Jesus and the first Christians were probably from the Essenes. An inquiry into the roots of the early Christians.
The discovery of the Dead Sea Scrolls in Qumran 1947 was, in my opinion, the most important archaeological discovery of all times. For a Christian it must be so. Why? Because, according to some Bible scholars, people like fundamentalist theologian Ken Johnson, John the Baptist was an Essene (the Qumran-society that wrote the Dead Sea Scrolls were Essenes). See for example this quote from this article by the Bible scholar, professor Otto Betz (1917-2005): "The Dead Sea Scrolls, found between 1947 and 1956 in caves on the northwest shore of the Dead Sea, provide us with a picture of a first-century Jewish community that could well have been the home of John the Baptist."
Incredible to read this from an ordinary professor of New Testament in our time, one who made the Qumran texts his life work.
Or read this from the Wikipedia-article about the Essenes: "John the Baptist has also been argued to have been an Essene, as there are numerous parallels between John's mission and the Essenes, which is why he perhaps was trained by the Essene community."
John the Baptist was, according to Ken Johnson and others, the head of the "School of Prophets" at the Qumran Caves in the Essene Community.
According to most Bible scholars, Jesus was a disciple of John the Baptist in the beginning (being baptized and taught by him in the desert. This is such a lovely fact), see the following for confirmation: "The current majority view of scholars is that Jesus is likely to have been John’s disciple at some time before beginning his own ministry (and in the opinion of some, during the early part of his ministry too" [from this paper by Max Aplin, from 2011])
Incredible. Jesus a disciple of a wildman, of an ascetic prophet in the wilderness who lived off eating wild honey and locusts.
According to fundamentalist bible scholar Ken Johnson, Jesus probably visited the Qumran Essenes and taught them. And probably he learned a lot from them, too.
This may be the reason why the first Christians were called Nazarenes (Acts 24:5). See this Wikipedia-article about the Nazarenes. John the Baptist was namely a Nazarite, one who had taken the Nazarite vow of the Old Testament (others who had taken this vow were the prophet Samuel and Samson).
Read the following from this Wikipedia-article:
"Tertullian (c. 160 – c. 220, Against Marcion, 4:8) records that the Jews called Christians "Nazarenes" from Jesus being a man of Nazareth, though he also makes the connection" with Nazarites in Lamentations 4:7. "
"The English term Nazarene is commonly used to translate two related Greek words that appear in the New Testament: Nazōraios (Ναζωραῖος, Ναζαραῖος) ("Nazorean") and Nazarēnos ("Nazarene"). The term Nazōraios may have a religious significance instead of denoting a place of origin, while Nazarēnos (Ναζαρηνός) is an adjectival form of the phrase apo Nazaret "from Nazareth.
Because of this, the phrases traditionally rendered as "Jesus of Nazareth" can also be translated as "Jesus the Nazarene" or "Jesus the Nazorean." In the New Testament, the form Nazōraios or Nazaraios is more common than Nazarēnos (meaning "from Nazareth").[1]" (the same Wikipedia-article)
End quote.
Now it starts to get really interesting. Do you begin to see where this leads?
According to this article, Saint Paul took a Nazirite vow at some point in his ministry. This seems to have been common for the first Christians. According to this article (the end of it), James the Just, the brother of Jesus and the leader of the first Jerusalem Church, was a Nazirite.
This focus on the Nazirite vow in the first Christian Church is in complete harmony with its Essene origins. Since John the Baptist was a Nazirite, it should have been common among the Essenes to be Nazirites.
According to Ken Johnson, most of the first Christians were Essenes who received the gospel. Do you remember the 3000 saved at the day of Pentecost after the death and resurrection of Jesus? They were almost all Essenes.
Why? Because, according to Ken Johnson, the Essenes were those, at the time of Jesus, who were most similar to the Christians, and who had prophecied about a Messiah who would die 32 AD. They found their prophecies fulfilled in Jesus.
But the Essenes were not a homogenous group. There were several fractions among the Essenes. Some were gnostic. One gnostic Essene group was the Nasorean Mandaeans (from Wikipedia, see also this Wikipedia-article). They believed that John the Baptist was the last and greatest prophet, not Jesus. They were Essene gnostics who fled persecution by other Jews before the fall of Jerusalem in 70 AD, and established themselves in Iraq and Iran. Still to this day there is Mandaeans in those countries. Mandaeism is one of the few living religions of original Gnosticism, present in our world today.
This Wikipedia-article about the Essenes has something interesting: "Since the nineteenth century, attempts have been made to connect early Christianity and Pythagoreanism with the Essenes. It was suggested that John the Baptist and Jesus of Nazareth were Essenes. According to Martin A. Larson, the Essenes were Jewish Pythagoreans who lived as monks."
The Nasoreans were probably in Qumran or other wilderness places at the time of Jesus, and Jesus may very well have met them and spoken with them, and learnt something from them. This is incredibly interesting. Just see what the Church Father Epiphanius has to say about the Nasoreans:
"The Nasaraeans ‐ they were Jews by nationality ‐ originally from Gileaditis, Bashanitis and the Transjordan ... They acknowledged Moses and believed that he had received laws ‐ not this law, however, but some other. And so, they were Jews who kept all the Jewish observances, but they would not offer sacrifice or eat meat. They considered it unlawful to eat meat or make sacrifices with it. They claim that these Books are fictions, and that none of these customs were instituted by the fathers. This was the difference between the Nasaraeans and the others."
— Epiphanius' Panarion 1:18" (quoted in this Wikipedia-article)
I believe Jesus shared the Nasoreans' contempt for meat and animal sacrifices, which also the rest of the Essenes did (see this article and for confirmation). Jesus' purification of the temple (John 2: 13-16) may be a hint in this direction. This article put it like this: "In agreement with Jesus, they neither would continue animal sacrifice in the Temple (Jn. 2.16-17)"
But the fact that there were gnostic Essenes, shows something of the incredible variation and richness of the religious life at the time of Jesus, and how much there is behind the teachings of Jesus in the New Testament. I speculate in my novel "Naturväsendenas återkomst" (The return of the Nature Spirits) 2022 that Jesus had a "gnostic conversion" in his youth where he stopped believing in the cruel Old Testament god, and had a gnostic period of rejecting the Demiurge, like the Mandaean Essenes did (see this article and this text), but that he left gnostic speculation later, and adopted a Jewish form of Cynicism centered around virtue, asceticism and love, not metaphysical speculation.
That there were gnostic Essenes, is one of the most interesting traits of Jewish history about the time of Jesus.
According to this article, there were three main branches of Essenism at the time of Jesus: "Three groups of Essene form, the Enochian sect, the Nazarenes, and the Osseaens." The Qumran Essenes belonged, according to the same article, to the Osseaens, and were very legalistic. The Osseaens were synonym with the "Scribes" in New Testament. They also kept the temple library at some point in history, and were very learned men. The Mandaeans belonged to the Nazarene branch, from where Jesus and John the Baptist also came, according to the quotes about the Mandaeans I have added in the end of this essay (the additions for further study). According to the same linked article above, John of Patmos, who wrote the Book of Revelation, was affiliated with the Enochian Essenes. In fact, the Book of Enoch, probably an early Essene (see the additional material in the end of this essay) or Proto-Essene work (several copies of the earlier sections of 1 Enoch were preserved among the Dead Sea Scrolls), was an apocalypse, just like the Book of Revelation.
The discovery that Jesus probably was trained by the Essenes is not a new one. The notion has circulated in alternative spirituality and esotericism (the truth has been supressed for various reasons) for a long time before the discovery of the Dead Sea Scrolls. It was taught by the early Theosophists, by Annie Besant (1847-1933) and Rudolf Steiner (1861-1925), the founder of the Anthroposophists. See the following quote for confirmation:
"Following Blavatsky, Annie Besant, the second President of the Theosophical Society, claimed that Jesus was sent “to be trained in an Essene community” and went to an “Essene monastery” in Egypt, where he was “fully instructed in the secret teachings which were the real fount of life among the Essenes.”Similarly, Rudolf Steiner, described Jesus as an “Initiate” of the Essene “Order,” a “lay-brother” of the Essenes who “received” him “as a kind of extern, or outside member." (from this article)
For further study:
"Pritz is similarly dismissive of Epiphanius' striking identification of the early Jesus-believers as having once been called "Iessaioi," denoting Essenes. Noting that Epiphanius equates these Iessaioi with Philo's Therapeutae,..." (from this article by Bible scholar Robert M. Price)
This Wikipedia-article states, in the section "Scholarly discussion": "Another issue is the relationship between the Essaioi and Philo's Therapeutae and Therapeutrides. He regarded the Therapeutae as a contemplative branch of the Essaioi who, he said, pursued an active life."
Read more about the Therapeutae here.
Read more about the Nazarenes here.
Read more about the Nazirites and the nazirite vow here.
Read about modern Nazarenes here.
Read more about the Mandaeans here. From that article is the following quote: "The Mandaean traditions and records are a rich gold mine of information on early Nazarene practices. The many overlaps in the early Christian tradition and the modern Mandaean tradition are strongly suggestive of the common origin of each. Because the earliest "Jewish Christian" strata of the tradition was rejected by the prevailing Roman-Greek Christian culture, many original and important elements of the Way of Yeshua was, no doubt, discarded. By prudent analysis of Mandaean tradition it seems possible to recover many of these ancient principles for use by modern Nazarene Essenes."
From this article the following three quotes are taken: "The Mandeaens are the surviving remnants of the Nasarene sect to which both Yeshua (Essene Jesus) and John the Baptist belonged. Many of their present practices and doctrines go back to the days when Yeshua (Jesus) walked the earth as one of their fellow Nasurai."
"Reports regarding the existence of this sect were first brought to Europe by Portuguese monks - who labeled them as descendants from the disciples of John the Baptist - hence from that time on, in Church textbooks and writings they have been referred to as Christiani S. Ioannis i.e.. Christians of St. John. This is incorrect because the Mandaeans claim to have existed well before the Baptist, they also claim him as a teacher and not a prophet nor the originator of the sect."
"The Mandaeans, themselves, hold the belief that both Yeshua (Jesus) and the Baptist were Nasurai, but that Yeshua (Jesus) was a rebel, who betrayed the secret Qabbalistic doctrines and made religion easier. John the Baptist, in contrast, is thought to be the truer teacher, skilled in magic and concerned with the healing of bodies and souls. This anti Jesus attitude is crystallized in their Book of John the Baptist."
* * *
"Contemporary authors such as Robert Eisenman present differing views affirming that the late Essenes were actually early Christians. Eisenman considers the Dead Sea Scrolls to be "Sadducean" documents of Messianically-inspired opposition to Roman-Herodian rule in Palestine. He identifies James the Just—the brother of Jesus described in the Book of Acts as the leader of the Jerusalem church—as the "Righteous One" who led this opposition movement until his death at the behest of the High Priest Ananus (with "wicked priest") in 62 C.E." (from this Wikipedia-article about the Essenes)
* * *
"In line with the above description, most scholars now believe the lost years of Jesus were spent in retreat locations preparing for what would become his ministry work. It is almost certainly true that Jesus traveled, perhaps extensively, as this was a part of the priestly discipline. He may well have traveled to Damascus, much closer to the Hauron region (in gray) of Nazara and Cochaba than Jerusalem. That Saul later has letters of arrest to prosecute in Damascus tells us much about the widespread influence of the Nazarenes, and the teaching called the Way. Jesus may have visited Qumran as well, for Jesus seems more than a little bit knowledgeable concerning the legalist Osseaens." (from this article)
* * *
About the Book of Enoch, see the following from this Wikipedia-article:
"The main peculiar aspects of the Enochic Judaism are the following:
- a solar calendar in opposition to the lunar calendar used in the Second Temple (a very important aspect for the determination of the dates of religious feasts);" (my comment: this is very remarkable, because the Essenes kept the solar calendar in opposition to the Pharisées)
"The relation between 1 Enoch and the Essenes was noted even before the discovery of the Dead Sea Scrolls.[60] While there is consensus to consider the sections of the Book of Enoch found in Qumran as texts used by the Essenes, the same is not so clear for the Enochic texts not found in Qumran (mainly the Book of Parables): it was proposed to consider these parts as expression of the mainstream, but not-Qumranic, essenic movement."
