THE ZEALOTS AND ESSENES
The specific reason that Jesus and Joseph planned and initiated his faked resurrection had as much, if not more, to do with inspiring the Essenes to join the cause as it did with producing a profound sense of awe within the local population. It was incumbent upon Jesus to insure the involvement of the Essenes in the rebellion in order to guarantee its success. Without the participation of the two most righteous and dedicated Mosaean sects of the time, the Zealots and the Essenes, his ability to rouse the general population to revolt would have been severely curtailed, perhaps to the point where the rebellion would have been doomed from the start. While the Essenes were prepared for the eschatological final battle between the sons of light and the sons of darkness, as seen in the War Scroll and other scroll writings, they were also highly fatalistic and dependent upon the will of God to set these events in motion. Without the anticipated sign from God, the Essenes would not participate in the rebellion. Jesus’ resurrection was designed to be that sign. It was to be a clear-cut demonstration by God that Jesus, as the leader of the Zealots, was the chosen one, a true Son of God, the Messiah and anticipated leader of the rebellion. If God could raise him from a very public death and restore him to life, the Essenes could hardly refuse to accept Jesus as their leader and could hardly refuse to join the coming battle. For Jesus, the ultimate success of the rebellion was dependent upon the believability of his resurrection to the Essenes.
The Essenes and the Zealots shared many similarities, not the least of which were their common goals for a restored Davidic kingdom, their nationalism and their sense of secrecy. It is their sense of secrecy and their separate needs to remain apart and obscure from their social contexts that above all has prevented scholarship from drawing the necessary conclusions regarding their similarities and consequently understanding them as two distinct factions within the same Mosaean political group, that of the ultra conservative, puritanical nationalism that was prevalent at the time. With the realization that Jesus and his immediate followers were actually members of the Zealot faction and that the terminology and self-designations attributed to them and subsequently to the proto-Christians who followed echoed many of the same terms used by the Essenes. Further, with the realization that the Essenes, far from being the pacifistic isolationists envisioned and accepted by scholars for so long, were actually militaristic and revolutionary in their worldview, it becomes easier to see the connections between them. The secrecy exhibited by both groups, from Jesus’ Messianic Secret in the Gospels to the teachings of the ‘Mysteries’ prevalent in both groups along with their shared proclivity for the use of nick-names and metaphors all indicate organizations that were in extreme tension with their surrounding societies.
The nature of secrecy indicates a considered response to perceived threat. Either the groups felt threatened by their positions within their society, the society itself felt threatened by their existences, or as was more likely the case, both sides felt threatened by the other. It is hard to imagine that if the Essenes were the peaceful, non-threatening group recorded in the contemporary accounts of Pliny, Philo and Josephus that they would have depended so heavily upon secrecy and misdirection in their writings and regulations for their survival. If they had been truly pacifistic and fatalistic in their worldview their need to disguise their political intentions and protect their leaders through the use of metaphor, allegory and nicknames would have been unnecessary. Then too, that very secrecy contributed to the misidentifications and misinterpretations registered by Pliny, Philo and Josephus. Their separate views of the Essenes were based in large part on a very limited sampling of the group primarily because the members of the group lived in secret within the society as a whole. Pliny, Philo and Josephus only observed those members of the Essenes who were easily identifiable, those who lived in clearly defined Essenic sanctuaries like Qumran and what the scrolls refer to as ‘camps’, in a sense, the public face of Essenism. The greater majority of the members lived quiet, unassuming lives within the extant social framework, visible but aloof. To judge the details and intricacies of Essenism by the restricted view collected and offered by Pliny, Philo and Josephus would be about as accurate as trying to judge the ancient workings of a nation’s military by reading the two thousand year old manual of a boys’ military academy. It would provide a framework for their belief system, but one that was tailored to indoctrinate initiates into the lifestyle. Qumran and the other camps were only the tips of a greater iceberg, hidden, like the Zealots, within Mosaean society.
Qumran, seen by many today as the focal point of Essenism in the First Century, has been viewed mistakenly as a main community of the Essenes, and the subsequent conclusions drawn by that model have been incomplete and misleading. Philo and Josephus saw the Essenes as a widespread phenomenon scattered throughout the region with thousands of members, but most of their conclusions about the group were drawn from what must have been superficial contact and outside sources that could not have known the whole story. The celibacy, monasticism, ritual cleansing and isolation apparent to First Century observers of Qumran were essential elements to the induction rituals conducted there for initiates and offered only a limited sampling of the Essene lifestyle based upon the activities of its new students. That is not to say that confirmed members did not observe many of the same rituals elsewhere in their day to day lives, but such activity would have been carried out more discreetly and in smaller gatherings, not in a collective community setting such as Qumran. The other observable traits and characteristics of the members would have been merely that, observable. They would have been seen out of context and without explanation, quirky and odd to the Mosaean population in general and as such worthy of comment but without being fully understood. Was there really an off shoot sect of Essenes that accepted marriage and procreation as the natural order of things, as Josephus suggested, or was that a choice open to all the members as seemingly suggested in the scrolls? Were the toilet habits that were remarked in Josephus their regular habit, observed by all Essenes, or were they the result of a rather nomadic and untethered lifestyle embraced by only certain members (the latrine discovered at Qumran would seem to indicate that camp dwellers, at least, used semi-permanent facilities)? These are questions that Josephus and the others either did not pose to the Essenes or failed to include in their reports.
This lack of corroboration by the First Century historians and our current inability to fully investigate their reports makes it difficult, if not impossible, to fully resolve certain apparent contradictions between various groups. Steve Mason, recognized as a leading authority on the works of Josephus, presented the proposition in an article for Biblical Archaeology Review (Nov./Dec. 2008) that the two groups (the Essenes and the Qumran community) were different groups entirely based upon apparent differences in certain philosophical key points, thereby refuting the Essene Hypothesis that is favored by many scholars who think they were the same. However, these differing views largely disappear if the Qumran community is seen for what it was (a school for initiates) and if Josephus’ lack of intimate knowledge of the group is accounted for. For example, Dr. Mason points to the Dead Sea Scroll known as the Community Rule (Serekh ha Yahad ) and notes that it envisions some “fairly boorish and even disgusting behavior” from the members and the resultant penalties for their occurrence. He lists some of the offenses as: “the speaking of the name of God in a curse, running fraudulent financial schemes, lying down to sleep in general meeting, practicing vigilante justice, bursting into raucous laughter, spitting into the assembled group, repeatedly walking out of a meeting, going around naked or exposing one’s private parts through flimsy clothing” (from 1QS 6:24-7:25) or exactly the kinds of behavior one might expect from undisciplined, uneducated and unfocused novices just entering the group. The Serekh ha Yahad (also known as The Manual of Discipline ) was not intended necessarily for members in long standing in the Essenes but for newcomers who needed to be enlightened about what was expected of them.
Furthermore, as Dr. Mason points out, the Essenes “pray to the sun in the morning and avoid offending ‘the rays of God’ by making sure that they are wrapped up completely when they relieve themselves.” This is in stark contrast to the scroll community that prohibits worship of the sun on pain of death. Again, these interpretations by both Josephus and Dr. Mason are assumptions based upon a lack of first hand, intimate knowledge. They both assume that the prayers uttered each morning are directed to the Sun and not to God for the Sun, as in a prayer of thanksgiving. Without an intimate knowledge of the specific prayers, it is unreasonable to assume that the Essenes were Sun worshippers. Even the idea that they covered themselves while performing their toiletries so that they would not offend ‘the rays of God’ is an assumption that presupposes that the Sun’s rays are the intended deity rather than the more probable concern about God’s vision in general. If initiates of the Essenes were instructed, as Josephus relates, that they “will neither conceal anything from his own sect, nor discover any of their doctrines to others, no, not though anyone should compel him to do so at the hazard of his life”, it is hard to imagine that Josephus and the others ever received anything more than a rudimentary gloss of the Essenes’ teachings and so could easily misinterpret what they were seeing.
Another example of such a seeming contradiction between the two groups can be found in the discrepancy in the election of their presiding officials. As Dr. Mason points out;
“When I compare the social organization of the two groups, I find no more similarity in them than in the customs I have already discussed…For Josephus, Essene leadership is basic to their distinctive ethos of discipline and order. He gives a pointed statement on this subject: ‘The curators of the communal affairs are elected by hand.’ Election ‘by hand’ was understood in antiquity as an expression of peer respect, in contrast to both election by lot (i.e. by chance) and the standard assumption of status by birthright, wealth or other such claims. There is no room for caste-based leadership among Josephus’ Essenes.”
This is in contrast to the leadership of the scroll community, as is documented throughout the Serekh ha Yahad , as well as other scrolls, which is overtly caste based, specifically religious leadership is afforded to the ruling priest or in his absence, the Levites and laic leadership fell to a controller. Once again, though, this seeming contrast is precisely what might be expected if the scroll community were in large part made up of initiates. The parochial ‘school’ would be run by both a religious expert and a manager to oversee those necessities that required their special skills, while the Essene community at large, having ‘graduated’ from Qumran, could adopt a more democratic and secular approach to electing its leadership. The difference between the democratic election ‘by hand’ and the rigid caste system of the scroll community noted by Dr. Mason is really the difference between separate levels of the same group, much as we would find in society today if we were to compare a boys military academy to our democratic society as a whole.
The secrecy employed by the Essenes within their own organization would have made an accurate assessment of their beliefs and activities extremely difficult for contemporary historians. What Philo, Pliny and Josephus saw and understood to be the Essene way of life may have been only a small facet of their custom and creed, leaving just a public face to the sect that was recorded by the historians. Josephus may have claimed an intimate knowledge of the Essenes in his autobiography, Life (2), but his rendition of the events of his spiritual quest between the ages of sixteen and nineteen during which he purportedly examined the various philosophical ideologies of the major Judaean groups hardly allowed for any in depth study of the philosophies he examined. In point of fact, Josephus actually indicates that he spent those three years with “…one whose name was Bannus…” (Life 2;11-12) an ascetic who lived in the desert and survived off the land. The point is that Josephus’ connection to the Essenes would have been superficial at best and he would not have had the time to develop any thorough or significant familiarity with their teachings and certainly not any of their secret or arcane philosophies that would have been exposed only to full members. At best, his various accounts of the Essenes, while incorporating many facets of the group, should be seen as thumbnail sketches that were limited by his lack of real, substantive knowledge and by the secrecy imposed by the Essenes themselves.
Even the apparent contradiction between the scroll community’s acceptance of and preparation for violent confrontation, as recorded in the War Scroll and the pacifistic tendencies of the Essenes as recorded in Philo and Josephus, can be resolved by the realization that both groups were essentially secret societies and the Essenes’ public face of pacifism may have been designed to mask their privately held belief that war with the Kittim (the war between the sons of light and the sons of darkness), was a very real proposition, one that they fully anticipated having to wage. Many of the Essene admonitions to its membership regarding the peaceful and respectful treatment of other members of society may have been made with an unmentioned but understood clause, ‘Until God gives us the sign.’ What limited and superficial information that has come down through the centuries about the Essenes did not and could not hope to entirely inform scholars of their worldview, and it must be remembered that works like the War Scroll were never intended to be read by outsiders. Both the Essenes and the scroll community could have harbored plans for an apocalyptic final battle while turning a peaceful visage to the world and their lack of militarization (the making of weapons, etc.) as noted in Josephus, was more than likely dictated by life under Roman rule. They could hardly be expected to manufacture and amass weapons of war under the noses of the Romans without considerable risk that they may have deemed unnecessary since God and his angels were to lead them into battle.
Furthermore, even the apparent contradictions within Josephus’ work can be rationalized and understood to be accurate portrayals of the Essenes if his lack of intimate knowledge is accepted and if common sense is used to resolve the discrepancies. For example, the marital status of Essene members recorded in Josephus seems contradictory in that he focuses on recounting the misogyny of the group as a whole by way of confirming their celibacy, but elsewhere in his report makes note of the fact that there was a separate sect of the Essenes that were married and had children. Such a dichotomy in what would seem to be a fundamental tenet of the group is not fully explained in Josephus, thus indicating that perhaps his knowledge of their behavior and beliefs is not as complete as one might suppose. It would be too easy to accept his account of their misogyny as accurate but for his inclusion of his account of their acceptance of marriage by at least some members of the group, and while it might be easy to say that marriage does not preclude misogyny, the question then becomes, what woman would knowingly marry into a misogynist group? Josephus does not provide any reasonable explanation (other than procreation) for why the majority of members were apparently misogynists while a whole separate group decided to marry.
The seeming contradiction within Josephus regarding the group’s attitude towards swearing or oath taking might seem to indicate some confusion on his part or again a certain lack of intimate knowledge, but it can be explained logically and with common sense. The discrepancy appears from Josephus’ adamant account that the Essenes absolutely did not swear oaths at all: “And whereas everything spoken by them is more forceful than an oath, swearing itself they avoid, considering it worse than the false oath; for they declare to be already degraded one who is unworthy of belief without God” (War, 8:6;135). This is in direct contrast to his later account that the newly inducted Essenes swear ‘dreadful oaths’ (War, 8:7; 139) upon acceptance into the group, but here again the explanation from Josephus is lacking. Do they or don’t they swear oaths? The answer seems to be a matter of nuance. While Essenes would not swear an oath using God’s name as confirmation of their veracity (taking the Lord’s name in vain) they would swear an oath to God confirming their piety and commitment. The acceptability of their oath taking was determined by who or what was receiving the oath; swearing an oath in the name of God to other men was anathema to them whereas swearing an oath to God would have been acceptable. Josephus, either unaware of the contradiction in his work or unconcerned with the uncertainty it produced, did not bother or could not explain the differences.
The Essene community of Qumran more correctly should be viewed as a school for initiates, an indoctrination academy for instruction into the Essenic lifestyle. As part of this introduction, repeated ritual cleansing was necessary to purify the initiates seeking induction as was a profound familiarity with not just the group’s rules and regulations but also the holy words of God and Moses as recorded in the books of the Hebrew Bible. These facets of Essene indoctrination are evident in the number of mikvahot scattered throughout Qumran and the number and variety of biblical books in the scroll caves. The seeming discrepancy between the historical record of the actual number of Essenes recorded in Josephus and Pliny and in the scrolls (in the thousands), and the presumed number of members that actually could have lived at Qumran at any given time (the Qumran settlement housed only a limited number of Essenes, perhaps no more than two hundred at any one time and this restriction is based upon several factors including a limited water supply) also reinforces the notion that the settlement was certainly not their main community but served another purpose. As Hippolytus remarked, “But there is not one city of them but many of them settle in every city” (Refutation of All Heresies, book 9,chapter 15).
With the realization that the historical record is therefore restricted in its complete access to what were clearly secret societies, it is still beneficial to re-examine those records to evaluate their common connections and not just their shared etymologies. It is important to remember that all historians imbue their individual subjects with personal agendas, whether consciously or not, and whether unbiased or not and all historians must exercise a selection process when approaching their subjects since it is impossible for any writer to record the complete essence and detail of any human endeavor. Philo, Pliny and Josephus were no less accountable to these restrictions than any other historians and their separate sections on the Essenes reflect their agendas and their selections. Philo wrote his works early in the First Century before the almost complete annihilation of the Mosaean culture during and after the Jewish Revolt, while Josephus and Pliny wrote their accounts after. This fact alone may have influenced their selections and their biases, just as it is accepted by scholars that both Philo and Josephus wrote for particular audiences. Philo wrote mainly for the Greek speaking audiences of Alexandria, although it must be assumed that he was writing for Roman audiences as well, and Josephus wrote primarily for his Roman overlords. In such cases, the historical works they produced no doubt contained as much propaganda as they did real history and their selection processes would have been biased towards pleasing or impressing, rather than alienating, their audiences. Consequently, their reports need to be viewed with the appropriate skepticism and an understanding of their agendas.
For example, the significance placed on the celibacy of the Essenes by all three writers must be re-examined in light of their agendas. Philo and Josephus registered it as a major tenet of Essene society, while Pliny’s remarks seem to view it as more of an oddity or aberration. As a result, scholarship has been at a loss to explain what appears to be a telling difference between the Essenes and the Scroll community, that made no rules regarding the celibacy of its membership. This is one of the major stumbling blocks to the acceptance of the Essene hypothesis or Standard Model that links both groups. However, the argument about the discrepancy is based upon the complete acceptance of the historical accounts as accurate and factual and unbiased, a state of affairs that generally is known not to apply to their works. Experts routinely agree that some measure of bias does exist in their works, especially in Josephus, and yet they tend to ignore that bias when it comes to the matter of celibacy. No doubt the justification lies in the idea that since three separate writers remarked on Essene celibacy it must be factual, but the converse is also true. If three separate writers remarked on the celibacy they must have shared the same agenda. This is not to suggest that celibacy was not a part of the Essene existence, but only to caution that its existence may not have had such a profound and fundamental place in their society.
The shared agenda of Philo and Josephus (less so for Pliny) was based in part upon the widely differing attitudes regarding marriage and procreation embraced by the two societies that were represented by the writers and their audiences. Both Josephus and Philo were Hellenized Mosaeans from wealthy and prominent families. As such, they were intimately familiar with the laws and dictates of their society and the customs and requirements of their faith. Their audiences, on the other hand, were either of Roman descent or heavily influenced by Roman society. Knowing the penchant of elite Roman society to avoid marriage and child bearing (so much so that it became necessary to pass several laws encouraging Romans to marry and have children) and the Mosaean admonition for men to marry and have children, it is not difficult to understand why Philo and Josephus selected that facet of Essene culture to emphasize to their audiences. Every aspect of Mosaean society was carefully watched and controlled by the Romans and had been since 63 BCE. It only made sense that Mosaean writers/historians would present the most non-threatening image of their society to Roman and Greek audiences. The last thing that Josephus and Philo would want to convey to their overlords would be the image of a Mosaean society procreating rampantly in an attempt to out-populate the Romans. Since the Essenes were being held up as paragons of Mosaean society and as equals to the Romans, Josephus and Philo needed to present them as both exemplars of many of Rome’s ideals and as non-threatening subjects.
How much less threatening can a society be when its most prominent and respected group (according to Josephus) practices celibacy, placing the attainment of philosophical enlightenment ahead of the growth, and perhaps even the survival, of its population? This was not history, it was propaganda. Given the Mosaean religious admonitions to marry and bear children, even to the point of marrying a deceased brother’s widow and having children by her to carry on the dead brother’s name (Levirate marriage; Deut. 25:56), and the subtle skepticism directed at unmarried males, it seems highly unlikely that there would have been a large, widespread group of celibate Mosaeans, Judeans no less, that would have held a place of high regard and prominence in Mosaean society. If the lack of reference to celibacy within the Dead Sea Scrolls runs counter to the idea of the Essene Hypothesis, surely the idea of a large group of celibate Mosaean males runs counter to Mosaean beliefs of the time. Philo and Josephus latched upon one segment of the Essenes and embellished their accounts of it in order to paint a non-threatening portrait of Mosaean society for the Romans. Josephus, as a sop to his audience regarding the reality of Essene behavior, mentioned that there was in fact a group of ‘marrying Essenes’ but as mentioned above, did nothing to explain in detail how the two groups could comfortably co-exist as different segments of the same organization.
Obviously, there were celibate Essenes (Philo and Josephus could not have been expected to create the sub-group out of whole cloth), and it was this group that Pliny was aware of who were living above or north of En Gedi on the northwest shore of the Dead Sea. He wrote of them as an anomaly, the armchair traveler remarking on the odd group of celibate men living an isolated life in the desert. His account, more than the others, hints at the reality behind their existence, that they existed primarily through the desperation of other men who were fugitives from a society and world that they were unable to control or tolerate. This group was not a threat, but rather a collection of spiritually broken men who wished nothing more than to live a celibate life apart from society. There is less propaganda here in Pliny’s account (understandable given his affiliations, family wealth and Roman citizenship) and more of a sense of polite shock, as though he were describing the scene of a traffic accident that other travelers might unfortunately encounter. He reveals no political agenda in his recounting of the Essenes, and showed an obvious lack of in depth knowledge about the group. His is a limited snapshot of the Essenes, coincidental to his geographical renderings. His is also the shortest account of the three historians that was written and published about the same time as Josephus’ work War , sometime in the mid to late 70s of the common era.
Ultimately, Pliny’s description of the Essenes is no more satisfying than those of Philo and Josephus. Just as their accounts rely too heavily on a politically correct celibacy and thus distort the full image of the Essenes, so too, Pliny relies too heavily on the idea of spiritually bankrupt lost souls continually refilling the ranks of the group (over thousands of years) along the shores of the Dead Sea, but the psychology does not fit. Emotionally broken men could not have been relied upon to consistently maintain an artificially imposed celibacy or isolation, even if they initially sought such a refuge from society. The choice of such a lifestyle requires a great deal more than an escape from reality; it requires a level of commitment and a desire for spiritual growth far beyond simple sanctuary in order to make the concomitant sacrifices worthwhile. Though he did not fully understand it, the men that Pliny wrote about were a dedicated and committed group, as most ascetics and religious hermits are, and they were goal oriented. The level of commitment required of them to join the Essenes precluded any incidental membership. They were there for a reason and they were prepared to dedicate their lives to a strictly enforced, rigid code of ethics that required complete subservience to a given way of life. These were men of the highest moral standing who were not cast offs from society. One need only to read the regulations regarding expulsion from the group with its admonition that the excommunicate may not eat food prepared by outsiders or be offered food from the group thus forcing him to live off the land to understand the depth of their commitment. So committed to their vows were excommunicates that they often neared death by starvation before the group reconsidered reversing their expulsions.
So Pliny’s model will not stand. Those celibates living on the northwest shore of the Dead Sea, above En Gedi were a dedicated and intensely focused group, and like the models of Philo and Josephus, were only partially defined by the historical accounts. To indicate that the Essene Hypothesis/Standard Model suffers because there are discrepancies between the historical accounts and the archaeological record of the Qumran community and the scrolls assumes a broader knowledge and greater awareness within the historical accounts than is there. Pliny indicates that the Essenes lived on or near where archaeology has located Qumran. No other site has been found that agrees so well with his location for the group. It should take more than the imprecise accounts of Philo and Josephus to dislodge them from that site.
Philo (c. 20 BCE-50 CE) was also known as Philo of Alexandria, Philo Judaeus of Alexandria and Philo the Judean. Born in Alexandria of a wealthy and prominent family, Philo was a Hellenistic Mosaean philosopher known historically through his own works as referenced in the works of Eusebius and Josephus. He is probably best known for his accounts of the Essenes and Therapeutae and for his personal inclusion in an embassy sent by the Mosaean community of Alexandria to Roman emperor Gaius Caligula in an attempt to resolve civil strife in the city in 40 CE. His writings were originally published in the first half of the First Century CE, thereby predating Pliny and Josephus’ works. The three works by Philo most often cited in regards to the Essenes and Therapeutae are: 1). A Treatise to Prove That Every Man Who is Virtuous is Also Free ‘ (Quod Omnis Probus Liber , generally known as Every Good Man is Free ), 2). On the Contemplative Life (De Vita Contemplativa ) and 3). Hypothetica: Apology for the Judeans (Apologia Pro Judaeis ). It is to the first and third of these works that better detail the Essenes.
Every Good Man is Free , Chapter 12 (organization and numbering of paragraphs by author).
1) “Moreover, Palestine and Syria too are not barren of exemplary wisdom and virtue, which countries no slight portion of that most populous nation of the Judeans inhabits. There is a portion of those people called the Essenes, in number somewhat more than four thousand in my opinion, who derive their name from their piety, though not according to any accurate form of the Greek dialect, because they are above all men devoted to the service of God, not sacrificing living animals but studying rather to preserve their own minds in a state of holiness and purity.
2) These men, in the first place, live in villages, avoiding all cities on account of the habitual lawlessness of those who inhabit them, well knowing that such a moral disease is contracted from the associations with wicked men, just as real disease might be from an impure atmosphere and that this would stamp an incurable evil on their souls. Of these men, some cultivating the earth and others devoting themselves to those arts which are the result of peace, benefit both themselves and all those who come into contact with them, not storing up treasures of silver and gold, nor acquiring vast sections of the earth out of a desire for ample revenues, but providing all things which are requisite for the natural purpose of life.
3) For they alone of almost all men having been originally poor and destitute and that too rather from their own habits and ways of life than from any real deficiency of good fortune are nevertheless accounted very rich, judging contentment and frugality to be in great abundance, as in truth they are.
4) Among those men you will find no makers of arrows or javelins or swords or helmets or breastplates or shields, no makers of arms or any employment whatever connected with war or even to any of those occupations even in peace which are easily perverted to wicked purposes, for they are utterly ignorant of all traffic and of all commercial dealings and of all navigation but they repudiate and keep aloof from everything which can possibly afford any inducement to covetousness.
5) Least of all is a single slave found among them but they are all free, aiding one another with a reciprocal interchange of good offices and they condemn masters. Not only as unjust, inasmuch as they corrupt the very principles of equality, but likewise as impious because they destroy the laws of nature, which generated them all equally and brought them up like a mother, as if they were legitimate brethren, not in name only but in reality and truth. But in their view, this natural relationship of all men to one another has been thrown into disorder by designing covetousness, continually wishing to surpass others in good fortune and which has therefore engendered alienation instead of affection and hatred instead of friendship.
6) And leaving the logical part of philosophy, as in no respect necessary for the acquisition of virtue, to the word catchers and the natural part, as being too sublime for human nature to master, to those who love to converse about high objects (except indeed so far as such a study takes in the contemplation of the existence of God and of the creation of the universe), they devote their attention to the moral part of philosophy, using as instructors the laws of their country which it would have been impossible for human mind to devise without divine inspiration.
7) Now these laws they are taught at other times, indeed, but most especially on the seventh day, for the seventh day is accounted sacred, on which they abstain from all other employments and frequent their synagogues, as they called these places and there they sit according to their age in classes, the younger sitting under the elder, and listening with eager attention in becoming order.
8) Then one, indeed, takes up the holy volume and reads from it and another of the men of the greatest experience comes forward and explains what is not very intelligible, for a great many precepts are delivered in enigmatical modes of expression and allegorically, as the old fashion was and thus the people are taught piety and holiness and justice and economy and the science of regulating the state and the knowledge of such things as are naturally good or bad or indifferent and to choose what is right and to avoid what is wrong, using a threefold variety of definitions and rules and criteria, namely, love of God, love of virtue and love of mankind.
9) Accordingly, the sacred volumes present an infinite number of instances of the disposition devoted to the love of God and of a continued and uninterrupted purity throughout the whole life, of a careful avoidance of oaths and of falsehood and of a strict adherence to the principle of looking on the Deity as the cause of everything which is good and nothing of which is evil. They also furnish us with many proofs of a love of virtue such as abstinence from all covetousness of money, from ambition, from indulgence of pleasures, temperance, endurance and also moderation, simplicity, good temper, the absence of pride, obedience to the laws, steadiness and everything of that kind and lastly, they bring forward as proofs of the love of mankind, goodwill, equality beyond all power of description and fellowship, about which it is not unreasonable to say a few words.
10) In the first place, then, there is no one who has a house so absolutely his own private property that it does not, in some sense, also belong to everyone. For besides that they all dwell together in companies, the house is open to all those of the same notions, who will come to them from other quarters. Then there is one magazine among them all, their expenses are all in common, since they all eat in messes, for there is no other people among which you can find a common use of the same table more thoroughly established in fact than among this tribe---and is not this very natural?
11) For whatever they, after having been working all day, receive for their wages, that they do not retain as their own but bring it into a common stock and give any advantage that is to be derived from it to all who desire to avail themselves of it. And those who are sick are not neglected because they are unable to contribute to the common stock, inasmuch as the tribe have in their public stock a means of supplying their necessities and aiding their weakness, so that from their ample means they support them liberally and abundantly and they cherish respect for their elders and honor them and care for them, just as parents are honored and cared for by their loving children, being supported by them in all abundance both by their personal exertions and by innumerable contrivances.”
Chapter Thirteen:
12) “Such diligent practices of virtue does philosophy, unconnected with any superfluous care of examining into Greek names render men, proposing to them as necessary exercises to train them towards its attainment, all praiseworthy actions by which a freedom, which can never be enslaved, is firmly established.
13) And a proof of this is that, though at different times a great number of chiefs of every variety of disposition and character have occupied their country, some of whom have endeavored to surpass even ferocious wild animals in cruelty, leaving no sort of inhumanity unpracticed, and have never ceased to murder their subjects in whole troops and have even torn them to pieces while living like cooks cutting them limb from limb, till they themselves, being overtaken by the vengeance of divine justice, have at last experienced the same miseries in their turn.
14) Others again having converted their barbarous frenzy into another kind of wickedness, practicing an ineffable degree of savageness, talking with the people quietly but through the hypocrisy of a more gentle voice, betraying the ferocity of their real disposition, fawning upon their victims like treacherous dogs and becoming the causes of irremediable miseries to them, have left in all their cities monuments of their piety and hatred of all mankind in the never to be forgotten miseries endured by those whom they oppressed.
15) And yet no one, not even of those immoderately cruel tyrants, nor of the more treacherous and hypocritical oppressors, was ever able to bring any real accusation against the multitude of those called Essenes or Holy Ones. But everyone being subdued by the virtue of these men, looked up to them as free by nature and not subject to the frown of any human being and have celebrated their manner of messing together and their fellowship with one another beyond all description in respect of its mutual good faith, which is ample proof of a perfect and very happy life.”
It is clear from the first that Philo’s knowledge of the Essenes in this early writing is somewhat uncertain and inexact. In the opening paragraph he gives his opinion as to the number of Essenes extant, and is either unsure or dependent on the knowledge of his readers as to the etymology of the group’s name. According to Philo, they derive their name, “from their piety, though not according to any accurate form of the Greek dialect, because they are above all men devoted to the service of God, not sacrificing living animals but studying rather to preserve their own minds in a state of holiness and purity.” It is not known if the name Essenes was a self-designation of the group or the name by which they were known by others. However, judging by what Philo recorded, certain conclusions can be drawn. The fact that he draws a distinction between the derivation of their name and its Greek equivalent while comparing it to their piety seems to indicate that the Greek term used to describe them did not accurately define their self-view. Philo goes on, by way of clarification, to indicate that they were ‘above all devoted to the service of God’, a phrase that could have been rendered in Greek as therapeutae from the Greek therapon meaning to be an attendant or servant to God and used in conjunction with Moses discharging the duties committed to him by God. This connection between the Therapeutae and the Essenes is one that Philo reiterates later in On the Contemplative Life when discussing the Therapeutae of Egypt. So it would seem that at least as far as Philo was concerned, his reference for this group was Therapeutae and that Essene must have been the group’s self-designation or Hebrew name.
The distinction between the two terms is clarified somewhat by Philo’s inclusion of the tidbit that the group did not sacrifice living animals and instead studied to preserve their minds in a state of holiness and purity. The motive to preserve their minds in a state of holiness and purity certainly would have drawn associations to the Jerusalem priesthood that was obsessed with identical goals, but by refusing to make animal sacrifices, the group had clearly separated itself from the mainstream Judean society that saw such practice as a normal and expected means of achieving some level of purity and holiness within the dictates of Temple hegemony. The Essenes, according to Philo, were beyond that, so that while in Greek terms the Essenes were viewed as ‘servants of God’ or therapeutae/priests, in their own culture the concept that they were servants of God or priests could not exist because they would not perform animal sacrifice that was one of the chief duties of Temple priesthood. In Philo’s mind, the Essenes were in many aspects pure enough and holy enough to be priests, but were not because of their distinct views on sacrifice.
The piety, from which the Essene name derived according to Philo, stems not only from their service to God and their desire to attain a marked purity and holiness but also specifically from their self-concept as spiritual and theological descendents of Moses. If Essenes and its Greek derivatives throughout Philo, Pliny and Josephus (Essaioi , Essenoi , Essaion , etc.) refers in translation to an ethnicon designating someone from Essa (as proposed by Mason and Schalit, et al.) the question would follow, then why didn’t Josephus recognize the etymology of the name since he included a reference to the city of Essa in Antiquities (13:15,3) Philo spoke of the name as a derivative of their piety, not as a geographical connection. For Philo, Essene had a religious connotation, one that tied the group to God and to the holy books of Moses. The people of Essa as the Essenes were known were the people of Yehoshua or, in English, Joshua/Jesus, and they saw themselves as preservers of the Torah and the saviors of Israel.
The word essa from which ‘Essene’ is taken is the Aramaic short form for the Hebrew word yasha , which is itself a root for the Hebrew Yehoshua or Jehoshua , which means ‘Jehovah is salvation’. From Jehoshua are formed the dimunitives Joshua and ultimately Jesus in English. Jesus, in Arabic, is rendered as Issa . Yasha , the common root for these names, means, among other things; to save, to deliver, to preserve, or also; savior, salvation, preserver, deliverer. In Hebrew, the spelling of yasha would be: yod-shin-ayin or transliterated to Greek as i/e-s(s)-a and finally to either e-s-s-a or i-s-s-a. Essa then was either used by the group as a direct reference to Yehoshua, the man to whom Moses relegated power at the end of his life or to yasha , in effect claiming that they were the preservers of the Torah and the saviors of Israel. Perhaps both meanings were intended thereby making a claim to be the rightful descendents of Moses’ teachings and the group charged with the responsibility with saving the Mosaean population from going astray. Only a group of great holiness and purity, as indicated by Philo, could have used such an overtly prestigious title, a title obscure enough in transliteration that its etymology might have been lost in time but still reminiscent in usage of a profound piety and faith.
It is hardly coincidence that Jesus’ double appellative (Yesha from yasha : savior) the Nazarene (from nazar : preserver) shares the etymology of the Essenes since in all likelihood he was named for that group and political movement. Even though he grew to lead the splinter group from the Essenes, the Zealots, at his birth his parents saw him as the Davidic heir and as such as the savior of Israel and the preserver of the Mosaean law and named him accordingly.
Philo saw the Essenes as a priest-like group of men in competition with the Jerusalem priesthood, as evidenced by his remark about their unwillingness to sacrifice animals. While it was expected of the general Mosaean population to provide the necessary Temple sacrifices required by Mosaean law, it was the duty of the priests to perform the actual sacrifices. His view is made clear by his reference to the Essenes as therapeutae , a term that can mean both ‘to serve’ and ‘to heal’ and it is through this connection with healing that his identification of the Essenes with a priesthood can be seen, since the Greek word for priest, akestor , encompasses the concepts of healer and savior. Such a conjunction of roles would have been understandable and natural in the First Century, when illness, deformity and mental aberration were seen as judgments by God meted out to impious and unrepentant individuals. Ill health from whatever cause was seen as the net result of sin. To be a healer was to be a savior and to be a savior required the ability to heal. So to Philo these Essenes were understood to be pseudo-priests, men in service to God, who were healers and saviors, separate from society in general for purity reasons and separate from the Temple in particular for theological reasons.
It is Philo’s implied association between the Essenes and a separate priesthood that most closely aligns them to the members of the scroll community where patently non-Temple priests are a major element of the group. In 1QS, col. 1:18, as elsewhere in the scrolls, the presence of priests and Levites is a given: “While the initiates are being inducted into the Covenant, the priests and the Levites shall continuously bless the God of deliverance and all His veritable deeds” (The Dead Sea Scrolls , Wise, Abegg and Cook, pg. 117). The Essenes and the Qumran community were made up in part of non-Temple, non-Herodian priesthoods, who were clearly instrumental in the organization and operation of the two groups, enough so, in the case of the Essenes, that Philo took note of their influence within that group. They were, in effect, rogue priesthoods, and it would be hard to imagine that given the time and place that there were many such groups in existence. Given the other similarities between the two groups the idea that the Essenes were not identified with Qumran and the scrolls seems an unlikely scenario. Qumran was a gateway into Essenic life, it was nothing more than a microcosm of the whole for the entrance for initiates, and the collected scrolls there reflect that purpose.
In their self-mandated separation from society, the Essenes and the Qumran Yahad were practicing what they saw to be a necessary lesson commanded by God. The opening of the Serekh ha Yahad (1QS, col.1; 1-4) makes it clear that the group was to live apart from the rest of Mosaean society:
“A text belonging to [the Instructor who is to reach the Ho]ly Ones how to live according to the book of the Yahad’s rule. He is to teach them to seek God with all their heart and with all their soul, to do that which is good and upright before Him, just as He commanded through Moses and all his servants the prophets. He is to teach them to love everything He chose and to hate everything He rejected, to distance themselves from all evil.”
Undoubtedly, the distancing ‘from all evil’ required that members of the sect stay aloof from ordinary citizens as much as possible and may have required that they live separate and even isolated lives, which was what was seen of the Essenes and the Therapeutae. Contact with the ritually impure, which included everyone but the Essenes/Yahadists could only defile them and instigate new rounds of ritual cleansing.
This apparent xenophobia practiced by the Essenes/Yahadists is in direct contrast to comments made later by Philo and Josephus (as a sop to their Greco/Roman audiences) that this group were exemplary humanitarians and pacifists but hatred was also a part of their teaching as recorded in col. 1:10-11; “He is to teach them both to love all the Children of Light—each commensurate with his rightful place in the Council of God—and to hate all the Children of Darkness [anyone outside the group]—each commensurate with his guilt and the vengeance due him from God.” These are not the lessons of a group that sees its political aims as humanitarian and pacifist, but rather of a group that perceives everyone who does not share their beliefs as enemies and consequently the condemned of God. Though Philo, Pliny and Josephus failed to be familiar enough with this subculture to even slightly grasp the true nature of the groups, the Essenes/Yahadists were an extremely militant force prepared to do battle in defense of their beliefs and the success of the Yahad of God. That those contemporary historians made note of the fact that the Essenes manufactured no implements of violence and had no plans for war are easily refuted by the fact that each initiate was given an axe (ostensibly as an entrenching tool for burying their defecations) and the scroll community had the War Scroll which precisely delineated movements of large groups of people and their military goals during the final apocalyptic confrontation between the sons of light and the sons of darkness. Presumably, God would provide whatever other necessary tools of war would be required at that time.
In the previous paragraph, Philo states clearly that: “These men [the Essenes], in the first place, live in villages, avoiding all cities on account of the habitual lawlessness of those who inhabit them, well knowing that such a moral disease is contracted from the associations with wicked men, just as a real disease might be from an impure atmosphere and that this would stamp an incurable evil on their souls.” Yet continuing the same line, Philo indicates; “Of these men [the Essenes], some cultivating the earth and others devoting themselves to those arts which are the result of peace, benefit both themselves and all those who come into contact with them, not storing up treasures of silver and gold nor acquiring vast sections of the earth out of a desire for ample revenues but providing all things which are requisite for the natural purpose of life,” and again, later in paragraph nine, “…and lastly, they bring forward as proofs of the love of mankind, goodwill, equality beyond all power of description and fellowship about which it is not unreasonable to say a few words.” Yet it seems difficult to reconcile the two differing views of the Essenes, one as reclusive and xenophobic and the other as altruistic and benevolent, all in the same work mere paragraphs apart. Such a dichotomy seems inspired more by the need for propaganda than it does by factual reporting and it must be remembered that even though Philo was writing well before the First Jewish revolt, Rome already controlled Palestine and much of the Middle East and it would have been natural for a Hellenized Mosaean to present the least threatening image of his country and countrymen to their Roman overlords. In Philo’s representation, if the Essenes were the epitome of Mosaean culture, they were going to be presented as peaceful humanitarians and not schismatic xenophobes.
He continues the whitewashing throughout the remainder of Every Good Man concluding with verse fifteen, referring to the Essenes also as the ‘Holy’ or ‘Holy Ones’ (Greek: hosion ), a self-designation also used within the Dead Sea Scrolls for the scroll community. Hosion was the transliterated term for the Hebrew hasidim , for holy ones or saints, the especially righteous and pure Mosaean group that is considered by some scholars to be the parent group of the Sadducees, Essenes and Zealots, factions that broke away from the Hasidim at various times for differing theological and practical interpretations of Mosaean law (primarily for issues regarding levels of purity and choices between lunar and solar calendars). With more than a dozen self-designations scattered throughout the scrolls, (New Covenanters, Holy Ones, Sons/Children of Light, the Way, the Yahad or Yahad of God, Counsel of the Torah, Sons of Zadok, the Poor, the Elect of Israel, those who fear God, those who entered the covenant, etc.), it is difficult to ascertain any one self-designation that served the scroll community as a proper name or title. It is also difficult to entertain the idea of a common association between Essenes and the Qumran community based upon their shared identities as ‘Holy Ones’, a term that would have been as definitive in its description as ‘conservative’ would be today. However, there are other commonalities and shared identities between the two groups that join them as one.
Philo: Hypothetica 11:1-18;
1) “But our lawgiver [Moses] trained an innumerable body of his pupils to partake in those things who are called Essenes being, as I imagine, honored with this appellation because of their exceeding holiness. And they dwell in many cities of Judaea and in many villages and in great and populous communities.
2) And this sect of them is not an hereditary of family connexion; for family ties are not spoken of with reference to acts voluntarily performed; but it is adopted because of their admiration for virtue and love of gentleness and humanity.
3) At all events, there are no children among the Essenes, no, nor any youths or persons only just entering upon manhood; since the dispositions of all such persons are unstable and liable to change from the imperfections incident to their age but they are full-grown men and even already declining towards old age, such as are no longer carried away by the impetuosity of their bodily passions and are not under the influence of the appetites but such as enjoy a genuine freedom, the only true and real liberty.
4) And a proof of this is to be found in their life of perfect freedom; no one among them ventures at all to acquire any property whatever on his own, neither house, nor slave, nor farm, nor flocks and herds, nor any thing of any sort which can be looked upon as the fountain or provision of riches but they bring them together into the middle as a common stock and enjoy one common general benefit from it all.
5) And they all dwell in the same place, making clubs and societies and combinations and unions with one another and doing every thing throughout their whole lives with reference to the general advantage.
6) But the different members of this body have different employments in which they occupy themselves and labor without hesitation and without cessation, making no mention of either cold or heat or any changes of weather or temperature as an excuse for desisting from their tasks. But before the sun rises they betake themselves to their daily work and they do not quit it till some time after it has set, when they return home rejoicing no less than those who have been exercising themselves in gymnastic contests.
7) For they imagine that whatever they devote themselves to as a practice is a sort of gymnastic exercise of more advantage to life and more pleasant both to soul and body and of more enduring benefit and equability than mere athletic labors, inasmuch as such toil does not cease to be practiced with delight when the age of vigor of body is passed.
8) For there are some of them who are devoted to the practice of agriculture, being skillful in such things as pertain to the sowing and cultivation of lands; others again are shepherds or cowherds and experienced in the management of every kind of animal; some are cunning in what related to swarms of bees.
9) Others again are artisans and handicraftsmen, in order to guard against suffering from the want of anything of which there is at times an actual need and these men omit and delay nothing which is requisite for the innocent supply of the necessities of life.
10) Accordingly, each of these men, who differ so widely in their respective employments, when they have received their wages, give them up to one person who is appointed as the universal steward and general manager and he, when he has received the money, immediately goes and purchases what is necessary and furnishes them with food in abundance and all other things of which the life of mankind stands in need.
11) And those who live together and eat at the same table are day after day contented with the same things, being lovers of frugality and moderation and averse to all sumptuousness and extravagance, as a disease of both mind and body.
12) And not only are their tables in common but also their dress; for in the winter there are thick cloaks found and in the summer light, cheap mantles, so that whoever wants one is at liberty, without restraint, to go and take whichever kind he chooses since what belongs to one belongs to all and on the other hand, whatever belongs to the whole body belongs to each individual.
13) And again, if any one of them is sick he is cured from the common resources, being attended to by the general care and anxiety of the whole body. Accordingly, the old men, even if they happen to be childless as if they were not only the fathers of many children but were even also particularly happy in an affectionate offspring, are accustomed to end their lives in a most happy and prosperous and carefully attended old age, being looked upon by such a number of people as worthy of so much honor and provident regard that they think themselves bound to care for them even more from inclination than from any tie of natural affection.
14) Again, perceiving with more than ordinary acuteness and accuracy, what is alone or at least above all other things calculated to dissolve such associations, they repudiate marriage and at the same time they practice continence in an eminent degree; for no one of the Essenes ever marries a wife, because woman is a selfish creature and one addicted to jealousy in an immoderate degree and terribly calculated to agitate and overturn the natural inclinations of a man and to mislead him by her continual tricks.
15) For she is always studying deceitful speeches and all other kinds of hypocrisy, like an actress on the stage when she is alluring the eyes and ears of her husband, she proceeds to cajole his predominant mind after the servants have been deceived.
16) And again, if there are children, she becomes full of pride and all kinds of license in her speech and all the obscure sayings which she previously meditated in irony in a disguised manner, she now begins to utter with audacious confidence and becoming utterly shameless she proceeds to acts of violence and does numbers of actions of which every one is hostile to such associations.
17) For the man who is bound under the influence of the charms of woman or of children, by the necessary ties of nature, being overwhelmed by the impulses of affection, is no longer the same person towards others but is entirely changed, having, without being aware of it, become a slave instead of a free man.
18) This now is the enviable system of life of these Essenes, so that not only private individuals but even mighty kings, admiring men, venerate their sect and increase their dignity and majesty in a still higher degree by their approbation and by the honors which they confer on them.”
In Hypothetica , Philo was clearly using the example of the Essenes to support the main tenet of his philosophy that the only truly free men are those that lead lives of exemplary virtue, communism, sexual abstinence and spiritual purity, in a sense diffusing the sting of Roman occupation by championing mental/spiritual freedom over physical freedom and as such, the work must be viewed with a certain skepticism to account for his agenda. However, there are still many inclusions that help to explain the Essenes and their role and impact on the socio-political environment of First Century Palestine and their connections to the other major Mosaean schools of the time.
For example, in the first line of this account of the Essenes, Philo draws a direct connection between their lawgiver, Moses, and the establishment of the group and also their name. As Philo understood it, Moses trained a large number of his followers to continue his work, the dissemination of God’s laws, just as Yehoshua, upon Moses’ death, was chosen to lead such work. This group of proselytes were or had been known for some time as Essenes, a name that can be linked directly or indirectly to Yehoshua or to yasha , suggesting that both the group and the name had been in existence for quite some time, echoing the idea put forth by Pliny, often denigrated as hyperbole, that they had been around for thousands of years. Philo saw both a spiritual and factual link between the Essenes and the first followers of Moses, a continuous line of Essenes that ran from the lawgiver to Philo’s own time and it may be that rather than the Essenes being an offshoot of the earlier Hasidim, the converse is true, that the Hasidim were the offshoot of the much older Essenes and the Essenes, as direct descendents of Moses’ teachings, may have been the parent group of many of the divergent Mosaean sects of the First Century. Clearly, as Philo mentions in the second paragraph, it was not a genetic or hereditary link like the Aaronic priesthood that connected the Essenes to Moses, it was the continuous, uninterrupted, unedited transmission of Moses’ Torah.
Their seemingly sudden appearance around the first millennium may seem to argue against a long and continuous presence in Mosaean affairs until it is realized that our historical record for the period of great antiquity regarding the Mosaeans and their sects is restricted primarily to Josephus and the Old Testament, sources that are notoriously biased and limited by their separate agendas and their lack of corroborating records. Add to that dearth of reliable historical reference the understanding that the philosophical schools of Mosaeanism were not intended for outsiders and it would not be implausible for a secret society, such as the Essenes, to go unobserved or unremarked in the Old Testament or in the works of Josephus. Also, it would not be too surprising, given the Mosaean penchant for pseudonyms, that the Essenes were, in fact, mentioned historically under different titles, such as the Hasidim or ‘pious ones’.
In the article Hasidaeans from the Jewish Encyclopedia.com website, authors Joseph Jacobs and Max Schloessinger draw the same connection between the Hasidim and the Essenes, also noting the contradiction between the Hasidim’s apparent pacifism and their recorded violence against foreigners and Mosaean non-believers. According to the article, the Hasidaeans were a “Religious party, which commenced to play an important role in political life only during the time of the Maccabean wars, although it had existed for quite some time previous.” They are mentioned only three times in the books of the Maccabeans: 1 Maccabees ii, 41-44,1 Macc. vii, 12-13 and 2 Macc.xiv,6.
1 Maccabees ii, 41-44:
“At that time therefore they decreed saying, Whosoever shall come to make battle with us on the Sabbath day, we will fight against him; neither will we die as our brethren that were murdered in the secret places. Then came there unto him a company of Assideans (Hasidim ) who were mighty men of Israel, even all such as were voluntarily devoted to the law. Also, all they that fled for persecution joined themselves unto them and were a stay to them. So they joined forces and smote sinful men in their anger and wicked men in their wrath but the rest fled to the heathen for succor.”
1 Maccabees vii, 12-13:
“Then did there assemble unto Alcimus and Bacchides a company of scribes to require justice. Now the Assideans were the first among the children of Israel that sought peace of them.”
2 Maccabees xiv, 6:
“Those of the Judeans that he called Assideans, whose captain is Judas Maccabeus, nourish war and are seditious and will not let the rest be in peace.”
These remarks, from the first two books of Maccabees , were written sometime between 135 BCE and the turn of the millennium, about the same time that, as most scholars believe, saw the beginning of the Essenes. What is of interest in the remarks is that the Assideans were seen as highly ranked (mighty men) among the various Mosaean groups who were lead by Judas Maccabee, a nationalistic military leader. They were associated with violence against sinful and wicked men and were constantly fomenting sedition to the point of war, although they were also prepared to entertain peace if the occasion arose. While these characteristics were certainly not unique in the Mosaean culture of the time, they do seem to echo those of the Qumran community, especially when it is remembered that the name Hasidaeans occurs frequently in the Psalms used in the sense of ‘the pious’ or ‘saints’, self-designations also used by the writers of the scrolls. That the Hasidaeans were also Essenes is supported by the fact that the Syriac word for pious and thus for hasidim is spelled he-semkath-yod-nun or he-semkath-yod-aleph , rendering in English: essin or essia . Apparently through the years, the original concept of the group as saviors, as rendered by yasha (essa ), was ultimately understood or misunderstood to mean ‘pious’, a not unrealistic view considering the theological requirements expected of Mosaean saints and saviors.
In Talmudic sources the Hasidaeans appear as: martyrs to their faith (Sanh. 10b); as unselfish and long-suffering (Abot v.4, 13); as the ‘saints of former times’ (hasidim ha rishonim ) and as those who compose themselves inwardly for an hour before prayer (Ber. v.1). This hour of composure before prayer was no doubt what Josephus observed when remarking that the Essenes seemed to be worshipping the sun by praying for its arrival. Again, these Talmudic references, while probably not unique to any Mosaean groups of the time, seem to draw a parallel between the Hasidaeans and the Essenes, and between them and the Qumran community. All three groups were extremely pious, nationalistic, and highly respected within the culture and yet saw themselves as separate and isolated from their society. As the Jewish Encyclopedia.com article continues, “…the Hasidaeans were strongly religious ascetics who held strictly to the Law and loved quiet (isolation/secret places) and who founded a society or sect that exercised considerable power and authority among the people…The Hasidaeans thus became the chief impelling force in the Jewish struggle for independence (2 Macc. xiv, 6).” Philo, in his accounts of the Essenes written for Greek and Roman audiences, would naturally downplay or omit entirely any connection between the Essenes and a nationalistic agenda, but in almost all other regards, his Essenes can be interpreted as Hasidaeans .
Pliny (c.23 CE-79 CE) also known as Gaius Plinius Secundus and more commonly as Pliny the Elder was born into a family of the Equestrian order at Como, Italy, Pliny served as a naval and military commander of the early Roman Empire and later was an author, naturalist and philosopher. He died, at the age of 56, during the eruption of Mount Vesuvius. His work, Natural History , a study of natural and geographic phenomena around the Mediterranean Sea, was, in a sense, a travelogue of the time and may have relied heavily upon source material from contributors and may not reflect first hand observations. His remarks on the Essenes are brief but important since they connect the Essene community to a specific location.
Natural History 5:18:73
“By the western shores [of the Dead Sea] but away from their harmful effects, live a solitary people, the Essenes, wonderful besides all others in the world, being without any women and renouncing all sexual desire, having no money and with only palm trees as companions. Their assembly is born again day by day from the multitudes, tired of life and the vicissitudes of fortune that crowd thither for their manner of living. So, for thousands of ages, strange to say, a people, in which no one is born, is eternal, so fruitful for them is the repentance of others for their life. Lying below [infra ] these was the town of En Gedi, once second only to Jerusalem in fertility and groves of palm trees but now like the other, a ruin. After that [inde ], Masada, a castle on a crag, itself not far from the Dead Sea, is the end of Judaea.”
Pliny (or his source) gives very little factual information about the Essenes other than the basics of their life and their location. The community lived along the western shore of the Dead Sea, though set back somewhat from the actual edge of the water and north (above) of En Gedi (though some scholars make the argument that infra is not meant as a compass direction but rather as meaning lower, as in altitude). According to Pliny’s account, the group is strictly male and celibate and lives communally and, as was mentioned above, replenished its ranks from a continuous supply of spiritually broken men in search of repentance. His comment that they have survived for “thousands of ages” seems less hyperbolic in light of Philo’s understanding that they are directly descended theologically from Moses, lending them an air of great antiquity. Pliny is also echoing the Yahad’s belief that: “They must separate from all kinds of ritual impurity according to their ordinance, not befouling each his holy spirit, just as God has told them so to do. In short, for all who conduct their lives by these laws, in perfect holiness, according to all the instructions, God’s covenant stands firm to give them life for thousands of generations” (CD, 4Q266-272, col. 7:6). This also echoes Deuteronomy 7:9; “He keeps the covenant and loyalty to those who love Him and keep His commandments for a thousand generations.” Pliny, or his source, understood at least partially that the Essenes, by adhering to a rigorous life of purity and faith and keeping God’s covenant, believed that God granted them, as a people, an eternal life, that as a separate people, the Essenes would continue for thousands of generations as opposed to the assumption that individuals would enjoy eternal life.
Pliny’s account is not only limited in its exposition, but also narrow in its view, taking into account only the Essenes community by the Dead Sea. He says nothing of other Essenes located elsewhere in Palestine or of their numbers in general. It is not difficult, given such a microcosmic view of the group, to accept that the group by the Dead Sea represented only a small and possibly unique segment of the overall population of the Essenes. If the supposition that Qumran represented an indoctrination academy into the Yahad is correct, Pliny’s view of the same group would seem accurate; they were celibate men, living without women and separate from the contamination from the rest of society who were isolated in a remote place, intent upon spiritual repentance. His limited knowledge of the group would not have accounted for the wider Essene presence throughout Palestine or those Essenes who married and had children or any of the other aspects mentioned in Philo and Josephus. However, he is the only one of the three to firmly fix a geographical location for at least some members of the group, a fact that allows for the connection between the Essenes and the Qumran Yahad . If his primary source for much of his material was Marcus Vispanius Agrippa (c.63-12 BCE) the Roman governor of Syria who surveyed the area c. 15 BCE, the accuracy of the location should be reliable and would account for the meager biographical notes regarding the Essenes.
Josephus (37-c.100 CE), also known as Yosef ben Matityahu (Joseph son of Matthias), Titus Flavius Josephus or more commonly, Flavius Josephus was born in Judea of both royal and priestly lineage. He was for a time a military governor of Galilee during the First Jewish Revolt, and later after his adoption into the Roman Flavian family, a writer and historian. He is primarily known for four major works: The War of the Judeans (c.75 CE), The Antiquities of the Judeans (c.94 CE), The Life of Flavius Josephus (c.99 CE), his autobiography, and Against Apion (c.93-100 CE). His remarks regarding the Essenes come largely from War and Antiquities and so overlap Pliny’s work and post date Philo’s. His works were written for a Roman audience, both as an introduction to the Mosaean people and culture and as justification and propaganda for that culture and his homeland in light of Roman domination. Consequently, the historical accuracy of his works is often debated by scholars. Since his need to portray himself and his culture in a positive or favorable light is so evident throughout the works, one must be constantly vigilant regarding his agenda. Nevertheless, they serve as a significant historical source for early Mosaean history and especially for events of the First Century BCE and the First Century CE. His actual, intimate knowledge of the Essenes and their way of life is suspect and may be based in part on the work of Philo and his own outsider observations.
The War of the Judeans 2:8:2-13
2) “For there are three philosophical sects among the Judeans. The followers of the first of which are the Pharisees, of the second, the Sadducees and the third sect, which pretends to a severer discipline, are called Essenes. These last are Judeans by birth and seem to have a greater affection for one another than the other sects have. These Essenes reject pleasures as evil but esteem continence and the conquest over our passions to be virtue. They neglect wedlock but choose out other persons’ children while they are pliable and fit for learning and esteem them to be of their kindred and form them according to their own manners. They do not absolutely deny the fitness of marriage and the succession of mankind thereby continued but they guard against the lascivious behavior of women and are persuaded that none of them preserve their fidelity to one man.
3) These men are despisers of riches and so very communicative as raises our admiration. Nor is there any one to be found among them who has more than another; for it is a law among them that those who come to them must let what they have be common to the whole order--- insomuch that among them all there is no appearance of poverty or excess of riches but every one’s possessions are intermingled with every other’s possessions and so there is, as it were, one patrimony among all the brethren. They think that oil is a defilement and if any one of them be anointed without his own approbation, it is wiped off his body, for they think to be sweaty is a good thing, as they do also to be clothed in white garments. They also have stewards appointed to take care of their common affairs, who every one of them have no separate business for any but what is for the uses of them all.
4) They have no one certain city but many of them dwell in every city and if any of their sect come from other places, what they have lies open for them, just as if it were their own and they go in to such as they never knew before as if they had been ever so long acquainted with them. For which reason they carry nothing at all with them when they travel into remote parts, though still they take their weapons with them for fear of thieves. Accordingly, there is in every city where they live, one appointed particularly to take care of strangers and to provide garments and other necessities for them. But the habit and management of their bodies is such as children use who are in fear of their masters. Nor do they allow of the change of clothing or of shoes till be first torn to pieces or worn out by time. Nor do they either buy or sell any thing to one another but every one of them gives what he has to him that wants it and receives from him again in lieu of it what may be convenient for himself and although there be no requital made, they are fully allowed to take what they want of whomsoever they please.
5) And as for their piety towards God, it is very extraordinary for before sun-rising they speak not a word about profane matters but put up certain prayers which they have received from their forefathers, as if they made a supplication for its rising. After this, every one of them are sent away by their curators, to exercise some of those arts wherein they are skilled, in which they labor with great diligence till the fifth hour. After which they assemble themselves together again into one place and when they have clothed themselves in white veils, they then bathe their bodies in cold water. And after this purification is over, they every one meet together in an apartment of their own into which it is not permitted to any of another sect to enter while they go, after a purer manner, into the dining room, as into a certain holy temple, and quietly set themselves down. Upon which the baker lays them loaves in order, the cook also brings a single plate of one sort of food and sets it before every one of them but a priest says grace before meat and it is unlawful for any one to taste of the food before grace be said. The same priest, when he has dined, says grace again after meat and when they begin and when they end they praise God as he that bestows their food upon them. After which they lay aside their garments and betake themselves to their labors again till the evening; then they return home to supper after the same manner and if there be any strangers there they sit down with them. Nor is there ever any clamor or disturbance to pollute their house but they give every one leave to speak their turn, which silence thus kept in their house appears to foreigners like some tremendous mystery, the cause of which is that perpetual sobriety they exercise and the same settled measure of meat and drink that is allotted them and that such as is abundantly sufficient for them.
6) And truly, as for other things, they do nothing but according to the injunctions of their curators. Only these two things are done among them at everyone’s own free will, which are to assist those that want it and to show mercy, for they are permitted of their own accord to afford succor to such as deserve it, when they stand in need of it and to bestow food on those that are in distress but they cannot give anything to their kindred without the curators. They dispense their anger after a just manner and restrain their passion. They are eminent for fidelity and are ministers of peace. Whatsoever they say also is firmer than an oath but swearing is avoided by them, and they esteem it worse than perjury for they say that he who cannot be believed without God is already condemned. They also take great pains in studying the writings of the ancients and choose out of them what is most for the advantage of their soul and body; and they inquire after such roots and medicinal stones as may cure their distempers.
7) But now if any one has a mind to come over to their sect he is not immediately admitted but he is prescribed the same method of living which they use for a year while he continues excluded and they give him also a small hatchet and the aforementioned girdle and the white garment. And when he has given evidence, during that time, that he can observe their continence, he approaches nearer to their way of living and is made a partaker of the waters of purification. Yet is he not even now admitted to live with them, for after this demonstration of his fortitude, his temper is tried two more years and if he appears to be worthy, they then admit him into their society. And before he is allowed to touch their common food, he is obliged to take tremendous oaths that, in the first place, he will exercise piety towards God and then that he will observe justice towards men and that he will do no harm to any one, either of his own accord or by the command of others, that he will always hate the wicked and be assistant to the righteous, that he will ever show fidelity to all men and especially to those in authority, because no one obtains the government without God’s assistance and that if he be in authority, he will at no time whatever abuse his authority nor endeavor to outshine his subjects either in his garments or any other finery, that he will be perpetually a lover of truth and propose himself to reprove those that tell lies, that he will keep his hands clear from theft and his soul from unlawful gains and that he will neither conceal any thing from those of his own sect nor discover any of their doctrines to others, no, not though anyone should compel him so to do at the hazard of his life. Moreover, he swears to communicate their doctrines to no one any otherwise than as he received them himself, that he will abstain from robbery and will equally preserve the books belonging to their sect and the names of the angels. These are the oaths by which they secure their proselytes to themselves.
8) But for those that are caught in any heinous sins, they cast them out of their society and he who is thus separated from them does often die after a miserable manner, for as he is bound by the oath he has taken and by the customs he has engaged in, he is not at liberty to partake of that food that he meets with elsewhere but is forced to eat grass and to famish his body with hunger, till he perish. For which reason they receive many of them again when they are at their last gasp, out of compassion for them, as thinking the miseries they have endured till they came to the very brink of death to be sufficient punishment for the sins they had been guilty of.
9) But in the judgments they exercise they are most accurate and just, nor do they pass sentence by the votes of a court that is fewer than a hundred. And as to what is once determined by that number, it is unalterable. What they most of all honor, after God, himself, is the name of their legislator [Moses], whom if any one blaspheme, he is punished capitally. They also think it a good thing to obey their elders and the majority. Accordingly, if ten of them be sitting together, no one of them will speak while the other nine are against it. They also avoid spitting in the midst of them or on the right side. Moreover, they are stricter than any other of the Judeans in resting from their labors on the seventh day, for they not only get their food ready the day before, that they not be obliged to kindle a fire on that day but they will not remove any vessel out of its place nor go to stool [defecate] thereon. Nay, on other days they dig a small pit, a foot deep, with a paddle (which kind of hatchet is given them when they are first admitted among them) and covering themselves round with their garment, that they may not affront the Divine rays of light, they ease themselves into that pit, after which they put the earth that was dug out again into the pit and even this they do only in the more lonely places which they choose out for this purpose and although this easement of the body be natural, yet it is a rule with them to wash themselves after it as if it were a defilement to them.
10) Now after the time of their prepatory trial is over, they are parted into four classes and so far are the juniors inferior to the seniors, that if the seniors should be touched by the juniors they must wash themselves, as if they had intermixed themselves with the company of a foreigner. They are long-lived also, insomuch that many of them live above a hundred years, by means of the simplicity of their diet. Nay, as I think, by means of the regular course of life they observe also. They view with contempt the miseries of life and are above pain by the generosity of their mind. And as for death, if it will be for their glory, they esteem it better than living always and indeed our war with the Romans gave abundant evidence what great souls they had in their trials, wherein, although they were tortured and distorted, burnt and torn to pieces and went through all kinds of instruments of torment that they might be forced either to blaspheme their legislator or to eat what was forbidden them, yet could they not be made to do either of them, no, nor once to flatter their tormentors or to shed a tear; but they smiled in their very pains and laughed those to scorn who inflicted the torments upon them and resigned up their souls with great alacrity, as expecting to receive them again.
11) For their doctrine is this: That bodies are corruptible and that the matter they are made of is not permanent but that their souls are immortal and continue forever and that they come out of the most subtle air and are united to their bodies as to prisons, into which they are drawn by a certain natural enticement but that when they are set free from the bonds of the flesh, they then, as released from a long bondage, rejoice and mount upward. And this is like the opinions of the Greeks, that good souls have their habitations beyond the ocean, in a region that is neither oppressed with storms of rain or snow or with intense heat but that this place is such as is refreshed by the gentle breathing of a west wind that is perpetually blowing from the ocean; while they allot to bad souls a dark and tempestuous den, full of never-ceasing punishments. And indeed, the Greeks seem to me to have followed the same notion, when they allot the islands of the blessed to their brave men, whom they call heroes and demi-gods and to the souls of the wicked, the region of the ungodly, in Hades, where their fables relate that certain persons, such as Sisyphus and Tantalus and Ixion and Tityus are punished, which is built on this first supposition, that souls are immortal and thence are those exhortations to virtue and exhortations from the wickedness collected whereby good men are bettered in the conduct of their life by the hope they have of reward after their death and whereby the vehement inclinations of bad men to vice are restrained by the fear and expectation they are in that although they should lie concealed in this life, they should suffer immortal punishment after their death. These are the Divine doctrines of the Essenes about the soul, which lay an unavoidable bait for such as have once a taste of their philosophy.
12) There are also those among them who undertake to foretell things to come by reading the holy books and using several sorts of purifications and being perpetually conversant in the discourses of the prophets and it is but seldom that they miss in their predictions.
13) Moreover, there is another order of Essenes who agree with the rest as to their way of living and customs and laws but differ from them in the point of marriage, as thinking that by not marrying they cut off the principal part of human life, which is the prospect of succession. Nay, rather, that if all men should be of the same opinion, the whole race of mankind would fail. However, they try their spouses for three years and if they find that they have their natural purgations three times, as trials that they are likely to be fruitful, they then actually marry them. But they do not use to accompany with their wives when they are with child, as a demonstration that they do not marry out of regard for pleasure but for the sake of posterity. Now the women go into the baths with some of their garments on, as the men do with somewhat girded about them. And these are the customs of this order of the Essenes.”
Josephus’ first account of the Essenes is much more detailed and in depth than either Philo’s or Pliny’s indicating a greater familiarity with the group. It seems clear from the account that Josephus must have personally studied them during his life, although certain discrepancies and contradictions in his work indicate that he probably did not have a close, personal association with them. His recording of their morning prayers, for example, seem like observations from a distance rather than intimate knowledge of a fundamental facet of their daily rituals. It would seem nearly impossible, even for a novice of the group that Josephus claimed to be, to either misinterpret or remain uninformed about the nature and composition of a basic daily ritual. If, as Josephus seems to indicate, the Essenes were sun worshippers, they would not also have been the third major philosophy of Mosaean culture. One would exclude the other, since Mosaeans would have seen sun worship as the greatest profanity against their God. Consequently, his suggestion of intimate, first hand knowledge of the group (in his autobiography, Life ) is doubtful. This lack of real knowledge is evident elsewhere in his work as seen in paragraph four; “For which reason they carry nothing at all with them when they travel into remote parts, though still they take their weapons with them for fear of thieves,” a strange and contradictory observation to make of a group that is presented elsewhere as pacifistic and humanitarian. Why weapons and why fear thieves if they go abroad with nothing? Either their pacifism was merely propaganda or Josephus mistook their weapons for the small hatchets used for making their toilets, again showing his lack of intimate knowledge.
Since they were not completely disassociated from violence (as witnessed in paragraph nine referring to their use of capital punishment for blasphemy against God and Moses), and the torture inflicted upon them by the Romans (paragraph 10), it is obvious that the Essenes took an active military role in the First Jewish Revolt in order to wind up as victims of torture. Their apparent xenophobia (as recounted in paragraph 10), presumes that they did, in fact, carry weapons and Josephus’ remarks about their pacifism was truly propaganda. Their exemplary humanitarianism to all men or all mankind, as noted by Josephus, seems artificial in light of the fact that they felt the need to wash themselves (ritual purification?) if they simply had come into contact with a foreigner. Isolated, egocentric and egotistical groups that separate themselves from their societies tend to be suspicious and cautious by nature, and whatever altruism or humanitarianism they exhibit is seldom lauded as their defining trait, as Josephus would have his readers believe about the Essenes.
Josephus also notes in the first paragraph that the Essenes, unlike the Pharisees and the Sadducees, were Judeans by birth, almost as though that were a requirement for admission. That common origin and background may explain why, as a group, they seemed to have a greater affection for one another than the other groups who apparently were somewhat more contentious and less unified. The first paragraph also indicates (in contradiction to Philo and Pliny), that the Essenes filled their ranks through the adoption of other peoples’ children, an effort aimed at reprogramming the young novices through mind control to better mold them into Essenes. Since both Philo and Pliny indicate that the group was singularly made up of mature males, it is difficult to fully understand how or why Josephus included this item about the adoption of children. The concept has such a Pied Piper quality to it that it is hard to believe that the other historians missed such a cultural phenomenon. Just as with other religions’ indoctrinations of young members into their ranks in seminaries and priesthoods, such an event is seen as both a rite of passage and a cause for celebration, an event of cultural significance. Certainly the knowledge of such adoptions would have been viewed by Philo and Pliny as being of note especially as an opportunity for use as propaganda. Their exclusion of these adoptions and of the children in general as members of the Essene society is therefore curious and casts some doubt upon Josephus’ account.
The account of the adoptions is called into question elsewhere in Josephus’ own work in paragraphs two and thirteen when he records that the Essenes did not “absolutely deny the fitness of marriage” and later, “Moreover, there is another order of Essenes” who live as the others do “but differ from them in the point of marriage”, precisely to advance the procreation of the sect and humanity in general, thereby nullifying the need for the adoptions in the first place. Clearly, some members of the group married and had children, and while Josephus may have understood these married members to be a separate order, it may have been that they were really the general membership and his celibate Essenes were in the minority, either as novices just entering the group or ultra righteous members taking purity to the extreme. The point is that married Essenes, concerned about the long term continuance of their membership (and mankind, apparently) through procreation, or “succession”, as Josephus calls it, would not have needed to adopt other peoples’ children, unless the group was so small in number that the birthrate for the group would not have been sufficient to replace their losses through death and excommunication. If Philo was correct in his original estimate of four thousand members scattered throughout Palestine, it seems there would have been enough married Essenes to maintain an adequate birthrate.
That women were active members of the Essenes is seen in paragraph thirteen where Josephus rather casually remarks about the wives participating in ritual bathing just as the men do. Ritual bathing was an important part of the Qumran establishment, as seen by the number of mikvah’ot found there, and while there may have been an inordinate focus on ritual cleanliness at the academy in order to prepare the novices, such concern no doubt carried on with the general membership once they had been accepted into the group and moved away from the indoctrination centers and out into society. Mosaean society was concerned with both male and female ritual purity given certain situations (defilements, etc.) and occasions (Temple pilgrimages, etc.), so it would not have been unexpected for women to ritually bathe. Josephus’ comment then was meant to draw attention to the fact the Essene women ritually bathed as often and in the same manner as the Essene men, that was markedly different than the society as a whole. Ritual purity was significant to the Essenes to the extent that they bathed frequently, at even the least contamination, such as the close proximity of a foreigner, going above and beyond what might have been expected of the Mosaean population in general.
The idea that women were an integral (although inferior), segment of the scroll community is reinforced throughout the scrolls, particularly in the Damascus Document, copies of which were found at Qumran. In 4Q266 (Fragment 6 column 2), the regulations of the community (based upon Leviticus 15:19-30) deal with the appropriate response to a woman with a bodily discharge (menstruation) and concludes with, “she shall not eat of the consecrated food or e[nter] the sanctuary until the suns sets on the eighth day,” thereby indicating that women were members of the group. The fragment goes on to relate the procedure for purification for a pregnant woman (based upon Leviticus 12) and also seems to indicate that women were members of the group.
There are echoes of Qumran throughout Josephus’ work: in paragraph five, where he notes their customs for their procedures for communal dining; for their indoctrination procedures and the length of time required to become a full member (although there is a slight discrepancy in the exact length of time; Josephus indicates three years while the scrolls indicate two) in paragraph seven; the organization of their group into a strictly class based society structured upon the length of time a member had served with them, the novices profoundly inferior to senior members, that is noted in paragraph ten (and in paragraph seven of Philo’s ‘Every Virtuous man…’); their intense study of ancient writings mentioned in paragraph six and the similarity in the banishment of serious offenders of their laws noted in paragraph eight. Paragraph twelve, which deals with the Essenes’ penchant for predicting future events through the use of their holy books, purification and the words of the prophets, is also very similar to what is to be found in the scrolls regarding the Yahad . In fact, the similarities between the Essenes and the Yahad would seem to outweigh the contradictions and the discrepancies mentioned by other scholars that they feel discredit the Essene Hypothesis.
Josephus second account of the Essenes is less involved, less detailed. It was written some twenty years after the first and only gives a thumbnail sketch of the sect as part of an overall view of the major Mosaean philosophies.
The Antiquities of the Judeans 18:1:2&5
2) “The Judeans had for a great while had three sects of philosophy peculiar to themselves, the sect of the Essenes and the sect of the Sadducees and the third sort of opinion was that of those called Pharisees, of which sects, although I have already spoken in the second book of the Judean War, yet will I touch upon them now.
5) The doctrine of the Essenes is this: That all things are best ascribed to God. They teach the immortality of souls and esteem that the rewards of righteousness are to be earnestly striven for. And when they send what they have dedicated to God into the temple, they do not offer sacrifices because they have more pure lustrations of their own. On which account they excluded from the common court of the temple but offer their sacrifices themselves. Yet is their course of life better than that of other men and they entirely addict themselves to husbandry. It also deserves our admiration how much they exceed all other men that addict themselves to virtue and this in righteousness and indeed to such a degree that as it has never appeared among any other men, neither Greeks nor barbarians, no, not for a little time, so has it endured a long while among them. This is demonstrated by that institution of theirs, which will not suffer any thing to hinder them from having all things in common, so that a rich man enjoys no more of his own wealth than he has nothing at all. There are about four thousand men that live in this way and neither marry wives nor are desirous to keep servants, as thinking the latter tempts men to be unjust and the former gives the handle to domestic quarrels, but as they live by themselves, they minister one to another. They also appoint certain stewards to receive the incomes of their revenues and of the fruits of the ground; such as are good men and priests who are to get their corn [grain] and their food ready for them. They none of them differ from others of the Essenes in their way of living but do the most resemble those Dacae who are called Polistae.”
The brevity of this account is curious compared to the account in War , since this account was featured in Antiquities , a work meant to inform Roman and Greek audiences of the whole history of the Judeans and so could have been expected to be a more in depth and detailed recording of one of the major tenets of Mosaean philosophy, perhaps much more so than the account in War . However, the intrinsic nature of the two works points to the explanation. War was designed as a Judean apology, an explanation and exposition of the Judeans in the best light and down playing the role of the Judeans and especially the Essenes in the First Jewish Revolt. Antiquities written decades after the revolt, was a history, a factual accounting of the Judeans and their past. The fact that the Essenes were given greater attention in War , greater even than the Pharisees and the Sadducees (though some scholars attribute this inequity to later Christian editing) is no doubt due to the fact that the Essenes must have played a greater role in the instigation and execution of the revolt. Josephus, aware of their contribution to the revolt, as would have been the Romans, wrote a very biased and politically correct account of the group in War as a means of deflecting much of the criticism that would have been directed at a very important and revered Mosaean group. By the time he wrote Antiquities , such propaganda was no longer necessary to assuage any residual Roman anger or condemnation for the cause of the revolt. Thus, the indication seems to be that the Essenes must have had a rather pivotal role at the beginning of the revolt.
What is also important about the Antiquities account is the emphasis that it places on the Essenes predominately fatalistic view of God and his impact on their lives. In paragraph five, Josephus notes their philosophy, “That all things are best ascribed to God.” This neatly encapsulates their view that God was responsible for all of life’s events, to the point that the scroll community felt that even political leaders, no matter how inept, ineffectual or cruel, were beyond their ability to control or remove, since those leaders could have only attained their seats of power through God’s direct intervention. As was written in 1Qs col. 11: 10-11, “Surely a man’s way is not his own; neither can any person firm his own step. Surely justification is of God. By His power is the way made perfect. All that shall be, He foreknows, all that is, His plans establish; apart from Him is nothing done.” Unless God gave a sign to the contrary, even the Romans and the Herodian hierarchy and the priesthood had to be left alone since they were God’s chosen leaders. It is this extreme fatalism and predestination of the Essenes and scroll community that directly inspired Joseph to help Jesus to fake his death and resurrection in an attempt to mobilize that group by presenting it with an undeniable sign from God. The idea that Jesus, a descendent of David, and a righteous man of priestly and royal blood, whom some considered the Messiah, could rise from the dead would no doubt have served as a clear cut sign from God that Jesus was to be the new leader of Israel and that the Essenes could take action and force the others to go.
The connection between Jesus and the renditions of the Essenes presented by Philo, Pliny and Josephus can hardly be missed. Many of the attributes ascribed to the Essenes can be found in Jesus’ teachings as well, from the communal living of the group (including communal meals) and simplicity of lifestyle, to the glorification of self-imposed poverty with its repentance of sin and a disdain for money. The Essenes appointed stewards to oversee their finances while Jesus had Judas Iscariot as steward to tend to theirs. Biblical scholars will often point to Jesus’ use of farming metaphors in his parables as proof that he came from a rural background and so was familiar with farming and husbandry, but as Philo (Hypothetica , 11:8) and Josephus (Antiquities 18:1:5) point out, the Essenes were well versed in such labors and Jesus could have easily acquired such knowledge from his association with them. His reliance upon metaphor and allegory within his parables is also a point of connection with the Essenes (Philo; Every Good Man 12:82, Josephus; War 2:8:7) and speaks to the need for secrecy within the groups as well as an older context for that method of teaching. While it might be argued that such attributes were the common currency of ascetic Mosaean groups of the First Century and therefore indicate no greater affiliation between Jesus and the Essenes than might be expected, the question must then be asked, where in the contemporary accounts are these other groups mentioned? In short, if the New Testament recounts the activities of Jesus’ group, and the historical accounts of Philo, Pliny and Josephus recount those of the Essenes, and the Dead Sea Scrolls recount those of the Yahad , and all those groups share remarkable similarities, where then in Philo, Pliny or Josephus are accounts of a further ascetic group, (similar to Jesus, the Essenes and the scroll community) that would confirm that such attributes were relatively common among similar groups? Three separate groups sharing fundamental similarities recorded in three separate records may indeed be independent groups and/or may spring from a common source, but they may also be three different views of the same group.
Whether or not Jesus was born into the Essene lifestyle or whether Joseph and Mary were Essenes is difficult to say. Certainly his teachings showed a great affinity and similarity to Essene philosophy, but there were differences too. His willingness to associate with impure, non-Essene members of society would have been hard to justify to the Essene community, as would his almost complete negation of their food purity laws. What seems reasonable to assume is that he and his family were well versed in similar teachings and may have been members of the group at some time but had disengaged from some of the strictest teachings at some point. Jesus did not remain an Essene and the schism was probably the result of his need for political activism coming into conflict with the Essenes’ entrenched fatalism. He may have been brought up within the embrace of Essenic philosophy, but by the time of his own ministry he and his father had altered their political perspective to a much more radical and pro-active approach. Their message of the restoration of the Davidic Kingdom through Jesus’ parables and their implementation of his faked death and resurrection indicate that they had moved beyond the entrenched fatalism of the Essenes and adopted a much more aggressive approach to achieve their nationalistic goals. One apparent sign of the break is recorded in the New Testament’s description of John the Baptist.
John the Baptist is thought by many scholars to have been a member of, or to have had close associations with the Essenes and Qumran, primarily due to the message of repentance in his ministry that echoed that of the Essenes. As will be seen below, his connection to Jesus was more profound than merely Jesus’ precursor or prophetic messenger; his role was equal to that of Jesus’ as literally the co-messiah of Israel. John was the messianic priest anticipated by the scroll community and others who was to rule along side the Davidic royal military messiah (1QSa; col.2: 11-17, et al), but his premature death at the hands of Antipas forced Jesus and Joseph to re-evaluate their messianic model. His teachings were similar to those of the Essenes and the scroll community in their admonition for the need for repentance, requirement for ritual bathing (although there is some uncertainty whether John intended baptism as a means of ritual cleansing or as a means to spiritual renewal) and their apocalyptic and eschatological tone. The New Testament references to John reflect both the change in the messianic model they presented and his early departure from the scene, so that, while the scrolls suggest a two messiah model because they were written earlier, the Gospels present only a single messiah after John’s death. The Gospels also seem to subtly record the rift or dissolution between the Jesus/John movement and the Essenes.
Traditionally, John is seen as an ascetic living in the wilderness of the desert and preparing the way for Jesus through his baptism with living water, but the notion of his ascetism is based solely upon a misunderstanding of his Gospel description. In Mark 1:6 and Matthew 3:4, John is described as wearing clothes made of camel hair and eating locusts and wild honey (the description is absent from Luke and John). These two observations, coupled with the location of his ministry at Bethany across the Jordan (in the desert) have led to the mistaken notion that he was an ascetic hermit living in the wilderness. The two remarks are odd interjections in otherwise focused accounts of John and his activities as they related to Jesus. They are tantamount to interjecting in the narrative suddenly that his eyes were blue or his hair brown. The matter of his ascetism does nothing to advance his role in the start of Jesus’ ministry or advance his prominence on the religio-political stage. Even as simple personal descriptions they lack any real significance, since people can change clothes and vary their diets. The original audience for the Gospels would not have been particularly moved by the fact that he was an ascetic, since that would not have been a rare occurrence in the society of the time. There were ascetics and religious hermits scattered throughout the region, some, like the Essenes and Qumranites, in significant numbers. To call attention to John’s ascetism suddenly and out of the blue within the narratives is awkward and misplaced and, quite frankly, too blatant. Those descriptions, like the parables of Jesus or his pseudo family history, are there for a reason, but were not to be taken at face value. Their significance is deeper.
In both Josephus’ account of the Essenes and the scroll community’s work 1QS, laws governing the behavior and punishment of members make it clear that under certain circumstances and in violation of certain regulations members would not only be cast out of the groups but would be prevented from eating the ‘pure food’ of the community. The ‘pure food’, as the name implies, was food that was ritually prepared within the congregation under stringent guidelines and was the only food permitted to members in order to guard against the possibility that any impure or unclean food might be eaten, thus defiling the member. Food purity laws were so strict within these groups that part of the initiation into the groups required that novices swore oaths to God to eat only those foods prescribed by the groups. If a member was convicted of breaking any of the covenant laws, he might be expelled from the group for a period of time or permanently, during which expulsion he would have been expected to honor his original oath not to eat impure (specifically non-community) foods or foods gathered and prepared by people outside the community. Such a punishment left the expelled member no choice but to eat raw, uncultivated foods that might still be considered pure, that he would have to gather himself. As Josephus mentioned, this often led to starvation.
War , 2:8:8
“But for those that are caught in any heinous sins, they cast them out of their society and he who is thus separated from them does often die after a miserable manner, for as he is bound by the oath he has taken and by the customs he has been engaged in, he is not at liberty to partake of that food that he meets with elsewhere but is forced to eat grass and to famish his body with hunger, till he perish.”
1QS: col. 7:22-25:
“Any man who, having been in the party of the Yahad for ten full years, backslides spiritually so that he forsakes the Yahad and leaves the general membership, walking in his willful heart, may never again return to the party of the Yahad. Also, any man belonging to the Ya[had who sh]ares with him his own pure food, his own wealth [or that of] the Yahad, is to suffer the same verdict: he is to be exp[elled].”
1QS: col. 8:16-17:
“No man belonging to the Covenant of the Yahad who flagrantly deviates from any commandment is to touch the pure food belonging to the holy men.”
1QS: col. 8:21-23
“Any covenant member of the Yahad of Holiness, they who walk blamelessly as He commanded, who transgresses even one commandment from the law of Moses intentionally or deviously is to be expelled from the party of the Yahad, never to return. Further, none of the holy men is to do business with that man or advise him on any matter whatsoever.”
John’s diet of locusts and wild honey sound suspiciously like the diets of those expelled from the Essenes/Qumranites. The particular need to define the honey as ‘wild’, or as untouched by human hands, indicates a state of dietary restriction not necessarily incumbent upon ascetics in general. While religious hermits might self-impose specific dietary restrictions in their attempts to reach a certain spiritual purity and righteousness, such idiosyncratic choices would not have been universal or important enough to include in works such as the Gospels. The specifics of John’s Gospel diet do not define him as an ascetic. John’s diet speaks of a more profound aspect of his life, his expulsion from the Essene/Qumran group, just as his wardrobe of camel hair and leather belt indicate that he could no longer wear the simple tunic and white robes of the Essenes/Qumranites. Considered the high priest of the dual messiah model of the scrolls, these Gospel comments about his diet and clothing were important indicators of John’s status within the elite religious communities of his time. Whether he purposefully sought expulsion from the group or whether he transgressed the given laws and was convicted and expelled is impossible to say, but it seems more likely that given his outspoken condemnation of Herod Antipas’ behavior concerning his brother’s wife and Jesus’ outspoken call to rebellion, John’s continued acceptance of Essenic fatalism may have worn thin to the point where expulsion was the natural conclusion to his association with the group. He and Jesus, eager to set the necessary events in motion in order to instigate the Kingdom of God, were prepared to join the more radical and pro-active Zealots who were a group similar in many ways to the Essenes.
Understanding the Zealots is much more problematic than understanding either the Essenes or the scroll community primarily because the historical record is quite meager and no written record of their beliefs has been found (with perhaps one exception) that can be absolutely tied to them. There is no scroll community for the Zealots in the contemporary histories and Josephus was reluctant, if not outright opposed, to mention them directly within his histories. Philo made no reference to them nor did Pliny, so that contemporary Judean accounts of the group are rare and generally couched in vague terms. Several reasons can account for this. In Josephus’ case, he considered that the Zealots were directly responsible for the start of the First Jewish Revolt and as such were the cause of all the death, pain and misery heaped upon the Mosaean nation as a result. As an apologist, Josephus was certainly disinclined to use too much ink on a group that was radically nationalistic and ultimately sociopathic. Then too, the Zealots were secretive to a fault, perhaps due in large measure to the paranoia that would have been a natural response to Roman domination. Rome was constantly on the lookout for radical nationalism in the peoples and countries it had conquered because nothing was a greater threat to their autonomy and control. The Zealots, born, in a sense, out of rebellion, would not have been willing or eager to be readily identifiable. Consequently, the historical record of the Zealots is sparse and dependent upon Josephus and certain suppositions, not the least of which is whether or not the group formed from an offshoot of the Essenes by Judas the Galilean around 6 CE is one and the same as the Zealots. Also, since Jesus is often referred to as ‘of Galilee’ and ‘the Galilean’ and at least one of his followers was referred to directly as ‘the Zealot’, is it plausible that they were, as a movement, members of the Zealots?
The JewishEncyclopedia.com entry for Zealots introduces them as:
“Zealous defenders of the Law and of the national life of the Jewish people; name of a party opposing with relentless rigor any attempt to bring Judea under the dominion of idolatrous Rome and especially of the aggressive and fanatical war party from the time of Herod until the fall of Jerusalem and Masada. The members of this party bore also the name Sicarii , from their custom of going about with daggers (sicae ) hidden beneath their cloaks, with which they would stab anyone found committing a sacrilegious act or anything provoking anti-Jewish feeling.”
The article continues:
“Originally the name Kanna’im or Zealots signified religious fanatics; and as the Talmudic traditions ascribe the rigorous laws concerning marriage with a non-Jewess (Sanh. 82a) to the Hasidaean bet din of the Hasmoneans, so probably to the Zealots of the Maccabean time are due the rabbinical laws governing relations of Jews to idolaters, as well as those concerning idols, such as the prohibition of all kinds of images (Mek, Yitro, 6) and even the mere looking upon them or the use of the shadow of an idol (Tosef., Shab. xvii; ‘Ab. Zarah iii. 8) or of the imitation of heathen (Amorite) customs (Shab. Vi. 10; Tosef, Shab. vi.). The divine attribute, ‘El kanna’ (“a jealous God”; Ex. Xx 5; Mek, Yitro, l.c.) is significantly explained as denoting that while God is merciful and forgiving in regard to every other transgression, He exacts vengeance in the case of idolatry: ‘As long as there is idolatry in the world, there is divine wrath’ (Sifre, Deut. 96; Sanh. X 6; comp. 1 Macc.iii 8).”
With this in mind, it is apparent that the Zealot group derived its name, at least in part, from a jealous (kanna ) attachment to God, which is a reasonable connotation since to be jealous infers both a vigilance in guarding a possession (God) and an intolerance or hostility toward any rivalry or unfaithfulness (false idols). The kanna’im were not only devoted to God but also highly protective of God and his laws, to a fanatical degree, more so than other Mosaean sects of the time. The article suggests that the beginning of the Zealots may have been during the time of the Hasmoneans, although as Essenes, they could have reasonably traced their beginnings back to Moses and more specifically to the freedom movement of AntigonusII Mattathias (Antigonus the Hashmonean). However, the striking of coins during his brief reign bearing an inscription proclaiming him king would seem to refute his connection to the Zealot movement where such a move would have been seen as idolatry. The Zealots as a politically militant, rather than a strictly religious or politically passive entity, no doubt began much later, in the First Century with Judas the Galilean. Josephus’ accounts recognize the fourth philosophy (as opposed to ‘robbers’ and freedom fighters) from that point. Josephus mentions them in three passages, though not with the same biographical detail that he used in his descriptions of the Essenes.
The War of the Judeans 2:8:1
“And now Archelaus’ part of Judea was reduced into a province and Coponius, one of the equestrian order among the Romans, was sent as a procurator [prefect of Syria 6-9 CE], having the power of [life and] death put into his hands by Caesar. Under his administration it was that a certain Galilean, whose name was Judas, prevailed with his countrymen to revolt and said they were cowards if they would endure to pay a tax to the Romans and would after God submit to mortal men as their lords. This man was a teacher of a peculiar sect of his own and was not at all like the rest of those their leaders.”
The Antiquities of the Judeans 18:1:1-10
“Now Cyrenius, a Roman senator, and one who had gone through other magistracies and had passed through them until he had been consul and one who, on other accounts, was of great dignity, came at this time into Syria, with a few others, being sent by Caesar to be a judge of that nation and to take into account of their substance. Coponius also, a man of equestrian order, was sent together with him, to have the supreme power over the Judeans. Moreover, Cyrenius came himself into Judea, which was now added to the province of Syria, to take account of their substance and to dispose of Archelaus’ money. But the Judeans, although at the beginning they took the report of a taxation heinously, yet did they leave off any further opposition to it, by the persuasion of Joazar, who was the son of Boethus and high priest. So they, being over persuaded by Joazar’s words, gave an account of their estates without any dispute about it. Yet there was one Judas, a Gaulanite, of a city whose name was Gamala, who, taking with him Sadduc, a Pharisee, became jealous to draw them to a revolt, who said that this taxation was no better than an introduction to slavery and exhorted the nation to assert their liberty, as if they could procure them happiness and security for what they possessed and an assured enjoyment of a still greater good, which was that of the honor and glory they would thereby acquire for magnanimity. They also said that God would not otherwise be assisting to them than upon their joining with one another in such counsels as might be successful and for their own advantage and this especially, if they would set about great exploits and not grow weary in executing the same. So men received what they said with pleasure and this bold attempt proceeded to a great height. All sorts of misfortune also sprang from these men and the nation was infested with this doctrine to an incredible degree. One violent war came upon us after another and we lost our friends who used to alleviate our pain. There were also very great robberies and murders of our principle men. This was done in pretense indeed for the public welfare but in reality for the hopes of gain to themselves, whence arose seditions and from them murders of men which sometimes fell on those of their own people by the madness of these men towards one another, while their desire was that none of the adverse party might be left and sometimes on their enemies. A famine also coming upon us reduced us to the last degree of despair, as did also the taking and demolishing of cities. Nay, the sedition at last increased so high that the very temple of God was burned down by their enemy’s fire. Such were the consequences of this that the customs of our fathers were altered and such a change was made, as added a mighty weight toward bringing all to destruction, which these men occasioned by thus conspiring together. For Judas and Sadduc, who excited a fourth philosophic sect among us and had a great many followers therein, filled our civil government with tumults at present and laid the foundations of our future miseries by this system of philosophy, which we were before unacquainted withal, concerning which I shall discourse a little and this the rather because the infection which spread among the younger sort, who were zealous for it, brought the public to destruction.”
The Antiquities of the Judeans 18:1:6
“But for the fourth sect of Judean philosophy Judas the Galilean was the author. These men agree in all things with the Pharisaic notions; but they have an inviolable attachment to liberty; and they say that God is to be their only ruler and lord. They also do not value dying any kinds of death nor indeed do they heed the deaths of their relations and friends nor can any such fear make them call any man lord; and since this immoveable resolution of theirs is well known to a great many, I shall speak no further about that matter nor am I afraid that any thing I might have said of them should be disbelieved but rather fear, that what I have said is beneath the resolution they show when they undergo pain and it was in Gesius Florus’ time [procurator of Syria 64-66 CE] that the nation began to grow mad with this distemper, who was our procurator and occasioned the Judeans to go wild with it by the abuse of his authority and to make them revolt from the Romans.”
What is clearly evident from the above passages is Josephus’ distaste for the founders and followers of the fourth Judean philosophy. He writes about them with contempt and lays the blame for the First Jewish Revolt (and many other crimes) directly at their feet. For Josephus, this group, made up of adherents “who were zealous for it”, were little more than murderers and robbers, so it is curious that he should equate the group with a philosophic school of thought. Josephus never names this fourth philosophy other than to say that Judas the Galilean was its founder and that its members were ‘zealous’. The members were not merely brigands and criminals of the lowest sort, as Josephus would have his readers believe, but were actually men who followed a specific doctrine, a fourth philosophic school on a par with the Essenes, Pharisees and Sadducees. In fact, one of the founders, Sadduc, was a Pharisee and it is important to realize that schools of thought in the Mosaean society of the time did not develop out of thin air or from the minds of average, pedestrian men, but rather from men of substantial learning and familiarity with the Torah who had reached a level of respect, prominence and familiarity among the people. The originators of such schools of thought such as Hillel, Shammai, Judas the Galilean and even Jesus, were successful in communicating their philosophies only after years of teaching had gained them prominence and consequently followers and only after their views had been tested and examined by other learned men and the people at large. To create and establish a new school of thought within Mosaeanism was no easy task because it required the questioning and interpretation of God’s word, something Mosaeans took very seriously. No fly by night radical or upstart could hope to stand on a soapbox and preach into existence a new philosophical school. He had to have a reputation and background sufficiently prominent either through his ancestry or through his own extensive knowledge of the Torah for the people to listen.
There may have been many preachers, teachers, rabbis and such wandering the countryside, spreading their individual views about God’s word and reaching out to the people to follow them. There were even some, like Bar Kokhba, who succeeded in leading large numbers to follow their teachings, even to the point of revolt, but only a few men of prominence were granted the development and tolerance for their own school of philosophy. If Josephus considered Judas to be the founder of the fourth philosophic school or sect, it should be understood that Judas must have been a man of some prominence and education, and while the zealous followers of the new philosophy may have become extreme agitators and even political assassins later as the political landscape changed and the desire for freedom and nationalism became more intense, years after the sect’s beginnings, that should not be construed to necessarily represent Judas’ original message. Josephus, in the longer passage from Antiquities , tends to lump much of the history of the group together, giving the impression that the violence and criminality of the group was there from the beginning as an intrinsic part of the philosophy, which was not necessarily the case. Judas’ group, that began as a grassroots rebellion in response to the direct payment of taxes to the Romans (they had already been paying those same taxes to Archelaus, a Mosaean, without complaint), was not characteristically xenophobic or sociopathic in their outlook until much later when they came into direct political conflict with the other Mosaean philosophies as tensions rose in the years before the first revolt. Originally, Judas’ point was that paying their taxes directly to the Romans made the Mosaeans slaves to Rome instead of subjects to their own leaders. Mosaean leaders were God’s leaders, and while the Essenes might believe that ‘all leaders were chosen by God’, Judas and his new philosophy did not. For Judas, paying Mosaean tax money to Roman coffers was a sin before God, a desertion of the covenant that encouraged the enslavement of God’s people.
Later, as a Zealot leader, Jesus would take up Judas’s cause and like Judas, call for rebellion. Jesus’ response to Roman taxation is identical to that of Judas’ and can be seen in Mark 12:13-17, Luke 20:20-26 and Matthew 22:15-22 to echo Judas’ outrage, though most scholars see in his clever ambiguity a fast thinking way to avoid incriminating himself. In fact, Jesus’ answer, “render unto Caesar what is Caesar’s and to God what is God’s” in response to whether they should pay taxes to Rome is hardly ambiguous. No devout Mosaean and certainly no Essene or Zealot would have handled any coin or object that bore the resemblance of any man or animal or any superscription that even hinted at the deification of any man like the coin noted by Jesus. Such objects were dangerously close to being in violation of the Mosaean law prohibiting the creation of idols. The fear of violating that law was so ingrained in the Mosaean population that they were prepared to die if Pilate had not removed the Roman standards from Jerusalem and Roman shields bearing eagles from the Temple grounds. Even the Essenes, who may have been the specialized builder priests who built the Temple and who lived in a separate section of the upper city to be near their work, had to have a specific gate, the Essene Gate, devoid of any ornamentation or idol figures through which they might enter the city, so as not to transgress the law. This aversion to human and animal likenesses also explains the existence of the moneychangers near the Temple, who no doubt converted foreign coins with their deities and human images into Mosaean coins that could be safely offered for the Temple taxes.
Jesus was just as adamant about the law and his admonition to give to Caesar what was Caesar’s was meant to clearly define the separation between the Roman occupation and Mosaean society in general. Jesus would have been incensed that some or all of the Temple treasure or corban had been taken by Pilate and used for the building of an aqueduct into Jerusalem, even though that construction benefited the Jerusalemites. It was a Roman project and should have been paid for in Roman coins, not Mosaean money, especially Temple funds. The co-mingling of the various coins was a direct assault on Mosaean law and Jesus wanted no part of that. Roman taxes had to be paid in Roman coin, not Mosaean. Since devout Mosaeans could not look upon such heretical coins, let alone handle them for fear of breaking the law, Jesus was in effect telling them that they could not pay the tax without breaking Mosaean law, the same message that Judas the Galilean had spread twenty some years before. That the Pharisees and the Herodians who had heard Jesus’ response did not fully understand his point is evidence that they had gone too far away from Mosaean law in their collaboration with the Romans and the Hellenizing influence of the Greeks. Pious and righteous Mosaeans would have understood his meaning at once since in all probability they already avoided contact with Roman money and would have saved what Mosaean money they had for the Temple tax and for their general business dealings.
Many modern scholars interpret this episode as an example of the Gospel message for a division between church and state, but in Jesus’ time and in Jesus’ interpretation it was meant as a clear division between the Roman state and Mosaean nationalism. Like Judas, Jesus saw the payment of taxes to Rome as an acceptance of Mosaean submission to their occupiers, a refutation of their nationalistic goals and as an outright sin. Jesus may have appeared ambiguous in his response as another example of plausible deniability in order to avoid ill timed and unwanted confrontation, but his message to those who understood it was quite clear: “Let those who deal in Roman coin, those sinners, those Herodians, those wealthy who no longer follow the law of Moses pay the Roman tax. We the poor, who will not look at or touch image-embellished coins, will not. Our money goes to God.” It was a distinctly Zealot moment in Jesus’ ministry that connected him directly to Judas, the founder of the sect.
Not only would a new philosophical school not have been established by someone of little prominence or weak credentials, it would not arise out of thin air. The seemingly numerous sects of early Mosaeanism all shared one thing—a common ancestry. As has been mentioned, since the Essenes apparently traced their theological lineage directly back to Moses, they appear to be the foundational starting point for all the various philosophical schools and sects that came after them. In other words, the Pharisees, Sadducees and Zealots, among others, were branches that broke free from Essenism at different times and for different reasons. As questions regarding different ideologies developed in the course of Mosaean history occurred, schisms developed that eventually produced independent philosophies that were sometimes slightly different from the original Essenic group and sometimes vastly different, much like the schismatic and widespread diversity of Christianity through the centuries. The differences could have been as diverse as calendar observations or food purity laws, animal sacrifice or the choice between fatalism and self-determination and on and on, but the groups remained fundamentally tied to one another by their core belief in the Torah and Moses. Christianity, another early schismatic sect of Mosaeanism, broke completely free from those foundational beliefs precisely because it did not maintain those core beliefs in the Torah and Moses having abandoned those for their core belief in the Christ.
Hippolytus, in his Refutation of All Heresies (Book ix; ch. 26; 228-230) remarked about the Zealots as just such a schismatic branch of the Essenes:
“Some of these [Essenes] observe a still more rigid practice in not handling or looking at a coin bearing an image, saying that one should neither carry nor look at nor fashion any image; nor will they enter a city at the gate of which statues are erected, since they consider it unlawful to walk under an image. Others threaten to slay any uncircumcised Gentile who listens to a discourse on God and His Laws, unless he undergoes the rite of circumcision; should he refuse to do so, they kill him instantly. From this practice they have received the name of Zealots or Sicarii. Others again call no one lord except God, even though one should torture or kill them.”
In this short passage, Hippolytus directly associated the Zealots with the Essenes and touched upon the three main tenets of the Zealot philosophy: 1) their absolute rejection of idolatry or any image that might be construed as an idol, to the point of fanaticism; 2) their refusal to call any man lord---only God was lord; and 3) their xenophobia regarding any non-Mosaean from participating in conversations regarding God and the Law, unless they were prepared to be circumcised. Josephus singles out only the last point as the doctrine of the Zealots (War 2: 8-1), in order to cast them as political extremists, but for pious Mosaics of the time, any form of government in place of a theocracy based upon the law of Moses would have been viewed, necessarily, as illegitimate. For Judas the Galilean and his followers, the issues of a Roman government, supported by Mosaean taxes, consisting, in part, of idol bearing coins, and made up of non-circumcised overlords was too much to bear.
The Zealots, then, were a schismatic branch of the Essenes that apparently separated because, as Josephus put it, they believed that God was to be their only ruler and lord, a philosophic standpoint that must have separated them from other Mosaean sects of the time. Practically speaking, that meant that any submission to the rule of Rome would have been out of the question. As Josephus also remarked, they had “an inviolable attachment to liberty,” which was another way of saying that they rejected all earthbound forms of government and control and obeyed only one form of social organization; the Law of Moses, God’s law. Since Josephus viewed them as a philosophic sect and not as anarchists, it must be assumed that they believed in some form of social organization that would replace those governments and institutions that held sway in their time, primarily the Romans of course, but also the Herodian ethnarchies and perhaps even the existing priesthood. All of these would have been seen by the Zealots as requiring their obedience and subjugation and would have been cause for tension and confrontation. The only form of social organization that would have been acceptable to the Zealots would have been the Kingdom of God, the Yahad , a government based solely on the law of Moses and run by ultra pious and righteous men elected by the Zealots themselves.
Without any first hand information about the Zealots, Josephus recorded what was widely understood about them. It must have been common knowledge that they anticipated God’s involvement in their affairs, especially their nationalistic freedom movement, although God’s intervention was, according to Josephus, dependent upon their ability to accomplish the unification or “joining with one another” of the various Mosaean sects into ‘counsels’ that would “set about great exploits.” These exploits presumably meant revolution against the Romans and “not grow weary in executing the same,” in other words they would fight to the end. The effort to cross sectarian lines in an attempt at unification may be seen in the fact that Judas was accompanied by Sadduc, a Pharisee. The Pharisees were a group not generally associated with the Zealots, a point made by Josephus’ observation. Although Josephus suspected their motives to be selfish rather than nationalistic or altruistic, enough of the population seemed to have taken the Zealots at their word, at least initially, to start a revolt behind the leadership of Judas and Sadduc in 6 CE, and even though that revolt failed, the Zealot message was clear; no taxes to Rome, nationalism and freedom are the ultimate goals, no rulers but God, no laws but those of Moses.
Josephus also pointedly comments on Zealot stoicism in the face of death and torture, a trait common to Mosaeans of the time, but made more singular by his association with the Zealots. If Mosaeans were prepared to suffer death and torture in the name of their faith as a matter of fact, how much more stoic and committed to their faith and ideas were the Zealots to be singled out by Josephus? In a society of stoics how much more prominent were Zealot virtues to be mentioned as exemplary? By extension, this means that Jesus, as a Zealot, had absolutely no qualms regarding death and torture and would have faced any physical abuse without hesitation. Such disregard for his physical wellbeing was not just expected of him as a Mosaean, but more so as a Zealot. According to Josephus, these Galileans under Judas were imbued with an “immoveable resolution” to suffer any pain rather than call any man lord. Josephus’ descriptions of how these Galileans were inured to pain match the descriptions he used in The War of the Judeans of the Essene attitude to pain and death, confirming that the Galileans/Zealots were a schismatic branch of the Essenes. It is not coincidental that Jesus was referred to in the Gospels as ‘the Galilean’ since as a Zealot that term would have been suitable as well. The two terms refer to the same group. This helps to explain the apparent omission of either the Essenes or Zealots from the Gospels when the other major philosophical schools or sects, the Pharisees, Sadducees and Herodians, are all mentioned therein. There is no omission. Jesus the Galilean and his followers represent the fourth philosophy and by extension, the Essenes as well, since the two groups had been closely aligned in the not too distant past. The story in the Gospels is the story of the Zealots/Essenes.
Josephus often used the term ‘robbers’ when describing the actions and events surrounding certain nationalistic freedom movements, especially in the years prior to and during the First Jewish Revolt, but those references should not be automatically associated with the Zealots. The fourth philosophy was radical from its inception and certainly used extreme measures in establishing its political point of view, but not all the radical, outlaw groups mentioned by Josephus were Zealots (as above with Antigonus). The members of the Zealot movement must have lived by a doctrine, just as much as the Pharisees, Sadducees and, others and it was only when they encountered extreme political pressure when the group seemingly had no political compass and was intent mainly on coercion and dominance of the other Mosaean political parties through intimidation and murder that they appeared to be terrorists. For Josephus, the Zealots became nothing but thugs and gangsters, killing indiscriminately and vying for power and control of the Mosaean nation. Although Josephus did not record it, there was a dramatic transition for the Zealots from a nationalistic, liberation movement started by Judas and carried on by Jesus, into a downward spiral of wandering bands of thieves and murderers that were a plague on the landscape. These Zealots, known as the Sicarii , had been around for many years as enforcers of the Zealot philosophy, the strong arm of the sect, but had only become a widespread threat to all members of Mosaean society as political tensions with the Romans escalated in the 50s and 60s. During Jesus’ main ministry in the 30s, the Zealots were still a politically focused group (as evidenced by his teachings), although elements of political violence were beginning to creep in (Luke 9:51-59). The Samaritan village that had failed to receive Jesus and his message and was threatened with annihilation by the disciples James and John for its unwillingness to join the movement was evidence of political coercion. This was not a parable or a metaphorical threat, but an actual, physical threat to destroy the village with fire to teach the Samaritans a lesson in the importance of joining the Davidic kingdom. That Jesus rebukes the disciples for their suggestion and moves on to another village indicates that he understood the political necessity in avoiding confrontation with the Samaritans because they were an important part of the restored monarchy.
If the Zealots were a schismatic branch of Essenism and if the Essenes are associated with the scroll community, then it is fair to assume that much of the literature found at Qumran could well apply to the Zealots. While the sectarian works may be too specific and ultimately inapplicable to the Zealot sect, some of the documents recording their history and theological views both past and future may well have applied to the Zealots. This connection is seen most clearly in the scroll community’s attitude towards the concept of the two messiahs and the corresponding leadership roles of John and Jesus within the Zealot movement. The Dead Sea Scrolls make references to the dual messiahs of Aaron and Israel, or the priesthood and the leader of the nation or better still, the priestly Messiah and the royal Messiah. As Wise, Abegg and Cook make note; “The Yahad believed that in the Last days two messiahs would emerge from its own ranks. One a priest, the other a royal commander for the armies.” (The Dead Sea Scrolls: A New Translation ; page 140).
1QS: Col. 9; 5-11:
“…At that time the men of the Yahad shall withdraw, the holy house of Aaron uniting as a Holy of Holies and the synagogue of Israel as those who walk blamelessly. The sons of Aaron alone shall have the authority in judicial and financial matters. They shall decide on governing precepts for the men of the Yahad and on money matters for the holy men who walk blamelessly. Their wealth is not to be admixed with that of rebellious men who have failed to cleanse their path by separating from perversity and walking blamelessly. They shall deviate from none of the teachings of the Law, whereby they would walk in their willful heart completely. They shall govern themselves using the original precepts by which the men of the Yahad began to be instructed, doing so until there come the Prophet and the Messiahs of Aaron and Israel.”
1QSa: Col. 2; 11-15
“The procedure for the [mee]ting of the men of reputation [when they are called] to the banquet held by the party of the Yahad, when [God] has fa[th]ered the Messiah (or when the Messiah has been revealed) among them: [the priest] as head of the entire congregation of Israel, shall enter first, trailed by all [his] brot[hers, the sons of ] Aaron, those priests [appointed] to the banquet of the men of reputation They are to sit be[fore him] by rank. Then the [Mess]iah of Israel may en[ter] and the heads of the th[ousands of Israel] are to sit before him by rank, as determined by [each man’s comm]ission in their camps and campaigns.”
Within these two passages are the Yahad’s or scroll community’s expectations that there would definitely be two messiahs: the priestly Messiah of Aaron and the royal or military Messiah of Israel (the ‘thousands of Israel’ denoting the military by the organization of the men by commission and campaigns). Several other prominent points are also clear. The Messiah of Aaron and the other priests were to precede the Messiah of Israel into the banquet, a show of preference echoed by John’s preceding Jesus as the forerunner of their ministry: the priest was given greater respect than the military messiah which explains Jesus’ admonition that John was the greater of the two. Also, the men of reputation were not to handle money or concern themselves with financial matters. This was to be the concern of the ‘sons of Aaron’ or the priesthood, much as Josephus mentioned stewards handling the money for the Essenes and Jesus relied upon Judas as his treasurer (if Judas was the treasurer or financial steward of Jesus’ group and that group was adherents of the scroll community, the suggestion would be that he was a priest and someone of authority, in other words, someone not likely to betray his leader for a few pieces of silver).
Later, in 1QSb, two blessings, the first for the messianic high priest and the second for the Davidic military leader, also known as the Prince of the Congregation, make clear the distinction between the two roles:
1QSb: Col. 4; 22-28 and Col. 5: 17-19:
“[…For] He has chosen you […] and to place you at the head of the Holy Ones and with you to bl[ess…] by your hand the men of God’s society rather than by the hand of a prince […] May you [abide forever] as an Angel of the Presence (God) in the holy habitiation, to the glory of God of host]s. May you] serve in the temple of the kingdom of God, ordering destiny with the Angels of the Presence, a party of the Yahad [with the Holy Ones] forever, for all the ages of eternity. Surely [all] His [pr]ecepts are truth. May He establish you as holy among His people, as the “greater [light” (Gen. 1:16) to illumine] the world with knowledge and to shine upon the face of many [with wisdom leading to life. May He establish you] as consecrated to the Holy of Holies. [You shall] indeed [be sanc]tified to Him, glorifying His name and His Holy Ones.
Col. 5 […F]or He has ord[ained you to the priesthood…] [wi]th never-[ending] time [and] with all the ages of eternity. May He never gi[ve] your glory [to another…May] God [put] the fear of you [upon] all who hear a report of you and of your majesty [upon all who…]”
1QSb: Col. 5; 20-29:
“(Words of blessing) belonging to the instructor, by which to bless the Prince of the Congregation who […] and he shall renew for him the Covenant of the [Ya]had, so as to establish the kingdom of His people forev[er, that “with righteousness He may judge the poor,] [and] decide with equity for [the me]ek of the earth” (Isa. 11:4), walk before Him blameless in all the ways of [His heart] and establish His covenant as Holy [against] the enemy of those who seek H[im]. “May the Lord li[ft] you up to an eternal height, a mighty tower in a wall securely set on high. Thus may you ‘be r[ighteous] by the might of your [mouth], lay waste the earth withn your rod. With the breath of your lips may you kill the wicked’ (Isa. 11:4, modified). May He give [you “the spirit of coun]sel and may eternal might [rest upon you], the spirit of knowledge and the fear of God” (Isa. 11:2). May “righteousness be the belt [around your waist and faithful]ness the belt around your loins (Isa. 11:5). May He “make your horns iron and your hoofs bronze” (Mic. 4:13). May you gore like a bu[ll… May you trample the nati]ons like mud in the street. For God has established you as “the scepter” (Num. 24:17) over the rulers; bef[ore you the peoples shall bow down and all nat]ions shall serve you. He shall make you mighty by His holy name so that you shall be as a li[on among the beasts of the forest]; your [sword will devour] prey with none to resc[ue]. Your [sw[ift] steeds shall spread out upon [the earth…].”
The violence suggested within the blessing for the Prince of the Congregation further supports the idea that the scroll community, although primarily considered an Essenic community and therefore predominately pacifistic, shared roots with the Zealot movement. This connection is strengthened directly by references within 1QS, the Way of the Yahad , that record the rules for the ‘Instructor’ in his teachings for the Yahad :
1QS: Col. 9; 21-23:
“…These are the precepts of the Way for the Instructor in these times as to his loving and hating; eternal hatred and a concealing spirit for the Men of the Pit. He shall leave them their wealth and profit like a slave does his master--- presently humble before his oppressor but a zealot for God’s law whose time will come: even the Day of Vengeance.”
The direct link between the Instructor and zealot and the violence of the blessing for the Prince of the Congregation make it clear that the members of the Yahad were prepared to use force in their attempts to establish the kingdom of God. In fact, the references are so direct that it might be more correct to understand the Zealots as the hardline (and pro-active) segment of the Essenes just as the Sicarii were seen as the harder-line segment of the Zealots. The three groups shared strong foundational philosophies even though their individual methods of effecting their implementations may have been extremely different. Clearly violence was accepted rather than condemned by the groups as the way to achieve their goals, the only differences being the wantonness of the violence and the degree of God’s direct intervention.
That Jesus supported a similar view rather than the pacifism of his traditional characterization, as has been mentioned, is also seen in Matthew 11, where Jesus talked about the violence associated with the kingdom of heaven:
Matthew 11:12;
“From the days of John the Baptist until now the kingdom of this heaven has suffered violence and the violent take it by force.”
This was not a euphemistic, metaphorical heaven that he referenced but an earthbound, concrete place that had been violently taken over by violent means (i.e. the Romans). The Greek original of this passage includes the word ton (this) to describe heaven, making it immediate and close at hand. It would be a strained interpretation of the line to imagine that God’s other worldly heaven had suffered violence and had been taken by violence. Jesus was talking about the restored Davidic kingdom and judging by his violent condemnation of Chorazin, Bethsaida and Capharnaum for their refusal to accept his works later in the chapter, the message of Matthew 11 seems to be one of violent retribution against those who had attacked or dismissed the kingdom of heaven that was in keeping with the Zealot goal to jealously defend and protect God and the Law.
Jewish Encyclopedia.com; ‘Zealots’:
“It was under the leadership of Judas and of his sons and grandson that the Zealots became an aggressive and relentless political party which would brooked no compromise and would have no peace with Rome. They were those who would bring about the “kingdom of heaven”, that is, the kingship of God, by force and violence.”
This formation of the Zealots into a political watchdog group would have taken place when Jesus was about ten years old and would have been a prominent feature of the political landscape throughout his life. Initially the Zealots were tolerated and even encouraged by the general population (the plaque at the entrance to the Temple environs admonishing gentiles to refrain from entering the Temple precincts on pain of death, is suggestive of Zealot behavior that was condoned by the Temple authorities), although later, as was seen under the high priest Ananias ben Ananias, the Temple authorities and the general public condemned and fought against the Zealot movement (Josephus War 4; 3). In Josephus’ account, it is interesting to note that in order to arouse the populace to action against the Zealots who had taken over the Temple, Ananias must first remind them that they, the people, were in large measure to blame for the Zealots’ aggression, assassinations and defilement of the Temple. Ananias bluntly tells the citizens of Jerusalem that their acceptance, indifference and tolerance of the Zealots over the years lead directly to the present state of the movement as political subversives and outright murderers leading the nation to war with the Romans.
Jesus and his movement were a segment of the Zealot movement, although at a time when political solutions were still sought, before pressure from the policies of various Roman procurators and the Judean indifference or tolerance encouraged the coercion and violence that became the dominant factors in Zealot policies. His parables and teachings throughout the Gospels, while imbued with a sense of violence and retribution, still aimed at teaching the political expedience of unity over division and co-operation over polarization. The two messiah model, advanced in the scrolls and elsewhere, ultimately was another aspect of the Mosaean political necessity for co-operation if the Davidic kingdom and hence Israel were to be restored. The ideal that two messiahs would restore the monarchy for God’s rule went a long way to diffusing potential political strife between the priesthood and the royal lineage of David that were both expected to rule (independently) the coming kingdom. While some factions believed that the expected Messiah would be a Davidic military leader, others adhered to the idea that it was essential that the Messiah would be from a more pacifistic ideology. In point of fact, early Mosaean writings, including the Old Testament, seemed to define the Messiah in pacifistic terms as a Prince of Peace rather than a contentious military commander.
The Book of Isaiah records several views of the coming messiah that seem to be in opposition to one another:
Isaiah 9: 6-7
“For unto us a child is born; unto us a Son is given and the government shall be upon his shoulder. These will be his royal titles: Wonderful Counselor, the Mighty God, the Everlasting Father, The Prince of Peace. His ever-expanding, peaceful government will never end. He will rule with perfect fairness and justice from the throne of his father, David. He will bring true justice and peace to all the nations of the world.”
Isaiah 11:1-5
“The Royal line of David will be cut off, chopped down like a tree but from the stump will grow a shoot—yes, a new branch from the old root and the spirit of the Lord will rest upon him…He will not judge by appearance, false evidence, or hearsay but will defend the poor and the exploited. He will rule against the wicked who oppress them.”
Yet David was first and foremost, a military commander who had established the United Monarchy, reuniting the various tribes into a whole nation and it was expected that his scion would do the same. Isaiah spoke of this facet of the messiah as well:
Isaiah11: 13-14
“Then at last the jealousy between Israel and Judah will end; they will not fight each other any more. Together they will fly against the nations possessing their land on the east and the west, uniting forces to destroy them…”
It was difficult for many in Mosaean society to resolve into a single person the dichotomy of the prophesied Messiah, at once a prince of peace and a military leader. For some, the prophecies spoke of a single messiah, but at two different moments in time, the first, a military leader who would reunite the people and the state of Israel, the second, (after their enemies had been destroyed), a wise and peaceful ruler. For others, the only answer was a more liberal interpretation of the prophecies, seeing in their words not one messiah, but two. This model may have been based upon the biblical accounts of David and his son Solomon, both of whom were responsible for the first United Monarchy’s success, with David as the warrior king and Solomon as the wise and peaceful king. This interpretation required two messiahs at two different times, one following the other. Later, the interpretations saw two messiahs, ruling together, a model that resolved what would have been a contentious and perhaps mutually nullifying division within Mosaean society, a potential conflict between the hawks and the doves. Two messiahs, of Aaron and Israel as the scroll community taught, could accomplish all that the prophecies predicted. One would lead the people to destroy their oppressors while the other would guide the nation as a model of peace and wisdom to the rest of the world once the fighting was done. Had it not been for the premature and unexpected death of John at the hands of Antipas, no doubt Jesus and John would have fulfilled these messianic roles within the new kingdom.
Whether or not Jesus and John were the models for the two messiahs recorded in the scrolls or whether they simply were aware of those writings and or the model they portrayed is difficult, if not impossible to say. Certainly, as with Jesus and Old Testament prophecies regarding the Messiah, tailoring their message to the writings would not have been out of the question. Any document that predicts future events is at risk of predetermining those events. Unfulfilled, but widely known prophecies are merely textbooks for later imitators and the scrolls were no exception. If those writings existed before Jesus and John, it is not unreasonable to assume that they had read them and begun to fulfill those models. Perhaps their roles were reversed and Jesus was, in fact, the Prince of Peace and John the military leader, but with John’s death, both roles fell to Jesus to portray, and what was originally foreseen as a two messiah model dissolved into one messiah out of necessity.
The dichotomy of a dual messiah ship seems to have continued for some years and is recorded numismatically in the coins commemorating Israel’s deliverance from Rome in the year 66 CE that were minted on the orders of Simon bar Giora, military leader of the Sicarii faction. Two different coins were minted, each type bearing the name of either bar Giora (‘Simon the Prince’ on the coins) or Eleazar ben Simon the priest. These two men were instrumental in raising a large Mosaean army made up chiefly of the poor and disenfranchised that was responsible for the annihilation of the Roman army of the 12th Legion under Cestius. Again, as with the two-messiah model, the coins represented both a military leader and a priest as the leaders of the restored Israel. Noticeable too, was the fact that bar Giora, especially, championed the cause of the poor throughout the First Jewish Revolt, and even turned to attacks against the rich and well to do Mosaeans as collaborators with the Romans, often murdering them or robbing their houses and raiding their grain stores to force them to end their collaborations and take up arms against their common oppressors. Simon bar Giora’s similarity to Jesus’ protection and elevation of the poor over and above the wealthy of society was not coincidental. They shared the same philosophical view, born of their Zealot backgrounds, that the wealthy, with too much to lose, were more interested in co-operation and coexistence with the Romans than they were in any nationalistic movement that would jeopardize their way of life.
The Zealots, throughout most of the First Century remained, despite Josephus’ inconsistent claims against them, strongly nationalistic, highly motivated, deeply religious freedom fighters who apparently embraced the idea of a two-messiah leadership model for a restored Israel. Although certainly possible, the idea that robbers and brigands may have been a small part of the overall Zealot movement in order to capitalize on their violent reputation is highly unlikely, mainly due to the stringent entrance regulations required by the sect as delineated in the scrolls and contemporary historical accounts. The sacrifices required of those men wishing to join the Essenes and the Zealots could only be made from a single minded spiritual commitment, not from an opportunistic, egocentric desire for easy wealth. Right up until the end of the revolt, the Zealots, under John of Gischala and the Sicarii under bar Giora continued their struggle for national independence against the Romans with an almost suicidal fanaticism. To suggest, as Josephus did, that they were merely robbers fails to account for their religious zeal. As Martin Hengel wrote regarding Josephus’ alternate view of the Zealots; “Josephus above all stresses freedom as the aim of the struggle conducted by the fourth sect. According to Judas and Saddok, the tax assessment brought ‘obvious enslavement’ in its wake, with the result that they summoned the people to the ‘salvation of freedom’. In his second summary of their aims and views, Josephus says that Judas and his followers had an ‘invincible love of freedom,’” (The Zealots , page 110).
Reunification of the United Monarchy
The importance of a reunited Davidic monarchy in Jesus’ teachings cannot be over emphasized. He understood better than anyone that in order to accomplish all that needed to be done, from driving the Romans from the land to re-establishing God as the true king of Israel to returning the people to the covenant that it was necessary to first unite the people in these common goals and to reunite the Mosaean tribes and provinces into a single entity. Victory over the Romans would be impossible without a united front and without the total commitment of the people to the covenant, God’s direct help in the ensuing conflict could not be guaranteed. Those who would not join the enterprise would not conform to the covenant, would not set themselves on the path of righteousness, and would be cast aside.
Only the poor with nothing left to lose could be counted on to fulfill their roles in the new kingdom. As mentioned above, the rich, concerned with protecting their interests and lifestyles, were willing to collaborate with the Roman overlords and the Herodian rulers as long as it preserved their wealth; the poor suffered no such desires. Their lives were generally so bereft of hope and potential that the image painted by Jesus of God’s intervention in their affairs to improve the quality of their lives on the way to creating a new, God (not Roman or Herodian) ruled kingdom, would have seemed a glimpse at a palpable paradise on earth. According to Jesus, the poor would be first in the new kingdom and would rank above those who had oppressed them for so long. They would be the ones in control, without fear and free of the terrible burdens of poverty and taxation. Like most politicians, Jesus was long on hyperbole and short on specifics, and there is no record in the Gospels as to how the poor would live and how the society of the new kingdom would be laid out. What was essential was that the poor join the cause and help God usher in the new Israel.
There was more to Jesus’ exaltation of the poor than his need for a righteous army to fight God’s war, however. The poor would have been seen as racially pure Mosaeans with direct genealogical links to the people of the Exodus. Unlike the wealthy, professional and priestly segments of society at that time, who were descendents of those masses carted off from Israel during the Assyrian and Babylonian exiles and were chiefly city dwellers, the Mosaean poor were descendents of those people left behind by Assyria and Babylon to tend the land. They were not the skilled craftsmen, professionals, priests or leaders that had been captured and taken out of Israel in order to insure the pacification of the country. They were the ones left behind to till the soil, husband the livestock and catch the fish so that they could provide basic revenues to the conquering nations. Second Kings suggests that such was the case:
2 Kings, 17: 23-24;
(23) “Until the Lord removed Israel out of His sight as He had said by all his servants the prophets. So was Israel carried away out of their own land to Assyria unto this day. (24) And the king of Assyria brought men from Babylon and from Cuthah and from Ava and from Hamath and from Sepharvaim and placed them in the cities of Samaria instead of the children of Israel and they possessed Samaria and dwelt in the cities thereof.”
2 Kings, 17:25-28;
(25) “And so it was at the beginning of their dwelling there that they feared not the Lord: therefore the Lord sent lions among them, which slew some of them. (26) Wherefore they spoke to the king of Assyria, saying, The nations which thou has removed and placed in the cities of Samaria…”
These two passages note that it was clearly the city dwellers of Samaria (Israel) who were removed and replaced by foreigners. The poor of the land, the farmers and fishermen are not mentioned as part of the exile of the Ten Tribes, so it can be safely assumed that they remained on the land for the previously mentioned reasons. Consequently, there is a suggestion that they remained racially pure, since intermarriage with foreigners was restricted by several prohibitions of Mosaean law (see Deut. 7:2 with Malachi 2:14 for marriage as covenant). The foreigners who were sent to the cities of Israel no doubt stayed in the cities while the poor Israelites stayed in the fields. Partial proof of this fact is represented in the animosity of the Judeans towards the Samaritans, a culture that saw its roots in Moses’ leadership and continually claimed that their understanding and practice of his teachings were older and more correct than those of the Judeans. This cultural egotism though based in fact did little to allay the racial attitudes of the Judeans who felt (unreasonably) that Samaritan blood had been tainted with the blood of the foreigners. The Samaritans equally might have argued that the Babylonian Exile was the direct result of the Judeans failing in their covenant with God and so were removed from their God given lands.
It was in response to the Babylonian Exile that a new theological discourse began among Judean leaders. Prior to the exile, Mosaean philosophy stressed a theology of judgment and the maintenance of the covenant. After the exile, the stress was placed upon a theology of salvation and a rescue of the people from their impure ways in order to restore the covenant. The cultural failure of the Judeans to maintain the covenant and to suffer their removal from the land created in their minds a rethinking of their relationship with God. On the one hand, they had to resolve the apparent mistrust they felt in God’s promise to them as His chosen people to protect and defend their rights and their realization that through their own fault and lack of piety they may have brought on God’s displeasure as displayed in their exile. As a result, a new, post-exilic philosophy came into being to resolve these issues. In texts such as Lamentations as well as many of the Psalms, Mosaean literature took on a despairing quality, while in texts such as Ezekiel and Isaiah there was the new prophetic ideal that the Israelites would be gathered together again, their society and religion purified and the unified Davidic kingdom re-established.
Of course, such a reunification was made more difficult by the fragmentation of Mosaean society from its original tribal identities into clan and provincial groupings. The Diaspora had done away with tribal thinking since ten of the tribes had either disappeared completely or had been absorbed into other cultures and the remaining groups, such as the Samaritans and Judeans, or the Israelites and the tribe of Judah, felt such animosity towards one another. On the face of it, reunification would have been nearly impossible given the polarization existing among the various Mosaean factions, yet for many, the only hope for the future lay in just such a reunification. The religious Mosaics of the time understood that the salvation of Israel and with it God’s covenant, was dependent upon overcoming their differences and joining together as one nation.
Jesus’ call to the poor and his denigration of the rich are seldom examined in biblical scholarship being generally accepted as a fundamental part of his teachings without further explanation except on theological grounds. Yet, there was a purpose to his selection of the poor and a reason for his omission of the rich. Christian theology fails to address the point although it is easy to speculate as to why all the rich were to be excluded from the Kingdom of Heaven. Certainly, some of the rich must have been worthy of inclusion on purely religious grounds (righteous living and piety, etc.), just as some of the poor must have deserved exclusion. Why then does Christian tradition fail to examine the polarization? It is only by understanding this division in the society of the time and the necessity for reunification that Jesus’ teachings can be understood in their correct political context. It is easy to grasp the significance of his reliance on the poor to energize the rebellion because they had nothing to lose and were the least likely group to collaborate with the Romans. It is equally clear to see his attempts at reunification that lie in his parables.
One of the clearest examples of Jesus’ teaching reunification is in the parable of the Good Samaritan, (Luke 10:25-37). The parable is an allegorical account of the then current state of the reunited state of Israel, its possible descent towards destruction and the means necessary to save the nation. It was presaged in a somewhat earlier teaching in Mark 12:28-34 and the later and more specific version in Luke gives credence to the fact that the state of the proposed nation was deteriorating rapidly and that strong measures were needed to save the political situation. The parable of the Good Samaritan spoke for the need for reunification.
Mark 12:28-34;
(28) “One of the teachers of the law came and heard them debating. Noticing that Jesus had given them a good answer, he asked him, ‘Of all the commandments, which is the most important?’ (29) The most important one, answered Jesus, is this: Hear, O’Israel, the Lord our God, the Lord is one. (30) Love the Lord your God with all your heart and with all your soul and with all your mind and with all your strength. (31) The second is this: Love your neighbor as yourself. There is no commandment greater than these. (32) Well said, teacher, the man replied. You are right in saying that God is one and there is no other but him. (33) To love him with all your heart, with all your understanding and with all your strength and to love your neighbor as yourself is more important than all burnt offerings and sacrifices. (34) When Jesus saw that he had answered wisely he said to him, You are not far from the Kingdom of God. And from then on no one dared ask him any more questions.”
This passage too, speaks to the need for reunification that could only come about if the separate provinces that were the original geographical boundaries of Israel could solve their animosity towards each other and reunite. The ‘teacher of the law’ to whom Jesus spoke would have been understood as a scribe or by extension, a Pharisee, teachers of the Torah and founders of the oral law. They were the intelligentsia of Jerusalem and were Judeans. The distinction is important because it gives a frame of reference to their discourse; Jesus was speaking to some of the leading religious men of Judea, not just some generic teachers. When the scribe asked Jesus which was the most important commandment he was asking him a question for which he already knew the answer, but Jesus’ answer emphasized certain things. He makes the connection between Israel and God, that if the Lord God is one and if ‘god’ (Hebrew: el ) is part of the name Israel (Hebrew: Yisra’el), then God and Israel are one. To love God with all one’s heart, mind and strength means to love the idea of the nation of Israel equally. In effect, what Jesus was telling the scribe was that the most important commandment was to commit oneself heart, body and soul to the nation of Israel, the nation of God, a nation that no longer existed in fact, but did exist as a future concept.
The second most important commandment according to Jesus was to “love your neighbor as yourself,” a concept that stretched beyond the narrow confines of people living immediately within a neighborhood to the intended concept of the neighboring provinces of Judea, that would have included Samaria. Jesus singled out both Israel (Samaria) and neighbor (Samaria) in his response to make it clear that what he was trying to convey was that Samaria was essential to God’s plan to reunite the Davidic kingdom. His final comment to the scribe makes that clear, “You are not far from the Kingdom of God,” meaning that if the scribe understood this teaching he also understood Samaria’s significance to the reunited monarchy. Also, his last comment caused fear within the immediate listeners, a fear that seems strangely misplaced if Jesus had merely answered the scribe’s question in accordance with the known law and if they were only discussing simple neighbors. The reason those listeners were afraid or “dared not ask him any more questions,” was because they knew what his reference to the Kingdom of God meant. They knew enough about Jesus and his teachings to understand that being close to the Kingdom of God meant that they were close to rebellion. Jesus’ teaching was intended to alter Judean perceptions and animosity towards Samaria and make it clear that old hatreds had to be put aside if the Kingdom of God was to become a reality, but it also meant that once the lesson was learned war was not far behind.
Later, as the political landscape changed and it became apparent that the effort to re-establish the kingdom had to increase and that the time for the rebellion was fast approaching, Jesus again visited the concept of loving your neighbor and Samaria’s role in the new kingdom. He was much more direct in his teaching although he continued to maintain the necessary plausible deniability in the parable of the Good Samaritan. It was only much later after his resurrection failed to incite the Judeans and Essenes to revolt that this parable took on a different significance, one lacking in any political objective. It became and has remained an obscure message that has been interpreted subjectively down through the ages by various groups to suit their needs. Originally, though, Jesus’ intent with the parable was very clear.
Luke 10:25-37;
(25) “And behold a lawyer stood up to put him to the test, saying, Teacher, what shall I do to inherit eternal life? (26) He said to him, What is written in the Law? How do you read it? (27) And he answered, You shall love the Lord your God with all your heart and with all your soul and with all your strength and with all your mind and your neighbor as yourself. (28) And he said to him, You have answered correctly; do this and you will live. (29) But he, desiring to justify himself, said to Jesus, And who is my neighbor? (30) Jesus replied, A man was going down from Jerusalem to Jericho and he fell among robbers who stripped him and beat him and departed, leaving him half dead. (31) Now by chance, a priest was going down that road and when he saw him he passed by on the other side. (32) So, likewise, a Levite, when he came to the place and saw him, passed by on the other side. (33) But a Samaritan, as he journeyed, came to where he was and when he saw him, he had compassion. (34) He went to him and bound up his wounds, pouring on oil and wine. Then he set him on his own animal and brought him to an inn and took care of him. (35) And the next day he took out two denarii and gave them to the innkeeper, saying, Take care of him and whatever more you spend, I will repay you when I come back. (36) Which of these three do you think proved to be a neighbor to the man who fell among the robbers? (37) He said, The one who showed him mercy. And Jesus said to him, You go and do likewise.”
The traditional moral of this parable (taken out of its original context), speaks to the need for both individuals and groups to move beyond their ingrained thinking about neighbors and clans and political associations to see all men as neighbors despite historical animosities. It is a message of inclusion rather than polarization, at least as traditionally taught, but taken within its original context of First Century Judea and Jesus’ efforts to reunite the Davidic Kingdom, it can be seen for what it is, a political message aimed at communicating to the Judeans the need to include Samaritans in the reunification process if the new kingdom is to survive. Taking the earlier model that males stand for political, national or theological groups in Jesus’ parables, the parable of the Good Samaritan can be broken down into the following metaphors. The victim, stripped and unconscious, is generic and consequently universal; he cannot speak, nor can clothing identify him as belonging to any province or group. As such, he stands for the concept of the reunited kingdom, broken, beaten and nearly dead, a politically tenuous concept facing an uncertain future. The robbers are the Romans and the ruling elite who have oppressed Mosaean society to the point of extinction through taxation and repressive laws. The priest and the Levite are obviously just that, members of the Judean elite unwilling to overcome past prejudices against Samaria in an effort to forge a unified nation. The Samaritan is the Samaritan nation, willing, in contradiction to Judea, to take the necessary steps to insure the survival of the new kingdom, from risking its own welfare at the hands of the robbers, to showing compassion and mercy to a fellow traveler without first knowing his affiliations.
For Jesus, the point was simple; without co-operation between the provinces, the idea of a reunited kingdom was destined to failure. Even his choice of the road in the parable speaks to this message. The road between Jerusalem and Jericho was narrow, winding and beset by robbers in Jesus’ time. It descended steeply from Jerusalem to Jericho, some three thousand feet in seventeen miles, or about 177 feet per mile, a fairly precipitous slope. The metaphor was clear; the victim/kingdom was traveling a dangerous and steeply descending path towards the future. Only the timely and unbiased intervention of the Samaritan(s) could prevent the victim’s/kingdom’s ultimate demise. The priesthood and the Levites might sidestep the problem because of old prejudices, but such bigotry would only ensure the eventual disastrous outcome. The compassionate intervention by the Samaritan(s) and by extension all the provinces, and their willingness to set aside old hatreds could save the situation and set the concept of the reunited kingdom on its way again. The ‘eternal life’ the lawyer sought was a coded reference to life in the new kingdom. Jesus made it clear that if one loved God with all one’s heart, mind, body and soul and if one also sought the reunification of the Davidic Kingdom by accepting and including neighboring provinces in the process, they would be granted life in the new kingdom. Jesus finished the parable by telling the Judean scribe to follow that example.
This parable, taken together with the earlier Mark 12:28-34 and with the parable of the Samaritan woman at the well, point to Jesus’ realization that the Samaritans were instrumental in restoring the Davidic Kingdom. The Judeans might tolerate the Galileans, the Idumeans and the Pereans, but if the new kingdom was to reach its historic geographical boundaries they had to accept the Samaritans as a fundamental piece of the whole. The Judeans did not feel the same animosity towards the other provinces and although they may have viewed those other peoples as backward, unsophisticated and too radical, they did not vent their vitriol towards them as they did towards the Samaritans. The hope for the future, as far as Jesus was concerned, lay in the idea that all the provinces would come together as a united whole. If he could persuade Judeans to accept Samaritans, if he could convince Essenes to persuade Judeans, the chances improved greatly that the Davidic Monarchy, with Jesus as its nominal king, could be restored.
The Samaritans, as noted in the parable of the woman at the well, already saw Jesus as their taheb /messiah and even though there was the suggestion of mistaken identity involved, it was an important distinction that the Samaritans saw Jesus as their messiah. The inclusion in the parable was not so much a comment on the universality of Jesus’ messiah ship as it was a comment about his political advocacy for the Samaritans. In effect, they were saying that they were prepared for Jesus to represent them, a highly unusual admittance since they considered him to be Judean. The Good Samaritan reinforces that advocacy from Jesus’ point of view; he was telling the Judeans that he supported the Samaritans and saw them as a necessary component in Judea’s political future. If the Judeans accepted Jesus as their Messiah, they also had to accept that Samaria would be part of the new kingdom.
There was, of course, much more to the reunification process than just alleviating the animosity between Judea and Samaria. While tradition views Jesus as a wandering miracle worker and rabbi spreading his gospel throughout the land, there was more political method in his travels than scholars would like to believe. A closer look at his travels during his ministry reveals that the geographical areas he covered very closely approximate the same geographical area of the original Davidic Kingdom (as mentioned above). Jesus did not wander aimlessly spreading his message; he traveled with a purpose, reaching out to all the areas and all the peoples who would be necessary for the reunification. Just as a modern politician travels widely to make contact with his constituents, Jesus traveled and taught across the length and breadth of the Davidic Kingdom, even traveling beyond the Jordan into the Hellenized lands of Gaulanitis and the Decapolis (Mark 7:31), lands that were part of the original kingdom but were separated from orthodox Mosaean culture by their interest and adoption of much of Greek culture. Yet Jesus preached to them too because they were as essential to the re-establishment of the kingdom as were Samaria, Galilee and the others.
His aim to recover the lands of the original kingdom is supported by the pericope regarding the Syrophoenician woman’s faith (Mark 7:24-30 and Matthew 15:21-28). The pericope takes place in the region of Tyre and Sidon along the Mediterranean Sea in the narrow strip of land known as Phoenicia. Not long before the First Century, the Romans had annexed Phoenicia within the province of Syria for bureaucratic reasons, hence the term Syrophoenician. It was considered to be part of the original Davidic Kingdom, as was made clear by David’s inclusion of the area in his census of the kingdom’s peoples (2Samuel 24:1-9), although during Jesus’ life it was not seen as one of the five provinces that represented the land area of the United Monarchy. Since Jesus considered it part of the original kingdom, he went there to preach about reunification. The pericope was designed with that in mind.
Mark 7:24-30,
(24) “And from there [Genneseret near the Sea of Galilee] he arose and went away to the region of Tyre and Sidon. And he entered a house and did not want anyone to know, yet he could not be hidden. (25) But immediately a woman whose little daughter had an unclean spirit heard of him and came and fell down at his feet. (26) Now the woman was a Gentile woman, a Syrophoenician woman by birth. And she begged him to cast the demon out of her daughter. (27) And he said to her, Let the children be fed first for it is not right to take the children’s bread and throw it to the dogs. (28) But she answered him, Yes, Lord, yet even the dogs under the table eat the children’s crumbs. (29) And he said to her, For this statement you may go your way; the demon has left your daughter. (30) And she went home and found the child lying in bed and the demon gone.”
This pericope in Mark comes immediately before Jesus heals the deaf and mute man of the heavily Hellenized area of the Decapolis which is followed by the Hellenized (the Greek word for baskets, spyridas is used) version of the feeding of the four thousand. In other words, the three pericopes are linked with a common theme: Jesus was teaching either Gentiles or Hellenized Mosaeans about the Kingdom of God; he was in geographical areas of the original kingdom speaking with non-orthodox Mosaeans and Gentiles about their roles in the coming conflict. While Jesus was not particularly interested in spreading his gospel to the Gentile communities (Mt. 10:6; 15:24; Rom. 15:8) seeing the struggle as one of orthodox Mosaeanism against all non-believers, he was at all times interested in restoring the geographical boundaries of the old kingdom, regardless of who lived there. The pericope of the Syrophoenician woman makes that relatively clear.
Mark 7:24-29 (metaphors added)
(24) “And from there he went away to the region of Tyre and Sidon [these cities represented the two fish referred to in the feeding of the five thousand and were originally part of the Davidic Kingdom]. And he entered a house and did not want anyone to know [the Messianic Secret, Jesus’ fear that the sedition he taught would become known to the authorities] yet he could not be hidden. (25) But immediately a woman [people or populace] whose little daughter [metaphor unclear] had an unclean spirit [fear of reprisal from either the Romans or the Mosaeans. Since the population in question was Gentile, as is later pointed out, it would not have been subject to the ritual purity laws of orthodox Mosaeans and so its unclean state must have arisen from a different source] heard of him and came and fell at his feet. (26) Now the woman was a Hellenized woman [the Greek word Hellenis was used], a Syrophoenician woman [the Greek word Syrophoinikissa was used] by birth [the ancestry of the population connected it to the Davidic Kingdom]. And she begged him to cast the demon [fear of reprisals] out of her daughter. (27) And he said to her, Let the children [the children of Abraham, orthodox Mosaeans] be fed first, for it is not right to take the children’s bread [House of David, their portion of the Kingdom of God] and throw it to the dogs [Gentiles]. (28) But she answered him, Yes, Lord, yet even the dogs [Gentiles] under the table [the restored kingdom] eat the children’s crumbs [benefit from the children’s portion]. (29) And he said to her, For this statement you may go your way; the demon has left your daughter.”
The point that was being made was that while the Gentiles of Phoenicia (and by extension other Gentiles living in other areas) might not be able to play an active role in the coming rebellion because they were not orthodox Mosaeans and therefore would not be entitled to a place in the kingdom to come, they would certainly reap the benefits of a Mosaean victory by continuing to live in the restored kingdom, free from Roman domination and taxation. Jesus might not view them as theologically fit to enjoin in the holy war for the new kingdom, but unless he was prepared to exile them from the country they would enjoy the fruits of victory by geographical association. Then, too, Mark’s insistent repetition that Jesus was referring to the people of the area (Mark repeatedly emphasizes that the protagonist is a woman) and not their leaders and that those people were in all likelihood descended from citizens of the Davidic Kingdom, seems to indicate that he took their inclusion, if not their participation, in the new kingdom seriously. Like the Samaritan woman at the well, the Syrophoenician woman was bold and did not hesitate to talk with a man outside her immediate family, a social act that would have been seen as scandalous at the time. As a metaphor, though, the woman’s behavior only indicates the population’s intense desire for assurance and recognition in the face of a holy war not of their choosing. Such groups of people would have been caught in the middle between the Romans on one side and the Mosaeans on the other, an almost untenable position since the Romans would have viewed them as enemies in such a conflict and the Mosaeans would have seen them as infidels.
Matthew’s version of the same pericope, written many years later but substantially the same in its main points, differed from Mark in four prominent ways: 1) the Hellenized Phoenician woman refers to Jesus by the messianic title ‘son of David’ (15:22); 2) initially, Jesus ignores the woman’s request and the disciples complain that she is badgering them (15:23); 3) Jesus responds to them by saying that he was sent only to the lost sheep of the house of Israel (15:24); and 4) after the woman’s clever response, Jesus responds to her by saying that her faith or trust is enormous and tells her immediately that the exorcism has been accomplished (15:28). These subtle changes were markers that clarified the political nature of the parable at a later time when it required a more obvious or forthright approach to motivate uncommitted Mosaeans. Clearly stating that Jesus was the ‘son of David’ and had come only for the ‘lost sheep of the House of Israel’ (the lost tribes of Samaria and beyond) was a strong political message that reinforced his mission of reunification. Acquiescing to her request for protection based upon her faith in his mission (in Matthew) rather than just her ability to perceive the true political ramifications of the coming rebellion (in Mark), allowed Jesus to accept Gentiles as limited political partners based upon their understanding of and agreement with his political motives rather than on their own self-interest and uncertain neutrality. Faith in the idea of a reunited kingdom was a stronger argument for inclusion than was mere self-preservation as far as Jesus was concerned.
If much of the political message of Mark was in circulation before Jesus attempted his resurrection and much of Luke was circulated shortly after the resurrection in an attempt to galvanize the necessary groups, the changes in the two gospels can be accounted for by the increased intensity necessary to promote Jesus’ political agenda in the wake of his failed resurrection. While the resurrection had been intended as a rallying point for the start of the rebellion, its failure to arouse the population did not automatically and immediately signal the end of Jesus’ push for a reunited kingdom. The parables and stories of Mark were rewritten and embellished and intensified in Luke and a little later in Matthew to continue the freedom movement and the drive for a reunited Davidic kingdom. At least for a few years, the resurrection’s failure to properly awe and inspire the Mosaean people did not mean that the idea of God’s new kingdom was dead or unattainable. Jesus and his followers continued to advance their agenda through the edited and expanded Synoptic Gospels in the hope that the kingdom could still be saved. It would take the Herodian Paul to finally usurp the concept and so alter the original message that it became unrecognizable. Paul so cleverly and thoroughly reinterpreted Jesus’ political message into a theological shift in the mainstream Mosaeanism of the time that Jesus’ original agenda was completely absorbed and consequently lost to succeeding generations. Within a single generation, consisting of those closest to Jesus who knew his original intent, the idea of a reunited Davidic Monarchy, a new kingdom of God, an earthly theocracy, had been pushed aside and forgotten and replaced by the heavenly kingdom and Christology of Christian tradition.