Jesus and the Essenes

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The enlightenment teaching of the Way would sound strange to those unfamiliar with Nazarene thinking. The Enochian and Nazarene Essenes held more visionary and mystical views, especially that a Messiah was necessary (not just arriving). It was believed that man could not sort the evils of this world, which only a heaven-sent being may do. As for the Sadducees, they did not see a need for Messiah, as they thought the Torah was complete and that man needed only to adhere to it. a b Rudolph, Kurt (April 1964). "War Der Verfasser Der Oden Salomos Ein "Qumran-Christ"? Ein Beitrag zur Diskussion um die Anfänge der Gnosis". Revue de Qumrân. Peeters. 4 (16): 523–555.

The Teacher is extolled as having proper understanding of the Torah, qualified in its accurate instruction, [3] and being the one through whom God would reveal to the community "the hidden things in which Israel had gone astray". [4] According to Josephus, the Essenes had settled "not in one city" but "in large numbers in every town". [32] Philo speaks of "more than four thousand" Essaioi living in "Palestine and Syria", [33] more precisely, "in many cities of Judaea and in many villages and grouped in great societies of many members". [34] The Enochian adherent believed there would be an end time and everyone must be prepared. The Nazarenes and the Osseaens held a similar belief. The idea of a designated group, including those who join them, is indicated or stated throughout the Book of Enoch.

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Bennett, Chris; Osburn, Lynn; Osburn, Judy (1995). Green gold the tree of life: marijuana in magic & religion. Frazier Park, California: Access Unlimited. ISBN 0-9629872-2-0. The Teacher of Righteousness (in Hebrew: מורה הצדק Moreh ha-Tzedek) is a figure found in some of the Dead Sea Scrolls at Qumran, most prominently in the Damascus Document. [1] This document speaks briefly of the origins of the sect, probably Essenes, 390 years after the reign of Nebuchadnezzar (d. 562 BC) and after 20 years of looking blindly for the way. "God... raised for them a Teacher of Righteousness to guide them in the way of His heart". [2] Lawrence Schiffman has argued that the Qumran community may be called Sadducean, and not Essene, since their legal positions retain a link with Sadducean tradition. [68] Connection to other religious traditions [ edit ] Christianity [ edit ] John the Baptist was possibly an Essene. [69] Other parallels strike me as less compelling. A discussion on the laws for the Sabbath in chapter 4 (“The Eschatological Teacher”) is a good illustration of the problems involved in interpreting the evidence: in Matthew 12:11 and Luke 14:5, Jesus argues that since people would labor on the Sabbath to rescue their household animals, they should also accept that healing humans is permissible. Joseph contrasts this with a statement in the Essene text known as the Damascus Document which explicitly prohibits delivering an animal who fell into a ditch (CD 11.13-14). Joseph sees this as a sign that Jesus was familiar with the Essene law and “explicitly contradicted” it (114). However, there are at least two further possibilities, both more plausible to my mind. First, the decree in the Damascus Document could be proof of an alternate practice that the Essenes decried. Jesus could simply refer to the more widespread practice with no awareness that some group opposed it. More importantly, the text does not necessarily mean that Jesus considers this the correct practice. The rhetoric in these verses might be compared to Jesus’s statement in John 8:7. Jesus does not condone adultery there, nor does he reject the decree that adulteresses should be stoned. He merely protests the hypocrisy of those who seek to punish others rather than attending to their own sins (in keeping with Matthew 7:1-5 and Luke 6:41-42). Read this way, the text, at least in Luke 14:5, may not even claim that it is legitimate to rescue an animal on the Sabbath, but rather to underscore the hypocrisy of his critics.

Vermes, Geza; Goodman, Martin. The Essenes According to the Classical Sources. JSOT on behalf of the Oxford Centre for Postgraduate Hebrew Studies: Sheffield, 1989. Robert Eisenman's The New Testament Code: The Cup of the Lord, the Damascus Covenant, and the Blood of Christ".Koester, Helmut (1971). "The Theological Aspects of Primitive Christian Heresy". In James McConkey Robinson (ed.). The Future of our religious past: essays in honour of Rudolf Bultmann. New York City: Harper & Row. OCLC 246558. The Essenes ( / ˈ ɛ s iː n z, ɛ ˈ s iː n z/; Hebrew: אִסִּיִים‎, Isiyim; Greek: Ἐσσηνοί, Ἐσσαῖοι, or Ὀσσαῖοι, Essenoi, Essaioi, Ossaioi) were a mystic Jewish sect during the Second Temple period that flourished from the 2nd century BCE to the 1st century CE. [2] Josephus, Flavius. Jewish War, Book II. Chapter 8, Paragraph 13. {{ cite book}}: CS1 maint: location ( link) Ritual purification was a common practice among the peoples of Judea during this period and was thus not specific to the Essenes. A ritual bath or mikveh was found near many synagogues of the period continuing into modern times. [54] Purity and cleanliness was considered so important to the Essenes that they would refrain from defecation on the Sabbath. [55]

The later separation within the body of the Essene will represent two groups: those whose bent become legalist (Osseaens) and those whose teachings remained uncluttered by the legalistic approach, later described as spiritual or enlightened (Nazarenes). As Jesus will demonstrate, the spirit of the law is more important than the written law itself. Early members of the Jesus faction were usually referred to as Nazaoreans, or those who practice in the Way. Pythagoras: Nazarenes all married and considered Osseaen celibacy misguided and a rude treatment of women, who would be exalted by marriage (increasing spiritual beauty?). According to Joseph Lightfoot, the Church Father Epiphanius (writing in the 4th century CE) seems to make a distinction between two main groups within the Essenes: [28] "Of those that came before his [Elxai, an Ossaean prophet] time and during it, the Ossaeans and the Nasaraeans." Part 18 [56] Epiphanius describes each group as following: Hachlili, Rachel (1988). Ancient Jewish Art and Archaeology in the Land of Israel. Leiden, The Netherlands: E. J. Brill. p.101. ISBN 9004081151.Barthélemy, D.; Milik, J.T.; de Vaux, Roland; Crowfoot, G.M.; Plenderleith, Harold; Harding, G.L. (1997) [1955]. "Introductory: The Discovery". Qumran Cave 1. Oxford: Oxford University Press. p.5. ISBN 0-19-826301-5 . Retrieved 31 March 2009. The introduction ( “Rediscovering the Essenes in the Study of Christian Origins”) and the epilogue ( “Beyond the Essenes”) each emphatically argue in favor of an influence of the Essenes on the early Christian movement. Chapter 1 highlights some of the prominent similarities between the two, such as the significance of Isaiah 40:3 in the Essene text known as the Community Rule and in all four gospels (14), a text reminiscent of the Beatitudes (4Q525, on 17), and the mention of a Son of God (17-18). Joseph supplements these similarities with a caution against “parallelomania” (16), offering reservations concerning how one should proceed to interpret these similarities while keeping in mind the paucity of evidence (23). The epilogue, however, unequivocally proclaims that these claims have been established: Jesus was influenced by the Essenes, as was his movement, which was in ideological proximity to the Essenes, but cannot be defined as Essenic (164). Although the work of The Enoch Seminar challenges and expands the definition of the “Essenic/Enochic” movement, it seems that today, with few notable exceptions, the “Essenes” continue to be marginalized in biblical scholarship – often demoted from being a powerful socio-political force within first-century Judaism to being the isolated, misanthropic, and ultra-legalistic recluses of “the Qumran community” or the literary-ideological fantasies of Josephus, Philo, and Pliny. As Susannah Heschel points out, the Essene hypothesis seemed to heighten a Christian “anxiety of influence” – an anxiety based on the fact that Christianity originated within Judaism. Consequently, the Essene hypothesis served several historical and ideological purposes for Jewish scholars: it boosted Jewish self-esteem in light of Christianity’s success, de-stabilized normative definitions of Judaism and Christianity, and supported revisionist readings of Jesus in a Jewish context.