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Had this not been so, it would simply have been a narrow creed and would, like many others, soon have vanished from the stage of history. The central elements in the Synoptic Gospels (Matthew, Mark, and Luke) are first the divine, atoning, and sacrificial savior, who gives his own life to redeem that of his followers and who, by rising from the grave, is empowered to confer divinity and immortality upon them also; second an ethical system which makes everyone economically and politically equal in a social order where want and injustice are forever abolished; third, a doctrine concerning the after-life according to which the redeemed will enjoy happiness in communion with each other in a kingdom of righteousness; and, fourth, the promise of an imminent Second Coming, when the Savor as the Great Messiah will reappear in power to conduct the Last Judgment and institute the kingdom of heaven, which will then belong to the saints in perpetuity. As an additional inducement, the redeemed would be healed of all physical and spiritual maladies in time for all eternity.
The Essenes of Alexandria, Egypt, as well as Palestine, adapted the "soter" or "savior" of Egypt. The original savior-god was the Great Osiris, the Egyptian deity who plays such a preponderant role in the religious history, not only of the Nile Valley, but also of the entire area which finally became the Graeco-Roman Empire. The facts, the legend, the myth, and the soteriology (doctrine of salvation) surrounding this majestic but also pathetic figure stretch back into the very roots of western culture and civilization.
A powerful force of Aryans, from Mesopotamia, conquered the much less developed Nilotics, about 4,000 or 3,500 B. C. The Sumerians superimposed their own economy, jurisprudence, architecture, agriculture, and general way of life upon the conquered, first, by intertwining their own religious concepts with those of the natives; and, second, by making their own the active and preponderant force. This was a long and complicated process, in the course of which cannibalism and other primitive poultices were outlawed and the flood waters of the Nile brought under control; and roads, temples, and cities were constructed. Scientific agriculture was instituted, an elaborate code of law established an elevated morality adopted, and a popular and powerful religious system perfected. The result was the greatest civilization yet known, which continued substantially intact for nearly forty centuries.
It is at least probable that Osiris was an historical person who had married his sister, became king of Egypt, and conquered many nations; that he was murdered by a group of conspirators headed by his brother, Set; and that he was finally transformed into the god-man savior by the priests of a great cult which became dominant in Egypt and later proliferated into all adjacent lands.
According to the Osirian myth, the sun-god Ra detected his wife Nut in the embrace of Seb, the earth-god. He therefore decreed that her offspring could not be born on any day of the year, which then consisted of 360 days. Nut, however, appealed for help to Thoth, the God of Wisdom; and, by playing at draughts with the moon, he won from her a seventy-second portion of each day. Thus, five intercalated days were added to the year, on none of which the curse of Ra was effective. Successively on these, Nut bore quintuplets: Osiris, Horus, Set, Isis, and Nephthys. Osiris, born on the 25th of December, symbolized the rebirth of the sun; in due course, he married Isis, who bore the Younger Horus, who, with his parents, made up the Egyptian Holy Family. Set married Nephthys, who became the mother of Anubis. The Elder Horus remained the celibate and intellectual Scribe. These five personalities, born of earth and heaven, were equally human and divine, mortals with a capacity for immortality. Osiris became the supreme god-man and Isis the ultimate mother-goddess, whose role and importance expanded over the centuries in the Osirian cult and who finally emerged as a supreme divinity in her own right.
After conferring a superior culture upon the Egyptians, Osiris set out at the head of his beneficent armies to do the same for other nations; he marched all the way to India and later in Europe to the Straits of Gibraltar. Finally, according to the legend, laden with the gifts of many grateful peoples, he returned home in triumph. This helps explain the spread of such religious ideas and myths as spread throughout the world.
In his absence, however, the evil Set conspired with the seventy-two displaced reactionary priests to seize the throne for himself. Having constructed a coffin, he induced his brother to lie down in it: whereupon the conspirators welded the lid shut with molten lead, so that Osiris died of suffocation. Thrown into the Nile, the coffin floated across the Mediterranean to Byblus (modern Jebeil), in Syria, where the body became encased in a tree.
Escaping the rage of Set, Isis took refuge in the Delta Swamps, where Horus was born. Leaving her child to be reared in Buto, she set out in search of her husband; finding almost all of his body except his penis, she returned with it to Egypt. The implacable Set, however, hacked this into fourteen pieces, and buried one in each of the names or provinces of the country.
Now began the incomparable passion of Isis, which ultimately made of her the supreme mother-goddess of the ancient world. Up and down Egypt she went, seeking and searching, until she found all the dismembered portions of the body and reconstituted them into its previous semblance; then, with the help of Thoth and Horus, Isis resurrected Osiris into a second and immortal life. Risen from death, he could never again be subject to its power. In due course, he entered his solar ship which transported him to the Elysian Fields, the realm of Khenti-Amenti, where he became and forever remains the judge of all who die and the ruler of the blessed.
Osiris, then, symbolized the reborn sun; as Apis, the Bull, he was the emblem of sexual virility; but, most of all, he was the god of agriculture. This, more than anything else, elevated the Egyptians from savagery and barbarism into actual civilization. Isis, meanwhile, who was identified with the moon and the cow, was the great and nurturing Mother; it would be Isis who taught mankind to transform the wheat into the bread of life, the barley into the joyous and invigorating ale as a forerunner of the Eucharist! Osiris gave men virility; Isis made motherhood possible and even delightful. Osiris gave mankind agriculture and Isis gave them civilized food. These two divinities gave humanity the more abundant life.
The sexual, astronomical, and agricultural symbolism woven into the Isis-Osiris myth reflects the deepest needs and desires of mankind. The offspring of Nut and Seb were conceived at the time when Sirius the Dog-star appeared in the East, as it did then on the first of June, when also the waters of the Nile began to rise, augmented, so the people believed, by the tears of Isis, weeping for Osiris, who was called the Morning Star who brings the waters, as well as the Great Bull, and the Reborn Sun. Deeply significant is the fact that the dismembered god was buried throughout Egypt on the very day when the grain was planted; and his resurrection occurred when the green shoots first emerged from the soil. The great rituals and festivals of Osiris were celebrated with the planting and the sprouting of the grains. In countless images of the god found in Egyptian tombs, his body lies on is bier with the tendrils of wheat growing from his body.
This brief was the central core of the Osirian mystery and since, for millennia, the Egyptian was the principal culture of the ancient world, a reconstituted Osiris penetrated many nations and countries, especially throughout Asia Minor and the eastern Mediterranean. Perhaps as early as 2,500 B.C., the Egyptian god-man was united with the Semitic Astarte to constitute the Adonis-Aphrodite cult; later, as Attis, he became the dying and annually resurrected god of the cult of Cybele; in the 13th century, B. C., he appeared in Thrace as Dionysus or Orpheus, the savior-god of Orphism. After he migrated into Greece, he finally became the center of the great Eleusinian mystery itself, which was dedicated to the worship of Demeter, who was herself the Greek reconstitution of Isis.
In the Roman world, he was known as Father Baccus and Demeter as Ceres.
Various mysteries spread throughout the Graeco-Roman world, especially after the Trojan War; but the cult of Isis at last outstripped all others in popularity, magnificence, power, and influence, wherein Osiris, while continuing as the sacrificial savior-god, became the secondary to his sister-wife in importance. These pagan savior-cults were wonderful for their number and diversity; and by the first century A.D., they had achieved almost complete dominion over the masses. All had one element in common: the worship of the atoning, sacrificial, and immortalizing savior god, substantially the replica of the great Osiris.
About 2000 B.C.E., another army of Aryans invaded India and conquered the culturally backward inhabitants. The newcomers revolutionized the social, political, and economic structure of the nation, first by commingling their own religious concepts with those of the natives; and, second, by making their own ideology predominant. A system of caste was established, in which the Brahmans (father-priests or divinities) occupied the highest rank; the Kshatriyas, or kings, nobles, and warriors, stood second; the Vaisyas, or artisans, tradesmen, peasants, etc., were third; and the Sudras, who were propertyless servants, constituted the lowest order. Only Aryans could belong to the two upper casts. However, every member of a caste occupied a definite and permanent hereditary position, and possessed certain rights in varying degrees. Below all this were multitudes who, for one reason or another, had lost their inherited social position: these were the outcasts, known as parasavas and khandalas, doomed to a life of misery in the most repulsive employments, while existing at a starvation level. Brahmans could have four wives Kshatriyas three, Vaisyas two, Sudras one, outcasts none at all. Elaborate codes were devised, which exacted the most fearful punishment for offenses against members of the higher castes, but little or no penance for the same acts when perpetrated against an outcast or a prostitute.
The hierarchy enjoyed complete control over education, morals, marriage, and the canonical codes. Theirs was a total way of life, which left nothing to any other discipline: like communist or Roman Catholic polities, it embraced every aspect of existence. The civil government existed only to enforce the decrees of the priests. The Brahmans were immune from all taxation, social obligations, or criminal prosecution. A more privileged or powerful bureaucracy, secular or religious, has never existed. The Brahmans made laws for all others, but were themselves exempt from punishment. They received tribute from everyone, but gave nothing tangible in return. They were the lords of life; and their regimen resented perhaps the most complete union of church and state ever known.
Since no one could rise in the social scale, the doctrines of karma and renunciation were devised to provide moral sanctions for caste. During this earthly life, every human being enters his good and evil deeds, as it were, in a book of credits and debits; and for these he is rewarded or punished, not in this life, but in the next. At death, each person who has lived good, or, rather, an obedient and subservient life, goes to paradise for a certain period, and will in due course be reborn in a higher caste; but if he had done evil, he will be unsigned to the twenty-three hells for a millennium, and then be reborn in a lower caste, or in the form of an animal, a reptile, a fish, a bird, or even an insect. Since every living feature is animated by a once-human soul, no one may kill even a louse, since it might be his own mother. Human misery, therefore, continues through endless aeons on a do dolorous Wheel of Life. Only through sainthood may Nirvana at last be attained; and this state of total unconsciousness or personal extinction was the Brahmanic substitute for the Egyptian Elysium and the Zoroastrian heavens.
In this system, there was no relief for outcasts and Sudras. It continued substantially unchanged for centuries; however, since the spirit of man will not endure such indignities forever without bitter resentment, certain safety-valves for social unrest were provided. Under the Brahmanic system, men were permitted to become students: but, when so doing, were required to take the vows of chastity, obedience, and poverty. Others, more advanced in years, were permitted to seek Nirvana by becoming hermits or ascetics, (just like the Essenes later) begging their food; however, all had to undergo a course in Vedic study and submit forever to the authority of the Brahmans. Even under these restrictions, vast numbers chose renunciation to escape the Wheel of Life and thus commingle at last with the Universal Soul—the Brahma or the Atman.
By the 6th century, B. C., various movements had arisen in opposition to the Brahmanic authority. The most important of these were Gainaism, or Jainism, founded by Mahavira, and Buddhism, established by Prince Gautama, said to have been a pre-existing divinity, who entered his mother's body at conception and was, therefore, born of a true virgin birth. Not to be outdone, Mahavira had a double virgin birth; for during gestation, he transferred himself from a Brahmani to Kshatriya mother so that, in addition to be being divine, he partook also of the nature of both upper castes. Actually, both movements, but particularly the Buddhist, represented a coalition of the nobles and the middle classes against the entrenched power of the priesthood. These new religions absorbed from Brahmanism such elements as transmigration, karma, heaven and hell, the Wheel of Life, renunciation, and Nirvana. Nevertheless, Buddhism was one of the most profoundly revolutionary movements in all history. It sought, not only freedom from upper-class tyranny, but also permanent release for its communicants from all labor and every kind of social obligation. Perhaps the most far-reaching of all Buddhist objectives was the substantial separation of the religious from the civil authority (church from state). No man was ever again to be called Brahmana, or Father, which signified priest-god (Matt. 23:9).
Buddhism denounced and outlawed a society based on caste, and proclaimed the utter wickedness of employing labor or accumulating private wealth. Persuaded that the duty to support parents, wife, and children is not only an integral element in the whole system of social exploitation but also a burden under which most toilers die unrequited, Buddhism declared that the family, based on sex and procreation, is an infamous evil; that the sexual relationship is the crime and corruption for which there can be no forgiveness; and that the highest conceivable virtue consists in renouncing and abandoning father, mother, sister, brother, wife, children, lands, and houses. Dressed in their yellow robes and with begging bowls in hand, the Buddhist saints sallied forth to obtain their food from the children of Mara And since Vedic study was the chief means by which the Brahmans consolidated their authority, the new ascetics declared knowledge so obtained to be utterly worthless or actually harmful.
The Buddhists made good use of several Brahmanic doctrines: hell was transformed into a place of torture for all who, in this world, had contracted matrimony, reared families, cared for their parents, and taught, or submitted to Brahmanic doctrines. Nirvana became the reward for a life of renunciation;a good karma was now to be attained by the children of this world only by giving generous alms to the Buddhist saints, who were by no means intent upon suffering material hardship: the greatest rewards in paradise were therefore reserved for the wealthy who donated their palaces as rest homes for the delectation of the holy ones. Communal orders of male and female celibates sprang up everywhere, into which the indigent thronged, where they could live idly in security, although under the strictest discipline. It was Buddhist dogma that, while personal property contaminates and destroys the character of the owner, the same wealth, when owned collectively and shared equally by the redeemed, is righteous and holy. You should immediately see the similarity in the communism of the early church as depicted in the Book of Acts as well as the Essenic celibacy; this is no coincidence but rather an example of strong influence that was exerted on the Essenes. I find this rather amazing that these Essene, knowing full-well that the first commandment in the Torah is to be fruitful and multiply, would violate this by enforcing celibacy on their adherents.
Under King Asoka, Buddhism became the national religion of India in 256 B. C. In his and subsequent generations, it proselytized throughout the whole known world; and its principal elements penetrated the stream of culture almost everywhere. Since western religion has its roots in oriental sources, Buddhist influence upon it has been immense.
In fact, long before Buddhism became the national religion of India, its basic concepts had appeared in the Graeco-Roman world. As early as the sixth century, B. C., it had already become a central element in the synthesis of Pythagoras.
The concept of the truly religious life as one of renunciation, celibacy, and communism was therefore deeply embedded in human consciousness; it became a major element in most important subsequent religious movements; and one phase of this philosophy emerged in the 19th century as Marxism. In this secular form, it has achieved its greatest conquests; and approximately one-third of the human race is now attempting to achieve a better life through communal organization and discipline, not in private communities, but through the control of great nations by the machinery of the state.
It should, however, be noted that after several centuries, Buddhism was expelled from India, which was reconquered by a reconstituted form of Brahmanism, known as Hinduism, which retains most of the central speculative doctrines of its ancient progenitor, such as the caste system, karma, and transmigration. The overwhelming force of religious ideology is apparent to any westerner who travels in India: useless cows and monkeys have been sacred, eating the scarce food, for want of which untold thousands of infants died of malnutrition. The killing of a vulture could cause a greater public disturbance than the sight of millions of starving indigents lying unhoused in the streets.
The religion of Gautama has undergone many revisions and divisions during the last thousand years; it exists today principally on the fringes of the greater cultures or as important minorities in Japan and elsewhere; however, it still commands the adherence of about 225 million communicants find exercises no small influence, not only in the Orient, but in the western world as well. Modern existentialism is in reality an offshoot of Buddhism, as are the doctrines of Zen. Various spin-offs like the Hare Krishna cult are today virulent in the United States; and it should be noted that since there are more than 515 million Hindus in the world-in 1979-80, these two cults originating in India, almost rival in numbers the 975 million credited to all existing divisions of Christianity. If you have any familiarity with the Essenes the parallels are striking as well with the communism and equality of good as stressed by the Book of Acts and the later celibacy as well which was later enforced upon the priesthood in the Catholic Church.
Although there are many elements in the religions of India and Egypt dealing with the after-life, the concepts of heaven, hell, and purgatory were developed to the highest degree by the Persians. The Jews were introduced to this in the Babylonian and Persian captivity and some of the Jews brought these religious concepts home to Israel with them.
In the 6th century, B.C., the prophet Zoroaster, by reconstructing the Mazdean Persian-Aryan religion, made it into a powerful nationalist instrument by which to unite his people as masters of a great empire. Three basic elements characterize this creed:
Zoroastrian dualism predicated two cosmic, untreated powers or forces, of which the first, known as Ahura-Mazda or Ormazd, was the Lord of Spirits, the God of Warmth, Light, and Order, the source of life and immortality, the ruler of the celestial spheres, the creator of all things good or spiritual; and the second was Ahriman, known also as Angra Mainyu, the Evil One, the source of cold, darkness, matter, and chaos, the power of death and destruction, and the Prince of the Air in this world. These two powers were seen as essentially equal; but, since Ahura-Mazda possessed prescience, of which his cosmic foe was devoid, he was, from the beginning, able to devise a long-term strategy which would ultimately result in the triumph of Good and Light. These antagonists were said to be engaged in a universal conflict, which extended to every living creature, especially all humanity, who are therefore pilloried throughout life on the horns of this dreadful dilemma and enmity. The spirit or soul is from the God of Light, the King of Heaven; but the body is of Ahriman, the Lord of Darkness. In the heart of every human being a fierce battle therefore rages between the spirit and the flesh: those who are redeemed are the Elect, the Children Light and Heaven; those who reject the pure religion of Zoroaster are reprobates, the Children of Hell and Darkness. This concept is reflected in Shakespeare's 146th sonnet, which begins: "Poor soul, the center of my sinful earth . . ." and constitutes the basis of the Pauline anthropology set forth in our New Testament. It is also the basis of the Augustinian, Lutheran. and Calvinist doctrines of predestination and moral depravity.
The second great element in the Zoroastrian system was its a eschatology, according to which every human being has an immortal soul; and, since this appears only once on earth, its eternal destiny is determined by its activities here. The human race was divided into three general categories: first, those whose deeds are preponderantly good and who, therefore, emerge as Children of Light—at death, these go directly to one of the seven heavens (reproduced in the Divina Commedia of Dante); second, those whose careers have been dedicated to wickedness—these must be plunged into hell, there to suffer terrible and longodrawn-out tortures; and, third, those in whom good and evil so nearly balance as to render them unfit for immediate entry into the celestial kingdoms, yet not deserving of hell-fire—these are consigned to purgatory, whence, after a Period of discipline purification, they are permitted to enter one of the lower celestial spheres.
The third basic Zoroastrian doctrine was that, following 660 B.C., would appear a great virgin-born savior, prophet, or Angel-Messiah, at the close of three consecutive millenniums. These concepts were taken directly from astrology and astronomy and later personified as if were a real person. Every Aryan nation had their own adaptation from the stars but Zoraster's influence made his the most prolific. On this web-site I have documented countless examples with more than sufficient bibliographies and references to prove the point beyond any reasonable doubt.
According to such Zoroastrian eschatology in 341 A.D., the great Hushedar was due; in 1341, the greater Hushedar-Mah would come; and in 2341, the greatest of all, the Soshans, would, after defeating all enemies at the final Armageddon, conduct the Last Judgment, and inaugurate the Kingdom of Saints, which would consist of a New Heaven and a New Earth, after the old had passed away in a cosmic holocaust.
We should note that Zoroastrianism was a universalist religion; for even the most wicked of men, after fearful refinement in a river of molten metal, would finally emerge as saints into an eternity of peace and glory.
Zoroastrianism included other important tenets; but these constitute its basic contributions to world-religion. By 510 B.C., Darius the Great Hystaspes, the son-in-law of Cyrus, ruled which stretched from Libya and Greece to the center of India, a territory comprising two million square miles and twenty-three nations. Throughout this vast complex, theology of Zoroaster exercised a potent and pervasive influence, and some of its elements became integral in Grecian Stoicism, in the creeds of the mystery cults, the tenets of the Jewish Chasids, and the speculative synthesis of the Orphic-Pythagorean brotherhoods. As you can see both the Pharisees as well as the Essenes were influenced by such a system and "borrowed" extensively from it in their writings. In the trappings of noisy and pagan solemnity, it is set forth in splendor in the Sixth Book of Virgil's Aeneid, composed in the first century, B.C., and in Dante's Purgatorio and Paradiso, composed in the fourteenth century, A.D. These concepts became the common heritage of the western world.
We should not discount entirely the influence upon Essene ideology of the Messiah-concept as found in orthodox Judaism, which may or may not have been directly altered by Zoroastrian influence. The belief that a powerful personality, a human agent, would one day emerge who, either by force of Jewish arms or by supernatural intervention by God and with God's support, would defeat all enemies and establish at least an independent nation, or, more probably, a great empire, had been a basic element in Jewish expectations for centuries before the time of Alexander. This Messiah, however, was quite different from the Angel-Messiah of Zoroastrian-Essene theology: his purposes were entirely temporal and terrestrial and were restricted to the ethnic interests of the Jews. He was not a moral judge; there was no Last Judgment; and his projected kingdom was not one of saints or of' righteousness. The Essene Angel- Messiah, in contrast, was the overwhelming Zoroastrian Soshans engrafted upon the age-old political and economic protagonists of Judaic visions.
Every important new religious system draws heavily upon its predecessors as the basis for its novel synthesis; and almost always it adds at least one or two significant origins elements of its own.
During their maturity and a later evolution of Essene theology, we find that the Essenes eliminated from their system the doctrine of purgatory (which they had previously embraced) as well as the possibility of post-mortem redemption. In Essene-Christian doctrine there is no second chance.
However, the most important specific ideological creation of the Essenes was the promulgation of the Second Conning known among Christian theologians as the Parousia. Paul teaches this doctrine along with Jesus in the New Testament. The Essene's last Teacher of Righteousness was expected, before the conclusion of the then-existing generation, to send a representative who would be endowed with power to conduct the Last Judgment and to set up the kingdom of the saints on earth. With the formulation of this doctrine, all the principal elements comprising the Synoptic synthesis had been incorporated into the Essene canonical system. The religion of the western world was thereby substantially completed and today Jesus is the one most look toward for the fulfillment of this religious synthesis.
In the 6th century, B.C., Pythagoras organized the first great religious synthesis of the western world where all of the above concepts, and more, were combined into one religious ideology or philosophy. About 105 B.C., the Essenes incorporated the doctrines and practices of the Phythagoreans into their own system and superimposed these upon the Zoroastrianism which they had already adopted about seventy years earlier. By so doing, they became the transmission belt by which the principal elements Egyptian, Persian, Indian, and Greek-mystery religions became integral portions of western faith which today is called Christianity.
Had this not been so, it would simply have been a narrow creed and would, like many others, soon have vanished from the stage of history. The central elements in the Synoptic Gospels (Matthew, Mark, and Luke) are:
I know this is a shock to many of our readers. Let me only say that we have in reality no recourse but to reevaluate the Christian faith in light of this information and re-examine Yeshua the Jew to see if we be in the faith of Torah and Tanakh. One must realize that the early church, Essenic in character, has put much into the mouth of Jesus on the pages of the New Testament. As you can see Yeshua was not a Christian but a Jew and it would serve us well to investigate Biblical Judaism as the faith once given to the saints. If those doctrines as espoused by the Essenes can be found in the Law, the Prophets, and the Writings, so be it and this is good. If not however, and if these Essenic religious beliefs which can be found not only in their sectarian writings as well as the New Testament can be shown to contradict Moses and the Prophets, then they must be cast aside as leaven. Shalom.