Jesus, a follower of a Pagan Custom?

by Faraon 18 Replies latest watchtower bible

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  Double Edge

  Baptism was a ritual of the Essenes (think Dead Sea Scrolls) and it is thought that both John the Baptist and Jesus were members of the Essenes. Very interesting background:
  

  More can be found at www.essenespirit.com

  Who Were the Essenes?

  Since the archaeological discovery of the Dead Sea Scrolls in 1946, the word "Essene" has made its way around the world--often raising a lot of questions. Many people were astonished to discover that, two thousand years ago, a brotherhood of holy men and women, living together in a community, carried within themselves all of the seeds of Christianity and of future western civilization. This brotherhood--more or less persecuted and ostracized--would bring forth people who would change the face of the world and the course of history. Indeed, almost all of the principal founders of what would later be called Christianity were Essenes--St. Ann, Joseph and Mary, John the Baptist, Jesus, John the Evangelist, etc.

  The Essenes considered themselves to be a separate people--not because of external signs like skin color, hair color, etc., but because of the illumination of their inner life and their knowledge of the hidden mysteries of nature unknown to other men. They considered themselves to be also a group of people at the center of all peoples--because everyone could become part of it, as soon as they had successfully passed the selective tests. They thought, and rightly so, that they were the heirs of God's sons and daughters of old, the heirs to their great ancient civilization. They possessed their advanced knowledge and worked assiduously in secret for the triumph of the light over the darkness of the human mind. They felt that they had been entrusted with a mission, which would turn out to be the founding of Christianity and of western civilization. They were supported in this effort by highly evolved beings who directed the brotherhood. They were true saints, Masters of wisdom, hierophants of the ancient arts of mastery.

  They were not limited to a single religion, but studied all of them in order to extract the great scientific principles. They considered each religion to be a different stage of a single revelation. They accorded great importance to the teachings of the ancient Chaldeans, of Zoroaster, of Hermes Trismegiste, to the secret instructions of Moses and of one of the founding Masters of their order who had transmitted techniques similar to those of Buddhism, as well as to the revelation of Enoch. They possessed a living science of all of these revelations. Thus, they knew how to communicate with angelic beings and had solved the question of the origin of evil on the earth.

  One of their major preoccupations was to protect themselves from any contact with evil spirits, in order to preserve the purity of their souls. They knew that they would only be on earth for a short time, and they did not want to prostitute their eternal souls. It was this attitude, this strict discipline, this absolute refusal to lie or compromise, that made them the object of so much persecution through the ages. The Essenes considered themselves the guardians of the Divine Teaching. They had in their possession a great number of very ancient manuscripts, some of them going back to the dawn of time. A large portion of the School members spent their time decoding them, translating them into several languages, and reproducing them, in order to perpetuate and preserve this advanced knowledge. They considered this work to be a sacred task.

  The Essenes considered their Brotherhood-Sisterhood as the presence on earth of the Teaching of the sons and daughters of God. They were the light which shines in the darkness and which invites the darkness to change itself into light. Thus, for them, when a candidate asked to be admitted to their School, it meant that, within him, a whole process of awakening of the soul was set in motion. Such a soul was ready to climb the stairs of the sacred temple of humanity. The Essenes differentiated between the souls which were sleeping, drowsy, and awakened. Their task was to help, to comfort, and to relieve the sleeping souls, to try to awaken the drowsy souls, and to welcome and guide the awakened souls. Only the souls considered as awakened could be initiated into the mysteries of the Brotherhood-Sisterhood. Then began for them a path of evolution that could not stop anymore through the cycle of their incarnations.

  Everybody knew the Brothers and Sisters in white. The Hebrews called them "The School of Prophets"; and, to the Egyptians, they were "The Healers, The Doctors". They had property in nearly all of the big cities; and, in Jerusalem, there was even a door that bore their name: the door of the Essenes. Despite some fear and joking, due to the rejection of that which one does not know, the people as a whole felt respect and esteem for the Essenes because of their honesty, their pacifism, their goodness, their discretion, and their talent as healers, devoted to the poorest as well as to the richest. They knew that the greatest Hebrew prophets came from their lineage and their School. Moreover, even if the Brotherhood was very strict about the law of secrecy with regard to its internal doctrine, it cultivated many points of contact with the people, notably through places of lodging for the pilgrims from every horizon, through helpful actions in difficult periods, and especially through the healing of illnesses. These places of primary teaching and of healing were located in precise areas where people could go freely.
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  Narkissos

  Sacred baths were widespread in ancient Egypt, Babylonia, India and the Hellenistic mystery cults. They were not absent of the ancient Israelite religion (2Kings 5:14; Leviticus 14:8; 15:16ff; Numbers 19:19). They were an essential part of the (probably daily) ritual in the Essene community of Qumran (in the desert of Judah, where the Gospels locate John the Baptist's activity). By the 1st century CE the "baptism of proselytes" became a common Jewish practice (in addition to circumcision). A few days ago a member of this forum described her Jewish "baptism" in a synagogal miqve (if I can find the thread, I'll post the link later).

  About the "demons" which seem to appear from nowhere in the NT, a research in "intertestamental" (and particularly apocalyptic) Jewish literature would show that this belief emerged as a side effect of monotheism in the centuries before Christianity. When the traditional god of Israel became God, the diversity of the old polytheism was recast into entities such as good and bad "angels" (including the Hebrew Satan or Greek Diabolos = Devil).

  Paganism as a whole is a negative concept which also resulted from the Jewish monotheism, as was in time accepted (and modified) by Christianity. From this point of view, every religious belief or practice which was not included in the "revealed" monotheistic faith was rejected and looked upon as "ethnic" (in Greek) or "pagan" (in Latin).
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  Narkissos

  Sorry Double Edge I didn't see your post before sending mine. Here's the thread I was referring to: http://www.jehovahs-witness.com/6/62765/1.ashx
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  Satanus

  As mentioned, jews already did the baths thing. Elijah made namaan? bathe seven times for his leprosy. Also, the equivalent for nt baptism was, in the ot, the circumcision. Done on the 7th day, it was a precurser to the catholic christening. In the ot, this initiated the baby boy into the national-yhwh covenant. Done by the roman church, it initiated babies into christ's new covenant. The church made two improvements: it was less painful, and it included girls. Ain't the church great?

  SS
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  Yerusalyim

  Actually, the greek word baptizo means to immerse, not to bathe.

  Yes, the Mikvah was an important part of Jewish life LONG before the Romans came along...ancient mikvot are found all over where Jewish communities are. And the immersion was done nude...had to be...a woman had to dunk herself after her menses before she and her husband could sleep in the same bed together...the priests also had to bathe (the bronze sea). Converts had to be immersed in the Mikvah, etc etc etc.

  I would hazard a guess that there are parralells between all religious symbols in the various world religions...after all, what is religion other than man reaching out to God.
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  Faraon

  The site infidels.org had an article on baptism by Kersey Graves http://www.infidels.org/library/historical/kersey_graves/16/chap26.shtml which, by the way, Infidels warns the readers that he is not too scholarly. But IMO he has many interesting things. He claims that

  ?baptism by water was a very old rite, being practiced by the followers of Zoroaster, by the Romans, the Egyptians, and other nations." It was also in vogue among the ancient Hindoos at a still earlier date. ?The ancient Mexicans, Persians, Hindoos and Jews were in the habit of baptizing their infants soon after they were born.

  It also talks about how people were baptized in certain bodies of water, such as the Ganges, Nile, Euphrates, Lustral, Po, and the Jordan. He asks:

  If Jordan was not called "holy," it was undoubtedly considered so, else why did Elisha order Naaman to wash seven times in that stream instead of Damascus, which was much nearer and more accessible? And why was Christ baptized in Jordan?... Why, as several streams were handier to a large portion of the candidates...

  Horus and Krishna were also baptized. http://www.truthbeknown.com/origins.htm

  Yes, I knew about other demigods being baptized. My point was that Jesus was baptized in the sense that it was a ritual that has a connotation of an initiation and a forgiveness of sins. While Jewish women?s bath was ritualistic, it was actually not a part of an initiation. Roman and Mexican children?s baptism was to ward off evil spirits, but not an initiation. Baptism in India was for done with the forgiveness of sins in mind, and was done late in life, preferably near death; but sometimes the people died before they could be baptized, and that is when the baptism of the dead originated. The baptism by sprinkling of water took place when they noticed that very old and babies died after maybe being sick, and being dunked in cold water.

  My point was that this is something we can confront the JWs with, when they start saying that they do not follow pagan customs. Once-in-a-lifetime immersion in water for a ritualistic initiation is, IMO, a clear pagan practice. They have no biblical based ? support for it.
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  Faraon

  Double Edge,

  Very interesting background

  
  Yes, indeed. I learned many things. Thanks.

  Faraon
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  lurk

  Bathing clearly is connected to pagan origins and is linked to immorality and murder

  sorry i was gonna reply but i cant stop laughing.
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  Leolaia

  The best paper I've seen on the origin of baptism is the following:

  http://www.jehovahs-witness.com/10/63330/1.ashx

  There may have been some influence from Greek initiation rites. But these appear to have arisen relatively late and fit better with later Christian initiation baptism than Jewish proselyte baptism or that of John the Baptist. The former is less a rite of initiation than an act to wash away Gentile impurity and could thus be viewed as a variation on Jewish purity cleansing (most famously practiced by the Essenes). John's baptismal practice also was ostensibly an act to achieve a newfold purity from sin through repentence; any "initation" function into a cult of John the Baptist was clearly secondary. The cleansing of Naaman in the Jordan in 2 Kings 5:14 may be an OT antecedent for John's baptisms in the Jordan -- not as a historical source of the practice but as a idological antecedent that John was trying to establish. The eschatological impetus of John's baptismal practice may have been influenced by the prophecy in Zechariah 13:1: "On that day a fountain will be opened to the house of David and the inhabitants of Jerusalem, to cleanse them from sin and impurity." John may have thus seen himself as fulfilling this prophecy -- providing innovatively a "baptism of repentence" as a means to "cleanse people from sin". There may have therefore been sufficient native Jewish antecedents to account for the development of baptism within Judaism.

  And though Jesus underwent baptism, he broke ways with John over doctrinal matters and in particular did not believe in traditional Jewish ritual purity, and in fact preached against it (cf. Luke 11:39-41; 13:20-21).

  Leolaia