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There is virtually unanimous agreement among all the scholars today (except from the original international team who first analyzed the Dead Sea Scrolls) that the history of Dead Sea Scroll scholarship constitutes a "scandal" due to all the delays, procrastinations, and restrictions on the scrolls that prevented them becoming public knowledge for over the last 45 years! This is utmost alarming since the Nag Hammadi Scrolls, located in Egypt before the Dead Sea Scrolls, were made public within ten years!
Answer for yourself: Why the difference? The Roman Catholic Church (by far the largest Christian denomination in the world) had no opportunity to establish control over the texts at Nag Hammadi, thus they found their way quickly into print and the public domain. But that is not the case when considering the Dead Sea Scrolls.
The Roman Catholic Church's control over the Dead Sea Scroll research must inevitably foster a grave element of suspicion. One must ask (as many informed 'outsiders" have) what is the reason for the reluctancy of the international team of researchers (whom all but one were Catholics-he was agnostic) to print their findings?
Answer for yourself: Was there damaging evidence that could refute some or many of Christianity's sacred dogmas and doctrines surrounding "the Jesus Story"? Was there damaging evidence that could shake the tradition of the Catholic and Protestant Church and its traditions as handed down for over a thousand years? Could these scrolls, issuing from so close to "the original source", and unlike the New Testament which has been altered, tampered with, added to in many places, and deleted in many places over hundreds of years as the hands of unscrupulous monks, since being untouched by human hands for over 2000 years shed some significant new light on the true origins of Christianity and the so-called "Early Church" in Jerusalem? Could these scrolls shed new light on the truth behind the conflicting accounts in the New Testament concerning "Jesus" himself? Might they contain something compromising, something that challenges, possibly even refutes established traditions of Christianity and the death and passion of Jesus? Could many doctrines in Christianity, like atonement connected to the death of Jesus, be exposed as "man-made" instead of "God-given"? Could new light be shown upon why Judaism has rejected the "Christian Jesus" for over 2000 years and vindicate them and their Sacred Texts and Scriptures in this "rejection of the Christian Jesus? Could Judaism emerge from such a study in a new light as the faith and religion of God instead of Christianity?
The official Catholic response for the original team assigned to analyze these "scrolls" ensured that the scrolls did not contain any information threatening to the Christian faith. They lied! The team's personal convictions, as well at the Pope's, were bound to have exerted some influence in their findings and their interpretation.
The "Catholic Scroll Research Team" made no real pretense to "dispassionate scholarship". In fact, they regarded it as positively dangerous. They decided that ultimately, the biblical scholar's work was to be guided and determined by Church doctrine and "be subject always to the sovereign right of Holy Mother Church and witness definitively what is in fact concordant with the teaching she has received from Christ." In other words, if it does not agree with Catholic Church Teachings, it is not to be shared with the world. The implications of all this are staggering. All inquiry and investigation, regardless of what it might turn up or reveal, MUST be subordinated and accommodated to the existing corpus of official Catholic teaching. In other words, it must be edited or adjusted or distorted until it conforms to the established Catholic Doctrine of today.
Answer for yourself: And what if something comes to light which cannot be made to conform? It had, out of necessity, had to be suppressed and it was up until just recently.
Let me give you a short history of this cover-up as connected to the Dead Sea Scrolls and the challenge they make to the "accepted" story given us by Roman Christianity and their version of the "Jesus Story". The major intact texts, from Caves 1 & 11, came into Israeli hands and were published by the late 1950's--they are now in the Shrine of the Book museum in Jerusalem. The bulk of the scrolls were in Jordanian control and were placed with a team of Christian (mostly Catholic and not one Jewish person on the team) scholars who over the next four decades published eight volumes of material. The team was left intact by the Israelis after the Six Day War (1967). The publication schedule was constantly delayed and many outsiders found the official team to be arrogant and unbending. The team was expanded in the 1980's and was much more broadly based, finally including Jewish scholars and a more open approach to sharing materials. As much as 40% of the Scrolls, mostly fragments from Cave 4, remained unpublished and unreleased (photos), until pressure mounted in the 1980's. A breakthrough occurred in the Fall, 1991: the photos were published by the Biblical Archaeological Society in a non-official edition; a computer reconstruction, based on a concordance, was announced; the Huntington library pledged to open their microfilm files of all the scroll photographs. The findings in these "unpublished" scrolls are of major impact to Christianity and therefore the Scrolls are of great interest to both Jews and Christians. They represent, when studied, a non-rabbinic form of Judaism, and also contain many important parallels to the Jesus movement and the "Jesus Story" of the New Testament. The key factor in determining the significance of the scrolls, and their relation, or lack of it, to Christianity, consisted in their dating:
Whatever the date ascribed to them, they might be a source of possible embarrassment to Christianity, but the degree of embarrassment would be variable. If, for example the scrolls could be dated from well before the Christian era, they might threaten to compromise Jesus' originality and uniqueness. They could show that some or many of his teachings and concepts to have been not wholly his own, but to have derived from current thoughts, teachings, and traditions already established and prevalent in his day. Since Jesus' teachings were not original or "new" surely he was not replacing the religion of Israel (Judaism) with an new replacement religion (Christianity! If the scrolls dated from Jesus' lifetime, however, or from shortly thereafter, they might prove more embarrassing still. They might be used to argue that the "Teacher of Righteousness" who is the main figure in them was Jesus himself, and that Jesus was could be interpreted differently that what we have come to understand of him today. Also, the scrolls contained numerous premised identical to subsequent images of "Early Christianity" and this would mean that what we call "Christianity" today was only an extension of the Essene community of Qumran and not a new movement at all. This would mean that Jesus had never dreamed of founding a new religion or contravening Judaic law as had been done by Rome in their depiction of this "Jesus" in the New Testament.
The information can be interpreted in a number of plausible ways, some of which are less compromising to Christendom than others. It is hardly surprising the Catholic International Team chose the less compromising way of interpretation to safeguard long cherished doctrines of the Catholic and Protestant churches. There is only one problem, today other scholars see the "hidden agenda" of the team in purposefully overlooking much harmful data that would refute many of their doctrines. For the Catholic Team the necessity prevailed to read or interpret the evidence in accordance with certain governing principles, regardless of what the evidence said. The team had to keep as dissociated as possible "early Christianity" (as seen in the New Testament and from 1st Century Judaism from which 'early Christianity' sprang) from the dating of the scrolls or risk theological embarrassment. They had to conceal the fact that this "New Testament Jesus" never came to begin Christianity. This hand-appointed, pro-Catholic, pro-Vatican scroll team had a big problem on their hands if certain parts of these scroll were ever to be made public and see the light of day.
Answer for yourself: What would this scroll team do and Vatican do after 1700 years when the reading Christian public comes to awareness of the tampering of New Testament manuscripts by the anti-semitic Catholic monks to "write-out" Judaism and "write-in" a replacement religion? What were they to do if the Christian world came to an understanding that God never changed His revelation and religion given to man which had remained in tact and almost unchanged since Egypt and as handed down through Judaism (the offspring of Egypt), that God never changed His true atonement, that God had never replaced His Torah and Laws, that the Essenes believed back in Egypt in and around 1350 B.C.E. that their "Joshua-Jesus" had been killed on the eve of the Passover and hung on a tree and that this "same story" was later retold in hindsight following the death of John the Baptist whom the Essenes had hoped and believed was to be their "returning Teacher of Righteous"?
Answer for yourself: What are informed Christians now to do when they discover that the early Catholic Church fathers, due to their hatred for the Jews, literally re-wrote the manuscripts of the earliest followers of the "Jesus-Joshua" movement along with the 7 original epistles of Paul which never mentioned a "human being" or a "historical Jesus" and changed them to complete their desire to break from Judaism and create their own religion built upon a "Joshua-Jesus" of their own making?
Answer for yourself: Did you hear what I said? I know its shocking but it is true! The "scrolls" (contemporary with Jesus and his Messianic Movement) are literally out of the bag today and they, when examined show that the texts within the scrolls do not agree with the passages we have received from Rome in the New Testament which scholars today tell us have over 600,000 variations and conflicts within them.
Now before I get a host of emails telling me that I am wrong about what I report in this or other articles let me say this in all honesty and humility. I have done the research like few others. If I write it then know it is "provable" and "beyond any doubt" by any "thinking believer". "Non-thinking believers" need not reply. What never ceases to amaze me is that in the articles I write and the knowledge over these 20 years which I gained which I share with others who more than likely have never done these studies, who have never read these scholarly works and books available today, who have never looked into manuscript alterations of the Hebrew Scriptures and forgeries of what I speak which litter the pages of the Christian's Bible, who have never looked for themselves into the corruptions of Catholic Church Councils where dogmatic and doctrinal decisions were made to correct "existing religious beliefs" by altering the existing religious writings as they were handed down chronologically, who have never read the Hebrew Scriptures and compared them line upon line and precept upon precept with the purposeful Greek mistranslations we have and who have never traced these changes as they crept into the Christian Old and New Testaments, who have never studied the Essenes and the fact that at Qumran we found one too many Bibles (one that agreed with the Jewish Tanakh and one that agreed with the altered Greek), who have never studied the earliest Gnostic Christians, and who have never studied in detail comparative religions of the world to see that this same "Jesus Story" in our New Testament has been told over and over again in the smallest details for thousands and thousands of years, as far back as in Egypt as we find written today in our New Testaments let alone who never studied in detail Astronomy and seen for themselves that behind all of these "Jesus Stories" and their parallels in all nations preceding Rome we find the same thing; namely, the personification of the path of the Sun through the Zodiac in relation to the surrounding constelation,....in the face of the failure to know or study to find out these things are "certain" I continually get, in the face of the overwhelming evidence that I present, simple New Testament Scriptures recited back to me by readers defending the traditional Christian stance as if these often quoted "forged New Testament" passages are somehow corrections for all the knowledge presented to the contrary and which expose them as "forgeries" by Rome. Please think and in so doing withhold such responses like this until you do the studies for yourself; all that I am doing is "inform" and I don't wish or desire a debate with others who have not prepared themselves with the facts at hand and studied to prove these things accurate for themselves. Please give me enough credit if you disagree to think that possibly I might know of which I speak and that it might be just possible that you, having not does the extensive studies as others have done, have not seen these "truths" for yourself as of yet in your life. Take the challenge not to correct or try to correct of which you have never studies or verified for yourself; but be thankful that such truth as come your way when the world sets in darkness due to the extreme censorship and mind control by organized Christianity.
Here is a flash: The Problem Is With These New Testament Texts.......THEY ARE NOT TRUE IN KEY PLACES!!! I can can read the New Testament as good as any one and I have studied it for years like few others but here it is again: The Roman New Testament is found upon scholarly examination to be a highly unreliable document not worthy of belief or faith in any area without your personal confirming study that will prove to your beyond any doubt that what you are reading is actually the truth. I surely don't need more "forgeries" recited back to me as some sort of proof that all the facts and evidence and knowledge that I have dug out from twenty years of study and freely given is somehow wrong. Doing so only attests to the terrible fruit of mind control and mental blindness motivated by fear generated by Christianity not only today but for the last 1900 years. We have been "dumbed down" by Christianity. It truly is so sad that as Christians and followers of "the Christ" we know so little about our faith and its origins but yet we go to church and fellowship around lies called "sacred" going on now for almost 1800 yrs.
These things of which I write in this article about the Dead Sea Scrolls are FACTS........not fiction and verifiable upon examination. Now that I have said that let us continue if you so wish. These sectarian document especially paint a picture of the times that you and I have never seen. These Dead Sea Scroll documents were buried and hidden from the hands of Catholic forgers. They were hidden by the help of God in the earth and the earth protected their integrity as "kodak moments" of the first century and first century "religious beliefs". We no longer have but one story, the Roman account to believe but now another that challenges the Roman inherited "Jesus Story" to its very core. Not only that but the Nag Hammadi Library find in Egypt stand right beside the Dead Sea Scrolls damning the Roman version of first century Christianity as a lie! We have been fed a "bill of goods" and it is not true. Let us examine the conclusion of the International Team and then contrast them to the findings of others now that the scrolls are made public!
The conclusions of the International Team headed by Father de Vaux:
If the Qumran texts and those of the "Early Church" have certain ideas, concepts or principles in common, they are also strikingly similar in imagery and phraseology. "Blessed are the meek", Jesus says, for example, is perhaps the most famous line of the Sermon on the Mount, "for they shall inherit the earth" (Matt. 5:5). This assertion derives from Psalm 37:11: "But the meek shall possess the land, and delight themselves in abundant prosperity." The same psalm was of particular interest to the Qumran community. In the Dead Sea Scrolls, there is a commentary on its meaning: "Interpreted , this concerns the congregation of the Poor..." The "Congregation of the Poor" (or the "meek") was one of the names which the Qumran community referred to themselves! Nor is it the only such parallel: "Blessed are the poor in spirit: for theirs is the kingdom of heaven" (Matt. 5:3); the "War Scroll" from Cave 1 states: "Among the poor in spirit there is a power..." Now you can understant why the whole of the Gospel of Matthew, and especially Chapter 10 and 19, contains metaphors and terminology at times most interchangeable with those of the "Community Rule". I could site several other examples, but just let me say that the Qumran scrolls and the Gospels echo each other. But more than the Gospels you will be amazed to find even more "borrowing" from Essene teachings in the epistles of Paul. Paul is particularly lavish in his use of Qumran terms and images in his epistles. One of the Qumran texts speaks of "All those who observe the Law in the House of Judah, whom God will deliver...because of their suffering and because of their faith in the Teacher of Righteousness." Paul ascribes a similar redemptive power to faith in Jesus. It is clear that Paul is familiar with the metaphors, the figures of speech and phrases used by the Qumran community. In his rigorous adherence to the Law, it might surprise you but Jesus is much closer to the Qumran texts than he is to Paul. In the Sermon on the Mount (Matt. 5:17-19), Jesus makes his position unequivocally clear in stating that as far as he was concerned not the smaller part of the Law would ever pass away; a position that Paul was subsequently to move away from in his attempts to reach the Gentiles.
Answer for yourself: Now a question: if Jesus' adherence to the Law concurs with that of the Qumran community, what does that say for our roots as Christians which pride ourselves as being "not under the law but under grace"? It may also surprise you but the Qumran community observed a feast which sounds very similar in its ritual characteristics to the Last Supper as it is described in the Gospels.
Now let us think for a second. I would ask that you put yourself on this team that was inspecting these scrolls. One can only imagine the reaction of Father deVaux and his team on first discovering the seemingly extraordinary parallels between the Qumran texts and what we know of "early Christianity". It had hitherto been believed that Jesus' teachings were unique, that he admittedly drew on Old Testament sources, but wove his references into a message, a gospel, a statement of "good news" which had never been enunciated in the world before. Now, however, echoes of that message, and perhaps even the true identity of the later Essene depiction of "Joshua-Jesus" is made known to us and has today come to light among a collection of ancienty parchments preserved in the Judean desert. This Essene' "Teacher of Righteousness" was hopefully "returning" and not believed to appear in some "first coming" as Roman Christianity makes it out to be. This Essene slain "Teacher of Righteousness", killed in Egypt long ago on the eve of the Passover where his body was hung on a tree at the bottom of Sinai, slain by the wicked priest of the followers of the Akhenaten (Hebrews), was hoped to return. This is the "messiah" of Judaism, one from the family of King David whom we have already seen was in reality Tuthmose III, the military Pharaoh of Egypt
Answer for yourself: And who were these Essenes again? Well they were the first followers of the New Testament "Joshua-Jesus".
Acts 6:7 7 And the word of God increased; and the number of the disciples multiplied in Jerusalem greatly; and a great company of the priests (Essenes) were obedient to the faith. (KJV)
Answer for yourself: Have you ever heard of the word "Essa"? Does the name "Essenes" mean that they are connected with this "Essa"? Yes it does.
The word "Essa" is the Arabic name of Jesus and is used only one time in the Koran.
Answer for yourself: Are you aware that "Essa" was also the name used for Jesus by the early Christians in Egypt in the 1st century C.E.?
Answer for yourself: Then does it stand to reason that the Essenes were not only followers of "Essa" but also of this New Testament "Jesus" or "Joshua-Jesus"?
Answer for yourself: Who was this historical Jesus or "Essa" that is hidden in their name around; lets say around 170-150 B.C.E. for example when much of the Dead Sea Scrolls were written? This is all the more important for us to understand just whom is this "Jesus" or this "Essa" in a historical sense in light of the fact the the vast majority of modern scholars tell us that the last writings of these Dead Sea Scrolls people, known as the Essenes, was no later than 70 B.C.E. That means that if this "Jesus" or "Essa" was to be a historical person then he had to be a historical person that lived before 70 B.C.E. when no more Scrolls were written and this rules out any possibility that this "Jesus" could be the later "Jesus of the New Testament"!!!
Thus without a doubt then we see that the name of the Jewish sect, the Essenes, indicates that they were followers of "some" Jesus that lived long before the first century.
Answer for yourself: Could this be part of the reason why contemporary writers like Philo, Suetonius, Pliny, and Josephus and why Roman writers like Suetonius, Pliny, Tacitus and others fail to mention a contemporary Jesus of Nazareth in all of their writings in the first century?
Philo Judaeus, who wrote the earliest account of this sect around 30 C.E., called them "Essaeans" from the Greek "Essaios" but stated that the word was of non-Greek origin. The Essaeans were included among the Jewish divisions of Josephus' time, but he called them the Essenes, the same term that is used in English. However, it was recognized that the word "Essene" must have had a Semitic origin, which is "Essa". "Essaioi" would therefore mean "a follower of Essa" which so translated also means "a follower of Jesus"!
Answer for yourself: Is it any wonder now why the meanings of "Essa" and the "Essenes" were intentionally ignored because the Essenes, as the followers of Essa (Jesus) existed before the time allotted to the assumed "historical Jesus" during the Romans' time?
Even more important for us is the study of the name of Joshua.
The names Joshua (Ye-ho-shua in Hebrew) and Jesus (Ye-shua in its short form), have the same meaning which is: "Yahweh (the Lord) is salvation."
Answer for yourself: Are you aware that the Greek translation of the Hebrew Scriptures, done by these Essenes in Alexandria, Egypt, interchange the name of Joshua with Jesus? That means in 200 B.C.E. when the names of Joshua and Jesus were interchanged that these Essene translators both saw and understood that the historical Joshua was the same as Jesus.
Answer for yourself: Are you aware that the King James Bible and many of the early Church Fathers of the 2nd and 3rd centuries C.E. refer to "Joshua" and "Jesus" as one and the same person?
Answer for yourself: Since Joshua and Jesus are interchangeable and the identities of each of them have been mingled and identified as the same person by the Christian Church and the translators of the Hebrew Scriptures then is it possible that historically long before the first century that these two representations; namely, the successor to Akhenaten, the Biblical Moses (Joshua) and this Jesus who was slain and hung on a tree on the eve of the Passover and later believed to be resurrected (Tutankhamun) are one and the same individual in Egyptian history? It certainly appears so. The sudden appearance of Joshua in the Bible when the Jews entered the Promised Land is believed to be literary fiction by many scholars and part of the cover-up of the death of the "anointed" Egyptian Messiah and Son of God by the Israelites.
Let us move on. Much has been written down through history about a Ben Pandira. The Talmud generally refers to Jesus as "a certain person" and not by a name. In some Talmudic passages he is named "Ben Pandira" (the son of Pandira). Since the Jews do not agree that Jesus was the Son of God, they suggested that Pandira was a lover, not the husband, of Mary.
Answer for yourself: But is this really true? Are you also aware that the word Pandira is a Hebrew form of an ancient Egyptian royal term? The word in Hebrew is Pa-ndi-ra, and in its original form is Pa-ntr-ra (pronounced Pa-neter-ra).
Answer for yourself: Do you remember that we have mentioned repeatedly the "neter" from Egypt? Where do we find Ra? We find Ra in Egypt again! Just like we find "Is-Ra-el" in Egypt.
The word Israel itself, far from being a Jewish appellation, comes from the combination of three different reigning deities:
El was one of the earliest names for the god of the ancient Hebrews (whence Emmanu-El, Micha-El, Gabri-El, Samu-El, etc.), and his worship is reflected in the fact that the Jews still consider Saturday as "God's Day."
Answer for yourself: Are you aware that all Egyptian kings and Pharaohs since 3000 B.C.E. had the title "Pa-neter-ra" which means they were thought of and called the "Son of Ra" or "Son of God"? Is this the same terms applied to Jesus by the Jews (Pa-neter-ra" and the New Testament (Son of God"? Yes they are.
Answer for yourself: Was Tutankhamun "Pa-neter-Ra"? Yes he was and if our identification is correct as I believe it is then this explains why the Jews, the children and descendants of Egypt, call this "Joshua-Jesus" by the name "Pa-neter-Ra" in the Talmud. The rumor that Pandira was a lover, not the husband, of Mary is but that; a false rumor because of the loss of "Gnosis" of the true meaning of the word "Pa-neter-Ra" being a name for Pharaohs as the Sons of God.
So as we see since the 18th Dynasty and in particular Tutankhamun, whom we identify as the original "historical Joshua-Jesus" lived around 1300 B.C.E. then the time period fits perfectly for Tutankhamun being "Pa-neter-Ra".
Answer for yourself: What should this mean to us? This means that the term "Ben Pandira" by which this Jesus is referred to in the Talmud, written after 200 C.E., means that this person is the "Son or Ra", "Son of God" and an Egyptian Pharaoh. Now we only have to decide which one it is of several we have to choose from. This will become abundantly clear as we continue our study.
Answer for yourself: Now are these references in the Talmud concerning a Jesus or "Joshua-Jesus" from the days of Herod in the New Testament or are they references to a ancient "Joshua-Jesus" from the days of Moses?
A summary is in order. We have seen in earlier articles that the Talmud Rabbis speak of a "Jesus" being killed by the Priest of Akhenaten over a thousand years earlier than the Jesus of the New Testament and his name is Pinhas. We see that these Essenes were followers of an "Essa" and a "Joshua-Jesus" that lived long before the New Testament times who was an "anointed" Messiah and Son of God in Egypt during the days of Aten worship and Akhenaten. Then we see that these same Talmudic Rabbis state that this Jesus is "Ben Pandira" which now we see is an Egyptian royal term for "Son of God" and a Pharaoh. It appears that we are speaking about a historical "Son of God" and Pharaoh who was believed to be the "image of the living Lord" that lived long before the New Testament times and we have today but a distortion by Roman and false depiction of this "Jesus" who was historically in Egypt an anointed Messiah of Egypt who was killed on the eve of the Passover by the followers of Akhenaten and believed to have resurrected and "returned" in some form or fashion.
Answer for yourself: Is it a coincidence that the title "son of Ra" was found engraved on Tutankhamun's stele which was found in the Karnak Temple in 1905?
These Essenes, who gave us the Dead Sea Scrolls, knowledgeable of their ancient deceased Pharaoh/Son of God, believed that the First Coming had already taken place (the historical Tutankhamun), but that this "Joshua-Jesus" had been rejected by the Israelite hierarchy and the Aten Priesthood and other followers of the Aten and executed by the Wicked Priest Pinhas. This slain one history records was the historical Tutankhamun of Egypt. Let it be said again this belief is reflective of the Qumran Essenes who were the writers of the Dead Sea Scrolls. They were the owners of the library of Dead Sea Scrolls that, as we saw earlier, date from the second century B.C., yet strangely enough contain many elements of the Gospel account of the birth and life of the New Testament Jesus we find later in the Gospels thereby linking the depiction of the New Testament Jesus with the slain "Joshua-Jesus" from the 18th Dynasty of Egypt.
Answer for yourself: What should this teach us? Namely that the Jesus of the New Testament is but a replay of an earlier "Joshua-Jesus" that was viewed as the Essene's ancient Teacher of Righteousness that lived in the days of Moses who had been killed on the eve of the Passover and hung on tree just like the later New Testament depiction of the supposed "historical Jesus" of Rome's making as taken from the Essene's teachings. The only problem is that instead of the New Testament teaching the "first coming" it is ironically actually the presentation of his "second coming" in the wake of the death of John the Baptist, the hoped for Messiah of the Essenes. Thus the need to keep faith alive for the Israelites through the retelling of an ancient "Joshua-Jesus" story after the death of John the Baptist by these Essenes who attached to it the hope of another "coming".
So as we see the very name of the Essenes indicates that they were followers of this Essa or Jesus. Philo Judaeus who wrote the earliest account of the sect around A.D. 30 called them Essaeans from the Greek Essaios but made it clear that this was not originally a Greek word. Josephus, who, half a century later, included them among the Jewish divisions of his time, called them Essenes, the same term that is used in English. However, it was recognized that the word "Essene" must have had a Semitic origin. Surprisingly, amid many unsatisfactory suggestions about its source, the obvious one was overlooked which was Essa, the Arabic name of Jesus and the only one used in the Koran. "Essaioi" would therefore mean "a follower of Essa" or of "Jesus". This meaning may in itself have been the main reason for its having been ignored: if the Essenes existed before the time of Jesus, they could not be looked upon as his followers. Essa was also the word used for Jesus in the Coptic Egyptian language in the first century A.D.
In the first century of what was to become the Christian era, the Essenes were expecting Jesus to return on the Day of Judgment at the end of the world.
Answer for yourself: Why now? Why was that?
Now you have to know some Astronomy. It was the end of the Age (erroneously translated and called "the world" in the New Testament) with the dawning of a new Age on the horizon; the Age of Pisces that came with a "new" revelation of the Christ. With the Precession of the Equinox which was understood each 2,160 years by the Ancients as a new beginning and a new era for mankind it was customary to understand that at this time God would communicate a new message to mankind of their salvation and redemption. With the replacement of the constellation of Aries in the Heavens (lamb) with Pisces (fish) mankind understood that God was moving the Heavens (the Kosmokrator as seen in the depiction of Mithra slaying the bull of Taurus to make room for constellation Aries at the Vernal Equinox for the next 2,160 years) and mankind was expectant of this new manifestation of God's salvation and deliverance that would accompany this new Age as it had with each one previously since the dawn of mankind and his understanding of the Cosmos. Understanding that the word "Joshua" and "Jesus" mean "God's Salvation" then they expected at time time accompanying this celestial phenomena of the Precession of the Equinox, as they had every time before every 2, 160 years a "new Joshua Christ" or a "new Jesus Christ"? Do you understand. This manifestation of God's deliverance and salvation was hoped for in the revealing of a historical John the Baptist and metaphorically in a new "Jesus Christ". But in the wake of the death of John the Baptist with their hopes dashed of a deliverance from Rome these Essenes chose to remain faithful and promoted the allegorical "Jesus Christ", the "Christ within", the meaning of which Rome would later change as they "literalized this Christ" as a historical person.
John, "the man sent from God" (John 1:6), was the first Essene to come out into the open and try to initiate all the Jews to a baptism of repentance, a confession of sin, and the need for moral cleansing which was a symbol of forgiveness that was to accompany this new beginning with the emergence of the Age of Pisces (the new Age (Pisces) of God's Christ and its new meaning within the souls of all of God's children). John therefore came preaching repentance as he commanded the Jews "to be born again from above" which is the true Jewish spiritual meaning of the mikvah in the first century. Christianity has distorted this meaning but if you study Judaism you see that being "born again" was connected to immersion and repentance and not as Rome would later teach connected to "accepting and believing some theological dogma or doctrine concerning their creation of their Jesus". John the Baptist, himself an Essene, was not, however, preparing the way for a historical Jesus to be born, but for the Coming of God's Christ to the souls of all of God's children: "In those days came John the Baptist, preaching in the wilderness of Judaea, And saying, Repent ye: for the kingdom of heaven (Sky...Aries...Precession of the Equinox) is at hand...that was spoken of by the prophet Esaias, saying, Prepare ye the way of the Lord, make his paths straight" (Matthew 3:1-3).
This was the time for mankind to search their hearts and being this new epoch with God. Contrary to what you might think this Precession of the Equinox was understood by the Ancients and understood as a time of spiritual preparation. John represented the prophet of the end of time which was to come at the end of the Age. John was the eschatological messenger of the Old Testament prophetic books but he was tragically killed without a successor. The "historical Messiah" hoped for and prayed form since the days of Egypt which was hoped would come to rectify all wrongs done to the people of Israel by the Gentiles and who was hoped to once again bring forth an age of bliss and harmony between man and God was killed as had been the one remembered from Egypt long ago; the historical Son of God Tutankhamun (the historical Joshua-Jesus of the 18th Dynasty).
John's baptist movement aroused such enthusiasm, and such a large following, that Herod Antipas, the Tetrarch of Galilee and son of Herod the Great, fearing that John the Baptist might become a rallying point for Jewish dissidence, had him arrested, imprisoned, and later executed. Had Herod Antipas not made this decision, the story of Jesus of Nazareth would almost certainly never have been written for the life and violent death of John the Baptist are the cornerstone on which it rests (Ahmed Osman, Jesus In The House Of The Pharaohs, p. 43-44).
As you might imagine the killing of John the Baptist was a severe blow to his followers and, in particular, his Essene disciples, who were anxious to prove that John's message about the return of the Messiah had been right. In the wake of his death and with the perils of Rome at their doorstep they not only continued with his teachings but claimed that his prophecy had been fulfilled and they had witnessed this "Jesus" (Ibid).
But no one alive had seen this person and no contemporary of this time period saw him or heard of him as well not wrote of him as we have noted. As nobody else had seen him, their story was not believed and it was generally thought that the person who had risen from the dead was actually John as the New Testament informs us. In the New Testament telling evidence is seen as we find two references to this belief in the Gospel of Mark after the disciples had been sent out two by two to preach repentance:
Mark 6:14 14 And king Herod heard of him; (for his name was spread abroad:) and he said, That John the Baptist was risen from the dead, and therefore mighty works do shew forth themselves in him. (KJV)
Mark 6:16 16 But when Herod heard thereof, he said, It is John, whom I beheaded: he is risen from the dead. (KJV)
Osman makes a very good point in his book when he mentions that in the Gospel of Mark an important admission is made to the fact that nobody apart from the disciples knew of this "supposed historical Jesus". This should make you wonder why if this Jesus had a 3 year ministry in the Gospel of John or at least a one year ministry as attested by the Synoptic Gospel writers where he traveled all through Israel preaching "the Gospel" why the masses were unaware of just who he was.
Mark 8:27-30 27 And Jesus went out, and his disciples, into the towns of Caesarea Philippi: and by the way he asked his disciples, saying unto them, Whom do men say that I am? 28 And they answered, John the Baptist: but some say, Elias; and others, One of the prophets. 29 And he saith unto them, But whom say ye that I am? And Peter answereth and saith unto him, Thou art the Christ. 30 And he charged them that they should tell no man of him. (KJV)
This is not only an important admission but the answer we get from Peter is very telling as well.
Answer for yourself: Why is Peter reported to have said "the Christ" rather than "Jesus"? Was this whole story really the story of the Gnostic allegorical "Christ Within" later literalized when Rome wrote their "literalized" account of the Christ as Jesus?
Let us not forget that the New Testament relates to us that John never claimed to be the Christ and, once John's disciples asserted after his death that this Jesus had been a contemporary of John's and they had seen him but others had not then the only course open to them was to "resurrect" the Jesus whose memory had been preserved down the centuries by the Prophets drawing off the legacy of the slain Tutankhamun who was expected to return by his followers since he was for them their "historical Teacher of Righteousness".
But there is something else we need to mention before we close this article.
Acts 18:24-25 24 And a certain Jew named Apollos, born at Alexandria, an eloquent man, and mighty in the scriptures, came to Ephesus. 25 This man was instructed in the way of the Lord; and being fervent in the spirit, he spake and taught diligently the things of the Lord, knowing only the baptism of John. (KJV)
Answer for yourself: Why had not Apollos who in 53 A.D. traveled to the same cities that had been visited frequently by Paul for some twenty years by now not heard of the baptism of this Jesus whom Paul preached? Could it be that Paul did not preach a "historical Jesus" but the "Gnostic Christ Within"? Is this possible? It sure is since modern scholars teach us today that although 2/3 of the New Testament is today writings that are believed by Roman tradition to be written by Paul the truth is that the real Paul only wrote 7 authentic epistles and them there is not any mention of a "virgin birth" not a "fleshly historical Jesus". The Gnostic Marcion which never believed in a "historical Jesus and whom Rome hated and worked so diligently to destroy along with his First New Testament for some 5 centuries advocated this Paul as the only apostle who knew the Christ. I found in my through studies abundant evidence to the fact that Rome would later "back write" the Second New Testament and created in the names of long dead Jewish dignitaries a completely fabricated "historical Jesus" and it is these documents that we have sadly read our whole lives which has so tragically misrepresented this Christ to us today. The undeniable factual evidence is on our Gnostic New Testament website.
Apollos knew of John the Baptist and his form of baptism of repentance but had he known of Jesus of Nazareth, who supposedly lived at the same time as John, he would also have known the new meaning that was attached to the baptism employed by the Palestinian Church in Jesus' name but curiously he did not. This is damaging information if you give it some thought that casts a dark cloud over the knowledge of the existence of a "historical Jesus" in the mid first century. This being the case if you think with me for a second then it is curious that three of the Gospels should give an account of Jesus being baptized by John and not the other way around. The logical inference from the story of John the Baptist is that his disciples, following his death, took the "Joshua-Jesus" of the Essenes, who was a contemporary of Moses who was slain by a wicked priest on the eve of the Passover, placed him in their oral tradition in the first century A.D. and, in so doing established him as a historical character, and related their tradition& the events of his life which we have seen are basically personified Astronomy and prior stories of the Sungods to those of John the Baptist. In so doing they created a "historical Joshua-Jesus" which later Rome elaborates upon as this oral tradition finds a life of its own in Rome's Second New Testament.
To any Christian, such a discovery would have been exciting indeed but at the same time most challenging to say the least for most Christians have been taught by Rome to put their faith and trust in an Eternal Life upon the Roman revelation of Jesus and not the "Jewish revelation" of "Jesus". The two are not the same as related above and that is what I began to discover in Seminary and that provoked me to such study to find out the truth behind the "Jesus Story" I inherited from Rome. For de Vaux and his colleagues, working as representative of the Roman Catholic Church, it must have seemed as though they were handling the spiritual and religious equivalent of dynamite; something that might just conceivably shake the very foundations of the entire edifice of Christian teaching and belief. I know I have been shaken by what I found; in fact it finally led to my resignation as a Pastor when I could not longer let my presence there justify all the "untruths" coming from the pulpit although my classes were having "their eyes opened". It led me to Judaism which is the faith of Moses and the religion handed down since Egypt that teaches that no man is God unlike Rome's Jesus but rather God lives and inhabits all mankind and that we are responsible to Him for righteous living by following the pattern of God's Law and Commandments. Amen!
In summary, Christianity today was birthed to a large degree from Essenic Judaism. Geza Vermes of Oxford University believes that "Essene" is derived from the Aramaic word "assayya", which means "healers". This fits in well many who believe the Essenes were medical practitioners. Remember the healing that are a trademark of the Messianic Community of Jesus in the first century, not to mention Luke, who was a "physician". Although the Qumran community never referred to themselves as "Essenes" or "assayya", they do employ a number of other Hebrew and Aramaic terms. They were the "people of the Covenant", which entailed a formal oath of obedience, totally and eternally, to the Law of Moses. The authors of the Scrolls would refer to themselves as "Keepers of the Covenant". As synonym for "Covenant" and "Law", they would often use words such as "way", "work", or "works". In acts the followers of Christ were called the "way". They would speak of "the Perfect of the Way", or "Way of Perfect Righteousness", where "way" meant "works of the Law." Among the terms by which the Qumran community referred to themselves was "Keepers of the Covenant", which appears in the original Hebrew as "Nozrei ha-Brit". From this term derives the word "Nozrim", one of the earliest Hebrew designations for the sect subsequently known as "Christians". The word "Nazorean" or "Nazarene" derive from "Nozrim" or "Keepers of the Covenant", which was the name by which the "Early Christians" referred to themselves in both the Gospels and the Acts of the Apostles. Contrary to the assumption of later tradition, it has nothing whatever to do with Jesus' alleged upbringing in Nazareth, which, the evidence (or lack of it) suggest. The city of Nazareth did not even exist at the time of Jesus's birth! It was the perplexity of early commentators encountering the unfamiliar term "Nazorean" that led them to conclude Jesus family came from Nazareth, which by them had disappeared on the map. It is not startling that the early believers in Yeshua were "Keepers of the Covenant" (obeyed the Law). Thus the "Essenes" are one and the same with the "Nozrei ha-Brit", the "Nozrim", the "Nasrani" and the "Nazoreans". You can easily see that different designations were used for the same people. It would seem that the Qumran community was equivalent to the "Early Church" based in Jerusalem - the "Nazoreans" who followed James, the Lord's brother. Notice also that in Acts 9:2, the members of the "Early Church" are specifically referred to as "followers of the Way" - a phrase identical with Qumran usage. Variations of these terms run all through the Dead Sea Scrolls to signify the Qumran community and its members.
This article is intended to alert readers to what lies buried in our lack of knowledge of the events that are going on around us outside our narrow minded church doors. The impact of the Dead Sea Scrolls, along with information from the Talmud as well as the Nag Hammadi Library are literally blowing the doors off the Roman lies that have pushed down our throats for 2000 yrs only to be reinforced by forgery of the historical events as detailed in Rome's New Testament. Ironically archeology today shows that that our New Testament we have today is not the first New Testament written but again a forgery of an earlier New Testament that existed as late as the 5th century when the final Gnostic Bibles and churches vanished from the earth. Today we are so fortunate and blessed to have restored to us this knowledge through the hard work of men and women archeologists who are literally digging these things up for us to behold. I cannot not speak for my readers but I want the truth for God does for He tells us that he does and any lies behind this Roman "Jesus Story" which are believed by the gullible and uninformed is an abomination to the Lord:
Prov 12:17 17 He that speaketh truth sheweth forth righteousness: but a false witness deceit. (KJV)
Ps 85:11 11 Truth shall spring out of the earth; and righteousness shall look down from heaven. (KJV)
Prov 12:17 17 He that speaketh truth sheweth forth righteousness: but a false witness deceit. (KJV)
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