan the Hidden
’, as already underscored, as ‘
si
t
ting under a carob tree for seventy years
’ in another somewhat pungent
redivivus
-type story.
54
For its part John 1:51 also po
r
trays Jesus, as already remarked, as predicting that ‘
Nathanael
’ will see a future vision of the kind ascribed to James in early Church accounts of the events leading up to his stoning (also finding a reflection, as we saw as well, in Acts 7:56’s account of events surround the stoning of ‘
Stephen
’), of
the Heavens opened and the Angels of God ascending and descending on the Son of Man
(in the War Scroll, it will be ‘
the Heavenly Host
’ that will so descend but one should note, in particular, this motif of ‘
the Heavens opening
’ paralleled in both the pictures in Acts and of James’ death).

The third one of these
Disciples
is called ‘
Nezer
’, with obvious affinities to the imageries associated with Jesus and James, either having to do with their respective, life-long ‘
Naziritism
’ or the prophetical ‘
Branch
’ or ‘
Nazoraean
’ vocabulary.
This pa
s
sage in the
Talmud
actually applies the all-important Messianic ‘
Root
’ or ‘
Branch
’ prophecies from Isaiah 11:1 and 14:19 to him – also to be found among the exegetical texts applied to the Messiah at Qumran as it is, by implication, in the New Te
s
tament – ‘
a Branch shall go forth out of its Roots
’ – but the second with inverted effect (probably to counter the importance placed upon it in both these other two): ‘
casting forth from your grave like an (abhorred)
Nezer
’.
55

The last two
Disciples
are called ‘
Matthai
’, obviously ‘
Matthew
’, and ‘
Nakai
’, seemingly ‘
Nakdimon
’ again; but now this name is related to the Hebrew root for ‘
naki
’ – ‘
clean
’ or ‘
innocent
’ – and not to ‘
shining through
’. Furthermore, Psalm 10:8 is cited about ‘
killing the Innocent
’, another Zionistic psalm of the kind of Psalm 69 above, in this instance also repeatedly refe
r
ring to ‘
the Poor
’ (‘
the
Ebionim
’).
56

Again, this whole circle of materials is typical of information-processing in the
Talmud
, itself sometimes even more ha
p
hazard and humorous than that of the New Testament. That a fabulously wealthy individual like Nakdimon should be seen as a
Zaddik
or ‘
Friend of God
’ or both, even ‘
speaking to God as a son
’ and going into the Temple and praying for rain is about as preposterous as some of the inversions one encounters in Paul and elsewhere in the Gospels and the Book of Acts. In fact, we have something of the same disingenuousness going on in the one as we do in the other and for the same reasons, though these Talmudic traditions are not nearly as well informed as New Testament ones sometimes are. The conclusion, however, must be the same: there can be little doubt that Nakdimon, who is performing some of the same miracles as Elijah and Honi and who is presented in this
redivivus
line, is a blind for certain more Revolutionary persons and subversive events associated with other individuals attached to this line.

Ananias, Nicodemus, Joseph of Arimathaea, and James

That ‘
Nakdimon
’ is associated with another individual, also legended to have been fabulously wealthy and seemingly co
n
nected with the tomb of Queen Helen, as well as replicating some of the same activities – such as
famine relief
(in Gospel po
r
traiture, ‘
multiplication of the loaves
’) – she and her sons were supposed to have been involved in, further reinforces this su
s
picion. Here, too, the individual Josephus calls ‘
Gurion ben Nakdimon
’ – perhaps the same as this Nakdimon, perhaps hi
s son
– is associated with another individual called ‘
Ananias the son of Sadduk
’ in last-ditch efforts in 66
CE
to save the besieged Roman garrison in Jerusalem at the beginning of the Uprising.
57

As always, there would appear to be two types of materials in these notices: one apocalyptic, uncompromising, and su
b
versive; the other, more accommodating – even collaborating. We have already seen a man with the same name as this
Ananias
involved, not only in Paul’s conversion at ‘
Damascus
’ in Acts, but also in the conversion of those in Queen Helen’s household around the same period of time. He was even portrayed as being the tutor of Helen’s son’s Izates. In the contemporaneous conversion of ‘
the Great King of the Peoples beyond the Euphrates
’, also in Northern Syria, in which both
Thaddaeus
and
Thomas
play important roles, there is also an intermediary named ‘
Ananias
’ involved as we have seen.

Not only are all these stories somewhat contemporaneous, but there is the common thread in them, too, that all are ‘
co
n
version
’ stories of some kind – either to Judaism or nascent ‘
Christianity
’. In Josephus’ version of the Helen material, the ‘
A
n
anias
’ involved is even portrayed, as just underscored, as Izates’ tutor; in Eusebius’ version of the
Agbarus
/
Abgaru
s conve
r
sion,
Ananias
is supposed to have brought the letter from King Agbarus in Edessa (
Antiochia Orrhoe
) to Jerusalem and then back again. Nor can the latter be separated from the
letter
again being sent to
Antioch
, according to Acts 15:22–30’s account, with James’ directives to overseas communities with someone called ‘
Judas Barsabas
’ (supposedly a different Antioch – there being four of them as we saw), in our view, a refraction of the
letter
known as
MMT
– itself addressed to a
King
of some kind to whom Abraham’s salvationary state has more than a passing importance. This would not be surprising in a Northern Syrian milieu.

The
Ananias
here in Josephus – now connected to this ‘
Rich
’ Nakdimon or his descendant or, in the Gospel of John’s view of things, the
Nicodemus
who is a ‘
Rich Councilor
’ and connected to another
Rich
individual who has an impressive tomb in Jerusalem (in Gospel lore, ‘Joseph of Arimathaea’) – seems to be personally acquainted with the Roman Commander of the Citadel named
Mitelius
.
58
This in itself again probably confirms his wealth, not to mention his influential status, and he does seem to be able to move around quite freely in the highest circles. Together with Gurion ben Nakdimon and a third pe
r
sonage, ‘Antipas’, he is able to convince Mitelius to surrender in exchange for a surety of safe passage – in other words,
once again, he is acting as the intermediary
.

This guarantee is broken by an individual Josephus calls ‘
Eleazar
’, who – like those in Hippolytus’ picture of the Jewish sects above called ‘
Sicarii
’ or ‘
Zealot Essenes
’ – seems to want the Romans, or at least their commander, to circumcise the
m
selves (or die), for at the last moment all are slaughtered except Mitelius, who
agrees not only to convert but also to be circu
m
cised
.
59
One should note the quasi-parallel here with the ‘
Eleazar the Galilean
’ who, in Josephus’ picture of the conversion of Queen Helen’s son Izates, insists on circumcision while the more moderate Pauline-type teacher
Ananias
(the above-mentioned merchant or courier) and his unnamed companion (Paul?) feel it unnecessary for Izates and Monobazus, his brot
h
er, to circumcise themselves – much to their mother Queen Helen’s relief. Even if the chronology is a bit skewed, we certainly seem to be getting a convergence of themes in all these stories.