Essenes, war and peace
Posted: Mon Feb 01, 2021 2:48 am
Gregory Doudna, when writing (at Vridar.org) about Josephus on Essenes, used the words “heriocly…heroic”—but those are Doudna’s words, and not those of Josephus. Giuseppe again parroted Doudna in an Christian thread, in which I argued that John the Essene is a misreading of John of Essa/Gerasa.
Essenes communed, stuck to themselves, believing that God and the angels were on their own side, not on the side of Jews generally, many of whom they thought did not truly observe Torah (’osey ha-torah, observers of Torah, is one of their self-designations and, some say, their name etymon). They were not “joiners.” No mention of them in the siege of Jerusalem. At Masada, according to Yadin and to Jodi Magness (her Masada book and NYU DSS zoom conference), and to the current excavator, Guy Stiebel, they huddled together in one place, where a ms of Songs of the Sabath Sacrifice, an angelic liturgy, was found. The John who wrote the Apocalypse also relied on god and angels to defeat the evil empire. (I published three articles related to this; two online by name search.) Reportedly (by Epiphanius) they fled to the east of the Jordan; Qumran then maybe was briefly occupied by zealots. Fled, not fought. (Philo, LCL IX, also presented them as the opposite of warlike—need I quote him?)
Essenes believed in fate, in predestination (Ant. 13. 171, 298 and 18. 11). War 2.152-3 “Smiling in their agonies and mildly deriding their tormenters, they cheerfully resigned their souls, confident that they would receive them again.” This is not “heroic” war-making. The applicable word is pacifism.
Essenes communed, stuck to themselves, believing that God and the angels were on their own side, not on the side of Jews generally, many of whom they thought did not truly observe Torah (’osey ha-torah, observers of Torah, is one of their self-designations and, some say, their name etymon). They were not “joiners.” No mention of them in the siege of Jerusalem. At Masada, according to Yadin and to Jodi Magness (her Masada book and NYU DSS zoom conference), and to the current excavator, Guy Stiebel, they huddled together in one place, where a ms of Songs of the Sabath Sacrifice, an angelic liturgy, was found. The John who wrote the Apocalypse also relied on god and angels to defeat the evil empire. (I published three articles related to this; two online by name search.) Reportedly (by Epiphanius) they fled to the east of the Jordan; Qumran then maybe was briefly occupied by zealots. Fled, not fought. (Philo, LCL IX, also presented them as the opposite of warlike—need I quote him?)
Essenes believed in fate, in predestination (Ant. 13. 171, 298 and 18. 11). War 2.152-3 “Smiling in their agonies and mildly deriding their tormenters, they cheerfully resigned their souls, confident that they would receive them again.” This is not “heroic” war-making. The applicable word is pacifism.