John Donne’s bell is not tolling only for the unfortunates starving in The Sahel—it is tolling for thee, mankind!

Who Lies Sleeping?

Exorcisms and Healing Miracles 1

Medical Use of Oil
Ailments as Essene Code
The Unclean Spirit

Abstract

Unless Bethany was a leper colony, Jesus could not have been dining with a leper. Nor would he anyway—leprosy was unclean. Either leper is a code word or the event did not happen in reality. For the rabbis, leprosy in the Jewish scriptures was often a euphemism for spiritual uncleanness or immoral behaviour, not necessarily for a physical ailment. Christians always regard the spikenard as a perfume, even though it is described correctly as an ointment, and so fail to realize that it is for the leper not for Jesus. In fact, nard is an oil from the plant Nardostachys jatamansi which is a member of the valerian family. Its active constituents include camphor and patchouli. The conclusion of the story is that “the poor” will have everlasting life. It is another kingdom parable. The healing miracles of Jesus

Medical Use of Oil

Oil was traditionally used to consecrate priests, prophets and kings. Aaron, Saul, David, Solomon and even Jesus Christ, allegedly, were anointed with oil in this way. King David was anointed with Holy Unction by the high priest while dancing before the Lord with all his might. Anointing by pouring aromatic oils on people as a token of honour is an ancient custom in the East. Anointing with perfumed oil was in common use among the Greeks and Romans as a mark of hospitality to guests. And modern travelers in the East still find it a custom for visitors to be sprinkled with rose-water, or their head, face and beard anointed with olive oil. The ceremony of anointing with oil to impart some fancied spiritual power seems to have been extensively practiced by the Jews and primitive Christians, and still more anciently by various oriental nations.

Oil also was also used to consecrate places and instruments of worship. Joshua anointed the ten stones he set up in Jordan and Jacob the stone on which he slept at the time of his great vision. The early Christians anointed the altars and even the walls of the churches just as images, obelisks and statues had long been consecrated in the orient.

In his epistle, the apostle James, surely an Essene, recommends the use of oil:

Is any sick among you, let him call for the elders of the church and let them pray over him, anointing him with oil in the name of the Lord.
James 5:14

Elsewhere, Jesus is anointed mysteriously by an unknown woman and he commends her for her enterprise. Yet, the Essenes rejected the practices of the Sadducees and regarded oil as a defilement. The Essenes will have used water not anointing to consecrate their own priests and princes. How are these to be reconciled with the New Testament if James and Jesus were Essenes?

Genuine Healing was with Herbs, Roots and Rocks

The point is that James quite explicitly recommends the use of oil in medical treatment. Prayers were also used medicinally because no one would be cured except by God. The Jews anointed the sick on the Sabbath day just as James recommended. This accords with the treatment of the sick in India and elsewhere several thousand years ago. Anointing the sick, with prayer and other ceremonies, was esteemed in nearly all the Eastern religions long before the birth of either Jesus or James. The medical use of oil would have been normal among the Essenes but oil used as a cosmetic as the Roman and Greeks used it would have been regarded as impure. The Essenes admired work as noble and therefore regarded sweatiness also as noble, as a sign of a labouring man. To hide sweat with perfumed oil was disgraceful. For Essenes the body was cleaned not by oil but by the daily ritual lustrations in water.

The medical use of oil by Essenes helps us to understand the anointing of Jesus in the gospels (Mk 14:3-9). As it stands, this story is mostly a fabrication of the early church, as Jesus’s lack of modesty proves. It is designed to predict once more the death of Jesus, the Son of God and to symbolize his messiahship. Nevertheless, that the poor are mentioned implies that the story might have a genuine Essene root—the expression: “For ye have the poor with you always”, sounds traditional. What Jesus obviously meant was that the poor would be the ones accepted into the kingdom which was, of course, an everlasting kingdom. The poor, the Ebionim, would last for ever—no one else would. Jesus was not expecting anyone to be around this world for long so “always” had to pertain to the coming kingdom.

The anointing seems pointless except to provide a basis for:

She is come aforehand to anoint my body for the burying.
Mark 14:8

From this, it is easy to see how the story developed. Dead bodies in those times would be laid out, anointed with oil or perfume. Jesus rose from the dead before the women were able to lay out his body properly. Some pious Christians might have been upset to think this, and this story filled a non-existent gap. Jesus is anointed as a dead man while he is still alive. If it were intended as an anointment for burial, it confirms that Jesus had lost control—proving the Romans had retaken the city. Also the messiah was one who is anointed as a king and, hitherto in Mark’s account, Jesus had not been—it had to be done symbolically before he died. Lastly, the analogy of the breaking of the vessel with the breaking of Jesus’s body was added. The expression “preached throughout the whole world” betrays a gentile Christian outlook. The main other giveaway, apart from the obviously prophetic references, is the use of oil. Josephus tells us that Essenes did not use oil and we have seen that their coronations were aqueous ceremonies not unctuous ones.

Christians always regard the spikenard as a perfume, even though it is described correctly as an ointment, and so fail to realize that it is for the leper not for Jesus. In fact, nard is an oil from the plant Nardostachys jatamansi which is a member of the valerian family. Its active constituents include camphor and patchouli. Certainly it is used as a deodorant but is also used medicinally and in aromatherapy. It was used as a vapour for depression and as a sedative, and externally for skin conditions—rashes, boils, abscesses, fungal skin infections like ringworm, acne, weeping eczema, cold sores and impetigo—in other words the conditions considered in those days to be leprosy!

What then is at the core of the story? Clues are the leper, the very expensive oil and Jesus’s statement about the poor. Unless Bethany was a leper colony, Jesus could not have been dining with a leper. Nor would he anyway—leprosy was unclean. Either leper is a code word or the event did not happen in reality. For the rabbis, leprosy in the Jewish scriptures was often a euphemism for spiritual uncleanness or immoral behaviour, not necessarily for a physical ailment. If Simon was a leper, it was because he had been a vigorous opponent of the Nazarenes, but had converted. He might have converted secretly so that he was a sort of double agent. Perhaps he was the man who procured the upper room or the foal and the ass. It is not unusual for clandestine organizations to use code to cover their operations. Perhaps Simon’s code name “leper” gave Jesus the cue for a story. We have noted that Essenes disdained the use of oil, and since they were “the poor” they would not have wasted their money on this expensive stuff. The conclusion of the story is that “the poor” will have everlasting life. Plainly, it is another kingdom parable that Mark has used for his own purposes.

Only someone who was very wealthy could afford a box of nard. It would take a day labourer a year to earn enough money even if he saved everything he earned. The woman was therefore the wife of a rich man and the leper was the rich man. Note that the beginning of the story is ambiguous—it is not clear whose head received the ointment. Having been diagnosed with the disease the rich leper was ordered from the city according to the law expressed in Leviticus 13:46. If the rich man was a High Priest he would also according to Leviticus 21:21 have lost his job. His wife buys nard and visits him in the leper colony to anoint him with the expensive ointment hoping to effect a cure. The poor lepers murmur against her, saying the money could have been put to better use on behalf of them all. Jesus’s conclusion is that the money is unimportant—the poor (the lepers) would live forever but the rich man (the High Priest) would not live forever despite his expensive treatment.

In Luke’s overelaborated version (Lk 7:36-50), the leper disappears but Luke adds a non-cryptic mini-parable about two debtors being forgiven. The message is that the one forgiven the greater debt had more reason to be grateful. The link with the parable of the rich leper is that he had every reason to be immensely grateful if, through repentance, he were accepted into the kingdom.

In verse 7, Jesus says he will not always be with them, an apparent contradiction of everything that a Christian believes. Mark was, of course, reminding his readers of Jesus’s forthcoming physical death but forgot his everlasting spiritual life which is supposed to be far more important.

Ailments as Essene Code

The key to understanding the exorcisms and healing miracles of Jesus is the appreciation that the Essenes disguised almost everything they did in a coded language. It is not unusual for resistance forces to use code to prevent the occupying forces from understanding their intentions. It is a necessity. The Essenes considered themselves prophets who could discern God’s signs in the scriptures of his Appointed Times. They were brought up scripturally and thought scripturally, so that when it came to deliberately confusing the Roman enemy, they simply used a scriptural code. This was seen simply as a continuation of their comprehension of signs in the law and the prophets.

The point about speaking in an arcane scriptural code is that Jews would understand but foreigners would not. Jews would understand the coded allusions but no one not brought up as experts in the Old Testament and the Apocryphal books would have no chance of understanding. This is what was meant when Jesus spoke in parables. The minority of Romans who understood Aramaic or Hebrew could hear what Essenes were saying but would not understand it.

Kim Paffenroth notes Jesus, in Matthew, is twice acclaimed Son of David as he practices his final healings in the temple—he heals “the blind and the lame” (Mt 21:14). When David conquered Jerusalem, he mockingly called his enemies “the blind and the lame”:

David had said on that day, Whoever would strike down the Jebusites, let him get up the water shaft to attack the lame and the blind, those whom David hates. Therefore it is said, The blind and the lame shall not come into the house.
2 Sam 5:8

David killed the blind and lame and excluded them from Jerusalem. Jesus cures the figuratively blind and lame to admit them to the New Jerusalem. Why then do Christians insist these people were physically blind and lame? The exorcisms and healing miracles have been understood as miracles because their real meaning was coded and gentile bishops deliberately chose to ignore the code, even if they knew it. It suited them that their new god proved his worth by miraculously healing people of disabilities and disease. In fact, he healed them of resignation and discouragement. Many Jews had given up. They thought God had gone and left them in the lurch, prey to a succession of foreign invaders. Jesus showed them they were wrong and, through building up their hope for freedom, healed them of their religious apathy and national despondency. In fact, he won them over to the cause of Jewish nationalism—only God could rule God’s people.

The different disabilities and ailments meant different types of problem but not the physical ailments that they seem. Thus Luke, in his story of Zacharias the elderly priest, tells us that dumbness meant disbelief. Blindness, palsy, leprosy and so on all meant different types of dejection or collaboration with the foreigner. A palsied man was one who had rejected the law of Moses. A leper was possibly a member of the priestly ruling class. A blind man was an apostate from the Jewish faith. In the non-canonical Book of Thomas the Contender, Thomas Didymus, the Twin, refers to sinners as “blind men”.

When Jesus spoke in his arcane language in synagogues and public places, he either persuaded people to join his crusade or he met with implacable opposition from Jews who considered any attempt to defeat the Romans as crazy. The first group had been healed. The second group were described as having an unclean spirit. The danger was that they would expose the Nazarenes to the Roman authorities, so the unclean sprit had to be exorcised. And so it was—with a beating from the disciples.

These ideas are illustrated here with reference to some of Jesus’s miracles and exorcisms as described in the earliest gospel, Mark’s.

The Unclean Spirit

Mark (Mk 1:21-28) describes how, in the synagogue at Capernaum, Jesus astonishes his audiences by his authority, a word which can also be translated as power. This is one of the more subtle clues to Jesus’s leadership in the gospels. We get the impression it means he knew what he was talking about but reference to Ecclesiastes 8:4 gives the true meaning:

the king’s word hath authority, and who may say unto him, What doest thou?

Authority or power is code for a king. The audience understood that Jesus was a leader claiming the authority or power of a king. By doing so he was automatically defying Roman authority.

An excitable man realizing that Jesus was claiming the power of a king and fearing reprisals by the Romans and their puppets for the crime of Laesae Majestatis calls out:

Let us alone! What have we to do with you, Jesus of Nazareth? Have you come to destroy us? I know what you are claiming—you are saying you are the Holy One of God.

Christian commentators tell us that the unclean spirit was a demon—a demon speaking perfectly sensible Aramaic in a synagogue! Can anyone today give credence to such a scene? The man was not a demon or possessed by one—he had simply inferred that Jesus meant to face up to the occupying forces and, disapproving of it strongly, remonstrated with Jesus. He wanted no further retribution from the Romans. He used the plural, “Let us alone”, not meaning that there were many unclean spirits, but that many Jews realized the power of Rome and feared the consequences of resistance. Unclean spirit is code for an opponent of the Nazarenes. Sticklers for precise translation should note that the Greek translated, “unclean”, could better be translated as “malicious” or “spiteful”.

Jesus, according to Mark, exorcises the devil. In reality, because the Nazarenes were not ready to have their aims declared openly in case the Romans or Herod should hear of it, Jesus rebuked the man, sternly ordering him to shut up, “Hold thy peace”. In Luke 4:35 the devil(!) throws the man down in their midst—not the disciples, but the devil, according to Luke! The unclean spirit tearing him eventually came out with a loud cry. The Greek implies strong emotions like terror and fear for life—scream of fear would be a more accurate translation. The man feared the blows of the disciples who had knocked him down and shut him up with a beating. Luke sees all of this is too obvious in Mark and hastens to add, “and hurt him not!”

The Nazarenes would not have been troubled at manhandling a man they understood to have an unclean spirit. In the War Scroll we find:

Cursed be Satan for his sinful purpose and may he be cast out for his wicked rule. Cursed be all the spirits of his company for their ungodly purpose and may they be cast out for all their service of uncleanness. Truly they are the company of darkness, but the company of God is one of eternal light.

Those with unclean spirits were of the company of darkness and had to be cast out. The Damascus Rule specifies that every man who preaches apostasy under the sway of the spirits of Satan shall be judged according to the law for those possessed by a ghost or a familiar spirit. Leviticus 20:27 orders that a man or woman possessed by a spirit shall surely be put to death. The Damascus Rule also quotes Nahum 1:2:

God is jealous, and the Lord revengeth, the Lord revengeth, and is furious. The Lord will take vengeance on his adversaries, and he reserveth wrath for his enemies.

These were sufficient reason for the Nazarenes to take a firm line with such opponents. The kingdom might be at stake. They could hardly murder people in the streets without raising a hue and cry—eventually raised anyway—but they could hand out admonitory beatings. For them the cosmic battle for the kingdom had started. The crowd were amazed at the urgency of Jesus’s teaching of the coming kingdom and his assertiveness in silencing his opponents.

This incident of the unclean spirit demonstrates correct interpretation. Taken literally it seems that Jesus’s aim was to assist the mentally and physically sick—though it seems horribly arbitrary a priviledged few should be cured while many more were left to suffer. Accepting that Jesus was an Essene, it is easy to be misled by Josephus who records the Essenes’ searches for cures by investigations into roots and stones and by using drugs from plants. They had a reputation as healers, but they were interested in the well-being not mainly of the body but of the soul. Now in Luke 13:32, we find Jesus explaining his strategy:

Today and tomorrow I shall be casting out devils and working cures; on the third day I shall reach my goal.

The third day of God’s kingdom was when the heavenly built temple descended to earth and the righteous were resurrected to reign over the saved (Hosea 6:2). Jesus obviously was not curing people of physical sickness believing the heavenly kingdom had a ban on the diseased. He was curing them of moral sickness because the heavenly kingdom had a ban on sinners. Even more explicitly, later in Mark, we find:

It is not the healthy that need a doctor, but the sick. I did not come to invite virtuous people but sinners.
Mark 2:17

Jesus tells us the sick are sinners. He was not treating the physical or mental sickness of the people but the sickness in their souls, and this verse proves it. All of the healing miracles need reinterpreting in this light.

Palestinian Jews were dispairing of the fate of the chosen people. Many foes of the Nazarenes openly collaborated with the occupying forces. Others feared reprisals. Both would have been strongly averse to anyone risking further trouble with the authorities. Mark (or Peter) could not put any of this explicitly so it was written allegorically, though the meaning is remarkably transparent. A demon was code for a doubter or opponent of the messianists which had to be driven out with a beating, illnesses were moral and spiritual sickness, helplessness and cowardice. In The Scrolls a thanksgiving hymn of the Essenes is explicit, “lying lips shall be dumb”—a diseased spirit is depicted as a physical affliction. Isaiah 35:3-7 expresses it perfectly, and links it unequivocally with messianic expectations:

Strengthen ye the weak hands, and confirm the feeble knees. Say to them that are of a fearful heart, Be strong, fear not: behold, your God will come with vengeance, even God with a recompense; he will come and save you. Then the eyes of the blind shall be opened, and the ears of the deaf shall be unstopped. Then shall the lame man leap as an hart, and the tongue of the dumb sing. On God’s terrible day of vengeance He will save the just. They need fear not. The blind shall see, the dumb shall speak and the lame shall walk.

God will save only the just—the righteous—others had to be cured of their dumbness and blindness—their rejection of the Essene route to the kingdom. All of Jesus’s healing miracles are metaphors for removing fear and improving morale so that the children of Israel might be saved—in short recruiting people to the Nazarene cause, the defeat of the oppressors and the proclamation of the kingdom of God.

For those who read on a few verses, the connexion of this part of Isaiah with the Essenes is unmistakeable. We find that in the wilderness waters shall break out, and an high way shall be there called the way of holiness, but the unclean shall not pass over it nor shall any ravenous beast go up thereon, but only the redeemed shall walk there, and they shall return to Zion bringing everlasting joy. This could only be a description of Qumran. The Essenes followed the way of holiness, preparing a high way in the desert that the redeemed could walk, their opponents among the Jews being the unclean, and their gentile opponents being ravenous beasts.

Also relevant here is the passage in 2 Samuel 5:4-10 where king David begins his reign aged 30 years, just as we surmise Jesus had done from his coronation by John the Baptist. David’s first trial is to take Jerusalem by defeating the Jebusites who are so defiant that they say to David:

you will have to get rid of us all, even the blind and the lame.

But David was single minded and ordered:

smite the lame and the blind that are hated of David’s soul. Then we’ll see why they say, There are the lame and blind; he cannot come into the city.

The Essenes could not accept that king David would kill cripples so they read it allegorically. The lame and blind were adversaries, not disabled people.

The Damascus Rule asserts that:

No madman, lunatic, simpleton, or fool; no blind man, maimed, lame or deaf man, and no minor shall enter into the community, for the angels of holiness are with them.

Unfortunately the scroll is damaged and the passage is ambiguous. On the face of it, Essenes believed the physically sick and infirm were already saved and under the protection of the angels of holiness—they did not need special attention. The disabled and afflicted were better off as they were because they were already saved—why then cure them and lead them into temptation? However, if the coded meaning is read then the scroll is simply stating the obvious—that sinners would not be admitted as Essenes because the angels of holiness were with the community. Wrongdoers had to repent sincerely and then they would no longer be afflicted.

We can disregard the angels of holiness being with sinners and the remaining possibility is that the community counted the physically afflicted like sinners as not eligible for the kingdom. If this latter were true and Jesus’s cures were a deliberate refutation of it, why are Essenes not explicitly mentioned in the gospels to expose their false position as the Sadducees and Pharisees are? And why would Essenes provide rules for the welfare of the old and sick?

We have to conclude that Jesus’s healings are not what they appear in the gospels. Healing miracles were code. Jesus was intent on winning over people’s hearts.

Before and since the gospel period, not least by Christians, beatings have been used ostensibly to drive out demons but in practice to punish or silence. Evidently it happened here. It works very well. Whether you are outspoken because you have a devil or not, having it driven out will make you consider your words more carefully. The clergy say the demons responsible for illness and uncleanness were supernatural enemies of God which Jesus had to drive out. Enemies they were to the Nazarenes—albeit not supernatural ones—who tacitly or flagrantly supported the foreign rulers of the land—God’s land. These people also disapproved of messianists who had caused a lot of trouble over the years by proclaiming a Jewish kingdom—as Jesus wanted to do. Once you accept that Jesus was intent on liberating God’s land, it immediately becomes clear why his enemies had to be silenced—the unclean spirits of opposition had to be driven out lest they betray them.

Jesus’s fame as a king, one who spoke with authority, spread. The crowd plainly recognized this but unlike the unclean spirits they were not appalled by the idea. Jesus is not declared a king except by his enemies. His friends use scriptural code—the circumlocution that he spoke with authority or power, meaning, for those that had ears to hear—not gentiles who did not know the scriptures—that he was a king or rather a potential king, a prince or Nasi.

When Mark (Mk 1:22) writes that Jesus was teaching not as the scribes he is virtually admitting that he was an Essene or a Zealot. The scribes were mainly Pharisees. Most of the priests were Sadducees who had little philosophy other than the atoning sacrifices of temple worship and would never have spoken against the status quo with which they were entirely satisfied. Of Josephus’s four philosophies of the Jews, only the Essenes and the Zealots are left. From the Qumran literature the Essenes were fanatics for the establishment of the kingdom of God on earth—from Josephus the Zealots also were fanatics for a Jewish kingdom of God on earth, and actually fought for it. The gospels tell us that Jesus opposed scribes, Pharisees, priests and Sadducees but taught of the imminence of God’s kingdom. He was an Essene and a Zealot.

Though Jesus is often teaching in Mark, the author tells us little about the doctrine. It seems Mark still expected the apocalypse—gentile converts were led to believe that the judgement day was at hand—still! Thus the content of the teaching was unimportant. Furthermore the teaching might have been too Jewish for the gentiles of Rome, AD 70. The earliest gentile converts would generally have known little about the Jewish religion and would not have had the scriptures at hand. The apostle to the gentiles, Paul, was not interested in the work of Jesus, only his death and resurrection. Mark, or his subsequent editors, was a Paulinist despite the tradition which associates him with Peter. Mark had to explain Jewish habits where they inevitably arose but his main object must have been to keep the message simple. A few decades later the very interest created by the earlier Christians in Jewish tradition would have opened up the market for longer and more Jewish accounts like Luke and Matthew respectively.

The incident of the unclean spirit is at the very beginning of Mark’s gospel immediately after Jesus had recruited his first disciples. Either the disciples knew precisely what was needed of them from the start or Jesus already had reliable disciples as he plainly needed, to be as bold as this. Jesus had the authority of the Essenes behind him and would not have set out on his task unaccompanied. Peter, James and John were probably already Essenes—perhaps village Essenes not monastic ones—and sent out with Jesus to began the task of winning over Jewish sinners.

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Last uploaded: 19 April, 2008.