Sir Peter Medawar has noted that scientists tend not to ask themselves questions until they can see the rudiments of an answer in their minds. In this case the rudiments even of the question did not arise.

Who Lies Sleeping?

The Poor Men, Jesus and Christianity 3

Christians cannot escape from the fact that, in Jesus’s parable of Dives and Lazarus, we are the rich man, clothed and fed in comfort, and also guilty of appalling negligence concerning the starving and sick man at our gate… We have ignored the insistent theme throughout the scriptures—that God has always been on the side of the poor.
Rev David C K Watson

New Testament Communists

Abstract

Origen classified the Ebionites as those who believed in the virgin birth and those who rejected it. Both the Jewish sabbath and the Christian Lord’s Day were holy to them, and they expected the establishment of a messianic kingdom in Jerusalem. Eusebius describes as Ebionites those who held the brother of Jesus, James the Just, in special regard. They had no regard at all for Paul, and Christ was not divine but a plain, naturally conceived man who achieved righteousness through his character. Can it be coincidence that “The Poor Ones” was a name of the followers of James in the Jerusalem Church in the New Testament? Paul claims the only condition James imposed upon him in his missions to the gentiles was to remember the poor. He is reminding him to send money not for any poor but for “The Poor”, the Nazarenes, who, after the defeated uprising, had a lot of widows to support.

New Testament Communists

But whoso hath this world’s good, and seeth his brother have need, and shutteth up his bowels of compassion from him, how dwelleth the love of God in him?�My little children, let us not love in word, neither in tongue, but in deed and in truth. �
1 Jn 3:17-18

The author of this epistle denies that those who do not show through their actions that they are helping their poorer brothers can be Christians. Traditionally, the author is the apostle John. As the Reverend Watson, vicar of S Michael-le-Belfry, York, says, most Christians have accepted a middle class culture with its wealthy values and selfish ambitions. Though God’s example was to become poor so that others could become rich, Christians prefer not to follow his example but to remain among the rich. According to S Paul, Christians should be satisfied with “enough” (2 Cor 8:8), and they are to be equal among God’s people (2 Cor 8:14), not above them in wealth. When Christians got more than enough for their needs, it was to “provide… for every good work”.

Jesus said:

There is no man that hath left house, or brethren, or sisters, or father, or mother, or wife, or children, or lands, for my sake, and the gospel’s,�But he shall receive an hundredfold now in this time, houses, and brethren, and sisters, and mothers, and children, and lands, with persecutions, and in the world to come eternal life. �
Mk 10:29

In this otherwise cryptic passage, Jesus is recommending communism. The brothers in the Nazarene fellowship might lose their families but they gained a much bigger one, they might lose a house but gained the use of many of them. Their reward was eternal life, but meanwhile, they would be oppressed for being a member and going against the received wisdom of Hellenized Judæa. Jesus was promising the kingdom of God, but was also offering a security in the Nazarene fellowship that would help bring it about:

Therefore take no thought, saying, What shall we eat? or, What shall we drink? or, Wherewithal shall we be clothed?�(For after all these things do the Gentiles seek) for your heavenly Father knoweth that ye have need of all these things.�But seek ye first the kingdom of God, and his righteousness; and all these things shall be added unto you.�Take therefore no thought for the morrow: for the morrow shall take thought for the things of itself. Sufficient unto the day is the evil thereof.
Mt 6:31

The whole objective was to bring about the kingdom of God, and meanwhile God would provide for the needs of the Nazarenes, a necessary evil. The parenthesis is proof that the Nazarenes excluded gentiles. Jesus was addressing a purely Jewish movement. They were Ebionites. The kingdom never arrived but Christians thought they were carrying on the movement founded by Jesus, though they had been excluded from the original one. Paul was the one who wanted to admit gentiles, contrary to the wishes of the Jerusalem Church, and to do so, he had to abandon the law of God and many of the rules of the Son of God. Paul is the true God of the Christians.

The followers of Jesus shared a common purse (Jn 12:6), a detail much expanded in the recorded lifestyle of the Nazarenes in Acts. Nazarenes indisputably were communists:

And the multitude of them that believed were of one heart and of one soul: neither said any of them that ought of the things which he possessed was his own, but they had all things common.�
Acts 4:32

And all that believed were together, and had all things common,�And sold their possessions and goods, and parted them to all men, as every man had need.
Acts 2:44

Neither was there any among them that lacked, for as many as were possessors of lands or houses sold them, and brought the prices of the things that were sold,�And laid them down at the apostles’ feet, and distribution was made unto every man according as he had need.
Acts 4:34

Later in Acts, the Nazarenes of Antioch helped the Jerusalem Church by sending them funds:

Then the disciples, every man according to his ability, determined to send relief unto the brethren which dwelt in Judaea.
Acts 11:29

The two citations (Acts 11:29; 4:34) combine to give the modern communistic maxim, “From each according to his ability, to each according to his need”. It seems that atheistic communists had read Acts but not Christians.

Christians argue vehemently against these unequivocal understandings of Acts. They desperately claim the early Christians did not share everything, especially private property. Peter murdered Ananias and his wife for not giving all the proceeds of the sale of their house to the Nazarene yahad (community), yet Christians argue that he had no need to!

But Peter said, Ananias, why hath Satan filled thine heart to lie to the Holy Ghost, and to keep back part of the price of the land?�Whiles it remained, was it not thine own? and after it was sold, was it not in thine own power? why hast thou conceived this thing in thine heart? thou hast not lied unto men, but unto God.
Acts 5:3-4

They interpret this as meaning that the sale was voluntary, and that Ananias was a member of the Nazarene yahad without needing to sell. In fact, Peter is plainly saying that no one forced Ananias to join the group. He could have retained his house, or sold it and kept the proceeds by remaining outside it, but having joined, he was obliged to sell his property and put it into the common purse. Why otherwise was the punishment death? Acts 4:32 clearly states the true situation, so why should it be doubted.

Apologists then tell us that, though the Greek is translated as the simple past tense, really the verbs are in the continuous, showing the Nazarenes were continuously giving their wealth to the Church. They cannot have done it all at once. It is another dishonesty. The Church was rapidly recruiting members, as Acts tells us. So, there were indeed continuous gifts to the Nazarenes because people were continuously joining. So, the literal translation of Acts 4:34 is:

For as many as were owners of lands or houses, selling them, they bore the value of the things being sold.

Those recruits who had sellable possessions sold them and brought them to the apostles. The continuity of the selling, and explicitly distributing too in Acts 4:34, is in the recruiting.

Another argument Christians offer against the communistic interpretation is that John Mark’s mother owned a house:

And when he had considered the thing, he came to the house of Mary the mother of John, whose surname was Mark, where many were gathered together praying.
Acts 12:12

Presumably, the assumption is that this Mary is a Christian because she has a congregation meeting in her house. The house might simply have been the house that Mary lived in, not one she owned. She could have been renting the house. Mary might have owned the house, but was not a Nazarene herself. Her son was, and so, like Gorky’s Mother, she let him and his friends use the house out of motherly devotion. Most likely, though, is that Mary was a Nazarene, especially as a title of Nazarene women seems to have been Mary (Lady), misunderstood by gentile Christians as a name. The Essenes held their houses in common, so that any Essene or Nazarene traveller in a different town could find accommodation in a communal house. This was the communal house administered by this Mary. She was called his mother in the same sense that an abbess is called a mother superior. She was John Mark’s mother because he lodged in her house. Or the senior Essene women were called “mothers” because they had the role of ritual mother at the hypothesised Essene born again ceremonies.

Christians say further evidence that the Nazarenes permitted ownership of private peoperty is that Peter owned a house, the place where Jesus healed Peter’s mother (Mt 1:28)—another “mother” in charge of a communal house, perhaps. In fact, Jesus had just begun his mission by recruiting Peter and Andrew. It means that the new recruit, Peter, had not yet had time to sell his house, as he himself required on pain of death (Ananias and Sapphira), in Acts. Moreover, the home might not have been Peter’s to sell, but his mother’s or his father’s. These were young men in their prime, and there is no reason to think that their fathers were already dead. They simply had no part in the story, and might even have disapproved of their sons, good reasons for not introducing them. The mothers also had no part in the story, but the early gentile church had a good reason for introducing spurious women. Most of its members were women.

Another modern justification for Christians being wealthy is that Jesus seemed to tell his followers to lend money with no chance of it being repayed. Christians like to think of themselves as charitable, so it ought to be clear that such a loan is misnamed. It is a gift (Mt 5:42). The gift is to the poor (Mt 6:2-4), and it is just another way of saying the same. Even so, Jesus addressed people other than his followers. He was, after all, trying to recruit people to his cause, that of the Essenes or Ebionites—The Poor. So, he could have been telling sympathisers not willing to join the movement to support them by gifts from their private wealth. The direct evidence of Acts is proof enough that the Nazarenes did not permit private wealth, so it is typically Christian hypocrisy to pretend otherwise from a few ambiguous passages. The undisguised communism of the first Christians is ignored so that the laissez-faire capitalism of Adam Smith can be adopted as the economic outlook of Christianity. If these Christians are genuinely God-fearing, they had better start changing their way back to those Jesus favoured—those of The Poor, the Ebionites.

The goods were held in “common”, the Greek word being “koinos”. Several derived words are popular in the epistles particularly, the main one of them being “koinonia” (commonality, commonwealth, brotherhood in the Jerusalem bible), reasonably translated as “fellowship”, though with the loss of its original connexion with “koinos”. Related words that retain the connexion with the original are translated “communicate”, “communication”, “communion”, and “companion” meaning “comrade”. The Harper Collins Encyclopedia of Catholicism clearly states that the word “communion” used as meaning the community of the Church and the communal life of Christians derives from the Greek word “koinonia” used by Paul as “sharing, fellowship or close association”. The word behind it, common(!) in the scrolls, is yahad. Sharing is the defining concept of “koinonia”. When Philo described the Essenes (Quod omnis probus), he wrote of their “koinonia”, rendered in translation as “spirit of sharing”. He described the Essenes thus:

No one’s house is his own in the sense that it is not shared by all, for, besides the fact that they dwell together in communities, the door is open to visitors from elsewhere who share their convictions. Again, they all have a single treasury, and common disbursements, their clothes are held in common, and also their food through their institution of public meals. In no other community can we find the institution of sharing food, life and board…

“Commune” would be the translation of “koinonia” that retains the original intent, especially as the Nazarenes were obviously communists, though “communion”, specifically understood as a confederation of communes might indeed be appropriate. The sharing of food appears in the Christian use of the word, “communion”, the Christian ritual involving the holy meal. It was chosen from the Essene practice of communal meals for the Christian communal act of sharing as a meal the blood and body of the Christian God, as Corinthians shows:

The cup of blessing which we bless, is it not the communion (koinonia) of the blood of Christ? The bread which we break, is it not the communion (koinonia) of the body of Christ?�
1 Cor 10:16

Paul’s collections were “koinonia”. The word is used for “contributing” to the Nazarene commonwealth, as well as “distributing” from it, so it has a distinct economic connotation, as perhaps the word “fellowship” ought properly to have too. The Nazarenes shared in everything, their goods, their beliefs and the blood and body of their God. The aim was economic equality, as even Paul advocated:

For I mean not that other men be eased, and ye burdened, But by an equality, that now at this time your abundance may be a supply for their want, that their abundance also may be a supply for your want: that there may be equality.
2 Cor 8:13-14

The New English Bible agrees Paul’s aim was equality, though some translations use other words such as “reciprocity” and “equity”. The Greek is “isotes”, from “isos” meaning “like” or “equal”, so can mean nothing other than “equality”.

Christians repeatedly prove their hypocrisy, especially as Jesus specifically said:

No man can serve two masters, for either he will hate the one, and love the other, or else he will hold to the one, and despise the other. Ye cannot serve God and mammon. �
Mt 6:24

“Mammon” is actually an Aramaic word but was left untranslated in the Greek, making it into an unusual name, apparently of an idolatrous god. If so, Mammon was the god of wealth, and therefore plainly meaning wealth itself. Their own God was telling Christians they had to choose between the God of The Poor (the Ebionites) and the god of the rich. The Greek word often translated as “covetousness” in the New Testament is “pleonoxia” which is better translated as “striving for possessions”.

And he said unto them, Take heed, and beware of covetousness, for a man’s life consisteth not in the abundance of the things which he possesseth.
Lk 12:15

Of course, anyone who covets someone else’s possessions must want them, but the real meaning is that no Christian should strive for possessions whether they are someone else’s or not. This passage makes it clear enough. Accumulating wealth does not give anyone life. The life of real interest to Christians is eternal life—life after death—and the Jesus of Luke pushes it home with the parable of a man who decides to build barns to accumulate his wealth for the future not realising he was about to die that night:

But God said unto him, Thou fool, this night thy soul shall be required of thee, then whose shall those things be, which thou hast provided? So is he that layeth up treasure for himself, and is not rich toward God.
Lk 12:20-21

The wealthy fool did not benefit in this life or the future one. Christians are very fond of Paul, who let them do many things their own God forbade, but here we have a passage in Paul, the Christian hypocrites again ignore:

But now I have written unto you not to keep company, if any man that is called a brother be a fornicator, or covetous, or an idolater, or a railer, or a drunkard, or an extortioner, with such an one no not to eat… Therefore put away from among yourselves that wicked person.
1 Cor 5:11

Paul’s argument is that Christians have no jurisprudence over those outside the church, but God will judge them. The congregation should judge those within the church if they are blatant sinners, and the sins listed include covetousness, meaning striving for possessions. Indeed, their punishment is specific—not to eat with them. In those early days of the Church, following on from the Essene messianic meal, the Eucharist was a proper meal—the communion—not merely a token one, yet those who were refused it were refused eternal life. The Latin translation from the Greek of “koinonia” was “communicatio”. Just as in the Essene practice, the wicked Christians forbidden to share in the Eucharist or communion were “ex communicatio”—they were excommunicated and could not be saved. In case anyone doubts it, Paul repeats it quite specifically more than once:

…no thieves, nor covetous, nor drunkards, nor revilers, nor extortioners, shall inherit the kingdom of God.
1 Cor 6:10

…no whoremonger, nor unclean person, nor covetous man, who is an idolater, hath any inheritance in the kingdom of Christ and of God.�
Eph 5:5

The constant message of the New Testament is that God will raise up the poor and will cast down the rich. Only the modern hypocrites who call themselves Christians refuse to see this, because it does not suit them, though they ought to be worried if they truly believe the bible is God’s word. And the reason is there too. God is the God of justice. The Judgement Day is meant to balance out the injustices of life. Yet, in life, the rich get their riches at the expense of the poor, and we can now add, the exploitation of the earth’s resources. That is why the rich have had their consolation, already, in life, and can expect no more after death.

The whole point of God’s love and justice, in the Essenic interpretation, is that He will reward the poor in his kingdom of heaven. That is why the Essenes were the Ebionites, and considered voluntary poverty—those who chose to be “poor in spirit”—a virtue.

Page Tags: Ebionites, Ebionim, Poor Men, Poor Widow, Christ, Christian, Christians, Church, Essenes, God, Jesus, Kingdom, Rich Young Man, Wealth, Mark, Nazarenes

Last uploaded: 19 April, 2008.