Information about Qumran and early Christian Jews
- This page is part of an ERW course: Historical figures of faith and inspiration.
- By John Eagles, July 8, 2010.
- This is information i acquired from a source S in spirit world. He was a Jew born ca 20 AD. He received training in the Qumran community for a few years. Around the year 68 AD he was in Jerusalem and taken prisoner by the Romans and brought as slave to Europe (probably what is now Germany). S was an early Christian. He died in slavery and from spirit world he supported Christians like Geert Groote [1] of the Modern Devotion [2] and Francis of Assisi [3] .
S tells that James the Just [4] , the first leader of the Christian church in Jerusalem, continued to work in spirit world with his own group of followers and acted (too) much as a big leader. S was never a member of this group.
He tells the following about Qumran [5] , the Essenes [6] and the Nazareth community:
The Qumran scrolls had already been hidden some 20 years before 68-70 AD. For this purpose of hiding, scrolls had also been collected from other Essene communities. The leaders of Qumran had already fled earlier to Egypt because there were wars against them from the Romans and also other Jewish groups.
The wars had been prophesied. The leaders wanted to hide until the heaven, which they expected soon, would come and then they thought they would be installed as leaders of heaven. In those years the Essene communities began to fall apart.
The Nazareth community had been an Essene group under the leader Zacharias. Later it became center of one of the first Christian groups and the members were called Nazarenes. The Jewish Nazareth community was not officially known to most other Jews as being Essene.
S received a few years of training at Qumran. The first he had to learn was to defend, in the 'defensive tower.' There lived between 300 and 1,000 people at Qumran, depending on how many students got training at a particular time. No children were born there. Most inhabitants were men.
An important aspect of training was concerning purity, who was allowed to touch, cups, plates etc. What had a higher value was not allowed to be touched by impure people. There was rigid punishment for letting pure things come in the hands of the impure.
In the 'scriptorium' copies were made of scrolls. The originals were stored away in the caves. The originals came from many different times of history and from many places. There were kept about 1,000 original scrolls. One part of his training was to learn to copy scrolls. This had to be done without making any mistakes. S got a few weeks training to do this.
Trainees lived mostly in tents. Only the leaders were buried in Qumran.
Celibacy was kept at Qumran but not at other Essene communities. If a woman came to Qumran she was not allowed to come near the men. The few woman-trainees that came to Qumran were trained only by some leaders. They got their training when the men were sleeping.
When S was there he also wore phylacteries [7] (little boxes containing holy texts and worn on arm and forehead). It was done only for a few months when they got training in texts. Some people wore them all the time.
The scroll mostly studied by trainees was the Scroll of discipline.
The Qumran community already existed when the Teacher of Righteousness [8] came there (probably ca 150 BCE). He brought new discipline and rules to Qumran. He was a Zadokite priest who protested against the Hellenization of Jewish religion.
The Qumran community collected also scrolls of other groups, not because they accepted their teaching but to become knowledgeable about these.
Jesus' disciples saw Jesus as king and messiah and leader of the Essenes. There had been revelations about someone like him to come. For this reason Jesus was crucified. The revelations said that this messiah would throw out the Romans and the evil priests and therefore the Romans and priests were against Jesus.
