Thank you for bringing up the Essenes. I want to do more research on them. Do you have any recommendations on.... more accurate information about them and their beliefs? The best books, videos, etc?
No, I'm really sorry I don't. I've never actually researched them but I can tell you why I "turned on my radar" about them.
First, though, let me say that what you'll hear all the time is that, "Oh, they were just another sect of Jews like the Pharisees and the Sadducees. Ho hum." I think now that's a deliberate ploy to derail interest in them.
(Don't hold me to any of the following because as I say I never did any disciplined researched and it's off the top of my head.)
As I mentioned, I stumbled across a reference to Jesus being an Essene, but at the time I didn't make anything of it. Then I stumbled across someone saying that the Essenes were one and the same as the Therapeutae. That's where we get words like "therapeutic" and "therapy", because the Therapeutae were known primarily as healers of body, mind, and spirit.
And I had always thought it was just some sleepy burg, but one of their centers turned out to be in Nazareth. There they were known as the--you got it--Nazarene. Whoa, didn't they call Jesus "the Nazarene"? We're always told that "Jesus the Nazarene" just meant that he was a dude from Nazareth, which technically it does. But I did a little informal counting and found that he was called "Jesus the Nazarene" twice as often as "Jesus of Nazareth". And just as a note, the Hebrew for "Christians" is "nazrim" (while "goyim" means "non-Jews").
My conclusion is that, in addition to whatever else he may have been, Jesus was trained by and a member of this group of powerful healers. So it always seemed to me the Essenes deserved a good looking into (to which I've never got around).
Thank you for bringing up the Essenes. I want to do more research on them. Do you have any recommendations on.... more accurate information about them and their beliefs? The best books, videos, etc?
No, I'm really sorry I don't. I've never actually researched them but I can tell you why I "turned on my radar" about them.
First, though, let me say that what you'll hear all the time is that, "Oh, they were just another sect of Jews like the Pharisees and the Sadducees. Ho hum." I think now that's a deliberate ploy to derail interest in them.
(Don't hold me to any of the following because as I say I never did any disciplined researched and it's off the top of my head.)
As I mentioned, I stumbled across a reference to Jesus being an Essene, but at the time I didn't make anything of it. Then I stumbled across someone saying that the Essenes were one and the same as the Therapeutae. That's where we get words like "therapeutic" and "therapy", because the Therapeutae were known primarily as healers of body, mind, and spirit.
And I had always thought it was just some sleepy burg, but one of their centers turned out to be in Nazareth. There they were known as the--you got it--Nazarene. Whoa, didn't they call Jesus "the Nazarene"? We're always told that "Jesus the Nazarene" just meant that he was a dude from Nazareth, which technically it does. But I did a little informal counting and found that he was called "Jesus the Nazarene" twice as often as "Jesus of Nazareth". And just as a note, the Hebrew for "Christians" is "nazrim" (while "goyim" means "non-Jews").
My conclusion is that, in addition to whatever else he may have been, Jesus was trained by and a member of this group of powerful healers. So it always seemed to me the Essenes deserved a good looking into (to which I've never got around).