Freethought & Rationalism Archive

Duvduv · 07-27-2012, 10:52 AM

Come on, there can be all kinds of stories about different groups. I just got through explaining that there was no major third group of Jews known as Essenes, and certainly none of these writers identifies a single name or place of where they allegedly lived throughout Judea. A brief mention about a desert settlement is of no importance. IF THEY WERE THE THIRD group, then they would be known in Jerusalem and throughout the country. And such authors would have no trouble mentioning their towns or clergymen and teachers, etc.

Quote:

Originally Posted by aa5874

Quote:

Originally Posted by Duvduv

He sounds like recycled Josephus or vice versa. He classifies the Essenes as the "third great group" after the Pharisees and Saduccees. And yet there is not a single reference to such a group alongside the Saduccees as heretics/sectarians in any Jewish religious source from antinquity. None. And of course it was said that there were various types of Pharisees as well. So let's not build sand castles from Hippolytus or anyone else...

You are FIGHTING history with your Imagination. Hippolytus wrote information about the Essenes that is NOT found in Josephus. You are just blowing Hot AIR and have NOTHING but ad hoc inventions.

aa5874 · 07-27-2012, 04:13 PM

Quote:

Originally Posted by Duvduv

Come on, there can be all kinds of stories about different groups. I just got through explaining that there was no major third group of Jews known as Essenes, and certainly none of these writers identifies a single name or place of where they allegedly lived throughout Judea. A brief mention about a desert settlement is of no importance. IF THEY WERE THE THIRD group, then they would be known in Jerusalem and throughout the country. And such authors would have no trouble mentioning their towns or clergymen and teachers, etc...

Where is the evidence from antiquity for your "explanation"??? You MUST identify some source of antiquity that claimed that there was NO Essenes. Please, your imagination is NOT an explanation-it is speculation.

Philo wrote that the Essenes lived MANY Cities and villages of Judea and Josephus mentioned John and Essene--his contemporary.

In Wars of the Jews 3.2.1

Quote:

.... This excursion was led on by three men, who were the chief of them all, both for strength and sagacity; Niger, called the Persite, Silas of Babylon, and besides them John the Essene....

Hypothetica

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But our lawgiver trained an innumerable body of his pupils to partake in those things, who are called Essenes, being, as I imagine, honoured 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.

Duvduv · 07-27-2012, 04:33 PM

WHICH cities and towns? They were the third major group and the only man named is yet another John?
Come on. As I said, not a single independent or external source knows anything of this "third major group." No source in ancient Jewish traditional texts mentions them. Sounds like our friend called justin, doesn't it?

pinkvoy · 07-27-2012, 06:21 PM

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Originally Posted by Grog

Sheshbazzar and aa, you are hijacking this thread. I have a 10 week old puppy and a five month old cat who endlessly wrestle and attack each other, nonstop. You are reminding me of them. I have enjoyed your discussions, but now it's a little tiresome. There doesn't seem to be anything new here. I am interested in knowing why pinkvoy has come to think these things.

would my answer be here or in a split thread?

pinkvoy · 07-27-2012, 06:24 PM

Quote:

Originally Posted by Minimalist

Israeli archaeologists, Magen and Peleg, recently published findings that Qumran was a pottery factory not a monastery.

Where does that leave your "Essenes?"

this is a professor of Judaic studies
Shaye I.D. Cohen:
Samuel Ungerleider Professor of Judaic Studies and Professor of Religious Studies Brown University

Quote:

Who were the Essenes?

A good example of a group which separated itself from society at large and defined itself against the Temple in Jerusalem are the Essenes, or perhaps you might say, the people of the Dead Sea Scrolls, the Dead Sea community, whom most scholars regard as Essenes. Here is a group of people who left Jerusalem, went to live in the wilderness, to live by themselves, totally isolated from other Jews, from the rest of the community, and as their Scrolls reveal, saw themselves as the new sacred community, waiting for the time, when ... they imagine that the Temple would be reconstituted and reconstructed and rebuilt.... and a new and better priestly group would take over the Temple in Jerusalem. And, in the meantime, while the wicked priests are still off in Jerusalem, following the wrong calendar, following the wrong purity rules and officiating improperly before the Lord, in the meantime, pure purity and true holiness resided only among themselves, in their own community, off near the Dead Sea.... The community itself was a surrogate temple....

The manuscripts that we call the Dead Sea Scrolls are a wide variety of texts. Some of these texts are hardly sectarian texts. These are texts that all Jews would have had, all Jews would have read. For example, the largest single category of Dead Sea text or Qumran Scrolls are text you and I call Biblical. No one is going to say the Book of Genesis was a Qumran document because fragments of the Book of Genesis were found in the Qumran scrolls.... We have to realize then that the Qumran scrolls contain a wide variety of text and we are not always able to distinguish clearly those texts which they simply read from those texts, which they actually wrote.

[What is the significance of the Qumran Scrolls?]

Even before the Qumran Scrolls were discovered, we knew that Judaism in the time of Jesus was a very diverse phenomena. After all, the Jewish historian Josephus gives us the names of Pharisees, Sadducees, and Essenes. We know from the New Testament of a group called Herodians - what they are exactly, we don't know, but there they are. Rabbinic texts add the names of yet other groups and then once the war comes around, in the year 66, we have the names of a whole slew of other groups.... Plus, we have a very wide ranging rich literature from this period which is impossible to imagine all coming from a single source, or all coming from a single school or a single class. The result was, even before the Qumran Scrolls were discovered, we knew or sensed that Judaism in the 1st century of our era was a very rich and varied phenomena. What the Qumran Scrolls do is to demonstrate clearly and unambiguously the truth of that which we always somehow felt or intuited....

The Qumran Scrolls show us the existence of a sect, a group that has separated itself from society at large, a group that defines itself against the Temple, the single central institution of Judaism..., and sees itself as the repository of everything that is sacred and true and sees all other Jews out there, including the priests, as wrong at best and at worst, irredeemably wicked. That is something which we had never previously seen....

The Qumran Scrolls also reveal a whole range of new books which we previously had not known, or had known about only in fragments or only in quotations, or perhaps in corrupted versions. We now have the original text. We have now a rich library of text showing that diversity was even greater than we had ever imagined and the range of possibilities for 1st century Judaism was far bigger than any of us had ever suspected.

http://www.pbs.org/wgbh/pages/frontl...t/essenes.html

per Shaye I.D. Cohen:
Samuel Ungerleider Professor of Judaic Studies and Professor of Religious Studies Brown University

the sect of Jews who regarded DSS scrolls as sacred texts, some of which has some semblence to Josepheus/Philo/Pliny description of Essenes.

pinkvoy · 07-27-2012, 06:26 PM

Quote:

Originally Posted by Toto

aa5874: the argument in the OP is that the Essenes were really early Christians, or perhaps that Jesus was tied into the Essenes. If you are not going to post about the Essenes, stop posting in this thread.

We all know that Philo did not mention any Christians by name, and the only mention in Josephus is a likely interpolation.

Going on about differences between later Christian theology and pseudohistory does not show anything about what Christians might have been in the first century, if there were in fact any Christians.

other way around

John the Baptist, Jesus and the early Christians were a splinter sect of Essenes, but outsiders like Philo and Josepheus saw them as Essenes or Therepeatue.

We are contemporary with "Christians" sect in Strong City.

the strong city cult sees itself as Christians, and those listening to them would describe them as Amish like Christian sect.

of the groups described in first century Judaism, there is quite a bit of similarity between Josepheus/Philo description of Essens/Therepateu and Jesus and early Christians.

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Therapeut%C3%A6

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he Therapeutae were a Jewish sect in which flourished in Alexandria and other parts of the Diaspora of Hellenistic Judaism in the final years of the Second Temple period. The primary source is the account De vita contemplativa ("The Contemplative Life") by the Jewish philosopher Philo of Alexandria (c. 20 BCE - 50 CE) who appears to have been personally acquainted with them. The pseudepigraphic Testament of Job is also thought to be a Therapeutae text

Jesus supposedly fasted 40 days in the desert and spent time in Egypt, something his Therapeatue followers would endorse.

My thesis is that Jesus and his followers were Essene-Therapeatue. They were attested by contemporary first century like Philo.

ergo Jesus existed and Philo and other authors and texts are an independent witness

aa5874 · 07-27-2012, 06:40 PM

Quote:

Originally Posted by Duvduv

WHICH cities and towns?

The cities and villages of Judea.

Quote:

Originally Posted by Duvduv

..They were the third major group and the only man named is yet another John?

What about SIMON the Essene?? What about Judas the Essene???Please your imagination is out of control.

Wars of the Jews 1.3.5

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And truly any one would be surprised at Judas upon this occasion. He was of the sect of the Essens, and had never failed or deceived men in his predictions before.

Wars of the Jews 2.7.3

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...Simon, one of the sect of Essens, said that he thought the ears of corn denoted years, and the oxen denoted a mutation of things....

Quote:

Originally Posted by Duvduv

...Come on. As I said, not a single independent or external source knows anything of this "third major group." No source in ancient Jewish traditional texts mentions them. Sounds like our friend called justin, doesn't it?

Philo, Josephus, Pliny the younger, and Hippolytus mentioned the Essenes so your statement is a load of BS.

Philo wrote 2 books about the Essenes and described their manner of LIVING in details.

Josephus wrote Wars of the Jews and Antiquities of the Jews and decribed their manner of LIVING in details.

Pliny the younger Identified the Location of some Essenes and their manner of LIVING.

Hippolytus in "Refutation of All Heresies" described the manner of Living of Essenes in ELEVEN chapters of book 9.

The Essenes are MULTIPLE ATTESTED by EYEWITNESSES and sources that Corroborated them.

Your imagination is getting you nowhere. Please get familiar with the writings of antiquity about the Essenes.

The Essenes may have been Wiped off the Face of the earth OR REDUCED to Rubble (like the Holocaust) sometime around c 70 CE.

Duvduv · 07-29-2012, 04:50 AM

There is not a single mention of this alleged "third major group" in the entire Talmud or Midrash. There isn't a single shred of a document describing their locations in all of these references. If they were so important they would have had sources of their writings and locations and their teachers and differences. How could someone write "several books" about them and not identify their locations?
"Third major group " my foot. Perhaps one minor sect that a writer liked better than the rest.

aa5874 · 07-29-2012, 07:37 AM

Quote:

Originally Posted by Duvduv

There is not a single mention of this alleged "third major group" in the entire Talmud or Midrash. There isn't a single shred of a document describing their locations in all of these references. If they were so important they would have had sources of their writings and locations and their teachers and differences. How could someone write "several books" about them and not identify their locations?
"Third major group " my foot. Perhaps one minor sect that a writer liked better than the rest.

Again, Philo, Josephus, Pliny the younger and Hippolytus wrote about them. Josephus Identified Essenes by name who were his contemporaries.

Pliny the Elder Identified the location of some Essenes.

They described their manner of living, the clothes they wore, their doctrine, and the kind of work they did.

You demonstrate the severe problem when Imagination is accepted as true regardless of the evidence.

Duvduv · 07-29-2012, 08:15 AM

Philo and Josephus don't describe them the same way, and there is no identification of their locations or writings or teachings. And if Jews couldn't say anything significant about them, then how could Romans?
What do the names Simon and John tell us other than names found in the gospels?
And nothing about this third major group in either the Jerusalem or Babylonian Talmuds or midrash.

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07-27-2012, 04:33 PM	#33
Duvduv Veteran Member Join Date: Nov 2011 Location: USA Posts: 4,095	WHICH cities and towns? They were the third major group and the only man named is yet another John? Come on. As I said, not a single independent or external source knows anything of this "third major group." No source in ancient Jewish traditional texts mentions them. Sounds like our friend called justin, doesn't it?

07-29-2012, 04:50 AM	#38
Duvduv Veteran Member Join Date: Nov 2011 Location: USA Posts: 4,095	There is not a single mention of this alleged "third major group" in the entire Talmud or Midrash. There isn't a single shred of a document describing their locations in all of these references. If they were so important they would have had sources of their writings and locations and their teachers and differences. How could someone write "several books" about them and not identify their locations? "Third major group " my foot. Perhaps one minor sect that a writer liked better than the rest.

07-29-2012, 08:15 AM	#40
Duvduv Veteran Member Join Date: Nov 2011 Location: USA Posts: 4,095	Philo and Josephus don't describe them the same way, and there is no identification of their locations or writings or teachings. And if Jews couldn't say anything significant about them, then how could Romans? What do the names Simon and John tell us other than names found in the gospels? And nothing about this third major group in either the Jerusalem or Babylonian Talmuds or midrash.

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