What Manner of Man Is This?

By John W. Hawkins

Who was Jesus? Was he just a Jew who lived 2000 years ago? Was he God incarnate? Was he the Messiah, a teacher, a healer, a miracle worker or a world savior? He was all of these things, depending on what source you are using to define him. This book tells us about Jesus, perhaps the greatest man who ever lived among us, through a number of different, and often differing sources: (1) The Holy Bible - both Old and New Testaments; (2)modern scholars and historians who make frequent use of documents not discovered until the middle of the last century; (3)from the stories of people who knew him uncovered though the agency of past-life regressions; and 4)from two well-known twentieth century psychics, Edgar Cayce and Levi Dowling who obtained their information from what they called the "akashic records". To supplement the material quoted herein footnotes are provided that list the author and publisher of more than sixty books used in doing research for this book.

• Language: English
• Publisher: Xlibris US
• Release date: Apr 15, 2009
• ISBN: 9781450081481

John W. Hawkins

The author has a degree in Business and Engineering from Massachusetts Institute of Technology. He is a charter member of the American Institute of Industrial Engineers and for a number of years worked as a registered professional engineer with a major oil company in Oklahoma and in Texas. He completed all his course requirements while living in Texas for an MBA degree majoring in Economics at Texas Tech but since he was successful in getting an attractive position with another oil company in Oklahoma he was unable to remain in Texas to complete all the requirements for his MBA degree. The author is a lifelong Episcopalian who has recently completed all four years of the church’s Education for Ministry program.

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Contents

Prologue

Underlying Philosophy

The Nature of God

The Heavenly Man

The Soul—A Missing Link

Pre-Birth Background

Previous Lives of the Master

Palestine Prior to His Birth

The Pre-Easter Jesus

His Conception

His Birth

His Early Years

His Ministry

His Last Week on Earth

The Post-Easter Jesus

His Empty Tomb and Resurrection

The Early Church

His Parousia

Epilogue

Appendices

A: Summary of Meeting Jesus Again for the First Time by Marcus Borg

B: Memorable Passages from the Epistles of St. Paul

C: Memorable Poems and Quotations

Dedication

To My Wife, Our Family 

And 

To All Our Many Friends 

When I look at Thy heavens, the work of Thy fingers,

The moon and the stars which Thou hast established; 

What is Man that Thou art mindful of him,

And the son of Man that thou dost care for him? 

Yet Thou hast made him but little less than God,

And does crown him with glory and honor. 

Thou hast given him dominion over the works of Thy hands;

Thou hast put all things under his feet, 

All sheep and oxen, and also the beasts of the field,

The birds of the air, and the fish of the sea,

And whatever passes along the paths of the sea. 

Oh LORD, our Lord, how majestic is Thy name in all the earth! 

Psalm 8 

Prologue

Several years ago one of my daughters sent me a book by Marcus J. Borg entitled, Meeting Jesus Again for the First Time. It was being used on a chapter by chapter basis as a Lenten study guide by her church. Since they had just begun to discuss the book, she thought I might like to offer my thoughts on each chapter of it also in order to help her assimilate the material. It turned out to be an eye-opener for me as well. So I then resolved, in a more leisurely fashion, to put some of my own thoughts on paper about this extraordinary man, Jesus of Nazareth. As is my wont before starting to write about any subject, I began to do background reading on what others had to say about Jesus in order to put Dr. Borg’s rather unconventional views into perspective

The first book I turned to was from my own library, one that I had also received several years earlier from one of my children, who I suspect was trying to steer my penchant for including Eastern religious beliefs in my previous essays back into the Christian mainstream. This one, which I had never read, was entitled, The Jesus I Never Knew, by Philip Yancey. Although similar to the title of Dr. Borg’s book, he comes at the subject from an entirely different viewpoint. Unlike Dr. Borg, a Jesus scholar who has his doctorate degree in New Testament from Oxford in England and who has taught religion at the university level for a number of years, Philip Yancey is a Christian journalist, formerly editor of Campus Life magazine, an official publication of Youth for Christ. He also attended a Bible college and has taught Christian classes at LaSalle Street Church in Chicago. However, he has an engaging writing style and articulates the traditional Christian message with considerable skill and knowledge. One of the reviewers of the book states on the back cover: In a day when novel ideas about Jesus are all the rage, Yancey’s pages offer major help for seeing the Savior as he really was. Similarly, Billy Graham weighs in by saying: There is no writer in the evangelical world that I admire and appreciate more.

Next I checked out a book from our local library that was co-authored by Marcus Borg and N. Thomas Wright, Dean of Litchfield Cathedral in England, entitled: The Meaning of Jesus—Two Visions. This book, on a chapter by chapter basis, contrasts the very different views of modern scholarship and traditional ecclesiastical exegesis about both the pre-Easter Jesus (the man) and the post-Easter Jesus (the Christ). Interestingly, both Borg and Wright obtained their doctorates in New Testament at Oxford University in England at the same time. To round out my background reading I chose another unread book from my library by Donald Spoto (a Roman Catholic, who was once a monk). This book, The Hidden Jesus: A New Life, was also an eye-opener. Although known primarily for his fifteen biographies and a dynamic history of the Royal Family in England, he completed The Hidden Jesus after being a book in progress for almost twenty years Dr. Spoto received both his masters and doctors degrees in New Testament theology from Fordham University and taught theology, Christian mysticism and biblical literature at the university level before turning to full-time writing of his well-known biographies in 1976.

His thesis, in a nutshell, is that it matters little about who the historical Jesus was (who, he believes, was probably born in Nazareth and not in Bethlehem), his alleged miracles, etc. What really matters is who He (the hidden Jesus) is right now and forever as He lives in the lives of those who seek Him. Every moment of every day in what we call the passing of time is embraced by the eternal present of the Resurrection of Jesus.1

Dr. Borg makes a similar point in the concluding sentence of his book, Meeting Jesus Again for the First Time, when he states: for ultimately, Jesus is not simply a figure of the past, but a figure of the present: Meeting that Jesus—the living Jesus who comes to us even now—will be like meeting Jesus again for the first time.2

Still, I was curious to know more about the historical Jesus and what we could learn about him from those who had studied in-depth what it was like to be a Jew in Palestine 2,000 years ago. So I purchased three VCR tapes comprising a series of programs hosted by Frontline on PBS entitled, The Lives of Jesus (Episode 1—Jesus the Jew; Episode 2—Jesus the Rebel; and Episode 3—the Hidden Jesus). One of the people featured in that series was the historian, Paula Fredriksen, who not only had an in-depth knowledge of the history of the area where Jesus was born, raised, taught and died 2,000 years ago but had also written a recent book about him, which I then purchased to supplement the material included in the TV series.3

An excerpt from the introduction to her second edition will give you a flavor of her approach to what the preoccupations of Jews were in Palestine during the time period when Jesus lived and the culture that surrounded the early Christian community following his death and resurrection.

"Ancient people in general, ancient Jews in particular, lived in a world radically different from our own, a world where leprosy and death defiled, where ashes and water made clean, and where one drew near the altar of God with purifications, blood offerings and awe . . . . I incline now to see the message of biblical redemption as the fundamental factor shaping Jesus’ mission and his supporters’ response to him. Both he and they exist as points along an arc that stretches roughly from the Maccabees [168-37 B C] to the Mishna [circa 200 AD], from the prophesies of Daniel through the letters of Paul, from the later books of the classical prophets in the Jewish cannon (Isaiah, Jeremiah, Ezekiel) to the Book of Revelation, which concludes the New Testament. It is the arc of a biblical perspective on God and history that scholars have labeled apocalyptic eschatology; the belief that God is good, that he will not countenance evil indefinitely, that in the End he will act to restore and redeem. This is what binds Jesus to his predecessors (like the Baptizer), his supporters, and his later apostles (like Paul). No sketch of the economic conditions of Galilee can have a sufficient or convincing explanatory effect on all the data . . . . in the way these biblical apocalyptic commitments do."4

This perspective from a well-known historian that what matters most in writing about Jesus is what people before and after him believed about God and redemption expanded my thinking about the scope of this essay. I then decided I should include beliefs about God, the controversy over whether Jesus was God incarnate or only an exceptional man, and the parousia (i.e., Christ’s second coming) in addition to the circumstances surrounding his birth, early life, ministry, crucifixion and resurrection. But viewing these tapes about Jesus and reading more about what modern scholars have learned about him from a critical analysis of the Gospel accounts and recently discovered other documents required another reassessment of the scope of this essay. There were two major finds of old documents beginning around the middle of the twentieth century that set biblical scholars and academicians back on their heels regarding their previous assumptions and conjectures about the history of the pre-Christian era and the written material that was circulated among Christian groups in the years following Jesus’ death and resurrection.

The first major discovery of old documents was found in 1945 by an Arab peasant and his brother in Upper Egypt near the village of Nag Hammadi. Digging around the base of a large boulder they discovered an earthenware jar about a meter in height that contained thirteen papyrus books bound in leather and a number of loose papyrus leaves. Not realizing their worth, most of the loose leaves were used along with straw as kindling to start a fire for the oven in their home. The first Western scholar to examine one of the bound manuscripts was astonished when he translated the first line of the document written in the Coptic language: These are the secret words which the living Jesus spoke, and which the twin, Judas Thomas, wrote down.5 This document, entitled the Gospel of Thomas, contained many sayings known from the New Testament gospel accounts but contained other passages that differed entirely from any know Christian tradition.6 Yet, even though a number of the loose papyrus leaves had been inadvertently burned, this manuscript was only one of fifty-two texts discovered at Nag Hammadi.

Why were these texts buried and why have they remained virtually unknown for nearly 2,000 years? Their suppression as banned documents, and their burial on the cliff at Nag Hammadi, it turns out, were both part of a struggle critical for the formation of early Christianity.7 It also turns out that many of these early documents were written or transcribed by early (mostly Jewish) Christians known as Gnostics. What they revealed was an interpretation of the teachings of Jesus that were often at variance with those documents being circulated by the followers of Peter, Paul and others that came to be part of the canon adopted by members of the Orthodox branch of the Christian church. All writings circulated by the Gnostic groups in Egypt were branded heresies by early Christian writers such as Ireneaus. By 200 AD Christianity had become an institution headed by a three-rank hierarchy of bishops, priests and deacons, who understood themselves to be the guardians of the only ‘true faith’. The majority of churches, among which the church of Rome took a leading role, rejected all other [than Orthodox] viewpoints as heresy.8

The second major discovery of old documents was made in 1947 by a young Bedouin shepherd in a limestone cave carved out of a cliff along the wadis that descend through the Judean wilderness near the Northwest bank of the Dead Sea. Between 1951 and 1956 ten more such caves containing documents were discovered, all of which came to be known as the Dead Sea Scrolls. The struggle to let scholars and other interested parties obtain photocopies of the many Hebrew and a few Aramaic documents and shreds of documents was a protracted one. Many of the documents were incomplete and thousands of fragments were found along with those that were found intact. In addition a number of documents were deliberately shredded by their Arab discoverers and sold piecemeal to the highest bidders. All told it is estimated that the number of fragments from the eleven caves totaled more than 100,000.

It took a number of years even after photocopies were made available to establish which fragments went with which manuscripts and then to sort them in the proper sequence in order to recover the original text. The problem of publication was further impeded by a change in legal control when all the scroll fragments housed in the Palestine Archaeological Museum came under the control of the Israel Department of Antiquities9 following the occupation of East Jerusalem by the Israelis after the Six Day War in 1967. Finally, and certainly not least, the publication of the scrolls was impeded by what one scholar called the academic scandal par excellence of the twentieth century10 :Lack of organization and [an] unfortunate choice of collaborators . . . ,[the secrecy rule that restricted access to unpublished texts and many other academic shortcomings, finally led to the termination by the Israelis in 1990 of] the thirty-seven-year-old and ultimately disastrous reign of the international team.11

However, it didn’t take long after the original discovery of the first scrolls to determine that the religious community involved in secreting the documents was the ascetic Jewish sect of the Essenes.12 The first Qumran scrolls to reach the public [1951], and the archaeological setting in which they were discovered, echoed three striking Essene characteristics. [1] The Community Rule [manuscript], a basic code of sectarian existence, reflects Essene common ownership and celibate life, while [2] the geographical location of Qumran tallies with Pliny’s Essene settlement on the northwestern shore of the Dead Sea, south of Jericho. [3] The principal novelty provided by the manuscripts consists of cryptic allusions to the historical origins of the Community, launched by a priest called the Teacher of Righteousness, who was persecuted by a Jewish ruler, designated as the Wicked Priest. The Teacher and his followers were compelled to withdraw into the desert, where they awaited the impending manifestation of God’s triumph over evil and darkness in the end of days, which had already begun.13 These manuscripts helped pinpoint the timeline to which they refer as occurring between the dates of the Maccabean revolt in 167 B C and the independent rule by the Jewish Asmonean priests and princes until the arrival of Pompey in Jerusalem in 63 B C. Then the last vestige of Jewish semi-autonomy was crushed when the Roman army led by Titus utterly destroyed the second temple in Jerusalem in 70 AD and slaughtered or dispersed not only most of the Jews living in Jerusalem but throughout the whole of Palestine. Before that awful destruction, however, the Essenes climbed the nearby cliffs in order to hide away in eleven caves their precious scrolls. No one came back to retrieve them, and there they remained undisturbed for almost 2,000 years. Several other documents discovered previously to those at Qumran are now also believed by many to be of Essene origin. Two of these, The Book of Jubilees, and The Book of Enoch have long been known and a third, The Testaments of the Twelve Patriarchs was never lost. Since these documents are all believed to have been written at least a hundred years prior to the ministry of Jesus, it almost seems that he was following a script of the life lived earlier by an Essene prophet.

There is evidence which indicates that, about 70 B C or soon thereafter, an Essene prophet known as the Teacher of Righteousness had been put to death by the Jewish authorities because of doctrinal, ritualistic and organizational heterodoxy; that, in due course, his followers declared that he was God himself, appearing as a man in Jerusalem, and that his death was an atoning sacrifice for the elect; that he arose from the grave and returned to heaven; and that he would send a representative in a few years who would be precisely the kind of Messiah that Jesus at first proclaimed himself to be. It is [this author’s] belief that Jesus had for some years been a full-fledged member of the Order; and that, wholly persuaded that he was himself the Messiah expected by the Community, he left it and preached the Gospel to the public; and that finally, in a revised concept of his own mission, he declared himself to be the atoning Christ, re-enacted the role and the passion of the slain Teacher, and proclaimed that in his eschatological role he would reappear as the last judge and the all-powerful Son of Man.14

Even a better case can be made that Jesus’ cousin, John the Baptist, was an Essene. Many thoughtful students have in the past been convinced that both John and Jesus had been Essenes; and many more think so now. In fact, the evidence concerning the former seems in some respects even more conclusive. He proclaimed the imminent apocalyptic kingdom; he inducted his converts by baptismal ritual for the remission of sins; and he denounced his generation as one of vipers upon whom the vials of heavenly wrath would shortly be poured forth. He declared that the wicked would soon be consigned to the unquenchable flames; [and like the Essene Community] that every one should share his food and clothing with those less well supplied; and that equality, justice and pacifism must prevail.15

There are also a number of similarities between some of the early Jewish-Christian believers and the Essenes. After the destruction of the Jerusalem temple in 70 AD the Scribes and Pharisees continued as the rabbis of the Diaspora; and we may consider the Sadducees the forerunners of the Jewish merchants, traders, bankers, and money-lenders of the subsequent centuries. What then happened to the Men of the [Essene] Community? . . . . The only reasonable hypothesis seems to be that they came over to Christianity, either as individuals or in groups, some of them before, and many more soon after, the destruction of Jerusalem . . . . many of the early Christians were merely Essenes with a new name.16 Because many of these early Christians were originally Jews there was a considerable controversy, particularly concerning non-Jew Christians (i.e., Gentiles), as to whether they should continue Jewish dietary proscriptions and rituals such as circumcision.17 Not only did many Essenic Jews in and around Palestine become members of the early Christian church but there are some who believe that the Gnostics in Egypt were originally Jewish before they became Christian and very likely members of the Essenic sect of Judaism as well.18

Toward the close of the Asmonean Jonathan’s reign (143 B C) the historian, Josephus, wrote that At this time there were three sects among the Jews, who had different opinions concerning human actions; the one was called the sect of the Pharisees, another the sect of the Sadducees, and the other the sect of the Essens.19 During the entire period of Hellenic [Greek] domination of Egypt, the Middle and Near East, the Seleucids, with their capital at Antioch in Syria, and the Ptolemys, with their capital at Alexandria in Egypt, beginning with their young world conqueror, Alexander the Great, actively sought to Hellenize all the areas under their control. This involved not only their language, arts and architecture but also their Greek philosophy and culture. Each of the three major sects of Judaism absorbed some of these Greek beliefs and philosophy in addition to their traditional Judaic heritage. The noble, wealthy, and successful Jews [the Sadducees] had gradually absorbed the Epicurean philosophy and had continued to Hellenize throughout the Maccabean War . . . . The Pharisees based themselves upon the Yahweh prophets; effected an intricate elaboration of the Law; and drank of Zoroastrian metaphysics and Stoic philosophy. 20 Very different though were the Essenes; for, while purporting to accept both the Law and the prophets, they proceeded to create a revised law and other prophets and revelations of their own. They were neither rich nor powerful, like the Sadducees; nor were they popular or influential among the masses, like the Pharisees. Instead, they were nicknamed the Holy Ones, because, throughout all the phases of their evolution, they continued as the repository of dedicated faith.21 Their philosophy, like that of the Pharisees, contained elements derived from Persian Zoroastrianism but it also contained many elements similar to, if not identical, to the Greek Pythagoreans.

Pythagoras was the first in the western world who devised a complete synthesis incorporating the central religious elements of several dominant cultures. Before 540 [B C], he had traveled over the then-known world in his quest for esoteric knowledge: from Egypt, he derived the concept of the sacrificial savior-god; from Persia, the Zoroastrian doctrines of dualism and eschatology; from India, the tenets of incarnation, celibacy, communism, and holy poverty; and from the Chaldeans his astronomical theories. He also absorbed other elements from the various mystic-cults, particularly the Orphic. He then reconstituted all this into a harmonious system, the like of which had never before been seen.22

Perhaps the greatest difference, therefore, between the Pious Pharisees and the Holy Essenes in the years following their withdrawal to Qumran was the adoption of the rules, similar to those prescribed by the Pythagoreans, for becoming and being a member of the Community. Some of the similarities noted by Dr. Larson are as follows:23 

• Both required long novitiates (from three to five years) as prerequisites for full membership.

• Both exacted the most tremendous oaths enjoining irrevocable secrecy.

• Both were esoteric orders.

• Both had their own sacred and exclusive revelations and their own supreme prophets.

• Both established degrees or classes of membership.

• Both practiced the strictest community of goods.

• Both were self-supporting, independent communal organizations.

• Both require each candidate for membership to sell all his possessions and place the proceeds in escrow with the curator of the Order during his probationary period.

• In both, memberships dined at communal tables, where meals were eucharistic ceremonials.

• Both required that all participants wear white, linen robes at these rituals.

• Both despised earthly riches and condemned all personal ownership of property.

• Both enjoined a total love for, and interdependence upon, their brethren, but utter rejection of all others.

• Both had affiliated orders of Hearers, or secondary members, who accepted their beliefs as a theory, but did not live in communes or practice their celibate-communal discipline.

• Both condemned sex-desire and repudiated marriage.

• Both taught dualism, predestination, and human depravity.

• Both repudiated every form of animal sacrifice.

• Both practiced the most extreme personal frugality.

• Both were supreme pacifists, and died under torture rather than offer resistance to force or violence.

• Both considered themselves the elect of the Supreme God.

• Both realized an intense belief and conviction in a personal and happy immortality and looked forward to death with anticipation.

• Both taught that man’s soul, which is immortal, is placed in this life in a corruptible body, as in a prison; a theory taught also by the Platonists and in the Pauline literature.

• Both worshipped a sacrificed god-man.

• Both visited an unimaginably fierce condemnation upon apostates.

• Both disciplined members for minor violations of cultic rules and excommunicated them for major offenses.

• Both emphasized a dedication and separation which rendered them, as it were, a nation apart. 

All these similarities, and the many more that were listed by Dr. Larson, confirm the statement of Josephus that the Essenes (in their maturity) lived a Pythagorean life.24 It also explains why both Jesus and John the Baptist (who, as young men at least, were probably Essenes) were at odds with the teachings and practices of both the orthodox Pharisees and the Hellenizing Sadducees. It further explains why Jesus in the gospel accounts would speak to the people (i.e.,the uninitiated) in parables but explain their real meaning to his disciples in private. (He who has ears to hear, let him hear.) Likewise, Marcus Borg titles one of the chapters in his book: "Jesus—Teacher of Alternative Wisdom"25

In addition to the differences in philosophy between the various Jewish sects prior to and during the earthly life of Jesus there were major differences in philosophy in the post-Easter period between Gnostic Christians and those Christian groups established by Paul and many of the disciples that received the Holy Spirit on the day of Pentecost. By the time of Emperor Constantine’s conversion to Christianity in the fourth century AD "possession of books denounced as heretical was made a criminal offense. Copies of such books were burned and destroyed . . . . But those who wrote and circulated these texts did not regard themselves as heretics. Most of the writings use Christian terminology, unmistakably related to a Jewish heritage. Many claim to offer traditions about Jesus that are secret, hidden from ‘the many’ who constitute what, in the second century, came to be called the ‘catholic church.’ These Christians are now called gnostics, from the Greek word gnosis, usually translated as knowledge . . . . But gnosis is not primarily rational knowledge . . . As the gnostics use the term, we could translate it as insight, for gnosis involves an intuitive process of knowing oneself . . . Yet to know oneself, at the deepest level, is simultaneously to know God; this is the secret of gnosis."26 As a gnostic teacher named Monoimus puts it: 

Abandon the search for God and the creation and other matters of a similar sort. Look for him by taking yourself as the starting point. Learn who it is within you who makes everything his own and says, ‘My God, my mind, my thought, my soul, my body.’ Learn the sources of sorrow, joy, love, hate . . . If you carefully investigate these matters you will find him in yourself.27

Adherents of Eastern religions such as Hinduism and Buddhism would have no difficulty in accepting this gnostic teaching. Nor would nineteenth century Transcendentalists like Henry David Thoreau and Ralph Waldo Emerson; nor would twentieth century Christian existentialists like Paul Tillich and explorers of the unconscious mind like Carl Gustav Jung; nor would practitioners of New Age consciousness-raising programs such as transcendental meditation and A Course in Miracles28

With all these additional documents now available from the Dead Sea Scrolls and from the fifty-two texts discovered at Nag Hammadi it became apparent that it would not be possible to combine all these conflicting philosophies in an essay that presented only a single point of view. Therefore, I decided instead to present the various topics about God, the pre-Easter Jesus and the post-Easter Jesus and his parousia (his second coming) from several perspectives: (1) the familiar or orthodox viewpoint based on a literal reading of scriptures; (2) the more recent view of scholars who have taken into account both the Dead Sea scroll documents and those found at Nag Hammadi; and (3) the view obtained from material variously styled as wisdom, the mysteries, and from those claiming to be able to read the so-called akashic records.

Anyone who has read my previous essays will understand my predilection for looking at things in groups of three.29 While it is true there is only one ultimate reality, it manifests itself in triads: Body-Mind-Spirit; World-Man-God; subconsciousness-ego consciousness-superconsciousness; matter-light-energy; and so on. An analogy of trinities connected with the present essay can be seen in the three predominant Jewish sects at the time of Jesus’ birth: Sadducees, Pharisees and Essenes. As shown above, these groups respectively adopted some of the Greek philosophies of the Epicurians, the Stoics and the Pythagorians.30

The founder of Epicurianism was Epicurus (341-270 B C) who taught that there were only natural causes. Any belief in supernaturalism he regarded as a superstition which only a weak intellect could possibly entertain . . . . With Epicurus man’s chief end is the attainment of pleasure.31 Similarly, the Sadducees were the noble, wealthy, the merchants, and the worldly. Good and evil were the results of man’s own actions. Thus they didn’t believe in fate. Neither did they believe in an afterlife or in the resurrection of the dead. The Stoics, on the other hand, eschewed the sensual pleasures and emotional side of human nature and taught that one can achieve freedom and tranquility only by becoming insensitive to material comforts and external fortune and by dedicating oneself to a life of reason and virtue.32 Similarly, the Pharisees, unlike the Sadducees, viewed the material and sensual side of life as something to be subjugated and brought under control by reason and a virtuous life. Also, unlike the Sadducees, the Pharisees were interested not only in the scriptures contained in the first five books of the Old Testament (i.e., the Torah) but also considered authoritative the writings of the Prophets. In addition, they believed that Moses had not only promulgated the written Torah but also a body of oral law that interpreted the meaning of what was written. This oral law, called, ‘the tradition of the elders’, was eventually codified in the Mishnah . . . and finally came out in an expanded addition known as the Talmud.33 It was also a group of learned Pharisees who put their official stamp on the authorized canon of the Jewish scriptures at the Council of Jamnia about 90 AD.34 Closely allied with them were the scribes who made copies of the scriptures approved by the Pharisees. In the New Testament, therefore, Jesus often condemned both the Scribes and the Pharisees for their over-emphasis on outward behavior. We have already discussed above the close relationship of the philosophy and practices of the Essenes to those of the Greek Pythagorians. Thus, the Essenes clearly represented the inner, secret and esoteric knowledge revealed to only the relatively few men who after several years of probationary training and study were shown to be worthy of being fully admitted to their membership.

Now it can be seen why I suggested there was an analogy between the three sects of Judaism extant during the time of Jesus’ life on earth and the threefold division by which I plan to approach the sections of the body of this essay. The Sadducees, similar to the first proposed category, represent the Orthodox or conservative way of looking at things. Since they only accept as authentic the earliest scriptures as found in the Torah, they focused their beliefs on the literal words contained in only those scriptures and closed their minds to any other manuscripts or points of view (just as certain