aa5874

Are you now claiming that Pausanius "Graeco-Roman Essenes" have been found?

Did not Pausanius' "Essenes" also disappear without a trace?

Pausanius writings may have demonstrated and corroborated the writings of Philo, Josephus and Pliny that some sects of antiquity, although known to have existed, have disappeared without trace.

mountainman

The claim is made by Rachel Elior who says

Josephus, inspired by descriptions of life in the Greek city of Sparta, made the Essenes up.

"There is no historical testimony in Hebrew or Aramaic of the Essenes. It is unthinkable that thousands of people lived abstemiously, contrary to Torah laws, and nobody wrote anything about it,"

So the claim here is that the "Jewish Essenes" will never be found, and we had better go back to the Cross Roads and ask some further questions of the sources in our possession. Since every man and his dog at one time may have jumped onto the "Jewish Essenes Bandwaggon" (especially with the DSS affair) the entire "historicity" of the "Essenes as a Jewish cultural group" needs to be reexamined from the ground up.

At the cross roads we have Philo and his description of the Therapeutae.
And although Philo does not mention "Asclepius" the citations to the
existence of Asclepius outside of Philo are abundant.

The "Therapeutae" are very similar to the Essenes described by Pausanias,
and very similar to the "Therapeutae of Asclepius". Not only that,
they were deemed to be ubiquitous in the empire, and the archaeological
artefacts for their existence may be described as "an abundance".

Therapeutae of Asclepius

Philo is often taken as the sole authority for the Therapeutae. When he wrote, the origins of the Therapeutae were already lost in the past, and he was even unsure about the etymology of their name, which he explained as meaning either physicians of souls or servants of God. Philo was employing the familiar polarity in Hellenic philosophy between the active and the contemplative life, exemplifying the active life by the Essenes, another severely ascetic sect, and the contemplative life by the desert-dwelling Therapeutae. According to Philo, the Therapeutae were widely distributed in the Ancient world, among the Greeks and beyond in the non-Greek world of the "Barbarians", with one of ther major gathering point being in Alexandria, in the area of the Lake Mareotis

This is precisely why Pausanias is important. His references have not been presumed to be important in establishing the "Jewish Essenes" for obvious reasons.


YES. The "temple servants" of all the temples across the empire virtually disappeared without a trace between the years of 324 and 325 CE. Prohibition of temple service was enforced by Constantine's orders. That was essentially the end of the Graeco-Roman religious traditions - they were made redundant with the implementation of the State Canon.

Has anybody asked what became of the entire Graeco-Roman priesthood and academics associated with the services at Graeco-Roman temples throughout the empire after these years? Were they "mass converted to Christianity"?

aa5874

But we have THRE sources that mentioned people called Essenes and at least one Jewish source before Josephus. And we also have a non-Jewish source that provided geographical information about the Essenes that is not found in Josephus.

It is unreasonable or illogical to claim Josephus invented the "Essenes".


So, it must be reasonable to assume or to consider that the "Essenes" of Philo, Josehus and Pliny could have disappeared just like your "temple servants" and your "Graeco-Roman Essenes".

It is multiple attested that there were people called "Essenes", Jewish and Graeco-Roman by four writers of antiquity.

It is almost a virtual certainty that there were people called "Essenes".

mountainman

Here's a little more about the claims of Rachel Elior


Also see the Time Article

aa5874

But Josephus contradicts Rachel.

This is Josephus in "Wars of the Jews" 2.8.13

And history will contradict Rachel. Philo, Josephus and Pliny wrote in the very period of the Essenes.

mountainman

This is "Josephus" in Jewish Antiquities 18.3.3

aa5874

You appear to be confused. You appear not to know what Josephus wrote. I will give you a clue. The writings of Josephus tend to be corroborated by other sources. The interpolations carried out by the Church writers or authorised by the Church are seldom corroborated by external sources.

The "TF" was NOT corroborated by Tacitus or Suetonius who were contemporaries of Josephus and mentioned him.

This is the real Josephus.

Wars of the Jews 6.5.4

See http://wesley.nnu.edu

This is Tacitus corroborating Josephus in "Histories" 5.1.13

See http://penelope.uchicago.edu

And this is Suetonius corroborating Josephus in "the Life of Vespasaian" 4.5

See http://penelope.uchicago.edu

You must know what was likely to be interpolated by Eusebius or the Church writers.

Josephus did not write the "TF".

It is virtually certain that there were people called Essenes in the 1st century since multiple sources attested their existence.

mountainman

What evidence exists for the existence of "the tribe of Christians so named from him" not being "extinct" on the day Josephus DID NOT write the above sentence.

This does not answer the particular question "Were they Jewish"?

The world has perhaps erroneous thought (following Eusebius's conjectural theory) that the "Jewish Essenes" were a "Missing Link" between "the tribe of Christians" and the "Christians described in Eusebius's History of Christians".

aa5874

It is very likely that there were Jewish Essenes as described as by Philo, Josephus and Pliny. And chronologically, it is unlikely that Josephus or Pliny invented the Essenes. Josephus and Pliny appear to corroborate Philo with regards to the existence of people called Essenes.