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THE ESSENE-CHRISTIAN FAITH...THE UNTOLD STORY OF CHRISTIAN ORIGINS

Disclaimer: It is important for the reader to understand that in this website, where we look into how the Essenes deviated from normative Jewish religious beliefs and inserted "literalized Sun-worship" into the Greek translation of the Hebrew Scriptures which later become the foundation for all later Christian Bibles, that I will use a "literal-historical" approach to the "Jesus Story". If you have studied and ran across some of our other websites then you know that "the Christ" can be interpreted from 3 different perspectives down through recorded history: "mystical", "mythological", and "literal-historical". Only after one has spent a considerable time in dedicated and scholarly studies in such areas as Biblical Judaism, the Jewish Messiah and true Messianic prophecy as taken from the Hebrew Scriptures and not the later forged texts of Rome, comparative manuscript evidences, the history and origin of the Roman New Testament, the true origin and creation of the New Testament , the Gnostic Paul vs the falsified Roman Paul, the Essenes and their "literal godman", Ancient Wisdom literature, Jewish and Gentile Gnosticism, Egyptian religion and the ancient "Jesus Story" that beings with Ancient Egypt, Comparative religions, Astronomy and Astrotheology can he understand and be certain which two of the above three methods of interpretation of "the Christ" are accurate and factual. Again for purposes of comparing Judaism's truths vs Christianity's alterations of it over the early centuries and the implications that this holds for the "non-Jew" and "Godfearer" today then we adopt in this website and for all studies in this website a supposed "literal-historical" interpretation of "the Christ" as well as the Jesus of the New Testament. Only in so doing can we adequately contrast the truths of Judaism vs Christian theology and by so doing follow the lineage of these "Divine Truths" back down the corridors of history to the earliest Divine revelations given to mankind by the Creator which were intended for both "Gentiles" and "Jews" as well. You will, in time, come to see how the Jewish human Messiah becomes the Cosmic Godman of Christian theology. You will see how that from the beginning of time that the "allegorical" understanding of the Descent of the Soul, God, into all matter was later manipulated and this "linking" agent, God's Christ within all mankind, became "literalized" and confined to just one person, this supposed "historical and literal" Jesus of the New Testament. I will let you be the judge of the results of such studies and leave to the reader to draw the necessary conclusions as we attempt to compare Jewish and Christian theological perspectives concerning this "Christ" and the Jewish Messiah all the while dealing with the "New Testament Jesus" in a "literal-historical" manner in order for such an accurate comparison to be done effectively. Craig Lyons M.Div.

There is now a bibliography of more than 1,500 books and articles dealing with the Dead Sea Scrolls as well as hundreds of web-sites, all written since their amazing discovery in 1947. One may well ask, therefore, why another web-site detailing the rise and evolution of the Essene/Qumran cult as a religious cult should be necessary. There is, however, two pertinent answers to that question:

• It is from Essene religious thought that Gentile Christianity would draw most of it's religious doctrines...be they right or wrong...your intense study will show you which ones as it did me
• And the "traditional origin" of Christianity is completely different from what most have been told from the Catholic and Protestant perspective through a "received tradition"...it is time to reconsider if what we have been taught as "Christians" as a Divine and unique revelation can be proven to find its origin in the re-filtered "literalized" Sun-Worship of the Essenes which was later incorporated into their "Christology" concerning their expected "Godman" redeemer in their purposeful mistranslation of the Hebrew Scriptures into the Greek...this theology of the "Essene Angel Messiah" (a "literalized" rendition of a prior "allegorical" cosmic godman/"allegorical" always in Gnosticism of the "god" (Christ) in all of created mankind) will become much later the foundation for Christian beliefs concerning a supposed "historical" Jesus (Christology) and other doctrines concerning atonement which are also connected to him by these Essenes which find again their origin in a deviate "literalized" solar and astral worship....again beginning with the allegorical understanding of the Osiris of Egypt and flowing on down through history even unto this day in the disguise of a "literalized" and "historicized" Gentile Christianity.

Answer for yourself: What must we not miss here?

Simply that when you do the studies, like our "Egyptian-Cx" website and our "Jesus-Astrotheology" website and our "Gnosticism website" then you find that the Ancients, long prior to these 2nd century B.C.E. Essenes, really since the beginning of recorded time, possessed an Ancient Divine Wisdom of a highly metaphysical nature that was given to them by God, our Creator, whereby mankind was able to spiritually understand from the observation of the path of the Sun in the Heavens, a "Sun" by the way which was always only a "symbol" for the Invisible Divine Intelligent Energy, Architect, and Creator of this Universe, had sent Himself and emanated Himself into all "matter", including all flesh. This websites are not intended to be tackled now; they must wait for the reader to build a foundation in what happened that causes us to lose these earlier Divine Truths so wait until you find your study of this website before you tackle these other websites. This Descent of the Soul into all mankind was understood and described by the agency of personification, allegory, myth, and legends which were handed down with mankind in every nation under the Sun for thousands and thousands of years as "the Christ". Man was "created" in this image of God and "the Christ within" was the bridge from God to mankind. All mankind, both male and female, were the true "godmen" and the "Christ" lived in each of them waiting to be "awakened" by the Spiritual enlightenment of each "host". This is the core of all Divine Revelation until the 3rd century B.C.E. when Rome will follow this "Essene theology" and "literalize" this "Christ within" and confine Him to just "one person" in the form of an assumed "historical Jesus of Nazareth". This explains why all the previous "godmen" stories as taken from all previous Gentile nations since the foundation of the world have their "godmen" myths and legends that parallel so accurately with the "Jesus Story" from beginning to end. Our "Jesus Story" is but a "literalized" and "carnalized" version of this "Descent of the Soul" into physical matter; namely mankind. Never until the Essenes of the 2nd century B.C.E. and later with Rome in the 3rd century A.D. was this high Spiritual Revelation of God's descent into matter, this giving of matter "life", called a "death" on a cross (a cross being the intersection of the planes of matter and spirit/energy) "historicized" and "carnalized" into a supposed "historical and literal" godman whom the Esseses first taught as their hoped for retuning redeemer who was their "historical Teacher of Righteousness" who would later be killed. Later this same idea will be picked up by Rome in their religious and political expediency in the 3rd century when they adopt this "literalized" godman centered Christianity as the religion of the Roman Empire under Constantine. Since Rome had "literal" godmen as Emperors on the throne this was but one small step in their world domination. These facts will become very clear to you as your studies advance and you see the hundreds and hundreds of parallels between the "Jesus Story" and the prior story of the Ancient's "sungods" beginning all the way back with Osiris and Horus, the original "godman" prototypes and coming down through history until the Essenes and later Rome. Let us come to understand and never forget from our accurate studies that ALL these "godmen" were but symbols for all mankind, a pattern or sorts, for their spiritual development of their souls from its birth in mankind, its life and spiritual development and maturation, its eventual release from this body of death at the demise of the physical body and its rebirth and ascent back to the realm of Heaven from which it came.

IT IS NOT AS SIMPLE AS YOU POSSIBLY THOUGHT...

This will not be an easy or a quick study I promise you; but one needs the facts to be CERTAIN that what he has accepted through tradition as his inherited religious belief system based off of a "literalized" godman is wrong before he should change it and repent of now recognized FALSE BELIEFS.

There are many reasons why we don't have the truth today as Christians and followers of this "Jesus" and "the Christ" . As far as our study here let it be simply said that in studying the origins of Christianity as it relates to the Essenes and the bridge from Judaism to Christianity most writers and scholars today have relied too heavily upon the summary comments of Josephus, Philo, and Pliny for their information about the Essenes. For that reason they have gravely misunderstood the Essenes and their role in determining Christian religious doctrine. The vast majority of the writers and scholars seem to approach the Essenes using the accounts of Josephus, Philo, and Pliny primarily as the substrate for their background information for the Essenes, all the while neglecting the internal evidence of the Essene documents which sheds great light as to their true identity and evolutionary "theological" development as a separatist religious sect over three hundred years. I wish it were as simple as reading a few pages left to us by these three men and their summary accounts of the Essenes but it is not.

This web-site will reveal to you what many others have either missed or chosen not to reveal due to the explosive nature of the materials that exists and their implications for Christianity today. But it won't be easy to see this for much time and effort must be devoted by you to cover the materials in question in order to see for yourself the facts concerning the gross departure from the "faith once given the saints" over 2000 years ago as practiced by the historical Jesus which sadly passes as Christianity today.

WHAT MOST HAVE MISSED WHEN STUDYING THE ESSENE/QUMRAN CULT...THE ORIGIN FOR ESSENE RELIGIOUS BELIEFS

There are several things I desire to accomplish for the reader who undertakes a serious study of the materials presented in this web site:

• Few, if any writers, to the best of my knowledge, have endeavored to trace the religious evolution of the Essenes as a religious movement from their pristine, pre-Chasidic beginnings as a Zadokite reaction against Hellenization among the Jews, into the frozen, rigid, secret, and celibate communist mystery-cult which had grown in the first century to reject Biblical Judaism almost in toto as we find in the days of Philo and Josephus. Thus the need to reevaluate the summary accounts of Josephus, Philo, and Pliny as their descriptions of the Essenes fail to give the reader the whole picture needed to properly understand the Essene/Qumran movement and their religious beliefs that go much deeper than the simple accounts left to us by these three historians. Few writers have undertaken to systematically lay out before the reader the chronological and systematic evolution of the Essenes over a three hundred year period whereby they are shown correctly in their historical light. We will reveal, in these pages to the reader, how the Essenes, in their rejection of Judaism and the Temple, would absorb religious tenants originally from Zoroastrianism and later from Greek-mystery sources, particularly Pythagoreanism. On the outside the Essenes might have looked Jewish, but on the inside when their writings are examined and correctly understood they can be shown to betray an anti-Jewish theological bias and it becomes evident that they as a group evolved to reject Judaism in toto; and except for certain Buddhist accretions, the early pristine church reproduced the Essene pattern faithfully. Since, however, this form of "Christianity" was unacceptable in the pagan world and since it was spurned by the majority of the Jews, it was Hellenized in the Pauline epistles and the Fourth Gospel, both of which reflect Stoic influence; these eventually became an essential foundation for that reconstruction or restitution of Christianity known as the Protestant Reformation.

• Few Scholars yet have made the connection of Essene religious beliefs with Sun-Worship. The vast majority of scholars who have studied the Essenes have failed to recognize the Essene/Qumran cult's reliance upon astronomy and astrology, along with the religious beliefs of the mystery cults, for the core of Essene religious dogmas and beliefs. The failure to recognize the Essene religious cult's heavy dependence upon a "literalized" Sun-Worship and a "literalized" approach to Egyptian religion has unfortunately given a false validity to the Essene-Christian faith. In the website and pages that follow I plan to correct this grievous error of omission and make available to our reader the hidden truths in this regard; namely, revealing how the core of Essene religious beliefs are nothing more than the synthesis of the major doctrines of Sun-Worship and Astro-Theology which finds is basis in Osiris and the Egyptian religion of antiquity.

• To few scholars fail to pay attention to the Book of Enoch, the Book of Jubilees, and the Testaments of the Twelve Patriarchs and their importance in the evolution and synthesis of the core religious beliefs of the Essene community. Few writers have properly analyzed The Testaments and especially the interpolations found in them, which the majority of scholars to this day incorrectly consider Christian forgeries, although these supposed and alleged Christian "interpolations," when properly understood in their historical context, exhibit every evidence of true Essene origin and are themselves, when properly understood, reflective of accepted Essene Christological and Messianic theology and a window to the pre-existing Essene Messianic faith. Far too often many authors, when reading or writing of this material, are accustomed to call such “Essene Messianic Prophecy” little more than Christian interpolations or alterations of Essene writings. In this website I will prove to you that this is not the case as all; in fact these "Essene” Christological Beliefs" are to find their origin in Sun-Worship and can be traced down through the paths of prior non-Jewish religious beliefs; ultimately finding their expression as Essene religious tenants which provided the foundation for the vast majority of Christian Messianic dogma to follow. Let us not forget that these "Essenic Christological Beliefs," which would later become the very backbone of Christian dogma, can be proven to have originated in Sun-Worship and this will be proven in the pages that follow. One only need read the Catholic Encyclopedia and their information on the Essenes to begin to see what the scholars have known all along...that the Essenes were involved in religious manifestations of Sun-Worship! The NIV Bible makes the same admission.

• Also, few have ever given adequate consideration to the implications of the Pandera-Yeshu legend in relation to the Essene Teacher of Righteousness. Sadly this blasphemous story is applied to Jesus when, upon examination of facts and evidence existing, will show that the account was originally applied to the Essene Teacher of Righteousness and not Jesus. Only later, in the Jewish reaction to the Jesus Movement, would the story be applied to Jesus to discredit him.

• Few writers and scholars have seriously considered the significance of the Ebionite cult and its evident relationship to Essenism.

• Fewer scholar still have noticed, or examined in detail, the influence of these Essenes on the corruption of the Jewish Scriptures when they were translated into Greek. We will show the reader how important "theological changes and deviations" from the accepted Jewish texts were made by the Essenes of Egypt in the translation of the Jewish Scriptures....called the Septuagint. The reader will come to see, once acquainted with the "Osirian myth," how such personified Sun-Worship was cleverly inserted into the mouths of the Prophets by the Essene sect in Egypt. Important for our understanding is that these "changes" in support of Essene religious doctrines will become the foundational texts for all Christian Old Testaments. Moreover, as if that was not enough, all quotes from the Old Testament contained in the New Testament come from this "corrupted " translation of the Jewish Scriptures. This means that the New Testament applies to the life of Jesus religious beliefs and doctrines that find their origin in pagan Sun-Worship! The startling conclusion is inescapable: a false "literalized" approach to ancient religious Divine Revelation and prior "allegorically" interpreted religious doctrines since the foundation of recorded time, revelations expressing this Descent of the Karast, Christ into mankind (matter), were inserted into the Greek translation of the prior Hebrew and Jewish Scriptures by these Essenes and these Essene "literalized" sun-myths would be the source for the Essene's beliefs in their Godman soter/Savior/Angel-Messiah. These doctrines will later be applied to this New Testament "Joshua-Jesus" by the same group in Palestine; thereby making this Jesus a "literalized sacrificial Godman" as well. These Scriptural alterations will then be examined and evaluated on an individual textual basis with hundreds of examples whereby the reader can see for himself the alterations of the Jewish Scriptures whereby doctrines of a "literalized" Sun-worship were added to the texts and inserted into the mouths of the Prophets by the translators in Egypt.

We propose to examine all these problems and offer a realistic analysis. Most of the voluminous material found in the Dead Sea caves today is available for inspection; therefore we are today able, with substantial accuracy, to delineate the origin, evolution, discipline, doctrines, practices, rituals, and basic purposes of the Essene cult during the successive stages of its existence and how such practices and religious beliefs, many of which are nothing more than personified and "literalized" Sun-Worship, would become the basis of the vast majority of Christian dogma that we have today attached to this "Jesus". I hope you understand, especially if you hold to standard Christian dogma, the implication of such sad fact! I as an ordained Pastor surely do and this plus other things led to my resignation from my Pastorate once coming to the knowledge of the truth and the corruption of the Hebrew Sacred Texts and how these "corruptions" became the foundation for New Testament "theology".

Nevertheless, we believe that the reading public, interested students, and especially university, college, and seminary teachers of comparative religion are now ready for a more complete delineation of the Essene cult in its historical setting and progression. We have available to us today a wealth of good materials by which we can learn the truth about the Essenes and the truth about Christian origins. We at Bet Emet Ministries wish to re-create the living image of these fervent ascetics; analyze their driving forces; and explore the processes by which they formulated the ideology and the practice which gave them their extraordinary power.

BUT BEFORE WE BEGIN....QUESTION: WHY IS THE CORRECT UNDERSTANDING OF CHRISTIAN ORIGINS SO IMPORTANT?

It goes without saying that if you are a Christian you should want to know the truth about this "Jesus" and "the Christ". I do! Having been a pastor for over 15 years, in the early years of my pastorate I tried to relate to others what I was taught by my spiritual leaders which was the "accepted" truth about Jesus. Just a few years into my pastorate, using the skills learned at Seminary, I discovered that all was not well with what I had been taught nor with the documents I had been taught since a child were sacred and a unique and a Divine revelation. Intense study beyond my peers became my way of life and ultimately led to my resignation from the pastorate. Today, I try to reach more than I ever could reach through the church in hopes of sharing the truth behind the "religious traditions and myths" that have captured the imagination of millions. What is at stake is our relationship with God and our proper worship of Him. Obedience is better than sacrifice, the problem is that there are too many conflicting voices claiming to speak for God. The truth can be known but it comes with a price. You have the responsibility to read and study and verify if what I say is true or not. The following information is presented in hopes you will undertake a serious study of the materials presented whereby you can discern truth from error in your walk with God. Once you understand the pivotal position the Essenes had and their lasting legacy and their continued influence today as found in the Christian Church, then by understanding the origin for the Essene's changing religious beliefs then you are capable of making an intelligent decision as to whether such "religious beliefs" need be held any longer or if they need to be replaced with "truth" once you see it for yourself.

The necessary information is presented for your inspection in this web-site in hope you will acquaint yourself with such knowledge, information, and facts in order to assure your knowledge and worship of our Creator be in Spirit and in Truth.

NAVIGATING THE WEBSITE

Attention: On many of our articles the "E-mail" address is wrong; no longer "bennoah1@airmail.net"....time will not allow for changing them all....so if you wish to E-mail us please use the bottom "correct" E-mail.

Bennoah1@verizon.net

• Bet Emet Ministries
• Craig M. Lyons M.Div.
• 902 Cardigan
• Garland, Texas, 75040
• 972-4964238

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