Essenes and the Virgin Birth

I find this extremely confusing, but also fascinating.. Does this cast light on a ancient but very complex and ritualized society or is it fiction?

http://www.peshertechnique.infinitesoulutions.com/Pesher/The_Virgin_Birth.html#

"The angel said to her, 'Do not be afraid, Mary, for you have found favour with God. And behold, you will conceive in your womb and bear a son, and you shall call his name Jesus.' ...And Mary said to the angel, 'How shall this be, since I have no husband?' And the angel said to her, 'The Holy Spirit will come upon you, and the power of the Most High will overshadow you; therefore the child to be born will be called holy, the Son of God." (Luke 1:30-35)

"Now the birth of Jesus Christ took place in this way. When his mother Mary had been betrothed to Joseph, before they came together she was found to be with child of the Holy Spirit." (Matthew 1:1

The above two quotations, from Luke and Matthew, present a virgin birth. The gospels of Mark and John, on the other hand, say nothing about a virgin birth, although they have plenty of miracles. There is no mention of it in Acts.

In his Epistle to Romans 1:3, Paul introduces Jesus as "descended from David according to the flesh." There is no virgin birth in any of the Epistles of the New Testament.

The same two gospels that present a virgin birth, implying that Joseph was not the biological father of Jesus, give long genealogies of Jesus, showing his descent from King David through Joseph (Luke 3:23-38, Matthew 1:1-17).

We have been seeing why clues from the Dead Sea Scrolls throw radical new light on the miracles of the gospels and Acts. They were not miracles, but natural events. The gospel-writers themselves did not believe in them. They were deliberately presenting them as miracles for the sake of the simple faith of the "babes in Christ", while at the same time wording them in such a way that the learned members of their ascetic schools would discover the actual history of Jesus and the foundations of Christianity.

The Dead Sea Scrolls give us another contribution, supplying the natural explanation of the "Virgin birth". While Christians have believed, following ecclesiastical tradition, that monasticism did not appear in Christianity until the third century, the natural explanation could not have been known. But the missing link has now been found.

Christianity had its origins in a celibate movement, one that believed sexual intercourse to be defiling. The holiest men avoided sex altogether, while the men descended from great dynasties were obliged to leave the celibate life temporarily, have sex with their wives only in order to beget offspring, then return to the celibate life for long periods. The men lived the life of monks, the women the lives of nuns.

The Essene nucleus of the writers of the Dead Sea Scrolls was perceived from the start, and has been battled over for the last 50 years. The motive for objecting to the evidence was the insight established in the 19th century, that Christianity was derived from Essenism, the distinctive Jewish ascetic movement. The great French scholar Ernst Renan had said Christianity was "an Essenism that had succeeded". For fundamentalist Christians and those allied with them, Christianity had not been derived from anything, but had been revealed straight from heaven through Christ.

Josephus gives us full descriptions of the Essenes, seeing them as one of the three Jewish philosophies of the period of Christian origins. After he has given a full account of the monastic Essenes, which agree at numerous points with the Scrolls, he goes on to "another order of Essenes", those who had to marry for dynastic reasons. He writes: "They give their wives a three years' probation, and only marry them after they have by three periods of purity given proof of fecundity. They have no intercourse with them during pregnancy, thus showing that their motive in marrying is not self-indulgence but the procreation of children." (JW 2, 161).

In Jewish thought, menstruation is "impurity". The Scrolls are even stricter on this inhibition than orthodox Judaism, treating a menstruating woman as the equal of a leper (Temple Scroll 48: 14-19). "Three periods of purity" meant, for them, three successive occasions when there was no menstruation. When a woman becomes pregnant, her menstrual periods cease. It is the main proof of her "fecundity". Josephus is saying that Essene dynasts marry, holding a first ceremony beginning a trial period of three years, during which they have sexual intercourse. When the woman is three months pregnant and the danger of miscarriage is past, they enter a binding marriage, for life. After this ceremony there is no further intercourse, as it can be a danger to a pregnant woman. The husband returns to the celibate community.

The Essene woman in such an arrangement had to be a literal virgin before the first ceremony beginning the trial marriage. The high value placed on chastity would make that obligatory. Both before and after her two wedding ceremonies she would be committed to a lifestyle that upheld celibacy as far as possible. She belonged to an ascetic order, "another order of Essenes", for which there were parallels in the hellenistic world, such as the Roman Vestal Virgins. She was and remained a Virgin, with an upper-case V, all her life.

The rules limiting sex would have included a long period of betrothal before the first ceremony. It would be a time when the couple met, but with no sex. It could be so long that "passions became strong." Such a situation, practiced by Christians, is implied in 1 Corinthians 7:36. "If anyone thinks he is behaving improperly towards his virgin (Greek: parthenos), if his passions are strong, and it has to be, let them marry -it is no sin."

Joseph was a descendant of King David, as the genealogies in Luke and Matthew show. (Their differences from one another are not a sign that they were invented, as critics have thought, but have a historical explanation that we'll come to later.) He was the biological father of Jesus. Mary, a young virgin, was betrothed to him for several years before their first ceremony. Six months before that ceremony, the passions became too strong, and Jesus was conceived. When her pregnancy was discovered, a strict view demanded that they separate, and the child should be brought up as an illegitimate.

But more liberal views on sex were held by hellenised Essenes. Joseph was advised by the "angel" (a human priest, as all "angels" in the story are) to skip the first ceremony and hold the second, binding ceremony, the one when the woman was three months pregnant. After that ceremony he "knew her not", as Matthew says (Matthew 1:25), because intercourse during pregnancy was forbidden.

Continued.......

 

The Apostle Paul seemed to know nothing about the Virgin Birth which implies that this idea was edited into the canon after his ministry was over.

 

Virgin birth was a necessary attribute of the mythical Jesus in order for him to take his place as the most recent incarnation of the pagan Sun God in Rome. The myths and rituals surrounding Jesus had already existed long before the Christian era. There was nothing new in the Christ myth. Virgin birth in a manger during the Winter Solstice, the Eastern Star, the Apostles, the Wise Men... All of these stories were well known at least since the time of the worship of Horus in Egypt.

 

Yes...................... there is a particular near death experience that if you research it further adds some fascinating details to that process.....

http://www.thomastwin.com/6 A Thomas background.html

 

Loosely translated the Hebrew terminology for virgin meant "young woman"

What happened was an alien from a more advanced civilization in another galaxy came down and got him some nookie from an earthling. And about that time a whole herd of bird dogs flew over.

 

The supernatural ‘miracle’ roadblock was one of longest lasting stoppage in what was to be my path from life long atheism to today. I am now a spiritualist, i.e. Christian pastor and theologian. The question of evil is another but to remain on topic I will address the former. In my opinion many supernatural events such as the virgin birth and other extraordinary proceedings would be better understood by believers* as supernormal events*. Scripture and other information indicates, maybe even dictates that the universe was designed by God to evolve within specific parameters and of such fine detail that the Planck scale is obscenely crude. So what appear to be miracles are because they were designed by God to happen. Yes things like the virgin birth may appear to be a miracle. I can use quantum event as a rough analogy. Many (most I would say) quantum processes are highly anti-intuitive. In the quantum world logic and its twin common sense seems vacation while probability and stats stay home to baby sit!

So we can safely say that virgin birth and other miracles don’t make sense to modern eyes, especially atheist eyes and minds. However, in a similar vein neither does quntaum nonlocality super-position or quantum entanglement*! Still the quantum events are ‘real‘, no matter the extreme weirdness of quantum mechanics allowing faster than light exchange of information and something being in two places at once! Even though the above quantum processes are devoid of ‘common sense’ explanation they have been proven true with complex scientific experiment etc. Just as the above processes seem to break natural law, in reality they are well within the boundaries of the physical meaning natural universe and its processes. I believe miracles for the most part are supernormal like some quantum events. However my faith leads me to believe all, meaning ‘EVERYLITTLETHING’ before and after the big bang, all the subatomic level, the first stars growing old and spreading the elements to build earth and all other things in the universe, life force entering the universe, man evolving from whatever to when God gave the whatever a soul and made eve, EVERYTHING was planned meaning our universe itself had the foreknowledge to create itself. IMO, its the divine foreknowledge that makes the biblical miracles supernatural.



God bless this forum ~


reva

 

The bottom line is that the Jews plagiarized the ancient Egyptian myth about Horus....there are 45 absolute parallels in the two stories.

Children are very gullible when they are less than ten years old......that's why that fable has lasted 2000 years. Each generation brainwashes the next.

 

And that is what you believe, yes? Lol, I am sure of it! Next time take the bubble gum out of the equation or sit down before engaging fingers or jaw... please?

reva

 

After reading pages 40 - 60 in this book.... I ceased to believe in the Virgin Birth theory even though I am still a Christian.........… the editors of the canon added that detail to compete with pagan thought.....

http://www.amazon.ca/The-Thomas-Book-Gospel-Brother-ebook/dp/B0041D8YXW

 

Learning just enough of quantum mechanics theory to confuse yourself in no way validates the existence of magic.

 

After reading a few hundred posts at this forum I would strongly advise each member to leave quantum mechanics and theories about the universe to those who understand it and have been working in related research for twenty years or more. With the use of modern telescopes and related techniques they have actually gone back in time far enough that they've made photos of an instant one trillionth of one trillionth of one trillionth of a second after the big bang occurred. In other words as far back as is possible.

 

Please provide a link where such photographs can be viewed that will support your claim.

 

Or you could try this one instead.

 

In a way this is true because…….. ultimately….. there is no such thing as magic……. miracles of healing or resurrection or the division of the Red or Reed Sea….. have logical explanations…….. Richard Dawkins Ph. D. refuses to rule out the possibility of intelligent life evolving on other planets and perhaps even playing a role in human evolution…… Once one has gone that far……… we also cannot rule out the possibility that they could even be involved in some pretty major events of the past as well……

http://www.allaboutchristian.com/spirituality/

I certainly am in no position to rule out aliens being involved in an artificial insemination of Mary the wife of Joseph……. if that were true…. I would make a wild guess that perhaps spermatazoa from Isaiah may have been frozen for six centuries or so for the occasion… based on Isaiah chapters 7 and 8?????!!!!

 

Not ruling something out is certainly not the same thing as is ruling something in.

 

Impressive!!!!!!

In the chapter entitled The Anthropic Principle in Stephen Hawking's Universe the possibility was brought up of the Cyclic Model of the Universe.

I personally was more than a little impressed that a near death experiencer was shown something along that line as well…….


http://www.near-death.com/experiences/reincarnation04.html#a05

- - - Updated - - -

True……….. but confining evolutionary theory to the fourth dimensional space- time continuum and merely 4.5 billion years or so did seem illogical to Stephen Hawking Ph. D…… which seemed to be one of the reasons why he wrote some parts of his books…….

 

Oh come on NightSwimmer: That is a photo of the cast from one of my favorite TV shows called the Big Bang. It is a good comedy show, as it shows how silly some Atheists can be. But anyway, that photo does not represent the "Big Bang" as in the 'Big Bang Theory'. Nice try... Want to do another one? Oh! I see you did.. Let me see if that one is on topic.

 

Well, that one is not supportive either. It amounts to thermal photographs which images are INTERPRETED as being the result of the alleged Big Bang. Oh well... want to try again, without the interpretations?

 

The Big Bang is also a metaphor for a Super String….. symbolic of a ray of light from the sun…….. to break through another orb/ bubble of thought and philosophy and take humanity up to a new and better way of looking at our universe……. Whether theistic evolutionary theory is true or not………….. the possibility of a Divine Feminine perhaps equating to God the Mother/The Holy Ghost/ Holy Spirit of Christian fame……… would surely be a good things for the 3.5 billion ladies living on this third rock…..and for their daughters and granddaughters over the coming decades and centuries……….???!!!


No matter how much you loved your atheistically inclined high school science teacher Incorporeal…… that is no reason to flush a concept that could help so many among the fairer sex!


http://www.politicalforum.com/scien...ionary-theory-divine-feminine-god-mother.html
Theistic Evolutionary Theory and The Divine Feminine/God The Mother??!!
The masculine and feminine thought and behaviour patterns may have a basis in theoretical physics.

http://www.grandunifiedtheory.org.il/gender/g1.htm

http://www.grandunifiedtheory.org.il/book/life1.htm

 

Somebody taught you that ideas…….. and words….. and thoughts need to be nailed down……….. perfectly…… so solidly…. that they cannot move…………. Think that one through for a moment and imagine yourself as a being known to some as The Word/Logos/ I AM That I AM/YHWH………….. imagine that you have given your word that you will become human in the future……………. and rescue Adam and Eve and their grandchildren…….

That is in the Book of Adam and Eve that was preserved into our own time only in ARabic…. we dumb Christians has burned every other copy of this book in all other languages……. Strongly indicating that it has immense value……. Anyway…. if you were the Word/Logos….. would you like see human and angels less determined to nail words and ideas down?

http://reluctant-messenger.com/eden_1.htm

 

almost edited has to had…..but decided to leave it…… illustrates my point in a perverse kind of way I guess????!!!

 

"better way"???? Wow! Did you really expect that ambiguity to go unnoticed? "Divine Mother"???? LOL. Anything to remain politically correct, especially when considering the passage of laws requiring women to be put on equal standing with men within the workforce. Is everyone ready for another big push by NOW (www.now.org) ?

 

Actually the photos don't reveal it nearly as close as gravitational magnetic wave forms...you know, Einstein stuff.

http://www.cnn.com/2014/03/17/tech/innovation/big-bang-gravitational-waves/

 

Once again, INTERPRETATION of data. Interpretation which requires the human mind, thus rendering the interpretation to be nothing more than a subjective opinion. BTW: The graphic insert is an artists conception of what might be. It (the artists rendering) serves well to demonstrate what I have stated regarding your evidence... your evidence is subjective opinion.