AW! Epistles
Shemayah Phillips
Abstract
Thursday, 30 December 2004
Mike, I have the following comments on: AskWhy! on Origins of Christianity in the Essenes—Christianity Revealed. I hope you are doing better, as I read on the site that you were ill. Do you remember me? I should have featured an advert for your book (Hidden Jesus) at ebionite.org’s bookstall, and will remedy that very soon.
I wrote because I have been considering some new (to me) questions about Paul of Tarsus in regard to Yahshua. I was doing some searches on the net in that context and ran across some of your work featured on essenes.net from nazorean essenes, etc etc. I didn’t think they were up to the writing I was reading, and then I finally found identification of the author.
Here is what I am thinking. The resurrection of Jesus did not proceed from the original followers, but instead was projected back based on the claim of Paul of Tarsus’ “vision” into the gospel accounts. Many of the miracles attributed to Yahshua were created by the Paulines or Paul himself (or even performed as magical signs by him) and inserted to the gospel accounts. I realize that not all of these originated in reality but from pagan myths, but as for what I have read from church history such signs were largely responsible for its growth (R MacMullen). I wonder (which you will most likely reply with a little incredulity) if Yahshua performed any miraculous healings (although I do believe humans can be healed by their “faith”).
Yes, I remember you. I hope you are well.
I accept that Paul was a profound influence on Christianity but I doubt that he could have founded it, or even such important events as you suspect. The one thing that he did was to change the interpretation of the messianic meal of the Essenes into a mystery religion communion with the God, similar to that of the Orphics. Per haps you are right that others were also altered or inserted by Paul, but speculation about it needs some historical evdience to back it, if it still exists. Paul seems not to have founded churches in the Roman empire. Mostly they seem already to be there when he arrived.
So there were a lot of Christians or Ur-Christians before Paul. Doubtless you will agree with me that these were Essenes, and Hellenized Jews glad to find a variation of Judaism that was not so rigorous as Pharisaism. The reason that it was not for ordinary (“village”) Essenes (not the senior figures who were immensely strict in their practices) was that the Essene rules, like the Damascus Rule of the Dead Sea Scrolls, showed them how to regulate their relations with gentiles without compromising their Judaism. The early Christians extended this laxity by using the rules offered by Jesus to Essenes serving as soldiers into daily life, on the grounds that the kingdom was coming and all Christians were soldiers of God. Paul added more to this general trend by abrogating the need for circumcision, the main barrier to the recruitment of adult male gentiles. The women were joining in large numbers already. Gentile godfearers were therefore free to join a religion that had impressed them for long, but had scared off the men particularly.
Regarding healing miracles. Jesus effected a miracle by converting convinced skeptics, apostates and collaborators with the Romans, people who were given nicknames, or code names based on illness—Jews who had abandoned God were presumed to be ill. The source of the idea is Isaiah. Thus lepers, lame, deaf and blind were all opponents of different kinds. When Jesus persuaded them to return to their Jewish beliefs, and—most importantly—agree to join the Holy War against the Roman occupiying forces, he had performed a miracle. He made the blind see, the deaf hear, the lame and paralytics walk, and lepers to be cured. We would know more, if the precise meanings of these code words could be worked out, but it is beyond me, at the moment. So, the cures of illnesses were never really miracles at all but always were metaphors for the conversion of former enemies. Using codes was an Essene practice, and the Christians did it too, but the bishops pretended that these really were miracles to impress their gentile converts.
Best wishes, and thanks for offering to mention my books on your pages.
