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Yeshua and the Essenes

The following information is from Jesus Within Judaism: New Light from Existing Archaeological Discoveries by James H. Charlesworth (pp. 70-71). The name “Jesus” in the original quote has been changed to “Yeshua” and the layout has been changed to highlight specific ideas.

Yeshua shared with the Essenes a theology that was thoroughly monotheistic (there is only one God) and eschatological (the present is the end of all time and history). 

It is misrepresentative to claim that the Essenes “thought of the present as the end-time, but they did not match Yeshua’s note of realized eschatology.”

Yeshua differed from the Essenes regarding the nature of the future, the understanding of the approaching Kingdom of God, and most significantly on how one must prepare for its coming.

The attempts to compare Yeshua with the Dead Sea Scrolls have foundered on numerous fallacies, misconceptions, improper methodologies, secondhand, even insufficient understandings of Yeshua and the Essenes, and misguided apologetics. To be specific, the most prominent, pervasive, and significant faults are the following:

(1) The desire to prove Yeshua is totally unique and the incarnate Son of God.

(2) The tendency to read red-letter New Testaments as if one has been given Yeshua’s unedited authentic words.

(3) The opinion that the Qumran Essenes over three centuries espoused the same theology and that those who went to Qumran in the middle of the second century BCE were the ones living there in the first century CE.

(4) The confusion of a search for a relationship with evidence of borrowing.

(5) The tendency to miscast the role of historian, who works only at best with probabilities, so that only what is a certainty is to be judged reliable.

An understanding of the Essenes, Sadducees, Pharisees, Herodians and Zealots enhances our ability to better understand the teachings of Yeshua by making us aware of the times he specifically addresses key points in their teachings.

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