The Bible is not my Book and Christianity is not my religion. I could never give assent to the long complicated statements of Christian dogma.

Abraham Lincoln

Similarities and Differences between Jesus and the Essenes 2

Jesus and the Essenes
Summary of Fundamental Similarities
Agreed Similarities II
Both Jesus and the Essenes:

Abstract

The objective of Jesus as the head of the Nazarenes was exactly what Christians have always said it was. He was trying to convert the sinners of Israel before the End. What has come to us of his attempt has come from some of his converts. He was a professional Essene, but preaching to the masses. The people who recorded Jesus’s doctrine had only a partial knowledge of it. He had no time to explain to them the finer points of Essene theology. His object was to have them repent and be ritually purified by baptism, ready for God’s Appointed Time, which would be soon! The Essenes had exactly the same aim. The differences are only apparent, because we have only an incomplete idea of the views of both Jesus and the Essenes, and the church has made its own changes later. What we do know overlaps far more than can be explained by accident.

Jesus and the Essenes
Agreed Similarities II

Both Jesus and the Essenes held their property in common

Judas was in charge of a money bag (Jn 12:6; 13:29) from which the followers of Jesus bought their needs. Though Jesus was called a carpenter, he never does any work in the gospels. He and his group seem to travel around while getting invisible support. In Acts 2:44, the Nazarenes held everything in common and to withhold from the common purse was a mortal crime. The Essenes held all they had in a common pool (1QS 6:22) with a bursar in charge. They provided succour to other travellinhg Essenes, so that no one needed anything except a staff when they travelled.

Both Jesus and the Essenes believed in a cosmic battle between good and evil

The forces of good are angels and the forces of evil are demons. Bent Scholar tries to deflect us by saying that many Jews accepted this in the first century, which is true, but he cites as evidence the very books that the Essenes themselves held dear, but that were rejected by the Rabbis when they selected the Jewish canon. Again, therefore, sharing a doctrine of cosmic battle is evidence of Jesus and the Essenes having common beliefs. By itself it would be inconclusive but, it cannot be divorced from everything else they have in common.

Both Jesus and the Essenes expected the present age to end

Bent Scholar for once gets sensible, but he still cannot reach a conclusion. Jesus was closer to the End Time than the Essenes because he spoke of the “hour” whereas the Essenes spoke of the “last days”. He cites:

Mark 13:32 where Jesus warns his disciples that no one knows the day or the hour when heaven and earth will pass away
Matthew 24:44 which is part of a similar warning for them to watch for the day (Mt 24:42) or the hour (Mt 24:44)
Matthew 26:40 when Jesus is plainly expecting God’s miracles at any moment and is berating the weary trio because they could not watch with him for an hour
Luke 12:40, where Jesus is not really saying that the son of man is due in an hour but simply that they would not know which hour he would come—it could be anytime
John 4:23; 5:25,28 are other references simply to the hour of the event, not that it is expected in an hour, but showing that there was some urgency about it all—he was counting in hours.

If you are waiting for a momentous event, like the birth of a child, say, you begin by calculating in months, then weeks, then days, then hours. If Jesus was thinking in terms of hours rather than days, it does not distinguish him from the Essenes who thought in terms of days. He is simply an Essene who thought himself closer to the event than the ones writing in the Scrolls. If the end of the world could be prophesied, eventually some prophet will be talking in terms of hours. But his beliefs are no different from those that went before. Jesus did expect the world to end while he watched in Gethsemane (Mt 26:40), but it didn’t.

Both Jesus and the Essenes believed in prophecy

Once again this is a correspondence of major importance, because the other important Jewish parties believed that the succession of prophets had been lost (Josephus, Against Apion), so even if a prophet appeared, no one would know whether he was genuine or a faker. However, there was a scriptural test (Deut 18:18-22) which is simply that a prophet is false if his prophecies are wrong. Sadducees and Pharisees evidently had decided that they had seen enough wrong prophets for the whole profession of prophecy to have been thoroughly discredited, but Essenes still valued prophecy and, if 4Q375 is anything to go by, they had a ceremonial test for it.

The Righteous Teacher was a prophet to whom had been revealed the mysteries of the Last Days (1QpHab 7:4-8). Was Jesus a prophet? All Christians would say he was, and here the Moslems would agree. What then did he prophesy? Not much except his own death, according to the gospels and, since Jesus was dead when the gospels were written, it wasn’t hard for the evangelists to get correct. He did get one important prophecy wrong! He said the kingdom of God would appear within a generation. The start of the kingdom of God is, of course, the end of the present time and the beginning of a new one. In short, it is the same eschatological moment in time that interested the Essenes. So, by the criterion of Deuteronomy, Jesus was a false prophet! In my view, he knew this and provided for his own dispatch should his prophesy fail (The Hidden Jesus) but in fact was arrested first.

Really, for anyone impartial, the case is already answered—Jesus was an Essene who turned out to be a false prophet. Not so for the Christian. There is room for “further exploration”.

Both Jesus and the Essenes regarded God as a king ruling a kingdom

Both Jesus and the Essenes believed in the expression Lord of heaven and earth (Mt 11:25; Lk 10:21). Otherwise unsuspected in Palestine writings, it has appeared in the Genesis Apocryphon (1QapGen 22:16,21).

God was a king of heaven and earth (Mt 11:25; Lk 10:21, where Jesus even uses the introductory formula,”I thank thee, O Lord” used in the Thanksgiving Hymns), and they prayed that God’s will be done in earth. In the Songs of the Sabbath Sacrifice (4Q400-407), God is continually called a king. Anyone reading a translation of the Scrolls meeting the phrase “God’s dominion” can be sure that in the New Testament it would have appeared as “the kingom of God”.

Bent Scholar considers this like the expression the “Poor Ones”. Jesus, “could well have discussed” the kingdom of God with the Essenes. Is this hilarious or sad?

Both the Essenes and Jesus expected an earthly messiah

Indeed, the Essenes expected two messiahs, a priestly messiah and a kingly messiah. Jesus is mainly seen as a kingly messiah, being a supposed son of David, but Luke tries to show him as a descendent of priests through Mary. Bent Scholar often refuses to accept what is written by the gospel writers if the words are not attributed to Jesus, again a stupid, certainly far from scholarly, procedure. None of the words were written by Jesus. All of the gospels were written by his followers. To imagine that there is some spurious validity in the words of Jesus repeated in more than one gospel is nonsense.

Both Jesus and the Essenes revered the Holy City of Jerusalem but despised the froward priests of its temple

The Essenes only made the minimum contribution to the temple required by law (All-DSS 164), a half shekel once in a lifetime, but Jesus is depicted paying the tax, in Matthew. In fact, the Christian interpretation of this incident in Matthew is diametrically wrong (The Hidden Jesus). Some Essenes did attend the temple at certain times as Josephus attests (Josephus, Antiquities), however, the assumption that Jesus is simply going to Jerusalem to celebrate the Passover in the gospels on the only occasion he definitely goes there, is silly. Essentially, the gospels depicts Jesus as having nothing to do with the defiled temple until he cleanses it.

Both Jesus and the Essenes saw God’s people, the Jews, as being sinful and in need of God’s forgiveness and were sure God would grant it

It was a general tenet of Judaism that God was merciful to those who tried to live by His law, even if they stumbled, but would burn up the wicked. Essenes considered that flesh and blood people were all wicked, and only God was perfect and righteous, but that God was merciful to those who sought righteousness, and pardoned their sins (1QS 11:12-14). Though Christians have taken it that any sinner would be forgiven by God, this was never the belief of either Jesus or the Essenes.

Essenes were the “children of God’s truth” and they were the ones who God would forgive—the point being that they were trying to be righteous. John the Baptist and Jesus both wanted people to repent of their wickedness to obtain God’s acceptance. Without sincere repentance they were not going to be forgiven. In Mark 3:28-29, the “sons of men” referred to were his suppoerters whom he was addressing, not any riff-raff. Note that a “son of man” is simply a man, not a messiah! Admittedly, God was almighty and could do what he wanted, which is why forgiveness was thought by both groups as God’s gift, but neither Jesus or the Essenes thought God was capricious. God was just, and believers of either sect could be certain He would forgive all deserving people. Neither Jesus nor the Essenes were concerned about gentiles—a feature added to Christianity when it entered the gentile world, and not based on any message of Jesus.

Both Jesus and the Essenes put especial emphasis on prayer

Sometimes Jesus prayed all night (Lk 6:12), and the Essene Master apparently almost continuously (1QS 10:10, 13-16).

Both Jesus and the Essenes considered sacrifice in the temple of no importance

Their aim was inward purity and devotion to God and righteousness (Mk 12:33-34; 1QS 9:4-5).

Both Jesus and the Essenes, and John the Baptist, emphasised the purifying power of water

In the fourth gospel Jesus even identifies water with eternal life—salvation. Jesus began his career baptising (Jn 3:22; 4:1—the parenthesis in 4:2 being a blatant insertion intended to distinguish Jesus from John, though his message in Mark 1:15 was also the same as John’s in Mark 1:4). Christians like to find a marked difference here between the Essenes whose lustrations were repeated and the followers of Jesus and the Baptist for whom baptism was a single act. As usual, they deliberately put their microscopes to their blind eye. Baptism was an expedient of urgency.

Both Jesus and the Essenes condemned divorce

This is a major identification of Jesus and the Essenes. A Jew was permitted to divorce his wife, according to the Mosaic law (Deut 24:1) simply by writing a bill of divorce. Jesus taught divorce was not allowed (Mk 10:2-9). The Damascus Rule criticises the Pharisees for allowing remarriage while “the first wife was alive”, making a man into a double fornicator. The rule forbids polygamy and divorce. The Essenes cite “Male and female, created he them” (Gen 1:27) as scriptural authority, the very passage quoted by Jesus (Mk 10:6). Both Jesus and the Essenes support this, their main authority, with others, different in each case, but the coincidence of the principle argument is devastating. Bent Scholar, therefore, does not use this item but choses a less convincing one from the Temple Scroll that applied apparently only to the king anyway. Here we have in a nation which had clearly laid out in its law a permit for divorce, yet two groups, unconnected, Christians try to argue, used the same scriptural authority to deny the common practice. This is quite beyond coincidence.

Both Jesus and the Essenes used the terms “Sons of Light”—no one else did in Palestine at the time

Once again, Bent Scholar believes he can tell what Jesus believed solely from what he is reported to have said. He said nothing much about Sons of Light or Sons of Darkness, yet his followers were fond of this light and darkness metaphor. Was it another of the strange coincidences that beset Christianity? Bent Scholar will tell us that Essenes who joined the Christian movement introduced it after the crucifixion. Perhaps so, or the Master introduced it himself and that is why his followers used it. The Christian explanation is special pleading to keep their God unique. It is not scholarship.

Bent denies that Jesus was a dualist. Why then did he believe that God had a most dangerous enemy in Satan, the God of Evil, who aimed to stop Yehouah in everything he did? The central pivot of dualism is this conflict, and Christianity is dualistic until this day. If the reply is, “Good will eventually win with God on its side”, then Christian dualism differs not a whit from Essene dualism and Persian dualism.

The expression “Sons of Light” is common in the Scrolls (1QS 3:3) and appears (Lk 16:8) on Jesus’s tongue in the parable of the Unjust Steward in Luke 16:1-9:

There was a certain rich man, which had a steward, and the same was accused unto him that he had wasted his goods. And he called him, and said unto him, How is it that I hear this of thee? Give an account of thy stewardship, for thou mayest be no longer steward. Then the steward said within himself, What shall I do? For my lord taketh away from me the stewardship. I cannot dig, to beg I am ashamed. I am resolved what to do, that, when I am put out of the stewardship, they may receive me into their houses. So he called every one of his lord’s debtors unto him, and said unto the first, How much owest thou unto my lord? And he said, An hundred measures of oil. And he said unto him, Take thy bill, and sit down quickly, and write fifty. Then said he to another, And how much owest thou? And he said, An hundred measures of wheat. And he said unto him, Take thy bill, and write fourscore. And the lord commended the unjust steward, because he had done wisely. For the children of this world are in their generation wiser than the children of light. And I say unto you, Make to yourselves friends of the mammon of unrighteousness, that, when ye fail, they may receive you into everlasting habitations.

It seems disparaging. Luke has Jesus saying that anyone of this world is wiser than the sons of light. If the Sons of Light meant the Essenes, Jesus evidently did not think much of them and cannot have been one of them.

The parable has always been a difficult one for Christians to explain—it seems to commend dishonesty, and the conclusion seems to say be friendly with thieves as an insurance policy. Luke obviously had the same trouble understanding the parable as later clerics. A Jewish friend of Bent Scholar seems to think the parable is meant to run down the Children (Sons) of Light as stupid, which would require the followers of Jesus to be identified with the crooked Children of this World in their generation. On this basis, the silly conclusion by Luke is correct. Naturally, it is not. A close look at the parable shows it to be entirely in the line of the teaching of Jesus and the Essenes.

Jesus and the Essenes were The Poor who could not have been admiring grasping people or their servants who handled their affairs for them. What then had the steward done that Jesus might commend? He had been clever in devising a way of providing for himself in the unknown circumstances that would arise when he was sacked. The steward and his employer were the children of this world, as ought to be plain. This world and its generation were, for Essenes and for Jesus, wicked. The children of it therefore behave in the parable as might be expected of them. Yet they are cleverer than the Children of Light, the name that everywhere it appears means the Essenes. Plainly, it is a warning to the Children of Light to be smarter. Jesus is saying that even the sinners of this wicked world look to their future and pursue it with guile. The Children of Light ought to take a leaf out of their book in this respect. They too should prepare for the future, the coming kingdom, by being on their guard to be constantly righteous, making sure they are not deflected from their goal by the wicked of the world. Note a similar warning in Matthew 10:16:

Behold, I send you forth as sheep in the midst of wolves. Be ye therefore wise as serpents, and harmless as doves.

The context of both gospels when these instances occur is that of Jesus explaining the kingdom, and who God would welcome. The world was soon to end. The only future there was was that in the kingdom of God. The sinners would have no future, unless it was one of hell fire. But the kingdom would come when God was ready. There was time to be guileless and be tempted in this world, and at that instance, the kingdom might come, with fearful consequences just for one slip. The message to the Children of Light was to be cleverer than the Children of this World. So, Children or Sons of Light meant those expecting the kingdom—the followers of Jesus and the Essenes. The Bent Scholarly consensus are prevaricating yet again.

The followers of Jesus also said they followed “the Way”, notably in Acts. Bent Scholar has to concede that this expression was highly likely to have come from the Essenes but prefers to believe it was the gullible followers of Jesus who took up Essene terminology. We simply do not know what Jesus called his followers, except disciples or Children of Light! But since the church from early times tried to make out it was the result of a revelation of God, it had extremely good motives for excising all references to the predecessors of Jesus in the gospels. Fortunately for truth, they were inept and have left fossils of the Essenes throughout.

Both Christians and the Essenes had a charismatic leader, Jesus and the Righteous Teacher

From the earliest days of Scroll research, Christians have been defensive about the Essene Righteous Teacher as the model upon which Jesus was built, if not Jesus himself, they had such similar characteristics and history. A Righteous Teacher led the sectaries into the wilderness in protest at the corruption of the Jerusalem Temple, but this seems to have been long before Jesus. Unless there has been some sort of confusion of chronology, the two could not be identified. What is not certain is whether the leader of the Essenes, their Master or Mebaqqer, always held the honorific title of Righteous Teacher. The Essene leader was chosen because he behaved like their founder. If so, Jesus might well have been a Righteous Teacher, one among many, though not the Righteous Teacher—the founder of the sect.

Both Jesus and the Essenes did not marry

Jews had been commanded by God to be fruitful and multiply the seed of Adam (Gen 1:28). The only celibate party known in first century Judaism were the Essenes. Would a devout man like Jesus have defied God’s commandment to have children unless he had the authority of a devout community? The Essenes were the Elect, God’s warriors in the cosmic battle to come. They had been forbidden to join God’s army if they had wife (Deut 24:5) and so they remained celibate. The Essenes justified this by regarding women as temptresses. In the passage in Matthew 19:11-12, Bent Scholar asserts, with no argument, that Jesus was not praising celibacy, but might have been praising the Essenes for their celibacy. So, here Jesus is just making an observation? Nonsense, he concludes saying, “There are eunuchs which made themselves eunuchs for the kingdom of heaven’s sake. He that is able to recieve it, let him receive it.” Anyone who cannot see that this is a recommendation of chastity does not deserve to be considered a scholar.

Both Jesus and the Essenes believed there was a power called the Holy Spirit

Bent Scholar admits at the outset that Jesus may have had this from the Essenes. The reason is that it is not a concept important in the Jewish scriptures, where it occurs only twice (Ps 51:11; Isa 63:10-11). Yet it appears almost a hundred times in the New Testament and frequently in the Scrolls. In both writings, it has the same personality, that of an entity separate from God. It is quite impossible to believe that the identical concept could have arisen indepnedently in the same community. It is not a strong concept for the Rabbis who believed it was associated with the Prophets and ceased when prophecy ceased, so it cannot have been simply a popular fad of the time. It is proof that the Christians were Essenes. The Essenes developed the idea when they left Jerusalem and the temple for the wilderness believing that they had God’s commission to uphold the true second-temple tradition. God was always with his people in the years in the wilderness with Moses, though he had no “house” to live in, and the outcast Essenes believed the Shekinah or Presence of God went with them. This was the meaning of the Holy Spirit in Isaiah and the Essenes grasped it and personified it as the Will of God.

Both Jesus and the Essenes believed in the guidance of the Holy Spirit in reading the scriptures

Neither was concerned about interpreting the scriptures in peculiar ways—guided by the Holy Ghost! Both felt they had the secrets of correct interpretation—prophecy, in its correct Jewish sense. Christians call it “revelation”, the Qumran sectaries tended to call it “knowledge of the mysteries of God” (1QS 11:3-4,15-17). Both concluded that God’s promises to Israel were about to be fulfilled in the end of the age, the End Time or Last Days (1QSa 1:1; Jn 6:39f). Essenes granted guidance by the Holy Ghost is a severe blow to Christians who thought it reserved its incompetence for them. They wriggle visibly trying to find weedling ways out.

He [Jesus] offered a new way of reading the Torah against the background of specific ideas of the Qumran Community.
Stegemann

Jesus may have been influenced by Essene exegesis, but if so he reshaped it in the light of his own claims of direct revelation,

and

Any Essene exegetical influence on Jesus would have been reshaped creatively by his own revelatory experiences and claims and understanding of his mission.
John Charlesworth

Yes, this is the scholarship of the same Professor Bent Scholar who is disparaging about writers who are not scholars!