Miracles of the Gods: A New Look at the Supernatural (157 page)

Chapter 7 of Book II of The Jewish War [15], he gives details of this religious community which I quote literally:

Among the Jews there are three schools of thought, whose adherents are called Pharisees, Sadducees and Essenes respectively. The Essenes profess a severer discipline: they are Jews by birth and are particularly attached to each other ... Scorning wedlock, they select other men's children while still Pliable and teachable, and fashion them after their own pattern. Contemptuous of wealth ... their rule is that novices admitted to the sect must surrender their property to the order ... When adherents arrive from elsewhere, all local resources are put at their disposal as if they were their own ... In dress and personal appearance they are like children in the care of a stern tutor. Neither garments nor shoes are changed till they are dropping to pieces or worn out with age. ... The priest says grace before meat ...

After breakfast he offers a second prayer ... (only) two things are left entirely to them ... personal aid, and charity ... they champion good faith and serve the cause of peace ... They are wonderfully devoted to the works of ancient writers, choosing mostly books that can help soul and body ... they ... conquer pain by sheer will-power: death, if it comes with honour, they value more than life without end. Their spirit was tested to the utmost by the war with the Romans, who racked and twisted, burnt and broke them, subjecting them to every torture yet invented to make them blaspheme the Lawgiver or eat some forbidden food, but could not make them do either, or ever once fawn on their tormentors or shed a tear.... It is indeed their unshakeable conviction that bodies are corruptible and the material composing them impermanent, whereas souls remain immortal for ever. ... Some of them claim to foretell the future ... rarely if ever do their predictions prove wrong ...

Flavius Josephus, who wrote these words in A.D. 77, knew all this about the Essenes, because, by his own account, he himself had lived among them for three years. It is highly probable that he also knew the written traditions and leather scrolls from about 100 B.C. which the community had packed in jars and hidden in nearby caves during a rebellion that threatened them [66].

This theological bomb with a time-fuse of 2,000 years exploded. In 1947 the original documents hidden by the Essenes, now known as 'The Dead Sea Scrolls' [16], were found by accident in caves at Wadi Qumran. Since then they have had an unshakeable place in theological historical literature.

Heinrich Alexander Stoll has told the whole exciting story of the Qumran texts in the book The Caves by the Dead Sea [l7]. This incredibly valuable Manual of Discipline, already supplied with commentaries by the Essenes (!), found its way half-way round the world, was appraised in universities and monasteries until it came into the good hands of objective scholars such as Professor Andre Dupont-Sommer [18] and Professor Millar Burrows, after all kinds of intrigues and haggling

[19].

The translations of the Qumran Scrolls show quite unequivocally that vital parts of the Gospels originated from the Essene school: that Jesus' style and way of life followed the customs of the Essenes and that parables, such as Jesus used, indeed whole sermons attributed to him, had been taught by the Essenes long before him.

Textual comparisons of the Qumran Scroll and the New Testament would be recognized and confirmed as clearly tallying with one another by any normal court of law - not so by Christian theologians. As if there was something reprehensible about the remarks of Jesus of Nazareth or