The Gnostics and the Essenes

The Gnostics and the Essenes

Gnosticism was widespread and must have been influenced from several sources. Judaism, Christianity, Persian religion and Greek philosophy can all be seen in Gnosticism, but its fount was in Jewish alienation and pessimism with the world and God. The place where these strands meet is in Essenism. 

The heart of apocalyptic belief is the notion that the world is evil. God would destroy it and thus destroy all evil but then renew the world, resurrecting righteous people into this renovated world—a perfect world, a heaven on earth. Essene belief was that Good and Evil forces were engaged in perennial conflict but eventually would come the End Time, preceded by identifiable signs. Then would begin Armageddon, a forty year battle, on earth and in the heavens, which concluded when God intervened on the side of the righteous. A messianic prince on earth would lead the fight and God would send his archangel Michael with a host of angels to end it. 

The fact that links the Essenes to Gnostics is the failure of God to fulfil His promises. The apocalypse which would save the Jews from oppression, and turn the tables to make them the emperors of the world, never came. The apocalyptic sects felt they had tried repeatedly to show to God that they spurned the invaders but God refused to act. The destruction of the temple in 70 AD and then its razing in 136 AD led the despairing apocalyptic Jews to reject their god. He had rejected them proving that he was a false god after all. When continual destruction led to no renewal or resurrection, it required merely an extension of the evil into the realms of the spirit world to explain that God had failed because he was deceitful. 

We can see evolution of this in the New Testament. In 2 Thessalonians 2:2 Paul is apocalyptic, telling the Thessalonians not to think that the Day of the Lord had yet come. In later writings he becomes increasingly Gnostic (see below). Both Paul and John dilute the apocalyptic idea of the coming of the kingdom of God in favour of individual spiritual salvation like that of the Gnostics. 

Like Christianity, the Gnostic sects became strongly anti–Jewish, but Christianity retained the Jewish scriptures as they were—even finding far more messianic prophecies than the Jews had ever noticed—whereas the Gnostics reinterpeted and re–wrote the legends to suit their new pessimism. 

The Essenes were experts in seeking hidden things in the scriptures, and in their despair and disillusion might have used their skills for radical re-interpretations. Instead of heaven coming to earth as the kingdom of God, it was up to individuals to seek it in another space or level—a spiritual place. There was no hope on earth. The Zealots, according to Josephus, came to doubt that God had ever lived in His house—the temple. Since Zealots seem to have been a branch of the Essenes, they were already part way to rejection of Judaism in believing that the priests of the Jerusalem temple were delinquent or froward priests. In their disappointment it was perhaps only a small step to believe that the priests' employer, God, was a delinquent god. The failure of their expectations led to their disillusionment with their former beliefs and then a reaction against them. 

Gnostics had lost faith in Yehouah as the Most High God and abandoned the law of Moses. Some even denied resurrection, suggesting some had their origins in the temple priesthood, the Saducees. The God of the Jews, the creator, was accursed in Gnosticism because he created the world full of difficulties, tragedies and hurts, and because he sent tedious laws that had to be obeyed, just to make life difficult. The messiah, who was to redeem or save, that is free, Israel from foreign bondage, became a mystical Saviour or Redeemer. And so he has remained. 

Among Essene splinter groups some recognized Jesus as a saviour, and some came to reject the Jewish intrerpretations of scripture. In this confusion, Gnosticism grew, especially when it attracted gentiles who had no cultural attachment to the Hebrew god. The seekers of hidden things sought to reinterpret scriptures such that a redeeming figure identifiable with Jesus came into a wicked world to save it from those that had made it wicked and held mankind in bondage in it. The redeemer of every Gnostic sect is Jesus Christ or someone similar, apparently confirming what Hippolytus had asserted—Gnosticism came out of the sect of the Nazarenes. 

Justin of Samaria, an early Christian writer, lists as well as Sadducees and Pharisees, Galilaeans as a Jewish sect related to Baptists, Genistae, Meristae, and Hellenians. The Genistae and Meristae seem to have been dualistic sects, presumably influenced by Persian religion and the Hellenians must have been those influenced by Greeks like the Hellenistic camp of the Nazarenes. 

The Jewish Christian writer Hegesippus, according to Eusebius, says James the Just discussed Jesus with seven Jewish sects, Essenes, Galilaeans, Hemerobaptists, Masbotheans, Samaritans, Sadducees and Pharisees. Mostly they rejected Jesus’s resurrection and his return as the Melchizedek. James fought a constant battle against the Hellenists in the Nazarene movement, who certainly believed it, and ultimately, Jewish Christianity factionalized and out of it came gentile Christianity and Gnosticism. 

Angelology

Nearly all the ingredients later found in Gnosticism were already present in the life and literature of the Essenes. The dualism of Gnosticism is present in the scrolls. The cosmic battle they expected to start by engaging the men of darkness never started. They reasoned that if they, the righteous had done what was needed to trigger the battle, but no hosts of angels had arrived with the archangel Michael to defeat the evil hosts of Belial, despite repeated revisions of their interpretations, then the only explanation was that there were no good angels—all angels were evil and manipulated men for their evil ends. Essenes had seen the calendar as of vital importance and remained sure that the escape route for good men must be in the heavens. 

The influence of Persian religion on Gnostic mythology is strong as it was in the scrolls of the Dead Sea and it seems to be a continuation and extension of the influence of exile on Judaism. After the disappointments of the failed apocalypses, it seems some of the sages looked again to the east for inspiration in the reinterpretation of the scriptures. The idea that the world was created by angels, and not God, is Persian and cannot be explicitly found in Jewish mythology, though there were hints that mankind was an angelic creation, and that angels had handed down the Law (Jub 1:27; see also Gal 3:19, Acts 7:53, Heb 2:2). In Ezekiel 40:3, Zechariah 1:9 and Daniel 9:22 there are angels which inspire prophecy. 

Gnosticism has seven spirits which seem to echo the seven archangels of Tobit, the Testament of Levi, Enoch and the Apocalypse of John. The original seven were not antagonistic to mankind but that is how they became in Gnosticism. They must have come to believe this in their despair because in Enoch the seven planets transgress the commandments of God and have to be punished, and in the Testament of Reuben seven spirits appear which seem to oppress man. 

In the Greek philosophic religion of Platonism, the seven planets are gods and an eigth force is a "power from above" which enfolds the others. In the Timaeaus by Plato, the Demiurge who is the creator, does not make men because if he had they would have been immortal so he leaves it to lesser spirits who make men out of the four elements. The Demiurge sends immortal souls down for them but the material being of mankind is corruptible and the seat of pleasure and pain. 

In Persian religion, the Supreme God, Ormuzd, is opposed by Ahriman who creates, according to Putarch, six more minor gods (angels) hostile to Ormuzd. Plutarch tells us that Ahriman represents darkness and ignorance. In the Apocryphon of John, Ialdabaoth is the First Archon of Darkness, an ignorant god with the form of a lion and a snake. The evil god, Ahriman, was always depicted in Mithraic imagery as being a lion headed figure in the coils of a snake. The spirit of the archangel Michael was associated with a lion and that of the archangel Raphael with a snake. The Apocryphon says Ialdabaoth set the seven spirits to rule over the planets and the days of the week. 

Ahriman was the model of the Jewish Satan or Belial, as the Essenes knew him. In the Jewish religion he was never the equal of God but a rogue angel acting in defiance of God and, in the scrolls, his challenge is serious enough to lead to a cosmic conflict which is only defeated by God’s will. Belial leads all the sons of darkness and in the New Testament opposes Jesus, tempting him. Paul (2 Cor 4:4) calls Satan "the god of this age", and John (12:31; 14:30; 16:11) calls him "the Archon of the world". In John’s gospel Jesus can tell the Jews that their Father is not God but the devil, apparently identifying the Hebrew God with Satan. 

There seems to be some justification for this in the scriptures when 1 Chronicles 21:1 is compared with 2 Samuel 24:1. The scribe of Chronicles has realized that the people were not to be numbered and so has Satan not God telling David to number the people. The scribe of Samuel has the original story, the rule against numbering the people being a much later introduction than the time of David anyway. When the two are seen side by side it sems that God is Satan, just the sort of discovery relished by those who were seeking hidden things. 

Furthermore Jubilees, beloved of the Essenes, seems to make God the pawn of the evil angel, Mastema. The writer is trying to save God the responsibility of some hostile acts in the scriptures but only succeeds in leaving opportunities for Gnostic exegesis. Jubilees also tells us that Moses wrote the Torah under the influence of an angel. Finally the many names of God in the scriptures, partly the result of the merging of different religious traditions in ancient times, leaves a perfect opportunity for reinterpreters to see them all as different entities—the recreation of an angelic pantheon from the one god. 

Since the authorities of Judaism had been scattered after the uprising, there was no adequate way of controlling the speculation that became rife. Thus creation stories refer to Yehouah and Elohim and elsewhere they are called angels, not names of God. In Exodus 4:4 Gnostics thought Yehouah tried to kill Moses with a serpent, so seemed hostile. So, the world was created by angels and at least one of them seemed to be unfriendly. This one fooled the Jews into believing that he was their god, but really he was Satan as the scriptures prove. 

For the despairing the world was evil because its creators in heaven were evil. The Supreme God lived at higher levels that had to be ascended into. The Essenes seemed to believe that the soul would be reborn into a renovated body when the kingdom came. In Baruch however the body was a new one. Josephus said the Essenes believed the soul was immortal and glad to be free of the confines of the body. Once dreams of the kingdom were dashed, dreams of resurrection had to be abandoned. The immortal soul had to aspire to something else—the ascent to the highest heaven. The Testament of Levi, 2 Enoch and 2 Baruch all have this idea. The highest heaven in 2 Esdras 7:88–99 is the seventh where the spirit can see the face of God. Jewish thought and Greek thought met just as Persian thought and Greek thought met to produce Mithraism. 

The Greek word "archons" simply means rulers but in Gnostic mythology they are the evil rulers of the lower levels of existence. Philo says that the planets were archons of the heavens. The psalms speak explicitly of archons and says that they are hostile to God, probably meaning the rulers of the nations that were the enemies of the Jews but interpreted by Gnostics to be wicked angels. In the Greek of Psalms 24, archons seem to be lifting up eternal gates to let the king of glory enter. Ascending spirits had to know the archons of the various heavens so that they could be addressed by name. Paul claims with false modesty in 2 Corinthians 12:2–4 that he has ascended to the third heaven. Josephus tells us that the Essenes had to know the names of the angels. Magical passwords were also needed and some Gnostic sects like the Ophites took with them to the grave Gnostic jewels with magical inscriptions. 

The Gnostic believer had the spark and waited for it to return, following the route of the Saviour, to the higher level. meanwhile he had to avoid being controlled by demons; he had to remain celibate, free of the taint of women; and many such avoided meat like the Orphics. 

Why was there a belief that Christ had descended from the higher spheres? Paul in 1 Thessalonians 4:16 says he would descend again in the future (cf Phil 3:20) presumably because his resurrection and ascension had placed him in heaven. In Ephesians 4:8–10, in an exegesis of Psalms 68:18, the descent is taken to be implied by the ascent. John 3:13 also says the Son of man has descended. In the scriptures, emanations of God dwell on earth—the name of God (Jer 7:12; Ezek 43:7; Ps Sol 7:5) and the Wisdom of God (Sirach 24:3,8; 1 Enoch 42:2 ; the Book of Wisdom 7:27). The Jews call these the Shekinah or the Presence of God which in the Rabbinic tradition appeared ten times on earth. These notions explain John and Paul’s belief that Jesus as an aspect of God could descend to earth. Jesus was commonly considered the Name in the first century as the Didache and the Shepherd of Hermas show. 

But pre–Christian Jewish literature does not have the idea that the messiah will descend from heaven. For the Essenes there was perhaps an implication that because heaven and earth became one, the messiah as the leader of the earthly hosts would conjoin with the archangel Michael as leader of the heavenly hosts to form the Melchizedek. 

More extensions of Essene thought occur in the contrast between the fall of Adam who wanted to be like God (Gen 3:5) and was punished by toil and labour for his presumption and Jesus who was humble enough to suffer the degration of a felon and be rewarded by God as the Name above all (Phil 2:6–11). Jesus was not a pre–existent Name and so the Name was a reward though he might have had the honour beforehand because in 2 Corinthians 8:9 Paul says Jesus was rich and became poor for mankind’s sake. There is a lot here about Essene humility and the idea that seniority depended upon service so that the last (most humble) were first. 

Post–exilic Judaism had a strongly dualist tendency which appears most strongly in the scrolls. In Persian religion the Supreme God originally had two apects, good and evil and Mithras was the corpus callosum between them, but later Ahriman as darkness and evil developed into the adversary of Mithras who was the sun and therefore goodness and light. In Jewish dualism, God, like Ormudz, stood above the conflict of light and dark below because he had created them. The ethical dualism between good and evil of the Essenes which led to the victory of good and the kingdom of God was replaced in Gnosticism by the notion that the lower levels of the world were themselves dark and evil and the enemy of God. In Persian religion the element of free–will was pronounced—men chose between the two spirits. In Essenism, men were born with varying degrees of goodness and wickedness within them but could achieve salvation—entry into god’s kingdom—by good works and submission to the grace of God. God decided, but he was just and a life of good works could overcome one’s intinsic badness. In Christianity men are intrinsically bad because of the original sin of Adam but works do not save them, only the acceptance of a faith in the Saviour, Christ. Gnosticism was similar. Men are intrinsically wicked but some of them have a spark of the divine and therefore can be saved. They show that they have the spark by believing in gnosis. 

Cerinthus was a Jew who identified Yehouah as an angel, the Supreme God being unknown. Thus the good God is disassociated from the evil world. Cerinthus accepted that Jesus was a man who had the special power of the Christ from his baptism. He did not accept that Jesus had yet been resurrected although he had been crucified. He would be resurrected along with others at the general resurrection, begin his reign on earht in Jerusalem where the Elect would enjoy banquets and marriages, pleasures and sacrifices. The kingdom would last a thousand years whereupon everything would be restored in some way (Irenaeus). This system has many features in common with Revelation and is quite close to the beliefs of the Essenes. Indeed Eusebius says Cerinthus not John was the auther of Revelation. The Jewish God is only an angel and the future king is Christ not God. It sounds like an intermediate step between Essenism and Gnosticism.