Marvin Vining. Jesus the Wicked Priest: How Christianity Was Born of an Essene Schism. Rochester, Vermont: Bear & Company, 2008.
I
found this book at a Hebrew Union College book sale a couple of years
ago, and I got it for free. It looked rather sensationalist to me, and
yet I felt like reading it last week. Perhaps I was curious about
Vining's case, or if I knew enough about the Dead Sea Scrolls to refute
it.
Vining's argument is that Jesus was the Wicked Priest who is
mentioned in the Dead Sea Scrolls. According to Vining, Jesus was once
an Essene, and he was initially supported by the Essenes as one who
would usher in Israel's eschatological restoration. But Jesus would
disappoint a number of Essenes by repudiating their asceticism and
desire for vengeance on their enemies. Vinick believes that the seekers
after smooth things in the Dead Sea Scrolls refer to the early
Christians, whom (according to Vinick) the Essenes thought were taking
the easier path by repudiating asceticism. After Jesus heals the
Teacher of Righteousness' withered hand in a Capernaum synagogue on Yom
Kippur, Vining argues, the Pharisees and the Essenes conspired to kill
Jesus. (Note: The Teacher of Righteousness is a prominent figure in the
Dead Sea Scrolls.) Vining argues that the Essenes had the power to
contribute to Jesus' death because they had clout with Herod, according
to Josephus, plus they had influence on Jewish halakah, for Vining
contends that the Essenes were the scribes in the Gospels, the ones whom
Jesus said sat in Moses' seat in Matthew 23. (After all, Vining
argues, did not the Essenes engage in a lot of scribal activity, since
they produced the Dead Sea Scrolls?) Vining also notes that, while the
Mishnah does not prescribe crucifixion, the Dead Sea Scrolls did, and so
Jesus' crucifixion was probably due to Essene influence.
There's
actually a lot more to the book than this. Vining talks about
reincarnation: not only does he as a Christian believe in it, but he
thinks that it is present in the Dead Sea Scrolls and the New
Testament. Vining will actually go somewhere with that in terms of his
larger thesis, for he contends that the Teacher of Righteousness was
Abraham reincarnated, and he compares the Teacher of Righteousness'
sacrifice of his son Jesus with Abraham's near sacrifice of Isaac. You
read that correctly: Vining argues that Jesus (on some level) was the
Teacher of Righteousness' son, and Vining equates the Teacher of
Righteousness with the Simeon who was in the Temple in Luke 2, and also
with the angel Gabriel, only I don't think that Vining here is regarding
Gabriel as a spirit being, for Vining notes that there was a Gabriel in
the priestly Zadokite line, according to 1QM IX, 15-17. According to
Vining, the Teacher of Righteousness was a priest who impregnated Mary
(perhaps through artificial insemination, since the Essenes did not care
for sex) in an attempt to usher in Israel's eschatological restoration,
but Jesus would disappoint him by repudiating Essene asceticism, and
Jesus would also embarrass him by healing his withered hand on Yom
Kippur. Vining also dismisses the doctrine of original sin, appealing
to Matthew Fox's Original Blessing (see my post about that here),
and Vining offers interesting thoughts about the Gospel of Nicodemus,
which Vining considers to be historically-accurate (on some level),
whereas many scholars do not. Vining sees in the Gospel of Nicodemus an
awareness of Jewish custom, such as the Jewish leaders' unwillingness
to be in the same room as the Gentile Pilate, and he believes that this
attests to its authenticity.
I'll say what I liked about the book,
before I say what I did not like. I'll highlight three things that I
liked. For one, the book was quite engaging theologically.
Vining is not just attempting to stake out a scholarly position on the
Dead Sea Scrolls, but he also goes into questions of theology and life.
In defending Pelagius' view that children are innocent like Adam and
Eve were in the Garden of Eden, Vining refers to Deuteronomy 1:39, which
states that Israelite children had no knowledge of good and evil. I also found some of Vining's defenses of reincarnation to be interesting (convincing,
I don't know, but interesting). For example, Vining states that
believing in reincarnation can reconcile the apparent biblical
discrepancy between the Decalogue and Ezekiel 18. The Decalogue affirms
that God visits iniquity on the third and fourth generation, whereas
Ezekiel 18 denies transgenerational punishment, saying that each is
punished for his own sin, not the sin of his father. According to
Vining, if reincarnation is true, then that resolves this contradiction,
for the third or fourth generation whom God is punishing may be the
reincarnation of the one from the first generation who sinned: according
to this rationale, the sinner is being punished for his own sin, only in another life, in a subsequent generation.
Second,
notwithstanding some of Vining's more sensationalist claims, Vining may
be on to something when it comes to possible connections that Jesus had
with the Essenes. I'm not saying that the Teacher of Righteousness
impregnated Mary, or that the Teacher of Righteousness was the guy with
the withered hand whom Jesus healed, but rather I'm acknowledging that
there may have been some connections between Jesus or his disciples and
the Essenes. There have been mainstream scholars who have argued this.
Vining refers, for example, to a statement by Yigael Yadin
about why Jesus in the Sermon on the Mount was repudiating the notion
his disciples had heard that they should love their neighbors and hate
their enemies. Many have noted that the idea of hating one's enemies
occurs in the Dead Sea Scrolls, but I have wondered why Jesus would
refer to the scrolls of some sect that was out there in the desert.
According to Yadin, Jesus was doing so because some of his followers
were former Essenes. And why not? Jesus was connected with
John the Baptist, who was a desert figure, like the Essenes. John 1
depicts two of John the Baptist's disciples leaving John to follow
Jesus. And, as Vining notes, there was overlap between Jesus' teachings
and those of the Essenes----on divorce, for example----even though
there were also clear differences. Moreover, on the Essenes being "out
there" in the desert, that's not exactly the whole story, for Vining
refers to Josephus' statement in Jewish Wars 2:124 that there were Essene settlements in every city. Why
couldn't Jesus have encountered Essenes in mainstream Palestine? While
I am not entirely convinced by Vining's argument that the Herodians and
the scribes in the Gospels were the Essenes, since I believe that there
are other plausible speculations about who the Herodians and the
scribes were (see here), I did not think that this particular argument by Vining was all that bizarre.
Third,
reading Vining did make me want to peruse mainstream scholarship on the
Dead Sea Scrolls. As I was reading Vining's interpretations of Dead
Sea Scrolls and the connections that he was trying to make, what I naturally
asked myself was: "Is this true? How would mainstream scholarship
interpret these passages?" I was reading through some of Geza Vermes'
material in The Complete Dead Sea Scrolls in English, and I
found what Vermes said to be much more plausible than Vining's
arguments. But I would not have been as motivated to read what Vermes
said, had I not read Vining first.
Now, for what I did not like.
First of all, I think that Vining should have summarized his main
arguments at the end of his book. Part of the book's charm was
its meanderings, but I wished that Vining had a section that pulled
everything together, especially because the book had some loose ends.
Was the Teacher of Righteousness Simeon, or was he Gabriel? Were the
Essenes part of mainstream Judaism and influential within mainstream
Palestine, or were they out there in the desert, bitter against the
mainstream religious establishment? These are important questions, and,
while Vining may have tangentially addressed them here or there, he
should have had a section near the end that summed everything up in a
cogent manner.
Second, there were times that I wished
that Vining had referred to the exact page numbers of where he had made
specific arguments. For example, he said that he had shown previously
that the Pharisees were offshoots of the Essenes, but I did not remember
what his exact arguments were for that. Sure, I could have checked the
index, but it would have been far more helpful had he included in
parentheses the place where he had made that argument. On a side note,
after reading what Vermes had to say, I don't think that there is
evidence that the Pharisees split off from the Essenes, per se. But I
can somewhat see Vining's point that the Essenes were the first sect,
and other sects broke off from them. I'd conceptualize that a bit
differently, though: it wasn't so much that the other sects broke off
from the Essenes specifically, but rather that there was a time when
different people were together, and they eventually broke away from each
other. That time when different people were together was the
Maccabean revolt, which brought together Hasmonean priests and devout
Hasidim. After the revolt, however, not everyone was listening to the
Teacher of Righteousness, and the larger Maccabean movement split up
into different sects: the Pharisees, the Essenes, the Hasmonean priests,
etc. In my opinion, the Pharisees did not break off from the Essenes,
but both broke off from the larger Maccabean movement.
Third,
there were times when Vining pointed out a weakness in his position,
yet (as far as I could see) he did not adequately address it. Vining
tried to situate Pesher Nahum into the life of Jesus, and he argues that the seekers of smooth things were followers of Jesus, but there is at
least one passage that militates against that: Pesher Nahum says that
Demetrius the king of Greece tried to enter Jerusalem, due to the
counsel of the seekers of smooth things. Vining on page 70 acknowledges
that this was Demetrius III Eucaerus, who died in 88 B.C.E. But how
could the seekers of smooth things try to persuade Demetrius to enter
Jerusalem prior to 88 B.C.E., if the seekers of smooth things were
Christians, since Christianity did not yet exist?
It makes more sense to believe that the seekers of smooth things were
Pharisees, for, as Vermes states: "Accused of plotting against Alexander
Jannaeus in 88 BCE in collusion with the Syrian Seleucid king Demetrius
III Eucaerus, 800 Pharisees were condemned by Jannaeus to die on the
cross (Antiquities XIII, 380-83; War I, 96-8)" (Vermes 53).
When
arguing that Jesus healed the hand of the Teacher of Righteousness in a
synagogue on Yom Kippur, Vining acknowledged that the Essenes and other
Jews had different dates for Yom Kippur, but he acts as if that is no
big deal. Actually, it is a very big deal! Why were the
Pharisees and Essenes together in a synagogue on Yom Kippur, if they
observed it on different days? Also, why were they in a Capernaum
synagogue at all on that day? Weren't Jews supposed to gather in
Jerusalem on Yom Kippur? If there is evidence that they felt that they
could observe Yom Kippur in their local synagogues, Vining should have
cited it. (UPDATE: I should nuance this critique a bit. The Essenes and the
Pharisees most likely would not be in Jerusalem on the Essene Yom
Kippur. The Essenes, from what I understand, had repudiated the
Jerusalem Temple, and the Pharisees would not be in Jerusalem on Essene
Yom Kippur because Jerusalem was not holding services on that day.
Could the Pharisees have been hanging out at Essene synagogue services
in Capernaum on Essene Yom Kippur, even though that was not the day on
which they observed it? Well, I have problems with that. In Matthew
12, Mark 3, and Luke 6, there seems to be a presumption that Jesus is
healing the man with the withered hand on a day that the Pharisees
considered to be a Sabbath. But the Pharisees did not consider Essene
Yom Kippur to be a legitimate Sabbath, since the Pharisees observed Yom
Kippur on another day, so why would they be upset with Jesus healing on
Essene Yom Kippur?)
On reincarnation, Vining acknowledges that
Christians who do not believe in reincarnation cite Hebrews 9:27, which
states: "And as it is appointed unto men once to die, but after this the
judgment" (KJV). But, as far as I could see, Vining did not offer an
alternative interpretation of that passage, one that would not preclude
reincarnation.
Overall, this book was worth reading, at the very least because it made me think.