James the Brother of Jesus and the Dead Sea Scrolls II (32 page)

The explanation for this is simple. Those coming in contact with persons behaving in such a manner, that is, ‘
sleeping with women in their periods
’ (namely, Herodians and their Roman overlords) – meaning in this period clearly the High Priests whom the Herodians and their Roman overlords appointed – thereby incur their ‘
pollution
’, a point also specifically made in the Damascus Document following these same accusations, namely, ‘
no one who approaches them
can be cleansed
.
Like someone cursed
,
his house is guilty – unless he was forced
.’
96
Nor are they observing proper ‘
separation
’ in the Temple, ‘
clean from u
n
clean
’, ‘
Holy from profane
’, the concomitant part of the description of such persons in the Damascus Document.
97
This last, finally, also carries over to accepting gifts from and sacrifices on behalf of such persons (even the Emperor of Rome) in the Temple – the issue, as already explained,
which was the immediate cause or and that triggered the War against Rome
.
98

It is now possible to return to Rabbi Eliezer ben Hyrcanus’ encounter in Galilee with ‘
Jacob of Kfar Sechaniah
’ in the
Talmud
and the opinion Jacob heard ‘
Jesus the Nazoraean
’ express concerning what to do with ‘
the wages of a prostitute
’ or ‘
a prostitute
’
s hire
’ (in this case, not the field laborer’s ‘
hire
’ or Judas
Iscariot
’s ‘
hire
’ according to Matthew’s tendentious portra
y
al)
given as a gift to the Temple
. It should now be clear how much this issue relates to the points we have just been making – the idea of its being ‘
the price of Blood
’ having a direct bearing on precisely the perception of this kind of activity, namely gifts from persons ‘
sleeping with women in their periods
’ or those incurring ‘
pollution
’ from such persons doing service in the Temple and the manner in which the Herodian family was conducting itself in familial relations.

Not only is
Jesus
’ response, as pictured in the
Talmud
, a good example of his sense of humor – refreshing for a change, to say the least – not normally considered present in most Gospel narratives (except by the writer), but, more germane, it co
m
pletely
gainsays
New Testament traditions of a similar genre depicting
Jesus
as ‘
keeping table fellowship
’ with
prostitutes
,
tax-collectors
, ‘
gluttons’
(a euphemism for persons not keeping dietary regulations), and other such individuals.
Moreover, the sa
r
donic sense-of-humor displayed by this ‘
Jesus the Nazoraean
’ in his response makes the whole Talmudic tradition, in the pr
e
sent writer’s view,
even more credible
.

As Jacob transmits this,
Jesus the Nazoraean
’
s
answer is that it was appropriate to use gifts given to the Temple of this kind – that is,
from
‘
a prostitute
’
s hire
’ –
to construct a
latrine for the High Priests
! Anyone who cannot see how this tradition, as it appears in the
Talmud
, has been transformed in the highly tendentious ‘
Judas Iscariot
’ materials, also involving gifts to ‘
the Temple Treasury
’ and so steeped in allusions to
Blood
, is just unaware of and exhibiting no appreciation of the process of tr
a
dition manufacture and/or elaboration in this period.

We shall see how this elaboration continues, reverberating back and forth between
Talmud
, Gospels, and Acts, particularly as concerns the ‘
thirty pieces of silver
’ which have become so proverbial and comparable allusions to
fabulous
‘
Riches
’
and precious ointments
, at times also involving
Judas Iscariot
, but also others, when it comes to considering the last and final
Rainmaker
in Talmudic tradition ‘
Nakdimon ben Gurion
’. Of course, just as some of the other characters we have been co
n
sidering – such as
Ananias
,
Agbarus
,
Theudas
, and the Adiabenean
Queen
– the double or
alter ego
of this ‘
Nakdimon
’ in the
Talmud
reappears in the Gospel of John as ‘
Nicodemus
’ described, as we shall see in due course, as ‘
a man of the Pharisees
’ and ‘
a Ruler of the Jews
’ (
thus!
) and pictured in John 19:39 (along with ‘
Joseph of Arimathaea
’) as ‘
bearing a hundred weight
’
of expensive
‘
ointments
’ or ‘
perfumes
’ with which he
helped prepare the body of Jesus
for burial
.

Elijah’s Cave-Dwelling, Honi’s Extended Sleep, and Revolutionary Messianism

Both the Palestinian and the Babylonian
Talmud
s now go on to relate a story about how Honi went to sleep for
seventy years
under
a carob tree
– not unlike Buddha ‘
under the Bodhi tree
’ or, in the case of the Nathanael-type stand-in for James in the Gospel of John, ‘
under a fig tree
’.
1
When Honi awakes in his grandson’s generation nobody knew or recognized him, whereupon he immediately
prayed for death and died
– another example of the
Talmud
’s sense of humor.
2
This is a very cur
i
ous, even sardonic, story. Not only are the number ‘
seventy
’ and the element of ‘
carob tree
’ significant for our period, but so too are Honi’s
going to sleep
and
praying for death
.

The Palestinian
Talmud
even preserves a puzzling further variation of this story, which has Honi the grandfather of yet another individual, once again called ‘
Honi the Circle-Drawer’.
3
Whether this individual is supposed to be the same as the one the Babylonian
Talmud
is calling ‘
Abba Hilkiah
’, with whom he would be contemporary – he probably is – or just another i
n
dividual in the
redivivus
tradition, confused in the Palestinian
Talmud
with Honi, is impossible to say. Not only this, the Pale
s
tinian
Talmud
puts these events at the time of
the destruction of the First Temple
when they clearly must be seen in relation to or in the context of the destruction of
the Second
. What appears to be confusing these traditions is the
redivivus
-ideology they all seem to be wrestling with or trying to present, however imperfectly.

As with the descendants of the
Hilkiah
involved in Josiah’s Reform and Jeremiah’s forebear previously, we seem to be i
n
volved with a line or even a clan of such individuals much like
the Rechabites
– or should we rather call them ‘
proto-Essenes
’ or ‘
Ebionites
’? – highlighted above as having to do with either James or his ‘
cousin
’ (even his putative
brother
), Simeon Bar Cleophas. At least this is the information one can garner by superimposing Epiphanius’ version of events on Eusebius’. Ce
r
tainly we have confusions of traditions, overlapping individuals and probably – since they all seem to involve
rainmaking
and ‘
falling asleep and
w
aking up later
’ – a variation on the
redivivus
‘
Zealot
’ (and, as it will turn out, ‘
Zadokite
’) Priestly line coming down from Phineas through Zadok to Elijah to Honi to either James or John the Baptist, or both.

This is exactly the theme we now encounter in the Palestinian
Talmud
with regard to this second ‘
Honi the Circle-Drawer
’, for he too
goes to sleep and wakes up again seventy years later
–
this time
,
supposedly in the time of Zerubabbel a
f
ter the Temple has already been destroyed and rebuilt again
.
4
The ‘
seventy years
’ involved here is certainly based upon Jerem
i
ah 29:10’s numerology for the length of the Exile, a characterization which also includes the notions of a ‘
Visitation
’ and the vocabulary of ‘
the Wrath
’, all of the utmost importance for the eschatological scheme of both the War Scroll and Damascus Document as well.
5
In Daniel 9:2–27, this number ‘
seventy
’ is actually referred to with reference to Jeremiah and reinterpreted, not only in terms of ‘
the Period of Wrath
’, but also successive devastations of Jerusalem concluding importantly with
the se
t
ting up of
‘
the Abomination of the Desolation
’
in the Temple
. Of course, according to the chronology of the story of the ‘
s
e
cond
’ Honi in the Palestinian
Talmud
, which puts him at the time of the destruction of the First Temple, none of this makes any sense whatsoever.

Such is often the case with the
Talmud
based, as its traditions sometimes are, on garbled oral tradition and/or possible copyists’ error. Still, it is interesting that this
second
Honi goes to sleep
in a mountain cave
rather than – as the first Honi – ‘
u
n
der a carob tree
’. This brings us to a possible solution to our problem – if there is one. As we have already underscored above, Honi like John the Baptist is an Elijah
redivivus
or an Elijah
come-back-to-life
. In fact, it is very probable that he, not John (since John is most likely his descendant and one of these ‘
Hanin
’’s or ‘
Honi
’’s) is the original behind the
Elijah
redivivus
ideo
l
ogy as reported in the New Testament.

What we are witnessing in later Gospel rewrites of this conceptuality – the Gospel of John, as we have seen, specifically denying the ideology where John was concerned – are themes from other narrative sources being absorbed into their ‘Jesus’ story. We have already remarked this happening with regards to elements from James’ biography.
It also happens regarding themes surrounding the series of other charismatic agitators, ‘
Innovators
’, ‘
Impostors
’, or ‘
Pseudo
-
prophets
’ described in J
o
sephus – the derogations are his not the author’s – for instance,
Theudas
leading the People across Jordan in a reverse exodus, the Samaritan Messiah apparently brutally crucified along with a number of his followers by Pontius Pilate, or ‘
the Egyptian
’ on the Mount of Olives for whom Paul is supposedly mistaken in Acts 21:38 (here, for instance, the terminology ‘
Sicarii
’, as we saw, was actually used to describe his followers), and others.
In Acts this kind of absorption of materials from other sources is raised to the level of art.

That this is the implication of the ‘
second
’ Honi story (to say nothing of the first) is strengthened by its relation to the 1 Kings 19:10 story citing Elijah’s ‘
burning zeal for the Lord of Hosts
’. Not only is Elijah ‘
filled with
’ or ‘
consumed
’
by such
‘
zeal
’ but, in this episode, before going into the cave and thence ‘
into the wilderness
’
of Sinai
‘
to stand upon the mountain before the Lord
’ and witness the miracles or ‘
earthquake
’, ‘
fire
’, and ‘
whirlwind
’ (19:9–12), he also ‘
sits down under a carob tree
’ and this, too, actually ‘
in the wilderness
’ (1 Kings 19:4). Here
Elijah prays
– as in the Honi stories –
that
‘
he might die
’ and
he too then falls asleep
!

In the ‘
Honi
’ stories the order is just reversed. In John 1:45–51’s variation involving ‘
Nathanael
’ – where Jesus is now pi
c
tured as uttering the typically Greco-Roman anti-Semitic gibe, ‘
Behold an Israelite in whom there is no guile
’ (
sic
), and in line with John’s distinct denial that John the Baptist was ‘
the Elijah-come-back-to-life
’ – it is now
Nathanael
not John who is ‘
the Honi
’ or ‘
Elijah
redivivus
’. The vision Jesus predicts
Nathanael
will see in return for having recognized him as ‘
the Son of God
’ is, yet again, just another variation on the one accorded James in the Temple in early Church literature and Stephen in Acts 7:53–58 (before he, too, was ‘
cast out of the city
’ –
ekbalontes
– and stoned). Even ‘
the mountain cave
’ element of the Palestin
i
an
Talmud
’s ‘
second
’ Honi story is prefigured in 1 Kings 19:8 above as ‘
the Mountain of the Lord in Horeb
’ where Elijah – and Jesus, thereafter, according to additional Synoptic Gospel portraiture – is also now to spend ‘
forty days and forty nights
’.

But Elijah does not sleep for
seventy years
, as the Honi stories revamp this aspect of the story in the light of the new e
s
chatology of
the coming Wrath
and the
redivivus
-tradition attaching itself to Honi’s family line and that of
rainmaking
Zaddik
s generally. Rather in 1 Kings, Elijah is twice awoken by ‘
the Angel of the Lord
’ and told to ‘
eat and drink
’ – another important motif retrospectively incorporated into Gospel portraiture. This is because, during ‘
the forty days and nights
’ he is about to spend –
like Moses on the Mountain in Sinai
– there presumably will be no food.

So now we have the twin themes of a Moses-like ‘
wilderness
’ experience tied to ‘
a burning zeal for the Lord of Hosts
’. This ideological combination can, in turn, be read into the temporary
Nazirite
procedure of ‘
not eating and drinking
’, revised into the kind of vegetarianism and abstinence followed by even ‘
life-long Nazirites
’ and later ‘
Mourners for Zion
’ – positions which Paul consistently reverses to the extent even, as already signaled above, of ‘
drinking the blood
’ of the Messiah (to say nothing of ‘
eating
’ his flesh), as do the Gospels along with him even to the extent of portraying ‘
the Son of Man
’ as ‘
coming eating and drinking
’.
6

A good example of the opposite sort of behaviour are the temporary
Nazirite
-type oaths which the
Sicarii
-style assassins vow in Acts 23:21 ‘
not to eat or drink until they have killed Paul
’ (for
‘the Mourners for Zion
’, it will be recalled, it was ‘
not to eat or drink until they had seen the Temple rebuilt
’ – in 1 Corinthians 3:9–17, Ephesians 2:21, and the Synoptics, of course, identical with Jesus
7
). Typically, Acts laconically describes such persons simply as ‘
Jews
’.

These ‘
Honi the Circle-Drawer
’ stories in the two
Talmud
s, despite their confusion over which Honi is actually being r
e
ferred to and when he lived, together with their expansion of Elijah’s paradigmatic activity – whether
falling asleep
under a carob tree
or
in a mountain cave
– must be seen as part and parcel of an incarnationist
Zaddik
or ‘
Primal Adam
’ tradition which includes the elements of ‘
consuming zeal for the Lord
’, ‘
rainmaking
’ (probably to be taken more in its eschatological sense than a natural one), and ‘
the Friend of God
’ ideology. Similar stories will be told in later Talmudic tradition about Sim
e
on Bar Yohai, the progenitor of
Zohar
tradition, who together with his son
hides
‘
in a cave
’
for years in the Trajan
/
Bar Kochba Period
.
8