First off, I’ve searched for this on the Dope, but haven’t been able to find anything in specific. If I’ve missed a link, please feel free to smack me with it soundly about the head and shoulders. (I even ran a google search a while ago and found something which would debunk the Essene hypothesis, but I never recorded its location and I seem to have lost it.)
Now, I’ve had a lot of trouble using my google-fu for these purposes, largely because there are a lot of people with an agenda out there with questionable research.
So, what I’m wondering is:
Is there any proof that Jesus was an Essene, or do people rely on the similarities between mikvah and baptism as circumstantial evidence?
Likewise, I haven’t been able to find a complete text of the Talmud online (go figure). From what I’m aware, that are refrences to a man or men named Yeshu, but that his death was due to bieng hanged and/or stoned, and not crucifiction.
So I guess what I’m asking is to have my ignorance cleared up. If this stuff can be easily debunked, please let me know how.
There is no evidence that Jesus was an Essene. That is largely speculation based on Jesus’ association with John the Baptist and some other superficial elements in the Gospels and traditions of Jesus which share similarities with the Essenes (baptism, Jesus’ putative celibacy). There really is nothing more than this, although many fanciful attempts have been made to find Jesus in the Dead Sea Scrolls. there is certainly nothing explicit.
As to the Talmud, there are a few passages which are disputable refernces to Jesus. The one you’re probably thinking of is from Sanhedrin 43a and says the following:
There are some obvious differences from the Gospels here. This Yeshu is hanged rather than crucified, and he is executed by Jewish authority rather than Romans. This passage dates to the 2nd century CE and may either be a divergent version of Christian tradition or may refer to entirely different Yeshu (which was an extremely common name).
There are some other passages which do not refer to a “Jesus” or “Yeshu” by name, but are thought by some to cryptic or coded refernces to him. One passage talks about a sorceror named Ben Stada whose mother (named Miriam) allegedly conceived him illegitimately with a man named Pandira.
None of the passages which are claimed to be about Jesus are very explicit and all are disputed. Some of them are fairly late and it’s possible they are responses to to Christians or may be altered legends made to fit the Jesus stories.
There’s a pretty good page of discussion right here.
I’d be curious whether any Jesus=Essene tracts existed prior to the early 1950s. I had always thought that the whole “Jesus was an Essene” nonsense started when some folks got excited about the Qumran scroll that described the “Teacher of Righteousness” and thought that it described Jesus. (The “Teacher” is shown at odds with the Judaean priesthood.) However, the Essene difficulties with the priesthood had more to do with the political infighting that surrounded the rise of the Hasmoneans than anything similar to the teachings of Jesus and (as far as I know) the “Teacher” was written about at least a couple of generations prior to the birth of Jesus. (Madame Blavatsky did link Jesus and the Essenes, but her ideas, along with her corruption of the word metaphysics, is so far removed from reality–historical or otherwise–that I’m not sure that anyone really followed her.)
If we can find references to Jesus as an Essene prior to around 1953 or if we can date the “Teacher” scrolls to the period following 25 C.E., there might be some not-yet-established connection. Barring that, I tend to doubt any connection greater than a similarity of some theological points attributable to the cultural milieu (much as Catholic and Lutheran writers of the 20th century wrestled similarly with issues of racism and social justice while Catholics and Lutherans of the 19th century were still trying to beat each other into the ground over con- or tran- substantiation).
Against the notion that Jesus was an Essene we have to point out that Essene society lived communally in fixed locations and were vegetarian while Jesus was a wandering preacher who does not seem to have shunned meat. (This also applies to John the Baptist who also get retroactively named an Essene by some folks.) On the theological issues, Jesus does not seem to be very closely aligned with the Essenes who argued forcefully for a purging and rededication of the priesthood, while Jesus rarely mentions priesthood at all.
I think you’re correct. I’m pretty sure that the Jesus-Essene theories were completely a by-product of the DSS discoveries and I’m almost positive that there was no attempt to tie Jesus to the Essenes before then.
There’s an interesting page on Jesus and the Talmud here which adds a little to Dio’s excellent reply.
“It seems to me that the passage about the execution of Jesus (b. Sanhedrin 43a) derives not necessarily from the actual events but from Jewish and Christian dialogue & polemics. Notice that in the Christian Gospels, Jesus is given a hasty and highly illegal trial in the middle of the night in which false witnesses testify against him. In the Jewish response to the Christian story, Jesus is given a full forty day period in which witnesses could have stepped forward to defend him. I wouldn’t make too much of the fact that the language is that of hanging, as even in the New Testament we find the phrase that Jesus was hanged on a tree. The point that Pilate is not involved at all, while modern reconstruction tends to regard Pilate as the prime mover in the earliest Christian memory, tends to indicate that the Jewish story most likely does not depend on Jewish witnesses but rather was formed as a polemical adaptation of the Christian story. The passage also agrees with John against the synoptics in the relationship of the day of death to the day of the Passover, but too much cannot be made of this because scholars are divided as to whether John or the synoptics are to be preferred here.”
Other possible, though tenuous, Jesus references are noted.
"Robert Stein writes (Jesus the Messiah, pp. 33-34):
Several passages dealing with the treatment of heresy have also been suggested as possible allusions to Jesus even though his name is not present.
b. Berakot: "May our company not be like that of Elisha, from which issued Gehazi. _In our bread places_: may we produce no son or pupil who disgraces himself in public." One manuscript (M) adds to the end of this saying, "like the Nazarene."
b. Sanhedrin 103a. "Another interpretation: 'There shall no evil befall thee' - though wilt not be affrighted by nightmares and dread thoughts; 'neither shall any plague come nigh thy dwelling' - thou will not have a son or a disciple who publicly burns his food." The expression "to burn food" refers to accepting or propounding heresy.
Other possible allusions to Jesus or his teachings may be found in b. Sabbat 116b (a possible reference to Mt 5:17) and b. Sanhedrin 107b, where one manuscript tradition refers to 'Jesus the Nazarene [who] practised magic and led Israel astray.' "
Edgar Cayce was a whack-a-doodle of the first order… I think I am safe saying that even in GQ. But since we are in GQ it is only fair to give a nutjob his due:
In the 30’s and 40’s Cayce said, among his rumblings about Atlantis, that Jesus was an Essene (in fact that he was registered by his Essene school under the name of “Jeshua”. :rolleyes:) Cayce’s followers today make great noise about this – that contemporary scholarship “supports this now” This thread shows that is false. But the litteral GQ answer to tomndeb’s Q: “whether any Jesus=Essene tracts existed prior to the early 1950s” is “yes”.
And in the “since it is on the Internet it must be true school of thought”: On this site, a lecture given by a seemingly reputable scholar at a seemingly reputable conference says:
Even the theory that Jesus was an Essene mystic, a member of the group that probably wrote the Dead Sea Scrolls, was familiar over a century before those documents were uncovered, and ignited so much popular speculation http://www.cesnur.org/conferences/riga2000/jenkins.htm