The two Jesus's Matthew 27:16-23

originally posted by: TefarimCanin
a reply to: NumberMan

I use a Bible that incorporates every translation and it is in the oldest versions. bar Abbas is obviously a character whose name being Jesus, son of the Father, was decided to be referred to as Barabbas as if it were a first name to prevent what I think it means from coming to light in the new world of Bible availability for the laymen.

But as time went by the Catholics have shown the most devotion to the spirit and wording of translating from the oldest texts accurately.

The NRSV w/apocrypha is my favorite.

Cool, I'm running Bible works 9, (10 came out)

It has all the oldest greek, hebrew, Latin as well as most every translation with tons of search options.

I have images of the Greek papyrus as well in the software, but haven't looked that over in awhile.

Check it out if you've never seen it.

a reply to: NumberMan

I'm buying the Dead Sea Scroll Bible next week. I like having the book and reading it on the internet but this one you have to but.

I got a lot of books. I read even more online.

Tonight I am going to read Plutarch's Isis and Osiris online. Plutarch might be Luke of the gospel as his first name is Lucius and his writings have parallels to Luke and Acts.

a reply to: TefarimCanin

Be careful of later interpretation of what we have knowledge of them as there are a lot of claim's which are based on the Assumption that the essene's were a christian sect or related to christianity, which it may actually have been,
www.thenazareneway.com...
but there is no concrete evidence to back up those assumption's, some have also claimed they were the jewish christians which is actually most probably wrong though they may have exchanged some idea's and even some members may have switched from one group to the other.

The Church of James was the real Jewish church and it is still extant today, it is known as the Orthodox church of Antioch or the Syriac Orthodox Church, it clung on and thrived outside Judea after the Roman Expulsion of the Jew's in land's to the north in what is today Syria in an independent kingdom which was not part of the Roman Empire and fiercely resisted attempt's by the Greek Orthodoxy to integrate it, they still practice there ceremony's in Aramaic the common language of the time of Jesus.

Definitely interesting though and there seem's to have been much that we would recognise as identical to Christian teaching in that sect though they were actually extreme orthodox jews of there period.

Likely they were more christian than most of us though even if they - the Essense - were not actually christian's there moral code most certainly was and there belief's are up there with the best teaching's if that page link I added is correct, now you have me interested.

a reply to: LABTECH767

I think think the Essenes were propaganda and based off the Jessenes, a minor Jewish sect claiming descendancy from Jesse.

Or the Naasenes. I'm not sure on these spellings but the pronunciation is equal.


James was a Zaddikim. He was the Zaddik, a historically known title for the leader of the Sons of Zadok. Zaddik means righteous one or the just(one). This is the community of radicals from Qumran written about in the Dead Sea Scrolls. They were finally vanquished at Masada with other Judeans like Zealots and Sicari.

The Scrolls also mentions Chasidim (pious ones) and Ebionites/Ebionim (the poor ones). and these are all the sons of light. They were intolerant of outsiders and had plans on conquering the the Roman and Syrian empires, however grandiose it seems they actually thought they would receive heavenly assistance from angels and Melchizedek and the Messiah of heaven and earth and would defeat all the "sons of darkness" (everybody but them) and rule the world from Jerusalem.

Somebody tipped off the Romans and they spent a long time fighting almost as long as the War Scroll prophecies, except they lost. They are actually responsible for the wrath of Rome and are definitely not the peaceful Essenes of Josephus (the Zaddikim).

The Chasidim survive today and are still the same way only they don't try and take over the world anymore. The Pharisees became Rabbinical Orthodox Judaism and follow Talmud as the most sacred of Jewish scriptures which takes half a lifetime to read before you study the Zohar and Sepher Yezirah.

The Pharisees learned from the Persian Parsi Magi how to control the rulership of any nation through religion and have employed the tactic with amazing success.

The other kind of Persian Zoroastrian priests who were against the tactics of the Parsi/Magi faction that was abusing the wisdom were in a way the first Gnostics in that they were good and disgusted with the theocracy and retreated to the wilderness to live communally and in peace and I believe they ended up in Egypt after the demise of the Persian empire and were the model for the Nag Hammadi Christian texts just as much as Christianity as they were already compatible. Much of Christianity is borrowed from Zoroastrianism, Hermeticism and the Nag Hammadi writings seem to be typical Egyptian syncretism with a high moral standard and I believe that the Essenes ended up in Egypt and became one or another of the endless schools of Religion of Egypt. Egypt was tolerant and not yet under the Roman domination and there were Israelites in Egypt after the expulsion from Judea. So I think it is unlikely that they became Christian as we define it today after Rome took over the Messiah movement and turned it in to a salvation sacrifice for sins on the condition of "believing Jesus died for your sins."

They were supposedly vegetarian and despised animal sacrifice so I don't see the Essenes accepting this false doctrine of faith and grace. They lived the "contemplative life" according to the ancient author/historian who wrote a book by that title, Pliny I think. So they were thinkers and would see through the Christ myth. They were put out of business or driven underground or are a pseudohistorical composite of the best qualities of a few groups. Nazarenes being one.

James is said to have died as the Nasi of the Nazarenes and that would mean Nazarene was what Yeshua's disciples were called. The church did everything to downplay this like making Nazareth the name of a town retroactive to Yeshua's own time when it was not. They make the residents of Nazareth hate him because a prophet is always rejected in his home town (so says scripture). Makes the Nazarenes, the actual Apostolic churches, look like they rejected the prophet.

So Essenes is probably a way of recording the history of the Nazarenes without using the dreaded word Nazarene which would be admitting the Christians aren't the rightful successor to Yeshua the Nazarene.

Nazarene gospels have popped up claimed to be long lost gospels and Nazarene and Essenes are used interchangeably today. But I don't know if those gospels are legitimate.

The Ebionites survived until the heretic hunters tracked them down and vanquished them for rejecting the false prophet Paul. They were loyal to James and the Apostles and Paul was teaching lies about James and Jesus.

a reply to: LABTECH

If the Syriac church of today accepts Pauline theology and epistles as scripture then I don't consider them to be the Descendants of Jesus, James and the Apostles.

That church was called the Ebionites until Catholicism wiped them out.


John the Baptist has a continuously existent since before Jesus in Iraq today called the Mandaeans. They don't hate Jesus but they are loyal to John and I know little about them.

Mandaeans scripture

a reply to: LABTECH767

Nazarene way has some really good info to get you thinking in a methodical way of interpreting scripture based on Philo's rules for allegory. You can use words with known historical usage like Hermas in the Apocryphal but originally considered scripture Shepherd of Hermas to figure out, just from the title, that Hermas relates to Hermes the Greek Thoth who was called "The shepherd of man" in the Corpus Hermeticus and you will find many similarities to the Gospel in there too.

Philo says that things like that were done on purpose and in coded allegory to preserve truths that otherwise would have gotten the work excluded from canon and destroyed.

Luke was the best at this along with Clement and Josephus.

Clement and Luke parodied Paul as Simon Magus although the stories say Simon Magus, a well despised person by the church, they are all about Paul and some will have Paul in them just to make it less obvious but he is always less important than Peter, Clements mentor, who the stories feature.