Philo's guide to decoding the Hebrew Bible

[Minimalist]

So, Ish, are we guessing that the Essenes arose as a reaction to the highly rigid control of the Temple that was exercised by the Saduccees under the sponsorship of the Hasmonean monarchs?

Calling it "second century" can be misleading.

In the mid-second century the Maccabaean revolt evicted the Seleucid Greeks from Jerusalem and opened the way for the first, true, Jewish expansion into the surrounding areas which they claimed had been conquered by "David" nearly 900 years earlier. So really, by the end of the second century we have the pharisees and saduccees fighting for control of the temple and it makes sense that a 3'd group would arise saying, basically, "a plague on both your houses" and looking to separate themselves. One just needs to be careful not to read second century as 190 BC when 110 BC would probably be the better time frame.

[seeker]

I'm going to disagree with your scenario in only one respect, Min. The Saduccees and Pharisees weren't fighting for control of the temple. Because the Saduceees tended to be wealthy and well connected they pretty much controlled the temple.

The Pharisees were always more of a group that preached to the commoner elements in Jewish society and never had the political power to get control of the temple. Groups like the Essenes and Zealots were actually radical elements of the Phariseees

[Minimalist]

I know how you feel about Josephus but, nonetheless, he is ultimately the only source we have for this stuff.

His tale of, essentially, a civil war between the king and sadduccees on one side and the pharisees on the other in the early first century BC is pretty grim...even if you knock a few zeros off the casualty counts to account for his typical exaggeration. But the constant dynastic squabbling allowed foreign princes (Aretas of Nabatea and finally the Romans under Pompey) to intervene in their disputes and ultimately to reduce the kingdom to the status of a client.

As for the zealots, Josephus attributes their rise to Judas the Galilean and I've always had doubts about the attachment of Galilee to the Jewish cause. They were forcibly converted by the Hasmoneans only 40 years before Pompey and it seems unlikely that they would have been all-fired up to be good "Jews" in such a short period of time.

But....again....all we have is Josephus so what can you do?

[john]

All -

Letter III

From Letters From the Earth,

By one Mark Twain.

"You have noticed that the human being is a curiosity. In times past he has had (and worn out and flung away) hundreds and hundreds of religions; today he has hundreds and hundreds of religions, and launches not fewer than three new ones every year. I could enlarge that number and still be within the facts.

One of his principle religions is called the Christian. A sketch of it will interest you. It sets forth in detail in a book containing two million words, called the Old and New Testaments. Also it has another name -- The Word of God. For the Christian thinks every word of it was dictated by God -- the one I have been speaking of.

It is full of interest. It has noble poetry in it; and some clever fables; and some blood-drenched history; and some good morals; and a wealth of obscenity; and upwards of a thousand lies.

This Bible is built mainly out of the fragments of older Bibles that had their day and crumbled to ruin. So it noticeably lacks in originality, necessarily. Its three or four most imposing and impressive events all happened in earlier Bibles; all its best precepts and rules of conduct came also from those Bibles; there are only two new things in it: hell, for one, and that singular heaven I have told you about.

What shall we do? If we believe, with these people, that their God invented these cruel things, we slander him; if we believe that these people invented them themselves, we slander them. It is an unpleasant dilemma in either case, for neither of these parties has done us any harm.

For the sake of tranquility, let us take a side. Let us join forces with the people and put the whole ungracious burden upon him -- heaven, hell, Bible and all. It does not seem right, it does not seem fair; and yet when you consider that heaven, and how crushingly charged it is with everything that is repulsive to a human being, how can we believe a human being invented it? And when I come to tell you about hell, the stain will be greater still, and you will be likely to say, No, a man would not provide that place, for either himself or anybody else; he simply couldn't.

That innocent Bible tells about the Creation. Of what -- the universe? Yes, the universe. In six days!

God did it. He did not call it the universe -- that name is modern. His whole attention was upon this world. He constructed it in five days -- and then? It took him only one day to make twenty million suns and eighty million planets!

What were they for -- according to this idea? To furnish light for this little toy-world. That was his whole purpose; he had no other. One of the twenty million suns (the smallest one) was to light it in the daytime, the rest were to help one of the universe's countless moons modify the darkness of its nights.

It is quite manifest that he believed his fresh-made skies were diamond-sown with those myriads of twinkling stars the moment his first-day's sun sank below the horizon; whereas, in fact, not a single star winked in that black vault until three years and a half after that memorable week's formidable industries had been completed.[**] then one star appeared, all solitary and alone, and began to blink. Three years later another one appeared. The two blinked together for more than four years before a third joined them. At the end of the first hundred years there were not yet twenty-five stars twinkling in the wide wastes of those gloomy skies. At the end of a thousand years not enough stars were yet visible to make a show. At the end of a million years only half of the present array had sent their light over the telescopic frontiers, and it took another million for the rest to follow suit, as the vulgar phrase goes. There being at that time no telescope, their advent was not observed.

For three hundred years, now, the Christian astronomer has known that his Deity didn't make the stars in those tremendous six days; but the Christian astronomer does not enlarge upon that detail. Neither does the priest.

In his Book, God is eloquent in his praises of his mighty works, and calls them by the largest names he can find -- thus indicating that he has a strong and just admiration of magnitudes; yet he made those millions of prodigious suns to light this wee little orb, instead of appointing this orb's little sun to dance attendance upon them. He mentions Arcturus in his book -- you remember Arcturus; we went there once. It is one of the earth's night lamps! -- that giant globe which is fifty thousand times as large as the earth's sun, and compares with it as a melon compares with a cathedral.

However, the Sunday school still teaches the child that Arcturus was created to help light this earth, and the child grows up and continues to believe it long after he has found out that the probabilities are against it being so.

According to the Book and its servants the universe is only six thousand years old. It is only within the last hundred years that studious, inquiring minds have found out that it is nearer a hundred million.

During the Six Days, God created man and the other animals.

He made a man and a woman and placed them in a pleasant garden, along with the other creatures. they all lived together there in harmony and contentment and blooming youth for some time; then trouble came. God had warned the man and the woman that they must not eat of the fruit of a certain tree. And he added a most strange remark: he said that if they ate of it they should surely die. Strange, for the reason that inasmuch as they had never seen a sample death they could not possibly know what he meant. Neither would he nor any other god have been able to make those ignorant children understand what was meant, without furnishing a sample. The mere word could have no meaning for them, any more than it would have for an infant of days.

Presently a serpent sought them out privately, and came to them walking upright, which was the way of serpents in those days. The serpent said the forbidden fruit would store their vacant minds with knowledge. So they ate it, which was quite natural, for man is so made that he eagerly wants to know; whereas the priest, like God, whose imitator and representative he is, has made it his business from the beginning to keep him from knowing any useful thing.

Adam and Eve ate the forbidden fruit, and at once a great light streamed into their dim heads. They had acquired knowledge. What knowledge -- useful knowledge? No -- merely knowledge that there was such a thing as good, and such a thing as evil, and how to do evil. they couldn't do it before. Therefore all their acts up to this time had been without stain, without blame, without offense.

But now they could do evil -- and suffer for it; now they had acquired what the Church calls an invaluable possession, the Moral Sense; that sense which differentiates man from the beast and sets him above the beast. Instead of below the beast -- where one would suppose his proper place would be, since he is always foul-minded and guilty and the beast always clean-minded and innocent. It is like valuing a watch that must go wrong, above a watch that can't.

The Church still prizes the Moral Sense as man's noblest asset today, although the Church knows God had a distinctly poor opinion of it and did what he could in his clumsy way to keep his happy Children of the Garden from acquiring it.

Very well, Adam and Eve now knew what evil was, and how to do it. They knew how to do various kinds of wrong things, and among them one principal one -- the one God had his mind on principally. That one was the art and mystery of sexual intercourse. To them it was a magnificent discovery, and they stopped idling around and turned their entire attention to it, poor exultant young things!

In the midst of one of these celebrations they heard God walking among the bushes, which was an afternoon custom of his, and they were smitten with fright. Why? Because they were naked. They had not known it before. They had not minded it before; neither had God.

In that memorable moment immodesty was born; and some people have valued it ever since, though it would certainly puzzle them to explain why.

Adam and Eve entered the world naked and unashamed -- naked and pure-minded; and no descendant of theirs has ever entered it otherwise. All have entered it naked, unashamed, and clean in mind. They have entered it modest. They had to acquire immodesty and the soiled mind; there was no other way to get it. A Christian mother's first duty is to soil her child's mind, and she does not neglect it. Her lad grows up to be a missionary, and goes to the innocent savage and to the civilized Japanese, and soils their minds. Whereupon they adopt immodesty, they conceal their bodies, they stop bathing naked together.

The convention miscalled modesty has no standard, and cannot have one, because it is opposed to nature and reason, and is therefore an artificiality and subject to anybody's whim, anybody's diseased caprice. And so, in India the refined lady covers her face and breasts and leaves her legs naked from the hips down, while the refined European lady covers her legs and exposes her face and her breasts. In lands inhabited by the innocent savage the refined European lady soon gets used to full-grown native stark-nakedness, and ceases to be offended by it. A highly cultivated French count and countess -- unrelated to each other -- who were marooned in their nightclothes, by shipwreck, upon an uninhabited island in the eighteenth century, were soon naked. Also ashamed -- for a week. After that their nakedness did not trouble them, and they soon ceased to think about it.

You have never seen a person with clothes on. Oh, well, you haven't lost anything.

To proceed with the Biblical curiosities. Naturally you will think the threat to punish Adam and Eve for disobeying was of course not carried out, since they did not create themselves, nor their natures nor their impulses nor their weaknesses, and hence were not properly subject to anyone's commands, and not responsible to anybody for their acts. It will surprise you to know that the threat was carried out. Adam and Eve were punished, and that crime finds apologists unto this day. The sentence of death was executed.

As you perceive, the only person responsible for the couple's offense escaped; and not only escaped but became the executioner of the innocent.

In your country and mine we should have the privilege of making fun of this kind of morality, but it would be unkind to do it here. Many of these people have the reasoning faculty, but no one uses it in religious matters.

The best minds will tell you that when a man has begotten a child he is morally bound to tenderly care for it, protect it from hurt, shield it from disease, clothe it, feed it, bear with its waywardness, lay no hand upon it save in kindness and for its own good, and never in any case inflict upon it a wanton cruelty. God's treatment of his earthly children, every day and every night, is the exact opposite of all that, yet those best minds warmly justify these crimes, condone them, excuse them, and indignantly refuse to regard them as crimes at all, when he commits them. Your country and mine is an interesting one, but there is nothing there that is half so interesting as the human mind.

Very well, God banished Adam and Eve from the Garden, and eventually assassinated them. All for disobeying a command which he had no right to utter. But he did not stop there, as you will see. He has one code of morals for himself, and quite another for his children. He requires his children to deal justly -- and gently -- with offenders, and forgive them seventy-and-seven times; whereas he deals neither justly nor gently with anyone, and he did not forgive the ignorant and thoughtless first pair of juveniles even their first small offense and say, "You may go free this time, and I will give you another chance."

On the contrary! He elected to punish their children, all through the ages to the end of time, for a trifling offense committed by others before they were born. He is punishing them yet. In mild ways? No, in atrocious ones.

You would not suppose that this kind of Being gets many compliments. Undeceive yourself: the world calls him the All-Just, the All-Righteous, the All-Good, the All-Merciful, the All-Forgiving, the All-Truthful, the All-Loving, the Source of All Morality. These sarcasms are uttered daily, all over the world. But not as conscious sarcasms. No, they are meant seriously: they are uttered without a smile."



I put a few phrases into bold.

Poor exultant young things, indeed.

john

[seeker]

Josephus does not present them as 'fighting' for control. The era you are talking about is during the reign of Alexander Janneus but if you read the account it is not about the Pharisee-Sadducee rivalry at all.

When Janneus dies Salome Alexandra takes over and puts the Pharisees in charge. Josephus describes this here but when you look at the passage there is some rhetoric but no civil war.

Galilee could have been a center, sometimes new converts are the most rabid.

[Minimalist]

Fighting is always about control. The winner takes the spoils.

Galilee was "forcibly converted" literally at knife point ( circumcision, too). Maybe willing converts are radical but guys who have their willy shaved under duress are probably not in that class. Besides, just the other day they found the remains of a first century pagan temple in Sepphoris. Now would fanatical Jews allow that? And the final kicker, when the Great Revolt broke out the citizens of Sepphoris invited the rebels to go screw themselves and wisely sided with the Romans.

It's a problem.

[Minimalist]

and upwards of a thousand lies.

[kbs2244]

I do think George Carlin read Letters from the Earth at an early age.

[Ishtar]

So, Ish, are we guessing that the Essenes arose as a reaction to the highly rigid control of the Temple that was exercised by the Saduccees under the sponsorship of the Hasmonean monarchs?

Calling it "second century" can be misleading.

In the mid-second century the Maccabaean revolt evicted the Seleucid Greeks from Jerusalem and opened the way for the first, true, Jewish expansion into the surrounding areas which they claimed had been conquered by "David" nearly 900 years earlier. So really, by the end of the second century we have the pharisees and saduccees fighting for control of the temple and it makes sense that a 3'd group would arise saying, basically, "a plague on both your houses" and looking to separate themselves. One just needs to be careful not to read second century as 190 BC when 110 BC would probably be the better time frame.

An interesting theory, Min, but based on the little we know, I'd say probably not.

I don't think the dating is misleading. The Essenes are widely believed to be the authors of the Dead Sea Scrolls which are dated to c 300 BC. So if anything, I've been conservative.

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Essenes

The Essenes have gained fame in modern times as a result of the discovery of an extensive group of religious documents known as the Dead Sea Scrolls, commonly believed as being their library. These documents include preserved multiple copies of the Hebrew Bible untouched from as early as 300 BC until their discovery in 1946. The multiple copies of the Old Testament in the original Hebrew confirmed that the Old Testament has remained relatively unchanged since it was redacted in 450 BC, with some slight changes in wording but not meaning. Among the scrolls recording each "book" of the Bible separately, only the Book of Esther did not survive the effects of time. This library also included many other, diverse religious texts, adding significant historical insights into various social and religious movements and events around the region.


Many scholars believe that the community at Qumran that allegedly produced the Dead Sea Scrolls was an offshoot of the Essenes; however, this theory has been disputed by Norman Golb and other scholars.

Groups of ascetics or renunciates per se are as old as dirt and don't necessarily arise out of something political happening in the religion. It's part of a long spiritual tradition going back thousands of years before Christ to renounce the world to embrace spirituality or mysticism. So we can't assume that they guys arose as a result of any temple infighting, although it's always possible of course.

[Ishtar]

Interesting extract from Wiki: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Essenes

The Essenes are discussed in detail by Josephus and Philo.

Many scholars believe that the community at Qumran that allegedly produced the Dead Sea Scrolls was an offshoot of the Essenes; however, this theory has been disputed by Norman Golb and other scholars.

Golb, for instance, uses strong arguments defending that primary research on the Qumran documents and ruins (by Father Roland de Veux, from the École Biblique et Archéologique de Jérusalem) lacked scientific method, originating wrong conclusions that comfortably entered the academic canon. For Golb, the amount of documents is too extensive and includes many different writing styles and calygraphies; the ruins seem to have been a fortress, used as a military basis on a very long period of time - including century I - so that they could not be inhabited by the Essenes; and the large graveyard excavated in 1870, just 50 metres east of the Qumran ruins was made of over 1,200 tombs that included many women and children - Plinius clearly wrote that "the Essenes that lived near the Dead Sea had no women, had renounced to any sexual desire and no one was born in their race".

Actually, on that last point, Josephus speaks of a branch of the Essenes who did get married and have children. Also, I think it's a mistake to connect where the Dead Sea Scrolls were buried with the nearby fort. If they were burying them to hide them, which they surely would have been, they're unlikely to bury them in their own backyard. And, in any case, the fort is dated to 100 BC, two hundred years later than the scrolls themselves.

Golb's book presents sharp observations about de Vaux's premature conclusions and their unargued acceptance in general academic community. He states that the documents probably were part of the Jerusalem Library, kept safe in the desert from the roman invasions.[3]

Since the 19th century attempts have been made to connect early Christianity and Pythagoreanism with the Essenes. It was suggested that Jesus of Nazareth was an Essene, and that Christianity evolved from this sect of Judaism, with which it shared many ideas and symbols. According to Martin A. Larson, the now misunderstood Essenes were Jewish Pythagoreans who lived as monks. As vegetarian celibates in self-reliant communities who shunned marriage and family, they preached a coming war with the Sons of Darkness. As the Sons of Light, this reflected a separate influence from Zoroastrianism via their parent ideology of Pythagoreanism. According to Larson, both the Essenes and Pythagoreans resembled thiasoi, or cult units of the Orphic mysteries. John the Baptist is widely regarded to be a prime example of an Essene who had left the communal life (see Ant. 18.116-119), and it is thought they aspired to emulate their own founding Teacher of Righteousness who was crucified. However, J.B. Lightfoot's essay (On Some Points Connected with the Essenes) argues that attempts to find the roots of Essenism in Pythagoreanism and the roots of Christianity in Essenism are flawed. Authors such as Robert Eisenman present differing views that support the Essene/Early Christian connection.

Another issue is the relationship between the Essaioi and Philo's Therapeutae and Therapeutrides (see De Vita Contemplativa). It may be argued that he regarded the Therapeutae as a contemplative branch of the Essaioi who, he said, pursued an active life (Vita Cont. I.1).

One theory on the formation of the Essenes suggested the movement was founded by a Jewish high priest, dubbed by the Essenes the Teacher of Righteousness, whose office had been usurped by Jonathan (of priestly but not Zadokite lineage), labeled the "man of lies" or "false priest".

[Minimalist]

The problem with that Ish is that one has to accept the whole Qumran Romance as it has developed over the years. Like the OT itself, the general public and the preachers fall all over themselves at the holiness of the place but scholars are dubious.

These two,

http://crusadefortruth.blogspot.com/200 ... heory.html

Maden and Peleg, believe it was first a fort (it is admirably located for such a purpose) and later a pottery factory.

AFTER 10 years of work at Qumran, when Magen and Peleg's crew reached the bottom layer of the large pool, they were stunned to uncover a previously unseen white sediment. The powder has turned out to be the most significant clue yet to the Qumran mystery, they say. "It was the most important thing ever found at Qumran: the bottom of the pool has some three tons of high-quality clay," Peleg told the Post. "We started to understand the site - there were no Essenes." Qumran in the Second Temple period was not much more than a small, dusty, muddy, and smoky pottery-industry work station, devoid of spirituality, according to the clay sediment in conjunction with their other findings, he says. The finding of "buckets and buckets" of burned dates also led the archeologists to confirm that the only other activity going on at Qumran was the production of date honey, stored in small ceramic vessels made there. Initially, to check that the powder was indeed viable clay, the archeologists threw the fine chalk-colored residue into a vat and added water. Then they delivered the clay to a potter and asked her to fire away. The potter gave the clay a quick thumbs-up. Her first vase adorns Magen's Jerusalem office, together with dozens of handmade drawings of Qumran artifacts. They are still running tests of the clay against the ancient Qumran pottery.

Of course, there is nothing to stop a group of squatters from having moved into the remains of the pottery factory and lived there for a while but the image of Essene monks diligently sitting at desks copying away probably owes more to the monks of the xtian middle ages, and the monastic and ecclesiastical background of Roland deVaux one of the earliest excavators than to any first century reality.

The dating of the material is always in dispute but, if they weren't written there, it really makes no difference. Again, a '3d century' reference is as wide open as a "2d century" reference. It could be 299 BC....or it could be 201 BC....quite a margin of error.

If Magen and Peleg are correct...and from the evidence it seems that they have to be at the least partly correct...the scrolls were probably deposited in the caves for safe keeping by residents of Jerusalem fleeing the onslaught that Titus was bringing towards them. Josephus' descriptions aside, there had to be a few people in Jerusalem who knew what the inevitable outcome of a Roman attack on the city would mean.

[seeker]

Fighting is always about control. The winner takes the spoils.

Galilee was "forcibly converted" literally at knife point ( circumcision, too). Maybe willing converts are radical but guys who have their willy shaved under duress are probably not in that class. Besides, just the other day they found the remains of a first century pagan temple in Sepphoris. Now would fanatical Jews allow that? And the final kicker, when the Great Revolt broke out the citizens of Sepphoris invited the rebels to go screw themselves and wisely sided with the Romans.

It's a problem.

Don't forget though that you are reading an account by a partisan Jew written as a sop to Roman patrons. there certainly was infighting between Pharisees and Sadducees but not anything like a war for control, more like rival political factions.

I think you just like war

[seeker]

I don't think the dating is misleading. The Essenes are widely believed to be the authors of the Dead Sea Scrolls which are dated to c 300 BC. So if anything, I've been conservative.

Ish - I don't know of very many scholars that date the dead sea scrolls before the second century. Here is a reasonable discussion of why.

[Minimalist]

Agreed...again the problem of having only one source. Still, Josephus was writing of a time 20-40 years prior to the Romans even entering the arena. It is hard to see what motivation he would have for misrepresenting anything because of his current audience. Now, Josephus was a pharisee himself so certainly his opinion of the sadduccees needs to be critically considered. He seemed to consider the Essenes to be a harmless bunch of oddballs.

[Ishtar]

The problem with that Ish is that one has to accept the whole Qumran Romance as it has developed over the years. Like the OT itself, the general public and the preachers fall all over themselves at the holiness of the place but scholars are dubious.

What .... as opposed to the whole Jesus-in-a-manger kinda romance? At least there’s attestation for the Essenes who followed a Teacher of Righteousness who was crucified. There’s none for Jesus.

According to my research, some scholars are dubious and some aren’t. But here’s what I think:

The Qumran fort is dated to 1st century BC. The manus are dated to 300 BC. Thus the fort was there 200 years before the manus were buried – thus those who buried the manus knew nothing about a fort or possibly even a potters or honey factory or whatever they decided it was.

One of the reasons for doubting the manus belonged to the Essenes is because they are in different hands and different dialects. But that is exactly what I’d expect from a library of manuscripts that had been collated over hundreds of years from various sources.

Peleg told the Post. "We started to understand the site - there were no Essenes." ...

As I said before, they were unlikely to be hiding incriminating evidence (which is what those manus amounted to) on their own doorstep.

But actually ...hang on a minute ...(my bolding)

Qumran in the Second Temple period was not much more than a small, dusty, muddy, and smoky pottery-industry work station, devoid of spirituality, according to the clay sediment in conjunction with their other findings, he says. The finding of "buckets and buckets" of burned dates also led the archaeologists to confirm that the only other activity going on at Qumran was the production of date honey, stored in small ceramic vessels made there.

Min.. where is the logic in the above paragraph? That they threw pots and made honey means that they couldn’t have been spiritual? The Essenes were self-supporting communities. How were they meant to support themselves if not by throwing pots and making date honey? In fact, we know that the Essenes lived on date honey. Of course the place would be ‘devoid of spirituality’ now, whatever that means, because if it ever was a spiritual place, that was thousands of years ago. What makes a place spiritual is what kind of vibe is emanated by the people there ... once they’re gone, so does the spirituality go.

Of course, there is nothing to stop a group of squatters from having moved into the remains of the pottery factory and lived there for a while but the image of Essene monks diligently sitting at desks copying away probably owes more to the monks of the xtian middle ages, and the monastic and ecclesiastical background of Roland deVaux one of the earliest excavators than to any first century reality.

Well, that’s just the prejudice of the author – Min, where do you find these articles? Someone somewhere must have written those manuscripts c 300 BC– whether or not they were written diligently at a desk, I couldn’t say ...but why is that relevant anyway?

The dating of the material is always in dispute but, if they weren't written there, it really makes no difference. Again, a '3rd century' reference is as wide open as a "2d century" reference. It could be 299 BC....or it could be 201 BC....quite a margin of error.

Well, whether it’s 299 BC or 201 BC, what difference does it make? By insisting on this nitpicking, you’re missing the real point. That is, as my table shows, that there were people practising “Christian” teachings and who followed a Teacher of Righteousness who was crucified hundreds of years before the so-called real life Christ was supposed to have lived.

That's the real point.

If Magen and Peleg are correct...and from the evidence it seems that they have to be at the least partly correct...the scrolls were probably deposited in the caves for safe keeping by residents of Jerusalem fleeing the onslaught that Titus was bringing towards them. Josephus' descriptions aside, there had to be a few people in Jerusalem who knew what the inevitable outcome of a Roman attack on the city would mean.

Ah ....! The light dawns – and it is Damascene in its proportions! Now I see.... you are determined to find a political context for this and that’s why you’ve come up with this dodgy article.

Min, do you not think that sometimes shit just happens and it has nothing to do with the grand, processional ever changing backcloth of history against which the everyday and unchanging trials and tribulations of the little people just go on the same, regardless?

For instance, here’s a ‘spiritual’ example: My joining a shamanic practitioners’ course two years ago had absolutely nothing to do with Bush and Blair invading Iraq or the Archbishop of Canterbury declaring that there should Moslem law in Britain. I just did it because I wanted to.

So...oh dear ... shall I let you have your political context ...? Do you know, I don’t really care? If it’s important to you – although I don’t see how anything Magen and Peleg have to say supports it – but go on, it's my birthday so I'll let you have it. Let’s say 210 BC then, even though the manus are dated to 300 BC.

That’s still a hundred year advance on what you were saying last night when you trying to fit the Essenes into the Maccabean revolt!!


Gotta love ya, though!