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From: laura@utzoo.UUCP (Laura Creighton)
Newsgroups: net.religion
Subject: Re: Hell:  Sheol, Hades, and Gehenna
Message-ID: <3723@utzoo.UUCP>
Date: Wed, 4-Apr-84 09:55:01 EST
Article-I.D.: utzoo.3723
Posted: Wed Apr  4 09:55:01 1984
Date-Received: Wed, 4-Apr-84 09:55:01 EST
References: <21@ssc-vax.UUCP>
Organization: U of Toronto Zoology
Lines: 62

The Essenes were not Pharisees. They were a group of people who were
indeed so upset with the evil Pharisees that they went into their
monasteries to withdrawn from the world. Recently some translations
of the Essene writings have shown prayers which are word-for-word
identical with what John the Baptist was saying in the desert.

This leads to some speculation over whether John teh Baptist was an
Essene -- or an ex-Essene since he preached the forgiveness of Sins,
something which was not a part of Essene belief.

In palestine, at Christ's time there were three main groups of Jews.
There were the Sadducees whom we don't know very much about, except
that they had disagreements about the immortality of the body/soul with
the Pharisees, the Pharisees, who founded the Rabinical tradition, and
hence are the ancestors of modern Judaism (so we know a lot about them)
and the Essenes, whose writing are just getting translated now.

The Pharisees thought that the way to salvation was through good
behaviour. They sat around and read scripture and interpreted what the
Law was, and said ``right -- God said do this -- everybody do this,
(even if you don't understand it) because God said so, and this is
what all good Jews should do and how you win Salvation''.

The Essenes were ye-old-tyme Jewish Calvinists. There postition was
that God was going to save some people (the Essenes, of course) and
damn others. Don't ask why. God just predestines those he is going to
save and those he is not. To demonstrate that you are saved you
join up with more Essenes and get very heavily into fasting,
purifying immersions into water (sound familiar?) and various other
ascetic practices which I forget now.

You can see how friction might develop. The Pharisees are busy determining
what is and what is not to be eaten by Jews with what and when and how,
(according to scripture) and the Essenes are saying that all of this does
not matter, and that you shouldn't eat very much at all -- mostly
beetles and locusts and rats and other desert scum if you want to be a
very pious Essene. Eventually, the Pharisses drove the Essenses out
(conversely the Essenes were so disgusted by the Pharisees that they
left) into monasteries. Periodically one Essene or anotehr would go out into
the desert and collect a crowd and berate them for being predestined to
wherever the Essenes thought that the not-saved would go. Other than
that, they kept to themselves.

If John the Baptist was an Essene, then he was an Essene who did not believe
in the double-predestination (which doesn't make him an Essene at all,
since that is fundamental to their belief -- though it doesn't preclude
John from *thinking* that he was an Essene). it is likely that he was
not, though undoubtably influenced by Essene thought since he believed that
man could be saved if he repented, and through baptism -- whereas the
Essenes knew that all the saved were saved ``from birth'' and predestined
that way by God -- and that baptism was something that you did repeatedly
as you reflected on how luckyu you were to be an Essene and how miserable
you were to be a sinner still.

-- 
Laura Creighton
utzoo!laura

	"Not to perpetrate cowardice against one's own acts!
	 Not to leave them in the lurch afterward! The bite
	 of conscience is indecent"	-- Nietzsche
					The Twilight of the Idols (maxim 10)