Jesus Was Not An Essene
This is part of chapter 4 from Gary Habermas’ book, “The Historical Jesus: Ancient Evidence for the Life of Christ”.
In addition to the major historical approaches presented in the last chapter, many have attempted to write more-or-less popular lives of Jesus. These authors often advocate unorthodox interpretations: Jesus never died on the cross; he was connected with the Qumran community; someone else changed his message to fit their own desires; he traveled to various parts of the word during the so called "silent years" or even after the crucifixion.
While such works are given virtually no attention by careful scholars, these attempts are sometimes very popular with those who are unfamiliar with the data behind such questions. Many are bothered by nonfactual or illogical presentations, but are not quite able to locate the problems involved. This is the major reason that these approaches are included in this book. We will investigate several of the most popular recent attempts to present unorthodox pictures of Jesus' life…
Qumran Connections
Another popularistic picture of Jesus is that he was a member of the Essene Community at Qumran, which is said to have influenced his teachings tremendously. Sometimes, but seldom, he is even connected with the Essene "Teacher of Righteousness," a priest who called the people to obey the Law and to live a holy life before the Lord and was perhaps even martyred for his teachings.
For instance, Upton Ewing's The Essene Christ asserts that Jesus was raised as an Essene and belonged to the sect, as did John the Baptist.(19) It is even hinted that Jesus thought of himself as the "Teacher of Righteousness."(20) Because of this background of both John and Jesus, their followers were likewise influenced by Essene teachings. Subsequently, the four Gospels are said to have borrowed much from the Qumran community.(21)
Strangely enough, Ewing sees the major theme of the Essene community, including Jesus and the early Christians, as the teaching of monistic ethics. This teaching involves a type of pantheistic oneness of the entire universe with God, each other and all of life. As a result, no violence should be perpetrated on any creature or person, but we should live in peace and love with all.(22)
Another writer to link Jesus and Christian origins with the Qumran community is Charles Potter. He also suggests that both John the Baptist and Jesus studied at Qumran while growing up. This would explain where Jesus was during his so called "silent years" between the ages of twelve and thirty.(23) During these years, Potter postulates that Jesus either wrote, or at least read and was very influenced by an apocalyptic book named The Secrets of Enoch, which is closely connected with the ideas taught by the Essenes. While, at the very least, Jesus was inspired by these teachings, Potter is careful to point out that Jesus was not the Essene "Teacher of Righteousness," who lived long before Jesus.(24)
These works of Ewing and Potter are examples of popularistic attempts to explain the inner motivations and secret events of Jesus' life that are not recorded in the New Testament. Like the fictitious lives of Jesus described by Schweitzer, not only do we find an interest in these inner workings, we also confront the secretive organization of the Essenes once again. And like Schweitzer's examples, so are these works refuted by the facts, Four critiques of these views are now presented.
First, there is a train of illogic employed in these works. For Ewing, the connection between Jesus and the Essenes is based on the opinion that, since he was neither a Sadducee nor a Pharisee, Jesus must have been an Essene!(25) Again, since the Gospels depict Jesus as opposing both the Sadducees and the Pharisees but never opposing the Essenes, then he must have been one of the latter.(26)
Both of these statements are textbook examples of arguments from silence. Just because there is an absence of evidence in the Gospels as to what group Jesus favored, we cannot argue from that silence to the fact that he favored the Essenes. For instance, the Talmud fails to mention the Essenes, so does this make it an Essene book? These statements also commit the black white fallacy of logic. They assume that either Jesus had to be a Sadducee or Pharisee on the one hand or an Essene on the other. But this conclusion only follows if it is known that these are the only options. Jesus could have been a member of another group or of no group at all. Indeed, the Gospels depict him as one who was "his own man" without explicit support for any sectarian politics.
Potter argues similarly. He states that he applied the logic which he learned in college to the facts concerning The Secrets of Enoch and decided that there was "no convincing reason against Jesus' authorship."(27) With this logic he surely should have noticed that his argument was also from silence. An absence of reasons against Jesus' authorship provides no evidence that he did, in fact, write the book. Potter additionally argues that The Secrets of Enoch was written by one author, from 1 50 A.D.(28) That is also an argument from the absence of evidence. There were surely an enormous number of intelligent people who lived between these years who would, given accurate dates, also be candidates for authorship. But this is not evidence that Jesus was the author. In concession, Potter even admits that his thesis is somewhat "imaginative."(29)
The second major reason for rejecting this thesis is that, while there are similarities between Jesus and Qumran,(30) there are also many differences that oppose any close connection. As asserted by Brownlee, "The Qumran literature tells us much about the background of primitive Christianity, but it can tell us nothing directly about Jesus."(31) A number of scholars have noted numerous differences between Jesus and Qumran beliefs.(32) 1) Jesus opposed legalism, whereas the Essenes held strictly to it. 2) Jesus also opposed ceremonial purity, while the Essenes, again, adhered meticulously to it. 3) Jesus associated with common people and "sinners," whereas such activity was appalling to the Essenes. 4) The sinlessness of Jesus is in contrast to the Essene teaching that even the Messiah would be purified from sin by suffering. 5) Jesus combined several messianic aspects, while the Qumran community was looking for two (or even three) different messiahs.
6) Jesus did not teach a strong hierarchy among his followers, while the Essenes imposed strict social rules. 7) Jesus' group was open, but the Essene community was closed. 8) Jesus' ministry was public, while the Essenes were very private. 9) Jesus' teachings were oral, whereas the Essenes emphasized writing and copying. 10) Jesus' manner of teaching was clear, not obtuse as in the Dead Sea Scrolls. 11) Jesus had no formal training, in contrast to those from the Qumran community. 12) Healing was a major part of Jesus' ministry, but this aspect was not emphasized at Qumran.
13) The teaching of love was Jesus' major ethical message, but does not appear in Essene teachings. 14) Jesus' ethics are closer to Rabbinic literature than to Qumran. 15) Jesus had a more positive admiration for the Old Testament prophets than did the Essenes. 16) Jesus did not emphasize angelology as much as did the Qumran community.
17) Jesus' central teaching was the Kingdom of God, whereas the Essenes give little or no place to the concept. 18) For Jesus, salvation was straightforward, while the Essenes had an elaborate initiation system. 19) Jesus taught that salvation would also be extended to the Gentiles while the Essenes were more exclusivistic. 20) Jesus was missionary-minded, while the Essenes were not. 21) According to Josephus, the Essenes taught the immortality of the soul, in contrast to the Christian teaching of the resurrection of the body.
As a result, it is generally held that a close connection between Jesus and Qumran is very improbable.(33) Daniélou even states:
Must we then conclude that he was an Essene, at least at some period of his life? Here historians are unanimous in affirming the contrary. There is nothing either in his origins or in the setting in which he habitually lived, to justify such a conclusion.(34)
Our third critique opposes the minority opinion that Jesus was the Essenes' "Teacher of Righteousness." Although very few hold this view, we will still list several problems noted by scholars.(35) 1) The Essenes' Teacher was a priest, as opposed to Jesus' plural office. 2) The Teacher considered himself a sinner in need of purification, while Jesus was sinless. 3) The Teacher perceived that he was separated by an infinite gulf from God, while Christians hold that Jesus is the very Son of God.
4) There is no evidence of any atoning value being placed on the Teacher's death, while such is the special significance of Jesus' shed blood and death. 5) There is no claim or evidence that the Teacher was raised from the dead, while this is the central event for Christianity. 6) Jesus is worshiped by Christians as God, while such was not the practice of the Essenes and even opposed their belief. 7) Additionally, the Essenes' Teacher lived long before Jesus did.
Our fourth critique of this view is the strongest. While the point is often missed, this view is not necessarily critical of Christ or his teachings even if it was shown that he had affinities to Essene thought or even that he was a member of the group. As Pfeiffer explains:
It should be observed that there is nothing derogatory to the person of Christ in the assumption that He or His followers were of Essene background. The Scriptures make it clear that the mother of our Lord was a Jewess, and that He became incarnate in the midst of a Jewish environment. If it were proved that this environment was also Essene, Christian theology would lose nothing and the uniqueness of Jesus would be no more disproved than it is disproved by the assertion of the Jewish origin after the flesh.(36)
In other words, Jesus had to be born somewhere and he went to school somewhere. To assert that this background was influenced by the Essenes is not in itself critical of Christianity, as long as his teachings are not adjusted or his uniqueness modified. His person and teachings are still validated by a trustworthy New Testament (see Chapter II) and, if his resurrection is verified, this could also serve to confirm his message.(37)
Yet, we must still reject this approach to the life of Jesus. The illogical argumentation, the differences between Christianity and Qumran and the differences between Jesus and the Teacher of Righteousness all invalidate it. However, even if this hypothesis was demonstrated, it would affect nothing of major importance in Christianity since Jesus did have some type of background and his message can be shown to be trustworthy and unique anyway…
Summary and Conclusion
There have been many popular attempts to discredit the Jesus of the Gospels. Even in the eighteenth and nineteenth centuries these attempts were prevalent. While they have been rejected almost unanimously by careful scholars, especially those who remember similar attempts disproven long ago, they still receive widespread attention among lay people. There have even been strictly fictional, novelistic attempts to deal with these subjects.(85)
It is because of this attention among the general populace that we have considered these popularistic "lives of Jesus" in this chapter. Accordingly, we investigated hypotheses involving swoon, Qumran connections, perversions of Jesus' message, and theses involving Jesus as an international traveler. Each was refuted on its own grounds by a number of criticisms.
Louis Cassels responded rather harshly to such "debunking" attempts:
You can count on it. Every few years, some "scholar" will stir up a short lived sensation by publishing a book that says something outlandish about Jesus.
The "scholar" usually has no standing as a Bible student, theologian, archaeologist, or anything else related to serious religious study.
But that need not hold him back. If he has a job -- any job -- on a university faculty, his "findings" will be treated respectfully in the press as a "scholarly work."(86)
Although such satirical comments remind one of Schweitzer's similar remarks concerning the "imperfectly equipped free lances" who composed the "fictitious lives of Jesus" from 130 to 200 years ago,(87) these statements cannot fairly be applied to all of the writings in this chapter. Yet they do remind us of characteristics that are true of many. Accordingly, while all of the theses surveyed in this chapter are refuted by the facts, some of them are additionally to be viewed from the standpoint of fictitious attempts to avoid the Jesus of the Gospels.
Endnotes--Chapter iv
1. Schonfield (New York: Bantam Books, 1965).
2. Ibid., pp. 37 38.
3. Ibid., pp. 112 115.
4. Ibid., pp. 153 161.
5. Ibid., pp. 160 161.
6. Ibid., p. 165.
7. Ibid., pp. 166 172.
8. Ibid., p. 6.
9. Ibid., p. 165; cf. pp. 171 173.
10. J. A. T. Robinson, Can We Trust the New Testament?, p. 15.
11. Joyce (New York: New American Library, 1972).
12. Ibid., pp. 106 110, 118.
13. David Strauss, A New Life of Jesus, 2 vols. (Edinburgh: Williams and Norgate, 1879), vol. 1, pp. 408 412.
14. Schweitzer, pp. 56 67.
15. Ibid., cf. pp. 161 166 with 166 179, for example.
16. Eduard Riggenbach, The resurrection of Jesus (New York: Eaton and Mains, 1907), pp. 48 49; James Orr, p. 92.
17. For examples of physicians who deal with this issue, see C. Truman Davis, “The Crucifixion of Jesus: The Passion of Christ from a Medical Point of View,” in Arizona Medicine, March, 1965, pp. 183 187; Robert Wassenar, “A Physician Looks at the Suffering of Christ” in Moody Monthly, 79/7, March 1979, pp. 41 42; James H. Jewell, Jr., and Patricia A. Didden, “A Surgeon Looks at the Cross,” in Voice, 58/2, March April, 1979, pp. 3 5.
18. For examples, Barth, Church Dogmatics, vol. IV, p. 340 and Brown, p. 223.
19. Ewing (New York: Philosophical Library, 1961).
20. Ibid., pp. 48 51, 62 63.
21. Ibid., pp. 52, 62 64.
22. Ibid., see pp. 62 64, 368 369, 393, 397, for examples.
23. Charles Potter, The Lost Years of Jesus Revealed (Greenwich: Fawcett Publications, Inc., n.d.).
24. Charles Potter, Did Jesus Write This Book? (Greenwich: Fawcett Publications, Inc., n.d.), pp. 16, 77, 133 141.
25. Ewing, p. 51.
26. Ibid., p. 78.
27. Potter, Did Jesus Write This Book? p. 14.
28. Ibid., pp. 134 135.
29. Ibid., p. 136.
30. Jean Daniélou, “What the Dead Sea Scrolls Tell Us About Jesus,” in Daniel Rops, Sources for Christ, pp. 23 28; John M. Allegro, The Dead Sea Scrolls (Baltimore: Penguin Books, 1956), pp. 148 151; William Brownlee, “Jesus and Qumran,” in Jesus and the Historian, ed. by F. Thomas Trotter (Philadelphia: The Westminster Press, 1968), p. 75.
31. Brownlee, p. 52.
32. Daniélou, pp. 28 29; Allegro, pp. 161 162; Brownlee, pp. 62 76; Charles Pfeiffer, The Dead Sea Scrolls and the Bible (Grand Rapids: Baker Book House, 1969), pp. 97 99, 130 134; F.F. Bruce, Second Thoughts on the Dead Sea Scrolls (Grand Rapids: William B. Eerdmans Publishing Company, 1956), pp. 79 84.
33. Allegro, p. 160.
34. Daniélou, p. 28.
35. Daniélou, pp. 30 32; Brownlee, pp. 69 70; Allegro, pp. 161 162; Bruce, Second Thoughts, p. 98.
36. Pfeiffer, p. 97.
37. Although this argument cannot be pursued here, see Habermas, The Resurrection of Jesus: An Apologetic.
38. High Schonfield, Those Incredible Christians (New York: Bantam Books, 1969), pp. IX, 50 51.
39. Ibid., p. 67.
40. Ibid., pp. 135 155.
41. Ibid., pp. 136 149.
42. Ibid., pp. 149, 211, 230.
43. Ibid., pp. XVII, 170.
44. Ibid., pp. 142 146, 259 272.
45. Ibid., pp. 50 51.
46. See Habermas, The Resurrection of Jesus: An Apologetic, Chapter 3 for several additional indications of Jesus’ claims to deity.
47. Reginald Fuller, The Foundations of New Testament Christology (New York: Charles Scribner’s Sons, 1965), p. 115, for instance.
48. Schonfield, Those Incredible Christians, pp. 98, 257.
49. Ibid., p. 155.
50. Oscar Cullmann, The Christology of the New Testament, transl. by Shirley Guthrie and Charles Hall (Philadelphia: The Westminster Press, 1963), pp. 311 312.
51. Ibid., pp. 312 313; Raymond E. Brown, Jesus: God and Man (Milwaukee: The Bruce Publishing Company, 1967), pp. 20 22.
52. Schonfield, Those Incredible Christians, p. 252.
53. Cullmann, p. 311.
54. A. T. Robinson, Word Pictures in the New Testament, 6 vols. (Nashville: Broadman Press, 1931), vol. 4, p. 491.
55. Cullmann, pp. 235, 311 312.
56. See Habermas, The Resurrection of Jesus: An Apologetic, especially chapters 1 3 for the details of such an argument.
57. The subject of Jesus’ self designations is an intricate issue and cannot be dealt with in detail here. For some justification of these claims, see Oscar Cullmann, The Christology of the New Testament. On the last point, see Reginald Fuller, p. 115.
58. Cullmann, pp. 235, 237, 307.
59. Fuller, pp. 208, 248.
60. Cullmann, p. 321; see also p. 235.
61. Joachim Jeremias, The Eucharistic Words of Jesus, transl. by Norman Perrin (London: SCM Press, Ltd., 1966), p. 101.
62. C. H. Dodd, The Apostolic Preaching and its Developments (Grand Rapids: Baker Book House, 1980), p. 16.
63. John Peterson, “A Legend Says Jesus Died in Japan at 112,” The Detroit News, August 9, 1971, pp. 1A, 6A. There are other parallels of a similar nature in Ethiopia and Egypt.
64. Joyce, The Jesus Scroll, pp. 7 14.
65. Ibid., pp. 100 110, 131 140, 160.
66. Ibid., pp. 54 59, 76 99, 141 158.
67. Michael Baigent, Richard Leigh and Henry Lincoln, Holy Blood, Holy Grail (New York: Delacorte Press, 1982), pp. 301 320, 324.
68. Ibid., pp. 322 332, 347.
69. Ibid., see Chapters 1 11, 13 for details. See p. 286 for the author’s statement concerning the need to have evidence of such a bloodline.
70. See James Robinson, The Nag Hammadi Library, pp. 329 338.
71. The Meaning of the Glorious Koran, transl. by Mohammed Marmaduke Pickthall (New York: New American Library, n.d.), p. 93.
72. Peterson, p. 6A.
73. Joyce, p. 187; see also pp. 7 14.
74. Baigent, Leigh and Lincoln, p. 286.
75. Ibid., p. 372.
76. Peterson, p. 6A.
77. Joyce, pp. 158 159, 184.
78. Ibid., pp. 159 160, 191.
79. Ibid., pp. 78 79.
80. Baigent, Leigh and Lincoln, pp. 303 304.
81. Ibid., pp. 307 308.
82. Ibid., p. 103.
83. Ibid.
84. Louis Cassels, “Debunkers of Jesus Still Trying,” The Detroit News, June 23, 1973, p. 7A.
85. Templeton, Act of God; Irving Wallace, The Word (New York: Pocket Books, 1973); Og Mandino, The Christ Commission (New York: Bantam Books, Inc., 1981).
86. Cassels, p. 7A.
87. Schweitzer, The Quest of the Historical Jesus, p. 38.