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It used to be customary to think of Jesus as brought up in a Judaism which answered roughly to that of the second century A.D. and derived from that of the Pharisees, and which was much the same all over Palestine. This view is no longer tenable. Certain scholars long ago apprehended from the rabbinical literature that the people of the north and south did not see eye to eye on many things. It was possible even to detect in Primitive Christianity the clash of Galilean and Jerusalem traditions. But only lately has it become appreciated that northern Palestine down to the time of Jesus had retained many features of the old religion of Israel, when it was separate from Judah, and this not only among the Samaritans.
In Galilee those who were of Hebrew stock could be called Jews in that they served the God of Israel, but they differed in many ways from the Judeans. Their Aramean speech was hard to follow because they slurred the gutturals, and in their customs and religious observances they were distinguished in a number of respects from the southerners. The Galileans were proud, independent and somewhat puritanical, more resentful of alien domination and infringements of their liberty. They were to be found in the forefront of the resistance movement to the Romans and to the Jewish authorities subservient to them. When the imperial capitation tax was levied on the Jews in A.D. 6-7, it was the rebel Judas of Galilee who raised again the battle-cry "No Ruler but God". It was with these stubborn, hardy, and intensely patriotic folk that Jesus, himself a Galilean, had to deal.
In the spiritual sphere the Pharisees were not nearly so well entrenched in Galilee as they were in Judea. They had a following in the north because of their piety and because they represented themselves as the People's Party, but they had an uphill struggle to contend with the Galilean way of life. The Gospels indicate that to meet the challenge of the teaching of Jesus the local Pharisees found themselves in need of the help of experts from Jerusalem. That the Galileans and Judeans were still affected by age-old antagonistic feelings is brought out by the Gospel of John. Because of these North vs. South antagonisms we find as expected that at Jerusalem (Judea) there was opposition to the idea that the Prophet or the Messiah could possibly come from Galilee, and Jesus was taunted with being a demon-possessed Samaritan. On the other hand his Galilean followers remonstrated with him for wanting to return to Judea where 'the Jews of late sought to stone thee'. We are so familiar with the application of the term Jew to all persons of Jewish faith that we may not realize that in the New Testament the name is sometimes used in the narrower sense to mean Judeans, the inhabitants of Judea, compared with Galileans or Samaritans.
We have also to think of Galilee as part of a region in which sectarian communities flourished. Some of these, like the Rechabites and Kenites, had an ancient tribal history. The area in which they functioned was in the proximity of the Sea of Galilee, in the Decapolis, Gilead and Bashan, the Gaulan and Hauran, and towards Lebanon and Damascus.
The Damascus Document among the Dead Sea Scrolls tells how in the early history of the Community “the Penitents of Israel (understood as the Essenes or the super-ultra religious...more so than regular Pharisees) went forth out of the land of Judea and sojourned in the land of Damascus”. There they entered into the New Covenant spoken of by Jeremiah the prophet, undertaking to separate themselves from all unrighteousness, not to rob the poor, the widow and the orphan, to distinguish between clean and unclean, sacred and profane, to keep the Sabbath strictly, also the festivals and the Day of Atonement, to love each one his brother as himself, and to care for the poor, the needy and the stranger. This was just one manifestation of the remnant hope of Israel. You need to understand that this “fraction” saw themselves as the “only” hope for Israel...the remnant hope for all of Israel and the world!
This indication of locality should be taken much more seriously and literally. Those who followed the restored Mosaism did not all gravitate towards Qumran. We have every reason to believe that many remained in the northern districts we have mentioned and founded settlements there. These 'Elect of Israel' of the Latter Days would encounter many kindred spirits in northern Palestine among groups carrying on the old ascetic Nazirite way of life abstaining from animal food and intoxicants. The term Essean-Essene appears to have come from the northern Aramaic word Chasya (Greek Hosios) meaning Saint. It would seem that we have to treat the term as generic, covering a variety of loosely related groups. For the people 'the Saints' were the Jewish eclectic bodies, who also bore or were given descriptive names according to their affiliations or characteristics.
There has been emerging ever clearer evidence that in the Galilean region an ancient Israelitish type of religion persisted in the time of Jesus, defying Judean efforts to obliterate it. To an extent we have to think of Jesus in the context of that northern faith which so strongly colored and influenced those communities of 'the Saints' which were spread across this area, and which gave rise to some expressions of Messianism with which he was acquainted. The Gospels identify him with the small Galilean town of Nazareth; but the name he bears, Jesus the Nazorean, has northern sectarian implications. United with the fact that he was of Davidic descent, the prophetic intimations could be seen to be fulfilled in him which spoke of the Messiah as the sprout (nezer) from the root of Jesse (Isa. xi. 1).
Isa 11:1
1 And there shall come forth a rod out of the stem of Jesse, and a Branch shall grow out of his roots: (KJV)
In the north [where Jesus grew up and ministered]:
In the book of Daniel, if you read it real closely, you will see that....
the Saints [PLURAL] are to possess the kingdom and are likened to a Son of Man (please notice the plurality of the “Son of Man”)! These Elect of the Last Times, amidst great persecutions first from Antiochus Epiphanies during the Maccabean era, then the Hasmoneans who took control of the Zaddok priesthood themselves, then the Romans with their enforced idolatry, regarded themselves as performing an atoning work by their sufferings.
In the Community Rule from Qumran [ again the Essenes...super strict] it is said of the leaders of the Council: 'They shall preserve the Faith in the land with steadfastness and meekness, and shall atone for sin by the practice of justice and by suffering the sorrows of affliction ... And they shall be an agreeable offering, atoning for the land and determining the judgement of wickedness, and there shall be no more iniquity" (The Community Rule, viii. The Dead Sea Scrolls in English, Tr. Vermes).
Since the Messiah was to be the Branch of Righteousness, the holy one who would bring iniquity to an end [by his preaching a message of repentance accompanied with Israel’s repentance and good fruit] and reign over a redeemed people, it was not difficult to move from the Son of Man (collective as the nation as taught in Isaiah) to the Messiah as the Son of Man (singular), from the Elect Ones [plural] of Israel to the Elect One. If the Saints could achieve an atoning work by their sufferings, how much more the Messiah himself.
YOU NEED to understand the attachments of “suffering as an atonement” was primarily an Essenic belief fostered by the difficult times since the times of the Maccabees. The Tanakh teaches atonement quite differently from the way the Essenes envisioned it. What is of monumental importance for the Christian to know is that the Tankah, when translated by Greek Jews in Alexandria, these were Essenes who combined their “current theologies” among the text. We then get mixed into the Greek Translation of the Jewish Scriptures their concepts of crucifies sun-godmen who suffered as well. These concepts carry over of course in their “religious beliefs” to the times of Jesus. Simply said we end up with two different Messiahs; one of the Pharisees and one of the Essenes! Oral tradition, and its weakness, is that both concepts later became fused together. In the recording of such oral traditions we have the blending the Messiah of the Tanakh [the Messiah expected by the Pharisees] which was a human Davidic King which came preaching repentance in the preparation of Israel to be a Holy Nation and a Royal Priesthood along with the Essenic “Angel- Messiah” of the Cosmos crucified in the Sun. I will later deal with this topic in detail, but I thought you needed to know why in reading the New Testament we are confused without knowing as within it are Two Different Messiah...one real and one fake. It takes years of study and investigation for me to find this out. Now back to the article at hand.
For the historical Jesus especially with his northern associations, these blending of the above 2 concepts emerged clearly, and governed the character of his messianic mission. To those of these desperate times the blood of Israelites, especially the quintessential Israelite (the Messiah) and his blood would seal the New Covenant spoken of by Jeremiah for these Northern Essenes, and must be shed for many for the remission of sins." In other words attributed to him, “Ought not the Messiah to have suffered these things, and then enter into his glory (as king)?"
We can say, therefore, that at the time when Jesus lived not only was there a widespread expectation that the Messiah would shortly reveal himself, but also that in some of the current thinking about “he that should come” there was nothing inconsistent with the way in we Jesus understood the functions of the Messiah.
In approaching the historical Jesus no question of his deity arises, since before the paganizing of Jewish belief in the development of Gentile Christianity no authority identified the Messiah with the Logos, the eternal Word of God, or conceived the Messiah to be an incarnation of God.
If you are a Christian you need to read the above sentence again. The very term, the Anointed One (messiah..small letters), indicates a call to office. It was not the title of an aspect of the Godhead. We do not have to entertain at all the notion that Jesus or any other claimant to be the Messiah in Palestine at this period could suppose himself for one moment to be divine. In the early history of Christianity it can be sufficiently seen how the doctrine arose out of the impact of the Gospel on the Gentile world, and in the circumstances was almost inevitable. There are plenty of instances still today of Christianity in many lands being colored by the polytheistic faiths the Church has conquered and absorbed. Our concern must be to overcome this barrier to our comprehension of Jesus, and reaching back to the core of Christianity to deal only with the requirements of the messiahship as he would have known them.
Answer for yourself: What, then, of the term Son of God?
The Messiah was not directly so-called; yet he could be thought of as having a filial relationship to God without any idea among Jews that such a description implied deity, and this could happen in so far as the Messiah appeared as the representative Israelite and as the preordained King of Israel. Israel is called the Son of God, the First-born the Only-begotten and Dearly Beloved One, and Solomon son of David and by interpretation the Messiah is brought into a filial relationship with God. But this Sonship only meant close association in representing God and carrying out His will; it never meant that the “son” was himself a God as Gentile Christianity would later change the concept to pattern their false gods.
Sonship of God meant something quite different to the Jewish mind than to the Gentile mind. It does so even today!
The right understanding of Jesus commences with the realization that he identified himself with the fulfillment of the Messianic Hope. Only on this basis do the traditions about him become wholly intelligible. He was no charlatan, willfully and deliberately misleading his people, well knowing that his posing as the Messiah was fraudulent. There is not the slightest suspicion of presence on his part. On the contrary, no one could be more sure of his vocation than was Jesus, and not even the threat of imminent death by the horrible torture of crucifixion could make him deny his messiahship.
We have to accept the absolute sincerity of Jesus. But this does not require us to think of him as omniscient and infallible. The Old Testament’s depiction of Messiah was fully human and not Deity. It is possible to hold that the Messianic Hope was not only a justifiable but indeed an inspired conception, and yet in many respects the predictions and expectations of the interpreters of the Scriptures could be quite wrong. It is one thing to see visions and dream dreams, and quite another when it is demanded that such visions and dreams be acted out on the plane of history in all their apocalyptic grandeur. How could Jesus soberly imagine that this could and would be accomplished? He could do so because he was a Jew, belonging to a people whose history, as they read it, was a record of miracles wrought on their behalf by God and who believed in greater miracles to come. But what Jesus anticipated would happen was no more likely to be correct than that of any other interpreter of the prophetic legends. During his lifetime he could to an astonishing extent because of his personal qualities enact and obtain compliance with the messianic scheme as he apprehended it. But he had no control over what lay beyond, and in much that he anticipated, the imminent appearance of the Kingdom of God, he was sadly mistaken. His only mistake was that he believed Israel, beginning in Galilee, would respond to his message of repentance and return to the Commandments of God. When the seventy returned he knew quite well at that moment that all his preaching had not produced the fruit he intended. He also knew one more thing; namely, that if where he had ministered for so long had failed to produce works in response to the message of repentance, then there would be little change of it as well when he would later go to Jerusalem. He knew at that time that the same fate awaited him as did ever previous failed “messianic hope”.....he would die. It was at this time that he began to teach his followers that it was appointed of him to die! The Kingdom, in the absence of repentance by Israel, would not appear. His ministry to prepare Israel for the priesthood for all nations had failed.
The Church had to face before very long the acute problem of the postponement of his expectations, and dealt with it rather lamely and unconvincingly by largely spiritualizing them. The dogma of his deity did not allow it to be admitted that he had been in error.
The convictions Jesus had, as we must appreciate, rested on the oracular treatment of the Old Testament. The Jewish circles in which he moved were accustomed to applying the text of the sacred books not only to the messianic figures, but to other individuals concerned in the Cosmic Drama, and in general to the circumstances of what they believed to be the Last Times. Abundant illustrations of this kind of prophetic exegesis are furnished by the Dead Sea Scrolls and the apocalyptic literature. The Bible had secrets to yield which could be extracted by the right methods for the guidance and instruction of the Elect of the End of the Days.
Christianity got going when the followers of Jesus started to proclaim that in him the Messiah had come, and sought to prove this in the only way which would carry conviction, by demonstrating from that all that had befallen him had been foretold. Thus the need for the creation of documents stating such thoughts. There is now every reason to believe that the first written presentation of the gospel took the form of a compendium of such Biblical Testimonies, a work which in its various recensions underlies the canonical Gospels, and whose influence can be discerned on other parts of the New Testament and on much of the patristic literature. What the traditional Christian fails to understand is that such “documents” were created out of the need for religious propaganda more than the expression of historical truth. To do so much of the Old Testament had to be “reworked” to make it look as if the prophets had been speaking about Jesus when in reality their message was not of him or about his ministry in such cases used by the New Testament writer in their attempts to line Jesus to the Old Testament.
Thus the New Testament becomes a mixture of traditions of the Davidic Messiah along with the Essenic “cosmic redeemer as modeled by the “Angel-Messiah” of the Essenic Buddhists.
We have evidence that some accounts of the activities of Jesus became colored and elaborated by prophecies which it was deemed appropriate to identify with them regardless if the original intent of the author was to point to Jesus or not. Prophetic authority was needed to give weight to the message being taught by some of the current followers of Jesus. So in doing such the Old Testament passages from the Tanakh were purposefully misquoted, mistranslated, and taken out of context in order to “Jesusize” them. One’s lack of understanding and familiarity of the Jewish Tanakh is the reason one can read the Old Testament from the KJV, for example, and not notice that what is being said, let alone quoted in the New Testament as “thus being fulfilled” in anything but that!
The Gospels insist that Jesus had some foreknowledge of his fate [death] which he had derived from the Scriptures ... both canonical as well as uncanonical. Significantly, he began to communicate this information only after he had seen the response from sending out the seventy and the lack of “repentance” in the testimonies of his disciples.
From that time forth began Jesus to show unto his disciples how that he must go unto Jerusalem, and suffer many things of the elders and chief priests and scribes, and be killed, and be raised again the third day." He declared this on the ground that these things were written concerning the Messiah, as he as you remember, was the “Jew of all Jews...the quintessential Jew...the anointed Jew of all Israelites...the Messiah. Isaiah 53, understood corporately as the nation who suffered for the whole world, was not pictured in Yeshua as the epitome of all Jews. Jesus understood and saw this as his role after the failure of the mission of the seventy.
Jesus exhibited such foreknowledge and this would be nothing extraordinary since it would be expected that he had access to such information as seems to be indicated by his familiarity with the idea of a Suffering Just One and with a Son of Man Christology. Josephus tells us of the Essenes: “There are some among them who profess to foretell the future, being versed from their early years in holy books and oracular utterances of prophets." In his writings he gives instances of their powers, and no doubt many in such circles did acquire remarkable insight and capacity for seership as a result of their training.
Believing himself to be the Messiah, it would not be surprising if Jesus should have sought to learn from “the saints” as much as he could of what was required of him and what would befall him. The early Christians delighted to pursue the quest for such fulfillments in his life to the extent that, with the help of the Greek Bible which had already been purposefully mistranslated by the Greek Jews and Essenes in Alexandria, Egypt. It was this Bible you remember which only the first 5 books were translated by the Rabbis and the rest by the Greek Jews of Alexandria. It is said of these Greek Jews of Alexandria, by Christian D. Ginsburg, in The Essenes-Their History and Doctrines, 1863, on page 32: “[speaking of the Greek Jew of Alexandria, Egypt] employed them to translate the Prophets and the Psalms into Greek, and that they availed themselves of the opportunity to introduce their tenets and rites into this version, now called the Septuagint.” Thus the concept of the Buddhist Angel-Messiah, which finds its origin in sun-worship of the ancients, is written within the pages containing the Prophets and the Writings of the Bible which would serve as the foundation for all later Latin and English translations. Even worse the New Testament would quote from these Old Testament Prophets and Psalms and apply this to Jesus. The problem is that the Jewish Prophets and Writings in many cases never said such things let alone intended they be referenced to one named Jesus who would live 3 centuries later! These Greek Jews of Alexandria would produce the foundation which the followers of Jesus would later use to uncover allusions to Jesus in the most unlikely texts, and even create incidents in the life of Jesus to conform with supposed prophetic necessities.
Now...let us proceed.