Christianity
Essenes and the Qabalah, an Esoteric Form of Judaism
Abstract
© Dr M D Magee
Contents Updated: Wednesday, May 23, 2001
Jewish Mysticism
Mysticism is concerned with achieving personal communion with God. The distinguishing mark of mysticism is an intensity of religious feeling often rising to ecstasy. Inasmuch as modern evangelical Christians always tell us they have a personal relation with God, they are mystics. The personal aspect of it means that it leans heavily on prayer rather than ritual whereas sacerdotal religions attribute communion with God to the observance of proper practice and ritual, like temple Judaism, though ritual is not precluded from mysticism especially for mystics practising in isolation or in small groups. Practical Judaism and Christianity are usually between these extremes.
The word Qabalah means “tradition” or “what is received” by being passed on by teachers. In older Jewish literature, Qabalah is all received religious doctrine except the Torah—the rule of the religious life and and worship of Jews—Prophets, Writings and Oral Traditions that became the Mishna. Qabalah had its beginning as mysticism, divided into “Maaseh Bereshit” (Creation Mysticism) and “Maaseh Merkabah” (Chariot Mysticism). The mystics of the Qabalah are called “Mequbalim”, those accepted by God.
Mysticism finds ways of seeking a “God’s eye” view of the world to reveal man’s relationship with the Creator and the universe. The method is to develop an insight whereby the real nature of the Creation can be seen, and this can be developed only by the mystic or someone trained in the tradition.
Qabalah as it is now known, as an esoteric form of Judaism, is first mentioned in the eleventh century in the work of Solomon Ibn Gebirol where the expression the “wisdom of Qabalah” is mentioned. It took three more centuries to become popular, or perhaps to escape into the open.
The medieval Qabalists were disenchanted with life, seeking to build a bridge from the “Vale of Tears” to God. They renounced the world with its snares and sought the spiritual, the hidden and the unknown. Only the “elect”—those who were worthy—could benefit. Commentators say that qabalah drew upon an eclectic collection of ideas—Jewish ethics, Zoroastrian dulaism, Pythagorean numerology, neo-Platonic emanations and medieval asceticism. Yet these concepts can nearly all be found together in Essenism, a form of Judaism, still displaying strong Persian roots, of 2000 years ago. The Qabalist rejection of life and inclination to asceticism is put down to the influence of the medieval Christian monasteries, but Essenic and Therapeutic monasticism preceded that of the Christians. Qabalists mortified flesh to subjugate desire, but the Essenes had done it long before, and were so successful that they could laugh at their Roman torturers. Through constant prayer and Torah study, they sought to reach God. So too did the Essenes.
The Jewish Encyclopaedia in its article on Zohar says Qabalism originated in the eighth century among Persian Jews, but in its article on Qabalah, it notes that Joseph ben Judah in the second half of the second century revealed that a secret doctrine existed, associated with Johanan ben Zakkai, a Jew who lived through the Jewish War. The article however also notes that the main elements of Qabalah occur in Jewish apocalyptic which is linked above all to Essenism.
Some try to find the roots of Qabalah in Gnosis. Qabalah and Gnosis have common concepts of light, emanations, aeons and letter mysticism, but the truth is that they both had common roots in Essenism, though it is hard to know what is the truth now. E Müller writes:
The scope of the Gnostic teaching itself—which contained Persian, Babylonian, Egyptian, Greek and Jewish elements fused together—is difficult to determine, since the greater part of the relevant literature has been destroyed by the Roman Church.
All we know is from the criticisms of Christian apologists, and therefore likely to be highly selected or misquoted, and latterly from the Nag Hammadi discoveries. Gnosticism was close to Christianity in its formative years because of their common roots in the Essenes and, like Christianity, tried to distance itself from Judaism when the Jews sank in popularity through the Jewish Wars, and became hostile to Jewish mythology. The Cainites venerated Cain, and the Ophites who corresponded to the Jewish-Gnostic sect called the Nachashites (from the Hebrew for serpent) venerated the serpent, who they saw as trying to warn humanity about the megalomaniac lesser god who ruled them. Marcion rejected the Hebrew God as the Creator because the world was evil, and made the Creator of the world a demon called Jaldabaoth.
Secret Doctrine
Scriptural exegesis is the source of Qabalah—the conviction that the Jewish scriptures are not just what they say, but also have an underlying meaning. This was the Essene belief, and it is from this source that medieval Jewish Qabalism arose.
“Agada” in Aramaic or “Haggadah” in Hebrew is biblical exegesis not concerned with the law (halacha). Practical Qabalah is the three methods of exegesis called “Gematria”, “Notarikon” and “Temura”, but the whole of Qabalah is concerned with scriptural exegesis. Agada is often illogical or based on false logic. It is like the peculiar methods of exegesis used by the Essenes in the Dead Sea Scrolls. Writing of the Qabalah as if he were writing about the scroll exegetes, A E Waite in The Holy Kabbalah, says their “doctrine in respect of exegesis was arbitrary to the last degree”. It was arbitrary to our way of thinking because it was based upon irrelevant connexions, but they thought God was at work. Such exegesis is characteristic of the Essenes, and Qabalistic tradition possibly came from them, seemingly through the Qaraites, but probably also linking back to and reviving ancient traditions of European Jews.
The Essenes were known as the Chashaim, the “Silent Ones”, yet another pun on their name. Both Josephus and Philo tell us the Essenes had books of secrets and knew secrets that they could not disclose. These related to the names of God and the angels, just some of the main interests of the Qabalah, but they also had their secret methods of exegesis that also were transferred to the Qabalah.
There is also a code involved. Psalms 85:11 says: “Truth shall spring out of the earth”, so whatever springs out of the earth, like grass, stands for truth. Biblical passages might be seen as connected because they contain the same phrase or even word. In Genesis 1:1, “beginning” is read as meaning “wisdom” because of Psalms 111. “Waters” means the secret doctrine of the Qabalah itself. In the the Damascus Document (CD 6:4-5) ”living water” is the teachings of the Essene community and is symbolicly drawn from the “well that the princes digged” of Numbers 21:18 which, in the scroll, symbolises the Law. Christian Qabalists will have noted “living water” for Jesus, addressing the Samaritan woman by Jacob’s well (Jn 4:10-14), brings salvation and eternal life. Anagrams and word associations are permitted. Genesis 2:4 reads “when they were created” which is interpreted as “Abraham” because the Hebrew is an anagram of the name.
The proper names of no Essenes are known from the Dead Sea Scrolls, only their titles. Josephus mentions some Essenes, highlighting their prophetic abilites, but they are not known elsewhere. In the Talmud, however, named Pharisees are listed as having mystical inclinations. Rabbinic Judaism presents itself in such a way that it seems unlikely that the Pharisees could have been mystics, and it seems plain enough that rabbinic Judaism discouraged it. G Vermes writes in The Dead Sea Scrolls in English:
The Throne-Chariot was a central subject of meditation in ancient as well as in medieval Jewish esotericism and mysticism, but the guardians of the Rabbinic orthodoxy tended to discourage such speculation. The liturgical use of Ezekiel’s chapter on the Chariot is expressly forbidden in the Mishnah; it even lays down that no wise man is to share his understanding of the Merkabah with a person less enlightened than himself. As a result, there is very little ancient literary material extant on the subject, and the Qumran text is therefore of great importance to the study of the Origins of Jewish mysticism.
The possibility remains that these mystical rabbis were Essenes who did not become Christians, but rather turned to Pharisaism when it became clear that Essenism had been Hellenized in its adoption as a gentile religion.
Ben Sirach 3:21-23 implies a secret doctrine that should not be asked about, and Talmud Chagigah repeats it:
Seek not the things that are too hard for thee, nor the things that are above thy strength. But what is commanded thee, think thereupon with reverence, for it is not needful for thee to see with thine eyes the things that are in secret. Be not curious in unnecessry matters, for more things are showed unto thee than men understand.
Qabalah equates the secret doctrine with the Book of Enoch, much admired by the Essenes. Arthur Lillie (Modern Mystics and Modern Magic) thought the Qabalah was an Essene sectret doctrine, though he spoke specifically of the Zohar. He also thought S Paul was a Qabalist. There is good reason to think he had Essenic training so, if the Essenes were the source of Qabalism, perhaps he was. Lillie was among those troubled that Buddhism was a source of Christianity, but his more extreme fancies do not automatically invalidate his more reasonable one.
The connexion of Philo with the Qabalah on one side and Philo and the Essenes and Therapeutae on the other might suggest a commonality between the two systems. There are too many similarities to discount, and Philo affirms a Jewish mystic doctrine.
Creation
In the mystical tradition, God did not create the world out of nothing, but out of the six elements mentioned in Genesis: Tohu, Bohu, darkness, water, wind and Tehom (abyss). These suggest a Zoroastrian origin.
In the Sepher Yetzirah, the creation of the world is described based on the 32 signs of the “sephiroth”, the 22 Hebrew consonants and the ten numeric signs. Creation is an emanation from the Holy Spirit into three elements, air, fire and water. Air is central and from it fire ascends and water descends. Just as in Zoroastrianism, these are sacred elements. The 22 letters are classified as three “mothers” (aleph, mem and shin), seven “doubles” are letters that have an alternative pronunciation, and twelve “singles”. The three mothers stand for the three primary elements, the seven doubles are the planets and the twelve singles are the signs of the zodiac. Jubilees, a favourite of the Essenes has a cosmogony derived from the Hebrew alphabet.
A Sepher Yetzirah is mentioned in the Talmud in the context of creation. Either the two books are the same or the modern Sepher Yetzirah is a forgery of what was conceived of as the old one. Yet whoever forged the book managed to do it in a convincing style of Hebrew, appropriate to the time! The doctrine of the power of the divine name was held in Mesopotamia, so might have been deliberately introduced by the Persian founders of Judaism.
Michael L Rodkinson points out that the sources of the Talmud are the “customs and regulations practised by the authorities in their administration of religious and civic affairs”. These customs and regulations themselves ultimately derive from Ezra, the Persian administrator who founded Judaism, though the Mishna actually began to be laid down by Rabbi Judah the Prince in the time of Marcus Aurelius. The Talmud insists on obedience to authority, showing its ultimate purpose.
G Scholem says the Qabalah degenerates into magical texts and incantations like the Sword of Moses when “the less sense any passage has in itself, the more important it becomes”. There are plenty of people taday who think something meaningless is profound. A E Waite writes:
It is useless to reason with those whose confidence is not shaken in the face of impossibilities, whose imagination can bridge all gulfs in evidence by fantastic suppositions.
Presumably he means Christians and Jews in this context.
Chariot
“Maaseh Merkabah” or Chariot Mysticism is deduced from the first chapter of Ezekiel which is written in distinctive imagery and language compared with the rest of the bible. Apocalyptic literature is important to Maaseh Merkabah. The central figure for Merkabah mystics is Enoch who did not die but walked with the gods. He is identified with Naar (the Lad) and thence with Metatron.
Most apocalyptic works have an angel sent to introduce a chosen human to angelic mysteries. Such works treat Judaism as a mystery religion and the angelic guide is the mystagogue initiating the mystae into the secrets of the cult. Rabbi Eliezar initiated Rabbi Akiba into the mysteries of the Song of Songs and the Merkabah, according to Midrash ha Neelam. In the Hechaloth Rabbati, Rabbi Akiba is called an initiate of the Merkabah.
The soul undergoes a journey, ascending through the levels of heaven, meeting various supernatural creatures and mysterious objects—the merkabah, the angelic hosts, supernatural beings of all ranks and kinds—of stars, of elements of nations, watchers by the gates, archangels and the throne of God. Humans can come to these things through the cult and can also see the past and the future of the Jews, including its conclusion in the eschaton—Judgement and punishment of the wicked. The messiah is called “son of God” in some of these apocalypses, as is the Metatron (Apocalypse of Elijah).
G Scholem says in Major Trends of Jewish Mysticism, that each stage of initiation corresponded to a stage of religious progress—devoted, pure, sincere, wholly with God, holy before God, able to turn away guardian angels by speaking the Kedushah, and finally to stand trembling before God and praying, “Praise to the Lord”.
Heavenly Citizens
A whole hierarchy of heavenly assistants to God can be called upon to help mystics, ranging from angels who are slightly God-like beings in the appearance of androgynous men, to the Sephiroth who are slightly men-like Gods. One object of Jewish mysticism is to categorize angels correctly according to their divine powers. The mystic is taught how to know these things and how to call them—an ability called “neshamah”. The outcome of it is its application to human life and conduct. All these beings are accepted in a supposedly rigid monotheism! Harry Gersh, in The Sacred Books of the Jews, writes:
The Jews wove into their mysticism ideas of upper and neither worlds, angels, and demons, ghosts and spirits—ideas that had been unknown or of little importance to them until then.
When? The truth is that the supernatural entities he speaks of were originally Jewish precisely because Judaism was founded from Zoroastrianism by the Persians. It is a common Persian influence that gives such beliefs a similar flavour. Isaac Myer in Philosophy of Ibn Gebriol says the “secret learning” of the Israelites was “in accord with the philosophy of Plato and Pythagoras”, and emanated from the same source, “Aryan and Chaldaean esoteric doctrine”. In Pierre Larouse’s Great Universal Dictionary of the Nineteenth Century, an article on the Qabalah said:
The Qabalah originated among the Jews five centuries before our era… It was elaborated silently, and in the main among the sect of Qaraites.
Ernst Müller in History of Jewish Mysticism tells us that Pythagoras was in Babylon in the Persian period and was taught by Nazarates, who in the Greek tradition was “a Zoroaster”, a renewer of Zoroastrianism. Since no one denies a marked similarity between Essenism and Pythagorianism, one might have thought this was worth a passing comment from scroll scholars and Christians, but needless to say, it gets none. P Mordell notes many similarities between Pythagorean mysticism and Jewish, confirming their joint root in Zoroastrianism. Letter mysticism is sometimes said to be purely Jewish but there are enough grounds to reject it.
The Persian religion was based on the existence of a vast suprasensual world of angels and demons, and this same emphasis came into the version of Persian religion imposed on Judah. Once the new religion had been accepted after about 100 years, subsequent writers made frequent reference to it, though no one had before simply because it had not existed in a form that distinguished it from the age old religions of Canaan in general. The Mosaic legend was formulated late in the elaboration of the cult but based on a romanticised telling of its early years of struggle against the local Baal cults of Canaan. The tent of meeting was a mobile sanctuary and it seems the initial stage of eliminating independent local sanctuaries was to provide this mobile sanctuary to just one God—Yehouah.
Judaism is replete with superhuman beings, showing its Persian ancestry. Cherubim pop up here and there and have the task of guarding the entrance to Paradise (Gen 3:24), mysterious “sons of God” canoodle with the daughters of men (Gen 6:2), the “angel of Yehouah” appears to Moses and to Hagar and leads the Israelites in their Exodus, angels visit Abraham, and Jacob even wrestles with one! The “angel of Yehouah” has his power through the Holy Name (Ex 23:20-21):
Behold, I send an Angel before thee to keep thee in the way, and to bring thee into the place which I have prepared. Beware of him, and obey his voice. Provoke him not, for he will not pardon your transgressions, for My name is in him.
It is absurd to imagine that the Persians planted these ideas only in Yehud. They were planted widely, explaining why Jews mysteriously appeared all over the parts of the east controlled by the Persians, even though they were supposed to have come from originally from a tiny underpopulated region of limestone hills in Palestine. The Persians implanted Juddin in Egypt, Anatolia, Mesopotamia and the north of the Iranian plateau, as well as in the Levant. There was no diaspora but rather a spiritual convergence to the temple state deliberately set up by the Persian kings as the focus of the religion of the Juddin. After the fall of Persia, all the Juddin looked to Yehud as their spiritual home, though few wanted to go there. It was the Maccabees who gave the Jews a national home of their own. All the Jews in the lands outside Yehud were called the diaspora, and the scriptural myth was written to support this new concept.
Names of God
The replacement of a Canaanite pantheon is clearly stressed in Deuteronomy 4:35,39 where we read: “Yehouah, he is the gods (elohim)”, and the same statement is proclaimed eventually by the people (1 Kings 18:39) showing that an editor of the deuteronomic history wrote after the event, therefore seeming prophetic to those who cannot understand what a pseudepigraph is.
M H Landauer, in the nineteenth century, had already noted the distinction in the bible between Yehouah and Elohim, a distinction that translators are happy to hide by false translation, notably the plural form of the latter and its use for gods and spirits in general, making its use for the monotheistic God extremely unlikely, except as a fudge by monotheists trying to disguise an earlier polytheistic phase. Moses is Elohim to his brother Aaron (Ex 4:16) and Saul conjures up Elohim as the ghost of Samuel. It was an earlier use exactly parallel to that of the polytheistic Greeks, desperately altered to suit later theology and eventually accepted as one of the many names of God though plural in form.
As in the Persian religion, abstract qualities are personified as beings or aspects of God. One of the main ones in Judaism is typically translated “glory” but in Greek is “appearance” (doxa) and in Hebrew is the word that denotes a numinous materialisation of the spirit in the form of a cloud (kabod)—essentially the popular wispy visualisation of a ghost! The kabod of Yehouah rests on Mount Sinai and Moses wants to see it (Ex 32:18). The “shekinah”, a word that does not appear as such in the whole Jewish scripture, is important to the Hasids, and is similar in meaning to “kabod” although not materialised, and therefore invisible or at best looking more like a translucence than a luminous cloud. It is the “presence” of God in the world. The spirit or breath of God (“ruach Elohim”, breath of the gods) is material enough to set into motion the primeaval chaos, and is the Holy Spirit that effects the soul (Psalms 51:11).
The Persian God, Ahuramazda, could not be confined to a temple, and the solution for the Jews was to separate God from his name. Only the name of God lived in the temple! The authors of the Mosaic myth got round this problem with the promise:
In all places where I record my name I will come to thee and I will bless thee.Exodus 20:24
The utterance of the Holy Name at Yom Kippur therefore led to the most astonishing miracles, according to the Talmud!
The Agada uses a variety of terms as aspects of God, just as Philo uses Logos—Metatron, Michael, Melchizedek and Shekinah. These are identified with Messiah, David and the Name. This aspect of God has the second throne of the vision of Daniel, so important to Christianity. Note that Paul mentions a Jewish sect called the Melchizedekites (the Order of Melchizedek) in Hebrews (Heb 5:5-9; 7:11-17).
In the Ethiopic Book of Enoch, the seven angels who keep watch are Uriel (or Phanuel), Raphiel, Raguel, Michael, Zarachiel, Gabriel and Remiel. Of these the four main ones are the four faces of a Janus-like figure, the four faces of God. The Christians called these four, archangels. The names of the angels show them to be qualities of God, just as the Amesha Spentas were. El means God, so each stands for a different description of God, except for Michael which is “who is like God”.
Metatron, Michael, Melchizedek, Messiah
Who said:
And he said to Moses, Go up to Yehouah?
Accoring to Talmud Sanhedrin 38b, it was Metatron. According to Targum Jonathan, it was Michael. Metatron is the angel that Enoch became in heaven, confirming that Jesus was expected to have an angelic heavenly form—that of Michael. But since Metatron is Michael, it follows that Jesus is Enoch! In the Hebrew Book of Enoch, Metatron is the Lesser Yehouah. He is a heavenly scribe who registers the deeds of men in the Book of Life. He is also the heavenly High Priest and the heavenly advocate of Israel. Michael has the same functions and is the angel of Yehouah, in whose name God resides (Ex 23:21).
The High Priest is the intermediary between the people and God. He conducted the central ceremony of sprinkling the blood on the altar in the blood sacrifice, a ritual prescribed by the Persians to seal the covenant—the vassalage treaty they imposed on the colony—from their own practice, then justified by the invention of the myth of Moses and his covenant with God (Ex 24:6). The Zohar has heavenly doubles of prominent figures at least—a heavenly (Upper) High Priest and a heavenly (Upper) David. These are Persian concepts—fravashis.
Much of the Dead Sea Scrolls is visionary and reminiscent of the Qabalah. Among the parallels is that between the Metatron of Qabalah and the Melchizadek at Qumran. The Heavenly Melchizedek (11Q13) shows Melchizedek exalted over all angels. Melchizedek is the head of the “sons of heaven” or “gods of justice” and has the titles “Elohim” and “El” normally reserved for God. Isaiah’s messiah is Melchizedek, because the pesher on Isaiah 61:2 identifies “the anointed one” with Melchizedek. In 4Q521, the one “anointed” by Yehouah in Isaiah 61:1-2 is the Messiah:
For the heavens and the earth shall listen to His Messiah.
Melchizedek presides over a heavenly assize and, with angelic assistance, punishes Belial, his demons and the wicked. He is the heavenly Judge. Since Melchizedek is “a priest forever” (Gen 14:8; Psalms 110:4), the sectaries saw Melchizedek as the high priest of the heavenly temple, and identified him with the archangel Michael, also the heavenly high priest. Parallels between the heavenly Melchizedek of Qumran and the Metatron of 3 Enoch also stand out. Both are exalted among the angels, both are heavenly judges, and both apparently had earthly lives, before their exaltation to their heavenly states, as Enoch.
11Q13 quotes Isaiah 61:1-2 but substitutes “the year of Melchizedek’s favour” for “the year of Yehouah’s favor” identifying Melchizedek with Yehouah in this passage. It continues:
…as it is written about him [Melchizedek] in the Songs of David, “Elohim has taken his place in the council of El; in the midst of the Elohim he holds judgement.Lines 10-11, Psalms 82:1
Scripture also says about Melchizedek:
Over it take your seat in the highest heaven; El will judge the peoples.Psalms 7:7-8
11Q13 goes on to apply the passage “Your Elohim reigns” (Isa 52:7) to Melchizedek finally concluding:
Your Elohim (Isa 52:7) is Melchizedek, who will deliver them from the power of Belial. (Line 25)
The Qumran community saw the Messiah as Melchizedek, Michael and Metatron, and Melchizedek was a name of God (El, Elohim and Yehouah). The divinity of Messiah at Qumran is also found in Enoch, fragments of several copies of which were found in cave four at Qumran. In 1 Enoch 14:24, Enoch sees the divine throne and the enthroned figure calls to him “come near to Me and to My Holy Word. The Word (logos) of Yehouah was next to the throne where Melchizedek is in Psalms 110.
N J Weinstein pointed out these identies in 1901, so after 100 years Christians still do not know who their angels are, a sad deterioration from their founders, the Essenes who were bound to learn them. And D H Joel, as long ago as 1849, and Alexander Kohat, in 1866, both showed that the name Metatron is a form of Mitra—the Persian God of Covenants. The alternative derivation of it from the Greek “meta thronon”, meaning behind the throne, might suggest a deliberate alteration of Mithras to eliminate an obvious Persian connexion, and to suit biblical imagery, under Greek influence.
Logos
Philo took logos to be an aspect of God—one of many, because in On Dreams Philo used the plural logoi to stand for them: “God sends his Logoi to assist those of virtue”, suggesting that he conceived of them like the Amesha Spentas of the Persian religion. In Genesis, the “Word” is the creative power of God. God created by the word of his mouth. So, logos was effectively God himself, his active spirit, effectively the Holy Ghost, the Spenta Mainyu of Zoroastrianism. In The Confusion of Tongues, Philo speaks of “God’s first born, “The Word”, who holds the eldership among the angels, their ruler as it were”. Then in Allegorical Interpretations, he identifies logos with Melchizedek!
The idea of the logos was invented by the ancient Greek philosopher, Heraclitus, but he was influenced by the Persians, so whether the concept could have passed into both Jewish and Greek tradition from Persia, or whether here is a Greek influence on the scriptures is hard to say. Evidence that it is directly from the Persian is that the “Word” in Hebrew (dabar) means a prophet’s utterance in 255 places in the scriptures out of about 265 in total. Since prophets spoke for God, they were speaking God’s “Word”, and the prophets were the Persian agents propagandising for the new ethical god.
The prophets were really speaking the Persian king’s word! The ethical force, the sharpness, the social idealism and, above all, the monotheism of the prophets is out of character with the Baalism of the time and place when they were supposed to have lived—the hills of Palestine in the eighth century BC. Monotheism, in the form of Zoroastrianism was on the horizon in the east and arrived with Cyrus in the sixth century, as the scriptures effectively concede by granting him the title of the messiah—the Jewish saviour.
Prophets made their predictions with assurance. they would have been useless propagandists if they had been unsure. They are certain. They see the eschaton, and see God enthroned. The Jews were being invited by God’s saviour on earth, the Persian king, to play an essential role in the ultimate salvation of humanity and the restoration of Paradise by building a temple in Abarnahara.
The “sons of the prophets” are their disciples. People who have accepted their propaganda and spread the desired message independently. This was the prophetic intent—the way propaganda was spread through a population, and precisely the way evangelists spread the Christian message still. Those who have something to gain from the message convince others to spread it for them—professionals using willing but uncomprehending volunteers. Eventually the Persian agents were written back into history as the “nebiim”, agents of God, not the foreign king, with God-given powers of foreknowledge. The successful prophets, of course, did seem to have foreknowledge. They would prophesy that the Persian king would succeed and he did. Those who prophesied the opposite would have had a short life when the victors took over. The age of prophesy ended with the Persian empire.
The psalms which started as sung propaganda became magical incantations with physical and spiritual healing powers. perhaps they were sold from the outset on this very basis. Besides the Nebiim, there were other sections of society, if they have their origins so far back, with some social functions now lost—the Nazirites, the Rechabites, the Kenites and the Sons of Korah.
The Messiah and His Herald
Elijah is the Jewish superman whose name means “My God is Yehouah”, a mythical role model for the new God and his religion. He was also later to be seen as the forerunner of the Christian saints as a heavenly guide—a messenger of God who could appear in human form and would herald the coming messiah. Because he would appear again just before the eschaton, he would be the last of the prophets, although he was the first, and Moses, whose myth came later, was designated the first.
In Jewish tradition, according to Lewis Ginzberg in the Legends of the Jews, Elijah is to re-appear three days before the messiah to herald his coming. After lamenting over the devastation of the Holy land, he declares: “Now, peace will come to the land”. The next day he declares: “God will come to the land”. On the third day, his message is: “Salvation will come to the land”. The angel Michael then blows his trumpet and Elijah appears at last to announce the messiah.
It is a threefold tale that actually has four appearances by Elijah. The implication is that the messiah appears at the beginning of the fourth day. This is distinctly Persian and particularly Mithraic. In fact, the announcement on the third day sounds like the announcement of the messiah, who duly appears as soon as that day ends, heralded finally by the blast of Michael’s trumpet. His purpose in blowing the trumpet is not that of a medieval herald. The blast is from the supernatural trumpet and destroys the corrupt world, providing for the raising of the dead for judgement and the inauguration of the incorruptible eternal world that Jesus called “the kingdom of God”.
Michael is the messiah! Michael in the scriptures is the face of God, just as Mithras seemed to have been for Ahuramazda. The second announcement by Elijah is that “God will come to the land”. After that the messiah is announced, so God is the messiah, and he appears in the form of the angel Michael.
The effect of the trumpet is told by Ginzberg in his retelling of the Apocalypse of Daniel. Here Michael or the messiah does not blow the trumpet, but Elijah himself. At the first blast, the Primal Light reappears. At the second blast, the dead rise and assemble for Judgement. At the third blast, the Shekinah becomes visible. The final blast levels the mountains and causes Ezekiel’s perfect temple to appear, just as described. Though this is Jewish, it all sounds remarkably Christian, not least in the first announcement that “peace would come to the land (eretz, earth)”. The connexion is obviously the Essenes.
Sepher Yetzirah
Sepher Yetzirah shows Persian influence. Kohut has shown that the names of the angels are Persian. The ten Sephiroth (Spheres, Greek, sphaira) make space spring from Good and Evil, and these from Time—seemingly the “Boundless Time” of Persian doctrine from which some see Ahuramazda and Angra Mainyu made as the opposite manifestations of Good and Evil. Ahuramazda created only the Good Creation. There was no point in Angra Mainyu creating a separate and independent Evil Creation, because Evil opposes Good and so he was constrained to build his Evil Creation within the Good. The seven Amesha Spentas were the seven planets turned into abstract good qualities of God personified. Plutarch in Isis and Osiris knew that these seven were Persian.
Qabalah, in Sepher Yetzirah, divides them into good qualities and opposed by equivalent evil ones. Life, Peace, Wisdom, Riches, Beauty, Fertility and Dominion are opposed by Death, War, Folly, Poverty, Ugliness, Desolation and Servitude. Lest anyone should gloat that here poverty is an evil while the Essenes regarded it as a blessing, they should remember the thousand years of time the Qabalah had to change subject to influences, some of which have been mentioned and many hidden forever by the Church. The Essenes would have had Poverty and Riches in opposite categories from the Qabalah, but this seemed baffling to medieval Jews who corrected what they thought was an error.
The idea of emanations occurs in Parseeism, the modern oriental form of Zoroastrianism. The Qabalah came into Europe in the ninth century from Mesopotamia.
Zohar
The other famous Qabalist book is Zohar that most people would accept was compiled and largely written by Rabbi Moses of Leon. Some therefore see it as a medieval forgery, but parts of it seem genuinely ancient—and Persian, according to Adolf Franck (1892). Christians mystics were happy to accept Zohar because it seemed to show ancient Jewish traditions analogous to some Christian traditions. Moses of Leon was a Christian convert from Judaism. Was he writing a Christianizing work for Jews, or were apparently Christian allusions already present in his source material because they were Essenic?
These older parts are visibly different in language and style from the connecting text, and are inserted at intervals. They are the Book of Secrecy, the Great Assembly and the Lesser Assembly. The first is letter mysticism explaining the secrets of God’s nature. The next describes Rabbi Siomeon ben Yochai, the supposed author of the whole work and a contemporary of Akiba, initiating his disciples, and revealing an anthropomorphic understanding of God. The third part is a continuation of the anthropomorphic revelation and a description of the death of Simeon. Rabbi Simeon is the Master and has seven disciples called his seven eyes.
The basis of being is ayin (nothing) or en soph (without end, timeless, the eternal or the absolute). In Zohar, as in Gnosis, the substance of the world is light, not the visible light that only appeared on the fourth day, but a Primordial Light which has a non-luminous equal, a Promordial Darkness. The Logos is the agent of Creation. An unknowable being, simply called “Who?” creates a place stamped with the name of God. There have been previous creations that lacked this holy name of 42 letters, and the desolation and chaos left from them are Tohu and Bohu. The letters of the holy name give the world its form. The Primordial Man of Judaism (Adam) is distinct from natural men who are called Enosh. This again is Persian where the Primordial man is Gayoman—not really a man at all but a seed of man.
The Zohar treats each soul as being androgynous before it enters the world. When it does the male and female parts separate and enter different bodies. It is the attraction of the soul trying to reunite that draws couples together in marriage. Thus the married couple is the unity. This reminds us of Jesus’s answer:
But from the beginning of the creation God made them male and female. For this cause shall a man leave his father and mother, and cleave to his wife; And they twain shall be one flesh: so then they are no more twain, but one flesh.Mark 10:6-8
In On the Creation of the World, Philo identifies the law of Moses with the harmony (asha, arta in Persian) of the universe:
The law corresponds to the world and the world to the law, and the man who is obedient to the law, being, by so doing, a citizen of the world, arranges his actions by reference to the intentions of Nature, in harmony with which the whole universal world is regulated.
The dimensions, proportions and prescriptions for cult objects were meant to reflect some underlying truth in respect of universal order, and took on numeric, geometric and musical harmonic forms. A Pythagorean influence seems possible, though a common origin in Persia would explain both. Thus the square is important and multiplies in power with repetition, so that the dimensions prescribed for the Holy of Holies of the temple (1 Kings 6:20) was a cube. The three divisions of the sanctuary, according to Philo and Josephus, stand for the division of the universe into heaven, sea and land. The four fabrics in the sacred tent were the four elements, the seven branches of the Menorah were the days of the week, each of which was controlled by one of the seven known planets, the twelve loaves of shewbread were the twelve constellations of the zodiac, rationalised into the twelve tribes of Israel, and also represented by the twelve precious stones on the breastplate of the High Priest.
A belief of Judaism, reflected in the Zohar is that the heavenly world is influenced by the material world, and indeed, is necessary to set it in motion if divine benefits are to appear: “What is above is also below and what is below is also above”. It smacks of an evolution from the Persian creation when the perfect world is still and only the creation of Evil introduces motion. It also reminds us of the Persian notion that everyone has a role in the ultimate victory of Good. We all chose between Good and Evil thus influencing the eventual outcome. The superior (male) world has to unite with the inferior (female) world in the missionary position for the harmony to prevail.
More sexual allusions occur in that the written law was uppermost and so masculine while the oral law was beneath and brought to fruition by the written law. The written law was wine while the oral law was milk. Water would be the natural opposite of wine but, for Essenes, who seem to have taken Nazarite vows, water was their wine, so milk was a less confusing substitute for the oral law.
Essenic or Rabbinic?
The tenor of much of the Zohar is that of “hidden secrets” perceived only by those trained to it. God, the law and Israel are all both hidden and revealed, but the layperson can only see what is obvious. Those that have ears can hear what is not!
The Lesser Assembly reminds us of the Essenes in demanding that the “Elect” constantly study the Torah:
He who occupies himself with the Torah every day, has a share of the future world. And when the Elect investigate the mysteries of of the Torah in the midnight hours, the Most Holy receives their souls in the Garden of Eden.
Messianic references are slight. “He is the foundation stone of the world”, sounding Essenic in their interest in foundation stones and the “precious corner stone”. He is also the “Righteous One”. He will come from “the Bird’s Nest” and will appear in Galilee, all apparently references to the band of Judas of Galilee and his base at Gamala, a city built like a bird’s nest on a cliff.
The question is: Did it begin being Essenic, and retain its original marks even though it was adpted first to Rabbinic and then to medieval conditions and values. If the Zohar was originally based on Essene doctrine, it was overlaid early, presumably in the second century by rabbinic doctrine. Rabbis are its heroes and the oral law is the twin of the written law, something Essenes could not have accepted at the earlier period.
The Talmuds have signs of a mystic tradition but nothing can be unequivocally identified as Qabalistic. Rabbinic discussions on the Creation and on the Chariot are mentioned in the Talmud, but none of the discussion is reported so it all remains enigmatic. Maimonides, much later, explains that the Creation mysteries are about the physical world while the Chariot mysteries are about the metaphysical.
The distinction between the practicality and everyday application of the Talmud and the obscurity and conjectural nature of the Qabalah, illustrates a difference between the Pharisees and the Essenes. The Essenes were no less capable than the Rabbis in laying down simple regulations for communities, but the Pharisees did not have the Essene reputaion for mysticism, even if there were mystic rabbis who were not Essenes. It is possible that this perception has been created by the expurgations of the rabbis themselves in cleaning out mysticism from rabbinism, but inasmuch as it reflected the real situation in the early centuries, it places the Qabalistic tradition with the Essenes in contrast with the Pharisaic origins of the Mishna.
In the Rabbinic tradition of the Talmud, Simeon and his school were responsible for the systematic classification of the Halakhot and building a rational basis for the law—Simeon is the exact opposite of the mystical figure in the Zohar, though he did have a reputation for miracle working. His school was in Galilee, and he was accused of treason by the Romans, making him sound rather like a zealot, not disimilar to Jesus. The tradition was that he hid in a cave with his son for twelve years to escape the Romans, a similar legend to one attached to Zoroaster. Galilee is code for a nationalist, a follower of Judas of Galilee, and his accusation by the occupying power rather confirms it. Pharisees were inclined to compromise, part of the reason why they were disliked and distrusted by the Essenes, so Simeon sounds more like an Essene than a Pharisee.
Essenes who had survived the wars must have become Christians or Pharisees, and possibly the rabbis accepted these men into their ranks as Jews who were knowers and doers of the law. Thus some of the Talmudic rabbis might have been originally Essenes, or even have still been Essenes—they are just called rabbis. So, the rabbinic schools cannot be said to have kept esoteric interpretations out of later Judaism, or even out of their own ranks, though the cautious and systematic approach plainly dominated after 136 AD. The suspicions of the “orthodox” Pharisees might have been a good reason why the secret doctrines of the Essenes remained secret even when Essenes had nominally become orthodox. Simeon, the hero of the Zohar, like Jesus, is a superhuman figure, one of the Maskilim, using the word used by the Essenes for their Righteous Teachers.
