Hello, and welcome back to The Moral Vision of Jesus Christ, the most exhaustive gospel study you'll ever read. If this is your first time, consider going back to the first installment. You can find that introductory post here.
Before we start today, allow me a few words on purpose and direction:
I want you to know that with this writing, there is a fire growing inside of me. My mind is increasingly occupied these days with the life and times of Jesus Christ, and, moreso, his moral philosophy.
I am hoping that you will see this study through with me, as we painstakingly explore every detail we can about Christ's ideas. My hope is that, as we uncover his beautiful and undeniably true moral principles, we (you and I) will be compelled together to moral action based on those principles. My expectation is that whatever moral action we undertake together at that juncture will save the human race from the hell it has created for itself. This is grandiose, I know. This is my purpose. This is our purpose.
This will be years in the making. The Gospel contains some 89 chapters. This study, at over 15,000 words thus far, has spanned not even two chapters in as many months. If we keep this pace, we will complete the most critical portion of our study somewhere around Anno Domini 2025, at a word count that will rival the entire Bible. (My hope is that I can speed that up a little by giving more and more of my time to this as we move forward.)
No matter how long it takes, though, I promise to see this through. To quote a modern rap artist: "I put in hour after hour, let's be crystal clear: I'm gonna get there if it takes a day or fifty years."
I pray for you to see this through with me.
Now, onto the good stuff.
Sects of Judaism Existing in Palestine at or Immediately Prior to the Time of Jesus - A Shallow Survey
Number Three: The Essenes
I had the opportunity to put my eyes on select fragments of the "Dead Sea Scrolls" a few months back. The scrolls were on exhibit at a museum in Denver, which is luckily not far from me. It was easily one of the most amazing experiences of my life. The exhibit featured fragments of the scrolls, period pottery, sacred altars, ancient arrowheads and even a stone block that had fallen from the Second Temple as Rome sacked Jerusalem in 70 AD. (The block of the Temple was displayed such that visitors could touch it with their hands. I did touch it. I was moved by this.)
I mention my luck in having seen fragments of the Dead Sea Scrolls as a springboard into the third sect of Judaism that we will study here in our survey: "The Essenes." You see, the Dead Sea Scrolls, according to many scholars, were written by, or at least collected and studied by, none other than this oft elusive sect of Jews who existed for at least a few hundred years right around the time of Jesus.
As you will recall, we've already learned about two Jewish sects: The Pharisees and The Sadducees. Our old friend Josephus explicitly says in his Antiquities of the Jews that there were three main sects of Judaism around the turn of the first-century. The Essenes complete Josephus' sectual triad.*
Like The Pharisees and The Sadducees, there is much to know about The Essenes. Unlike The Pharisees and The Sadducees, The Essenes are not explicitly mentioned in The Gospel, and we are left to question for ourselves whether or not Jesus ever interacted with Essenes. To hear some tell it, though, Jesus Christ himself was an Essenic Jew.
So what did The Essenes believe? Well, to start, we can easily say that The Essenes were the most ascetic of the three main sects. In his Naturalis Historia, the first-century Roman historian Pliny the Elder records the asceticism of The Essenes thus:
Lying on the west of Asphaltites, and sufficiently distant to escape its noxious exhalations, are the Esseni, a people that live apart from the world, and marvellous beyond all others throughout the whole earth, for they have no women among them; to sexual desire they are strangers; money they have none; the palm-trees are their only companions.
A sect of first-century men who live without women or money? A group of men who are total strangers to sexual desire? Ascetic indeed!
In his Antiquities of the Jews, Josephus says the following of Essenic beliefs:
They teach the immortality of souls: and esteem that the rewards of righteousness are to be earnestly striven for.
So, where The Sadducees did not believe in an afterlife, The Essenes apparently did. Furthermore, they believed in some reward that could be earned in the afterlife by righteous action in this life.
Josephus says that The Essenes are unlike any other humans that were ever known to him, Greek or Barbarian. He elaborates thus:
The New American Bible's "Bible Dictionary" (a scholarly supplement at the end of the printing) says that The Essenes ranked in importance with The Pharisees and The Sadducees, but agrees with Josephus (perhaps because Josephus was their source) that there were only 4,000 Essenes alive at their height. It also mentions Qumran as "their most important center." Qumran was an Essenic monastery (to use a term loosely).
Qumran was the human settlement nearest the famed Qumran Caves, wherein the Dead Sea Scrolls were discovered. The proximity of the caves to the Essene community in Qumran has led scholars to believe that the caves, which sat about a mile away from Qumran proper, served as a holy library of sorts. At the time of The Essenes, Rome was making steady incursion into Palestine, and it is postulated that the community at Qumran hid all their most important scriptures in the caves a mile outside of town so that, if Roman forces were to come knocking, they would not have the opportunity to destroy or steal the library. One cannot study the Dead Sea Scrolls without studying The Essenes.
It is understood that The Essenes were very serious about cleanliness, and scholars believe that Essenes bathed themselves ritually every morning to maintain purity, and would have taken painstaking steps to maintain the ritual purity of their water, wine and food. The Essenes were so obsessed with purity that they may not have been allowed to defecate on their Sabbath day. (My prurient interests show through again. Apologies to those weak of stomach.)
You see, The Essenes would have strictly followed the scripture in Deuteronomy 23, which says that latrines should be well outside of the town one lives in. The Essenes would have also, however, strictly followed rules about travel on the Sabbath, which specifically limited the distance a person could walk from their town. The Essenes did the math, and came to believe that scripture forbade them walking far enough outside of town to use the latrine on the Sabbath.
Can you imagine living a life of piety to the extent that you couldn't use the restroom for a twenty-four hour period every week?
Like I said: The Essenes were the most ascetic of the Jewish people at the turn of the first-century.
We will retire of The Essenes for now, but I promise that we will revisit them in the context of Jesus and of John the Baptist later. As with the prior two sects, I want to leave you with a few "must-remembers:"
Josephus says that The Essenes are unlike any other humans that were ever known to him, Greek or Barbarian. He elaborates thus:
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 who hath nothing at all.So, like our earliest first-century Christian community, The Essenes held their goods in common. No individual Essene owned any personal property or wealth. This stands in stark contrast with The Pharisees and especially The Sadducees. Josephus tells us more:
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.Josephus and Pliny's accounts of The Essenes seem congruent. These were indeed an ascetic and spiritual people.
The New American Bible's "Bible Dictionary" (a scholarly supplement at the end of the printing) says that The Essenes ranked in importance with The Pharisees and The Sadducees, but agrees with Josephus (perhaps because Josephus was their source) that there were only 4,000 Essenes alive at their height. It also mentions Qumran as "their most important center." Qumran was an Essenic monastery (to use a term loosely).
Qumran was the human settlement nearest the famed Qumran Caves, wherein the Dead Sea Scrolls were discovered. The proximity of the caves to the Essene community in Qumran has led scholars to believe that the caves, which sat about a mile away from Qumran proper, served as a holy library of sorts. At the time of The Essenes, Rome was making steady incursion into Palestine, and it is postulated that the community at Qumran hid all their most important scriptures in the caves a mile outside of town so that, if Roman forces were to come knocking, they would not have the opportunity to destroy or steal the library. One cannot study the Dead Sea Scrolls without studying The Essenes.
It is understood that The Essenes were very serious about cleanliness, and scholars believe that Essenes bathed themselves ritually every morning to maintain purity, and would have taken painstaking steps to maintain the ritual purity of their water, wine and food. The Essenes were so obsessed with purity that they may not have been allowed to defecate on their Sabbath day. (My prurient interests show through again. Apologies to those weak of stomach.)
You see, The Essenes would have strictly followed the scripture in Deuteronomy 23, which says that latrines should be well outside of the town one lives in. The Essenes would have also, however, strictly followed rules about travel on the Sabbath, which specifically limited the distance a person could walk from their town. The Essenes did the math, and came to believe that scripture forbade them walking far enough outside of town to use the latrine on the Sabbath.
Can you imagine living a life of piety to the extent that you couldn't use the restroom for a twenty-four hour period every week?
Like I said: The Essenes were the most ascetic of the Jewish people at the turn of the first-century.
We will retire of The Essenes for now, but I promise that we will revisit them in the context of Jesus and of John the Baptist later. As with the prior two sects, I want to leave you with a few "must-remembers:"
a) Where The Sadducees had only their literal readings of Torah, and The Pharisees had the Torah supplemented by oral traditions, The Essenes had the Torah supplemented by exegesis, meaning that they didn't believe in the oral traditions the Pharisees had, but they also believed there was more to be extrapolated from Torah than was immediately apparent by its words.
b) As Rome came warring through Palestine in the second half of the first-century, The Essenes either died out along with The Sadducees, or dispersed to the extent that they diffused completely into the larger diaspora.
c) The Essenes believed in an afterlife and an eternal soul. They believed there was a reward to be had in the afterlife for the righteous. They may not have believed in free will, however, meaning that all human lives were totally predestined in their cosmology.
d) They were a relatively small sect, and held little to no sway over Judaism at large or The Temple, both of which they appeared to shun because of perceived impiety on the part of The Pharisees and, especially, The Sadducees.
Josephus said there were three main sects, so you might expect our survey to end here. To the contrary: we have at least two more rounds to go with first-century Jewish sectarianism.
Next time: The Zealots.
Now, let's get back to our Gospel.
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Matthew 2:16 through Matthew 2:18
16 When Herod realized that he had been deceived by the magi, he became furious. He ordered the massacre of all the boys in Bethlehem and its vicinity two years old and under, in accordance with the time he had ascertained from the magi.
17 Then was fulfilled what had been said through Jeremiah the prophet:
18 “A voice was heard in Ramah,
sobbing and loud lamentation;
Rachel weeping for her children,
and she would not be consoled,
since they were no more.”
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So, for the first time in our Gospel, we see some bloodshed. We've seen Herod's fear about the Baby Jesus rising now for a couple of weeks, and today we see the levee break. He realizes the magi did a number on him, and, in his rage, he decides he's going to do a number on the countryside.
All the baby boys two years old and under are to be killed.
Woah. Just... woah.
This narrative only occurs in Matthew. When we read Mark, we will not find a massacre of infants. When we read Luke, we will not find a massacre of infants. When we read John, we really won't find a massacre of infants.
Historians who study Herod, and even many Biblical scholars, agree that this massacre never happened. My personal understanding of Herod is that he was a very paranoid man, constantly wary about the loss of his power. While Matthew shows Herod's paranoid hand-wringing as the cause of the massacre, I see it as the proof that it didn't happen. What faster way could there possibly be for a monarch to undermine his own power than to go out to his constituency and kill their baby boys by the hundreds or thousands? The move is nonsensical from the point of view of someone trying desperately to maintain political power. Herod might have had an anger problem, but he was generally liked by his people and generally made very rational decisions throughout his political career. Thus I concur with the scholars who think that the massacre is an invention.
Why invent such a thing? We cannot say for sure, but verses seventeen and eighteen shed light on one possibility that we've already encountered. Perhaps the evangelist has made this up simply so that he can create yet another in his growing series of links between Old Testament scriptures and the messianic ministry of Jesus. In other words: more shoe-horning.
I might call him "Shoehorn Matthew" by the time this is all said and done.
Verse eighteen refers to Jeremiah 31:15. Jeremiah was another prophet. Matthew has thus far referred to prophets that were contemporary to King Ahaz (eighth-century BC), but Jeremiah lived a little later, having been born around 650 BC. We will find further cause later to discuss Jeremiah, so we will leave the study here for today.
Your take-away: Matthew (or the guy that wrote what was later ascribed to Matthew) made up the massacre of the infants. This was done at least partially so that Matthew (or the guy that wrote what was later ascribed to Matthew) could continue his established pattern of referring the Gospel reader constantly back to Jewish prophecy.
Please join us next time, and please share this writing.
Love.
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* I do not want to be crass... but that was the funniest sentence of this study thus far. And you know this.
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