thegoodfellas/blogset-br huggingface dataset:
In actuality, of course, an occasional change of mind or a reluctance to take a stand is often nothing but an expression of conscience and concern about acting correctly when faced with decisions of great importance.Based on the premise of the fallibility of our senses and perception, the Rosicrucian teachings remind us to be tolerant of other points of view. By the same token we should be hesitant in presenting our own as fundamental truth. It is probably not too far fetched to state that this attitude could go a long way in preventing hostility and acrimonious disagreement in our daily lives, in the hallowed halls of Congress, and in relations amongst the nations of the world. The world has come a long way in limiting the wars of attrition that so dominated the eras of feudalism and of the great monarchies. Todays wars are largely fought over ideological or religious differences and nationalistic interests. Unfortunately, these conflicts often result in much greater bloodshed and loss of life because, much like the religious wars of old, they are based on the self-righteous assumption that we are right and they are wrong. While the old wars of attrition generally ended once the territory was annexed and the superior force had prevailed, conflicts over ideology, religion, or nationalism seemingly rage on forever. Witness the chronic hotspots in the Middle East or the Balkans, as well as those in India, Pakistan, and Afghanistan. If there is ever going to be peace in those regions it will have to come through compromise and willingness to live together with folks of different beliefs. And compromise is not likely to occur unless the warring sides manage to conjure up some recognition and respect for the arguments of the other side.This then may just be the challenge of the twenty first century. The human race will have to come to terms with the fact that lasting peace will require tolerance, patience and the humility that comes from the realization that we are one; and that our differences stem from the imperfection that is inherent in our humanity.--Arcturus
olaRobert Feather, MIMMM, C. Eng.obert Feather is a Member of the Institution of Metallurgists and a Chartered Engineer. He is a member of The Orion Center for the Study of the Dead Sea Scrolls and Associated Literature at the Hebrew University of Jerusalem, the Society of Biblical Literature, The Egypt Exploration Society, and The Historical Metallurgy Society. The author of two works on the Dead Sea Scrolls, The Mystery of the Copper Scroll of Qumran: the Essene Record of the Treasure of Akhenaten (2003) and The Secret Initiation of Jesus at Qumran: the Essene Mysteries of John the Baptist (2005), Professor Feather created the present essay especially for this issue of the Digest dealing with the questions raised concerning the Essenes Messianic hopes, and connections with Egypt.As part of his Easter 2007 messages Pope Benedict XVI made the surprise statement that he now believes Jesus celebrated the Passover Supper according to Essene rites and implied that he thought the meal took place in an Essene house somewhere in Jerusalem.1 He did not go so far as to say he now believes Jesus had been an Essene, but reading between the lines it is the logical conclusion of his statement. Referring to contradictions in the Gospels on the timing of the crucifixion, the Pope said: Jesus celebrated Passover with his disciples probably according to the calendar of Qumran, that is to say, at least one day earlierhe celebrated without a lamb like the Qumran community and did not recognize the Temple of Herod and was waiting for a new Temple.Many Christians, especially Catholic theologians, were thrown into a state of disarray. Previously they had tended to try to maintain as large a gulf between Jesus and the Essenes as possible, but here was the head of the Church confounding traditional thinking that Jesus had emerged from a Pharisaic background. In my second book, The Secret Initiation of Jesus at Qumran,2 I developed a strong case, not only to link Jesus to the Essenes, but also to place him as a long-time member of their community at Qumran, and this suggestion met strong resistance from Christian scholars, especially the more conservative. Now that the head of the Catholic Church has made a statement supporting much of what I have been contending, theologians have had to accept the possibility of an entirely new perspective for the origins of Christianity.One can only admire the Popes forthright thinking, but wonder what was the motivation behind this unexpected statement. I have several theories about the reasoning behind the Popes comments:1. Relatively recent excavations have confirmed the existence of an Essene community living in the Essene Gate part of the city of Jerusalem in Second Temple times.2. The ongoing problems caused by claims in the Da Vinci Code and other books, such as The Templar Revelation and Holy Blood, Holy Grail, that Jesus married Mary Magdelene and had a child with her. 3 If Jesus is now to be seen as following an Essene lifestyle, the implication is that he would have remained celibate and not married. Conceding one
then the student was again examined. If he passed this test, he served a further year of probation before a proposal for full membership in the Brotherhood was put to the vote. If accepted, he was required to swear an oath of loyalty. The minimum age to hold office in the Brotherhood was twenty-five, and the fourth degree of holiness (referred to by Josephus) could not be reached before the age of thirty. (It is interesting to note the similarity in the use of the terms brotherhood, degree, and master to those used in the Masonic movement. This subject is discussed more extensively in The Mystery of the Copper Scroll of Qumran. 8)The most likely scenario is, therefore, that Jesus graduated at the age of thirty and then chose to become an urban Essene, taking his own path with his own cadre of followers. Basing himself in Capernaum on the Sea of Galilee, he set forth with several close disciples to preach the basic message of the Essenes and Torah, enriched by his own divine revelation.Josephus, Philo, and PlinyRecruitment to the community appears to have taken place at any age, but the preferable age for an apprentice was when the child was quite young. Philo and Pliny report that adults were taken in for qualification, but Josephus says boys were also admitted for training.Recently Found Ostracon The excitement was almost palpable as people crowded around pictures of an ostracon, or inscribed pottery fragment, trying to get a better view. The subject of the Copper Scroll, which had drawn delegates to an international conference in Manchester, England, in 1996, was for the moment forgotten. This was the star turn of the day. Esther Eshel, of Bar-Ilan University, was showing what appeared to be the first-ever archeological proof that the inhabitants of Qumran considered themselves a communitya Yahad.The ostracon contains a legal text in Hebrew, apparently recording the surrender to the community by a new recruit of his personal property. The procedure is entirely consistent with that prescribed in the Manual of Discipline, and as such represents the first solid outside evidence that conventional scholarship is correct in its assessment of activities at Qumran.That the Gospels and historical external evidence tell us almost nothing of Jesus formative years is not surprising, if those years were spent at Qumran. If I am correct, he was closeted away in a desert environment from an early age and excluded from outside contact with his parents and family.The minimum age given in the Rule of the Congregation for when a novice could attain his full accreditation, thirty years, is exactly the same age as the Gospels state for the reappearance of Jesus into the outside world. By the time Jesus reached this age, he would have been fully immersed in the teachings of the Qumran-Essenes, and their protocols would have been engraved on his conscious and subconscious mind. This is a potent piece of correlation, which does not appear to have been connected to Jesus before.It is not surprising, therefore, that so many of the echoes of the
Qumran-Essenes can be detected in the later transcribed words and recordings of Jesus acts. If the view that John the Baptist was also at one time or another a regular visitor to, or even for some period a resident member at Qumran, it is reasonable to assume that his rebellious nature may have inspired Jesus to reassert his own radicalism. What is more natural than on reaching his majority at the age of thirty, Jesus should strike out on his own, leave the community, and seek out John the Baptist for reassurance and communion?The Gospels of Matthew, Luke, and John say Jesus was born in Bethlehem, a village that certainly existed at the time of his birth. Nazareth, the town he is said to have lived in during most of his early life, is less easily identifiable. The question marks that hang over this period of Jesus life, and the uncertainty of Nazareth as a place of prolonged residence for Jesus, may well have relevance when it comes to considering an alternative place of residence for his maturing years. Athough Nazareth is now a bustling town of some forty thousand people, neither Talmudic texts nor the Masoretic Testament (Hebrew Scriptures, or Old Testament), the Apocrypha, or Josephus can help verify the existence of the Nazareth of the Christian Scriptures (New Testament).Tellingly, Jesus, in the New Testament, performs many miracles, healings, and exorcisms across the Holy Land, but never performs anything in Nazareth. Josephus, one-time commander of the Galilee region, lists its towns and villages, but makes no mention of a place called Nazareth. The only possible external reference to Nazareth comes from a fragmentary ancient Hebrew inscription dated to the end of the third century CE., found at Caesarea, on the north coast of Israel. This lists twenty-four priestly allotments of duty rotations (Hebrew, mishmarot) and the places from which they derived. The eighteenth allotment is given in Hebrew as nzrt, which could be read as Nazareth.Archeological work at Nazareth in 1889, led by Father Prosper Viaud, and between 1955 and 1970, led by Father B. Bagatti, has yielded some clues about a possible early history, and excavations are said to have revealed graffiti in lower layers under the existing Church of the Incarnation. These are believed to indicate an early Judeo-Christian presence, but nothing from the first century CE.If there is little proof that Nazareth actually existed in Jesus time, why is the name mentioned in the Christian Scriptures? The explanation put forward by a number of scholars as the most likely reason is that it has been confused with the term Nazirite or Nazarene (Nazorene). The Nazirites were a select Jewish group who took a vow of dedication to the Lord and followed a spiritual lifestyle. The three lifelong Nazirites mentioned in the Bible are Samson, Samuel, and John the Baptist; intriguingly, the term has been associated with the Essenes.So where does current conventional scholarship stand on the possibility of a connection between Jesus and other characters from the Christian Scriptures, and the Qumran-Essene community? Surprisingly, a number of eminent
that would later become strongly applied in Christianity.There is a continual reference throughout their scrolls to the part played by the Tabernacle priests. It is clear that the Essenes considered themselves the keepers of the covenant and part of the direct line of priests that attended the holy shrines.So whom were the Qumran-Essenes waiting for? The answer is contained in a number of the Dead Sea Scrolls texts that indicate they were waiting for two, and some scholars read three, messiahs. These messiahs, one priestly and one royal, are given various titles in different scrolls:Priestly: Interpreter of the Law, the Star; the Messiah of Aaron, who was of princely descent.Royal: Prince of the Congregation, the Scepter; the Messiah of Israel; the King Messiah.In addition, they expected the return of a prophet similar to Moses. Fortunately, there are quite detailed descriptions of these messiahs in a number of their scrolls, so one would assume it should be relatively easy to identify whom they were talking about. Unhappily that is not the case, and conventional scholarship makes little attempt to utilize this information.A Davidic Messiah?The idea of the kingly messiah referred to by the Essenes is inevitably taken as being someone emerging from the Davidic line of kings, commencing with King David himself. The tacit assumption by most scholars is that King David was the role model for this returning royal messiah. If King David wasnt the role-model messiah, ordinary scholarship has nowhere else to go. The assumption, however, is fraught with problems. King David (who ruled in approximately 1000 BCE) noticeably failed to live up to the righteous ideals demanded in the books of Jeremiah, Ezekiel, Micah, Kings, and Chronicles.David had Uriah, an officer in his army, murdered in order to marry Uriahs wife, and brought destruction on seventy thousand Israelites for his evil doings. In a parable by the prophet Nathan, David is roundly condemned for his evil acts against God and told that his descendants will suffer as a result of his murderous deeds. This is hardly a worthy pattern for a future messiah. In fact, formal messianism in Jewish scripture does not appear until the time of Daniel in the second century BCE, so King David is even less likely to have been the role model the Qumran-Essenes were thinking of.One has to wonder, therefore, where the Qumran-Essenes obtained their quite detailed and well-developed philosophy of these anticipated messiahs and messianismwhich, in any event, appear to predate any of the royal kings of Israel. The problem of identifying the two messiahs, one kingly and one priestly, alluded to in the Hebrew Scriptures but distinctly specified in the Qumran-Essene literature, is so contentious that modern scholarship either ignores the problem or scratches around to try to find possible candidates using very weak evidence. Nowhere does the Pentateuch or any succeeding text of the Hebrew Scriptures suggest that, when the faithful in Israel worshiped at the Tabernacle or later in the Temple at Jerusalem, they looked to the Aaronic high priest as a foreshadowing of a future messianic high priest. Almost in
desperation, some scholars have even suggested Zerubbabel, the rebuilder of the First Temple, or Joshua, the postexilic high priest, as possible contenders.The phrase Davidic line is, in my view, only an indicator of a longer royal line predating King David. In fact, in Qumran texts, and in most biblical texts, the messianic king is deliberately not referred to as Davidic. Although many of the motifs in the expectation of a future king may be drawn from Israels experience of kingship, other motifs can clearly be traced to pre-Hebrew Scriptures kingship periods of Israels history. Indeed, how can King David be the personification of a messianic figure when the same messianic figure is seen by Isaiah and Zechariah, and by Dead Sea Scrolls texts such as 4Q285, as a suffering servant of God who is frustrated in his ambitions and killed for his efforts? None of these characteristics can be applied to King David. One eminent scholar, Kenneth Pomykala, like others, has postulated that any reference by the Qumran sect to a messiah of Israel should be regarded categorically as non-Davidic.11 Why should this be, unless there was some memory of another previous line of royalty? In the same way as there is no reference to Jerusalem in the so-called New Jerusalem Scroll, there appears to be limited reference to a Davidic messiah in other sectarian Qumran-Essene scrolls. That the references to a Davidic messiah are limited, however, has not prevented most scholars from falling back on the assumption that David was the Essenes role model for a future messiah, even given the fact that there are alternative explanations that have not yet been explored.John and Jesus continuity with the Qumran-EssenesWhen one looks at other factors that tend to confirm the continuity of specifically David and Solomon, detail from the Icon of the Harrowing of Hell (Anastasis), 11th century, in the Nea Moni in Chios.Essenic thinking and practices that have been transmitted on into Christianity, and by extension into Islam, it becomes irresistible not to conclude that both Jesus and John the Baptist must have been intimately involved with Qumran. One of the main contentions in my work has been that the Qumran-Essenes had an allegiance in terms of holy and secret knowledge to the earliest forms of Hebrew religion, as developed in Egypt, prior to the Exodus, and specifically linked to the monotheistic Pharaoh Akhenaten.If the early Jesus movement owed a powerful debt to the beliefs practiced at Qumran, then it would not be surprising to find that some of Akhenatens teachings and imagery would be transferred across and reflected in the early Jesus movement and later Christianity. The examples of these phenomena are numerous, but there is space here only to refer briefly to two of them. MelchizedekMelchizedek is a complex character that appears in their texts as a figure of major importance to the Qumran-Essenes. There are detailed descriptions of this figure in the Dead Sea Scrolls, and in Rabbinic writings, as well as references in the mainstream Bible, but no one is certain who Melchizedek relates to, despite endless
speculation. Just as the Qumran-Essenes revered this character, so Jesus has also to be associated with the kingly-priestly figure. As if to verify my contention that Melchizedek incorporated the concept of Akhenatens high priest, Meryra, new light on the Christian Scriptures Epistle of Paul to the Hebrews has been shed by the fragmentary first century BCE document found in Cave 11 at Qumran, known as the Heavenly Prince Melchizedek (11Q Melch.). The description in Hebrews depicting Christ as the Son of God and without beginning of days or end of life, as priest according to the order of Melchizedek, now makes sense as reflecting the same image of Melchizedek portrayed by the sectarian Dead Sea Scroll. This interpretative understanding was taken still further in discussion at a recent international conference on the Dead Sea Scrolls at the University of St. Andrews in Scotland. A paper by Margaret Barker published in the Scottish Journal of Theology 12 maintains that Jesus knew of and understood Melchizedek; that he may have patterned his life on the Qumranic conception of Melchizedek; and that his earliest followers built on that understanding. In the Epistle to the Hebrews, Jesus is ...a priest forever, according to the order of Melchizedek (5:6).That this is the same high priestly figure of the Qumran-Essenes is underlined by a further reference to him as the superior priest. Suggestions that this priest is Aaron, or a Zadok of his lineage, is excluded by the insistence that Jesus, like Melchizedek, is in the Greek wording agenealogetos, without a genealogy. As Professor Joseph Fitzmyer, of the Catholic University of America, points out, Every priestly family was supposed to be able to trace its lineage from Levi via Aaron and Zadok. Aarons lineage itself was known from Exodus 6:1619, but Melchizedeks lineage was unknown. 13Analysis of the Melchizedek that Jesus of the Christian Scriptures was to emulate, Meeting of Abraham and Melchizedek, Dieric Bouts the Elder, 15th century.however, shows that this attribution, as explained by Deborah W. Rooke, of Kings College, London, was not merely of high priesthood but of royal priesthood.14 The relationship is spelled out in Hebrews, but although the royal association is assumed to be to King David, scholars are at a loss to explain why there is no specific Davidic categorization for this royal element.David is not referred to by name in Hebrews. Instead, the king specifically mentioned is the King of Salem, who is related to the patriarchal period of Abraham, long predating the Israelite kings, and a royal figure who had nothing to do with King David. Once again, there is no Israelite king that conventional scholarship can turn to, and the issue is stuck in the mire of preconceptions. Indeed, it is made crystal clear that the Melchizedek Jesus aspired to emulate was the King of Salem in Genesis:And Melchizedek king of Salem brought forth bread and wine; and he was the priest of the most high God. (14:18)A number of other scholars have noted that the Melchizedek of Hebrews can definitely be linked to the Melchizedek in the Qumran
scrolls (11Q Melch.), and this character, as discussed above, is certainly not Davidic. 15Even if a royal association were tied only to the Genesis descriptions and not also to the Qumranic descriptions, we would have to ask why an apparently pagan king, the king of Salem, should be singled out as a prototype for a divine personage. Not only is he seemingly a pagan king; he is not even a Hebrew! The answer, I suggest, lies partly in the Amarna letters, where Jerusalem is specifically chosen by Akhenaten as his holy city forever. The appellation of King Melchizedek can then clearly be seen as a sacral name combining the royal aspect of King Akhenaten and his High Priest, Meryra.The problem of why Abraham and Jesus should want to associate themselves with an apparently pagan figure is thus entirely explained by the fact that Akhenaten and Meryra, his High Priest, were not pagan, but together with Jacob and Joseph, were the first true monotheists. Thus Abraham acknowledges Melchizedeks God El Elyon (God Most High) as his own God in their encounter in Genesis (14:1824).For this high priestly figure to have no ancestors can only mean that he was the first of his class. Once again, the literal evidence points strongly in the direction of Meryra, the first High Priest of Akhenatens new monotheism, who we know from Egyptian records was a hereditary Egyptian princea requirement also spelled out in the Dead Sea Scrolls. As becomes dramatically apparent in the explosive archeological evidence documented in The Secret Initiation of Jesus at Qumran, this assumption is almost certainly correct.AmarnaBoth the Christian Scriptures and historical tradition maintain that Jesus and his parents, Mary and Joseph, fled to Egypt from Judea around 4 to 7 BCE to escape the tyrannical threats of Herod the Great (Matt. 2:1320).If one had to predict where the family of Jesus might have stopped en route in their journey through Egypt, on the basis of the proposed connections I claim existed between the Qumran-Essenes and Akhenaten, and between the Qumran-Essenes and the earliest followers of Jesus, the following four destinations would have been definite favorites in their itinerary:1. Lake Mereotis (Marioot), near Alexandria, traditional location of the Therapeutae, close Egyptian associates of the Essenes;2. Valley of Natrun, traditional location of the Therapeutae;3. Leontopolis, near Heliopolis (Cairo), site of the temple founded by Onias IV, who, I maintain, was the Essenes Teacher of Righteousness;4. Amarna, site of Akhenatens holy city.In horse-racing parlance, my shortest odds would be on Amarna, and the combination odds of all four of these highly significant Essenic connected places featuring as important locations in the Holy Familys journey would be about ten thousand to one.Take a look at the figure illustrated in this article. It shows the route, strongly entrenched in Egyptian legend and tradition, taken by the Holy Family in Egypt. All four suggested locations are included in the journey and are considered the most important of the numerous monastic centers that have grown up in Egypt. So which of these locations is believed to be the most