wordy

(Most likely you have been talking about this for years and me didn't know you did so pardon me taking old stuff up again)

Josephus existed didn't he? Jesus could be a mythical construct or an elaboration on one or several historic preachers.

What about the Essenes? According to Josephus they are on of the four major sects at the alleged time of Jesus. From Wikipedia.
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Essenes
So suppose they actually existed. The scrolls found support it too.

What makes the story of Jesus likely to be mythical is that the writers kind of hide or obfuscate the presence of the Essenes at that time. As if they wrote about Jesus and placed him in a time they had very little knowledge about or that they kept Essenes and Jesus hidden from each other cause they may have been a party within the Essenes and sworn to keep that a secret?

Only my hunches, I have no knowledge in such matters. I fail to see why they would be absent in the text if the writers had knowledge about them.

wordy

I write so many words.

Here is the shortest version of above.

Could Jesus be a mythical construct based on the sect of the Essenes.

Jesus as a symbol for them as a whole. Them the Essenes being God's kingdom incarnated.

Remember how Saul when he became Paul heard Jesus say to him.

"Why are you .... me."

Saul was trying to hunt down and kills people submitting to the heavenly Christ. So "Jesus" is in reality the whole sect of the Essenes seen as one. They as a collective is symbolized as one person given the name "He who saves".

Does it make sense?

Toto

The idea that early Christians were either Essenes, or evolved from the Essenes, is not new, but it is more of an intriguing speculation than a developed theory.

There is an article from 2001 on the subject by Sid Green: From Which Religious Sect Did Jesus Emerge? I read this article a while back, but I think that he tries to link the Essenes with the Qumran community. That is still a majority view, but under serious attack.

Gamera

Ironically, the quality of the evidence that there even was a sect of Essenes is poorer than the quality of evidence for the historicity of Jesus.

Toto

Essenes describes the sources for information about the Essenes: This is a bit superior in variety of sources and reliability than we have about Jesus.

Eusebius thought that the Essenes were early Christians, although today he is universally assumed to be confused.

Gamera

Honestly Toto it's not. A single text by a compromised "historian" under house arrest writing whatever the Emperor wants him to write for whatever reason so that he doesn't get executed.

At the very least the gospels have four seperate authors, even if they may have at least one source in common.

Plus we have traditions about Jesus that get recorded in the patristic writings outside the canon. Plus we have epigraphia and pseudographia about Jesus from noncanonical traditions.

Thus we have in support of Jesus, multiple authors, multiple texts close in time, and multiple seperate traditions recorded by multiple authors. All of this is superior to a few passages by the very dubious single author Josephus about an elusive sect not mentioned elsewhere.

Ben C Smith

Single author Josephus? What about Pliny? Philo?

Ben.

Gamera

Pliny was never in Judea. I beleive Philo offers two paragraphs on the subject. Both Josephus and Philo are suspiciously laudatory about the Essenes, who seem to represent to them the nostalgic embodiment of what Judaism should be but isn't.

I'm not saying the essenes didn't exist. I think most texts in antiquity that purport to be historical or biographical (including the gospels) have a good degree of veracity, mixed in with the usual propaganda, nostalgia and political posturing. I am saying in comparison we have rather voluminous texts on Jesus, both in the canon and out, both in the mainstream tradition and out, both early and late. Compared to Josephus, and some passing laudatory references by Philo, (and as I recollect now some confused references by Pliny -- you are right about Pliny of course) there's just no comparison.

My point is not to throw into doubt the historicity of the essenes, but the argument in the topic post that this historically elusive sect, that remains a mere blip in the textual universe of antiquity, somehow casts doubt on the historicity of the better attested Jesus of Nazareth.

Ben C Smith

I understand your method. But to talk about the single author Josephus seems to ignore two other sources.

Ben.

mountainman

It is notable that the WIKI account includes reference to Eusebius
in relation to the Essenes, but not Porphyry, who also wrote an
account of the Essenes, either in the late 3rd or early 4th century,
couched within his "Abstinence from Animal Foods" which is everywhere
available on the net.

Porphyry's description of the Essenes seems to match that of Philo
and of Josephus. However it is important to understand here, that
we are lead to believe (according to mainstream opinion) that the
author Porphyry, who is widely regarded to have been one of, if not
the leading academic of the empire at the time, actually wrote a
treatise "Against the christians". This treatise immediately brands
Porphyry as essentially "a violently anti-christian neopythagorean".

If you were to read both (above) accounts of Porphyry regarding
first the Essenes, and second the christians, it is entirely obvious
that Porphyry could not have considered there to be any
relationship between the essenes and the christians, because they
are almost diametrically opposed in his desciptions thereof.

Thus, in regard to:

There is also the possibility that he is not confused, but that this
deception was just part of "the fabrication of the Galilaeans".

Porphyry is not seldom regarded as confused, yet Eusebius is often
regarded as either confused, or a liar, or simply credulous.

It appears to me that Philosopher Jay is correct in his assessment
that the future of BC&H Studies will polarise around the role of
Eusebius of Caesarea, in the "delivery of christian literature" to the
planet, in the early fourth century.

He has his fingers in all the pies.