Where there is doubt, there is freedom.

Latin proverb

Essenes and the Qabalah 2

Metatron, Michael, Melchizedek, Messiah
Logos
The Messiah and His Herald
Sepher Yetzirah
Zohar
Essenic or Rabbinic?

Abstract

The medieval Qabalists were disenchanted with life, seeking to build a bridge from this Vale of Tears to God. They renounced the world and sought the spiritual, the hidden and the unknown. Only the elect could benefit. Commentators say that Qabalah drew upon ideas form various places, yet they can be found together in Essenism. Much of the Dead Sea Scrolls is visionary and reminiscent of the Qabalah. The Qabalist rejection of life and inclination to asceticism is supposed to be the influence of the medieval Christian monasteries, but the Essenes and Therapeutae were there before the Christians. Qabalists mortified flesh to subjugate desire, but the Essenes had done it first, and were so successful they laughed at their Roman torturers. Through constant prayer and Torah study, Qabalists sought to reach God. So too did the Essenes. Among the parallels is that between the Metatron of Qabalah and the Melchizedek at Qumran.

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.

Page Tags: Qabalah, Qabala, Kabbala, Kabala, Cabala, Essenes, Mysticism, Jewish, Judaism, Zohar, Sephiroth, Yetzirah, God, Heavenly, Jewish, Melchizedek, Messiah, Persian

Last uploaded: 19 April, 2008.