| Home > Jesus - the son of a Man > Situation prevailed before Christ |
Situation prevailed Before Christ
The Jewish society
It is very important to examine Jesus' life in the context of what was happening politically and socially in the society into which he was born. It was a time of great unrest in the Jewish world.
The Jews in their history have been trampled under the feet of invaders one after another in a series of invasions, which will be examined in great detail further on in this account. Because of the defeats which resulted in their helplessness the fire of hatred always remained burning in their hearts. But even in the days of their blackest despair ,a large proportion of of the Jews retained their mental balance, and continued in the expectation of a new Moses who , with his staff , would succeed in driving away the invader, and the rule of Jehovah would be ushered in. He would be the Messiah ,or the Annointed.
Their was always a section of the Jewish nation who worshipped every rising sun, trimming their sails to whatever wind prevailed at the time , in order to make the best of a bad bargain. They acquired wealth and position , both temporal and religious ,but were hated by the rest of the Jews as traitors.
Apart from these two groups , there was a third group of Jews who differed widely from them . They took refuge in the wilderness where they could practice religion according to the Torah, and prepare themselves to fight the invaders whenever the opportunity arose. During this period ,the Romans made many unsuccessful attempts to discover their hideouts, The number of those patriots continued to grow. We first knew about them from Josephus .
He calls these three parties of the Jews - Pharisees , Sadducees , and Essenes, respectively .
The existence of the Essenes was known of ,but in any great detail. This group of people is not one mentioned in the Gospels. Then ;with dramatic suddenness, the documents known as the Dead Sea Scrolls cam to light in the mountain s of Jordan near the Dead Sea. This Discovery took the whole intellectual and ecclesiastical world by storm. The story of how there documents were found needs some telling.
Dead Sea Scrolls
In1947, an Arab boy, tending his flock near Qumran, found one of the sheep was missing, so he decided to climb nearby mountain in search of the missing animal. During the search ,he came upon the mouth of a cave into which he thought the sheep had gone. He threw a stone into it and expected to hear stone hitting stone. Instead the stone made a clinking noise as if it had hit an earthen pot. His imagination was fired. He thought that perhaps he had stumbled upon treasure trove. Next morning, he return ed to the cave and ,with a friend to help him, entered it. Instead they found several clay jars amongst the fragments of broken pottery. They took on of them to the camp where they were living and were bitterly disappointed when all that they found was foul smelling leather scroll. They unroll it until it reached from one side of the tent to the other. It was one of the scrolls which were later sold for quarter of a million dollars. They sold it to a Syrian Christian named Kando for few shillings . Kando was cobbler, and he was only interested in the leather as it might come in handy for resoling old shoes. Kando, however ,noticed that the leather sheet was over-written in letters unknown to him. After a closer look, he decided to show it to the Syrian Metropolitan of St. Mark's Monastery in Jerusalem. these two shadowy figures carted the scrolls from one country to another, hoping to make money.
In the American Oriental Institute of Jordan, the scrolls were found to be the oldest known copy of the Book of Isaiah in the old testament. Seven years later, the scrolls were placed in the Shrine of the Book of Jerusalem by the Government of Israel.
At a rough guess, there are about six hundred caves dotting the hillside above the bank of the river Jordan . In these caves lived the Essenes, a community of people who had renounced the world, because a true Jew could only live under the sovereignty of Jehovah and was not permitted to obey any authority excepts His. So, according to their belief, a Jew living under and recognizing the Roman Emperor as overlord committed sin.
Tired of the pomp and show of the world and overwhelmed by its uncontrollable forces which lead inevitably to conflict and self -destruction, they sought refuge in the silence of the cliffs rising above the shores of the Dead Sea. They withdrew into the solitude of the mountain caves so that they could concentrate on living a life of purity and so gain salvation. Unlike many of the Jews of the Temple, they did not use the Old testament to make money, but tried to live according to its teaching. By leading this life, they hoped to achieve perfection and holiness. Their aim was to set an example to the rest of the Jews of how they could escape from the road leading to destruction, which they knew was fast approaching unless the Jews followed the Word of God.
Gnostic songs
They wrote Gnostic songs that must have stirred the hearts of the people too deeply for words to express. A gnostic's life is like a ship in a storm, says one song. In another , a gnostic is described as a traveller in a forest full of lions, each having a tongue like a sword. At the beginning of the path, a gnostic experiences distress like a woman in labour giving birth to her first child. If he succeeds in enduring this distress, he becomes illuminated by God's perfect light. Then he realizes that man is a vain and empty creature moulded of clay and kneaded with water. Since he has passed through the crucible of suffering and endured the limits of doubt and despair , he attains peace in turmoil, joy in sorrow, and a new life of happiness in pain. Then he finds himself wrapped in God's love. At this stage, with humble thanks, he realizes how he has been snatched from the pit, and placed on a high plain. Walking here in the Light of God , he stands erect, unbending , before the brute force of the world.
Before the discovery of the Dead Sea Scrolls ,only a little was known about the Essenes. Pliny and Josephus mention them m but they were virtually ignored by later historians. Pliny describes them as a race by themselves more remarkable then any other in the world.
" They have no women, they abjure sexual love , they have no money ..... Their membership is steadily increasing through the large number of people who are attracted to their way of life ..... in this way, their race has lasted for thousands of years , though no one is born within it"
Josephus, who started life as an Essence writes, that the Essenes
"believe that the soul (rouch) is immortal. It is a gift from God. God purifies some for Himself, removing all blemishes of the flesh. The person so perfected attains a holiness free of all impurities. "
The Zealots
Theses cave dwellers continued to lead their life unaffected by the waves of conquerors who destroyed the temple and conquered the Jews do many times. Their life in the Wilderness was not an escape from the responsibility of every Jew to struggle for the purity of his religion, and to free Judea from foreign aggression. Side by side with the daily prayers and study of the Scripture , some of them were formed into an efficient force which not only preached the guidance of Moses, but was also ready to fight for the freedom to live in the way that the teaching indicated. Thus, their fighting could only be in the service of God and not to gain power or for any personal consideration. The members of this fighting force were called ' Zealots ' by the enemy. They were organized under one flag, and each tribe had its own banner. The Zealots divided into four divisions, and at the head of each stood a chief. Each division was composed of people from three of the tribes of Israel. In this way, all the twelve Jewish tribes were organised under one flag. The chief had to be Levite. He was not only military commander, but was also a teacher of the Law. Each division had its own Midrash (School) and the Levite, apart from performing the duties of a military commander, had to give regular darsh (lessons) in the schools.
Thus , living in the wilderness in these caves, the Essenes shunned pleasure - seeking , scorned wedlock and were contemptuous of wealth. They formed a secret society and their secrets were never divulged to a non-member. The Romans knew about their existence, but could not penetrate the mask of secrecy surrounding them. The dream of every adventurous Jew was to become a member of this society, for that was the only practical method available to him of fighting the foreign invaders.
The Essenes, as we already know from Pliny's record, disdained marriage, but they adopted other men's children while yet pliable and docile, accepting them as their kin and moulding them according to their way of life. Thus, through centuries, incredible though it seems, the Essene society had perpetuated itself , although no one was ever born into it. Thus, Zechariah, the high priest, in the the Temple of Solomon, when he had a son in his old age, sent him; to the Essenes in the wilderness where the child was brought up. He is known to history as John the Baptist.
Now that we know that the Essene community did exist in the wilderness. Zechariah's action is made understandable. He was not sending his cherished son alone into the desert, but was entrusting him to the most reliable of communities, a community which sought to live in a manner pleasing to Jehovah. Mary, the cousin of Zechariah's wife , Elizabeth , was brought up by Zechariah because she was handed over to the temple in accordance with a vow taken by her mother. It was in this environment that the birth of Jesus took place.
(ICRA)