- It has been a long time since the Dead Sea Scrolls were
found in 1947, and when they were translated it became a problem for the
world of capitalists. Jesus' values and the Essene were more
in line with Socialism than Capitalism and usury.
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- Israel took the Dead Sea Scrolls in 1967 and stopped
access to them.
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- So, what has happened since is that the values of Jesus
and the stories of Jesus have been sanitized to fit into support for capitalism
and Israel, which is about the same game that was going on with Jesus and
the Pharisee. This is why the extreme right capitalism and Israel's Talmud
Pharisee usury religion have such intimate association and they work together
in deceit and treachery games to fool the masses.
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- The Churches in the US don't present the true story on
Jesus, and the churches like Bush's Methodists are some of the worst to
avoid telling all the simple associations of the Biblical narratives and
the huge respect Moses had for the natural order, which was the one thing
that allowed the Hebrews to be called God's Chosen People.
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- Thus, all the faked up Jews in Israel don't have the
respect from the region's people and constant war rips up the region.
-
- The following piece speaks to some of the hidden away
truths from these Dead Sea Scrolls, which have great bearing on what is
happening in this day and time.
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- =====
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- http://www.ihr.org/jhr/v08/v08p-79_Larson.html
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- An Update on the Dead Sea Scrolls
MARTIN A. LARSON
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- Paper Presented to the Eighth International Revisionist
Conference. I was reared in a highly fundamentalist religious denomination;
and although I had various early doubts concerning its dogmas and practices
and rejected them when I was about twenty years old, I never lost an intense
interest in religion as a social phenomenon or in its influence upon mankind.
I remember one philosopher who said that men create their gods in their
own image; and certain it is that human beings in almost all times have
believed in a great variety of supernatural beings; and one scholar declared
that the greatest miracle of all is the capacity of mankind to believe
in things for which there is no actual evidence.
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- When I was doing my research for the Ph.D. degree at
the University of Michigan, I became engrossed in Milton, especially his
religious concepts; and I discovered that he was far from orthodox in these
as well as in his political convictions. In fact, I found that he had embraced
various heresies for which, under Puritan law, he could have been sent
to prison or even executed. And this was especially true because he rejected
the doctrine of the Trinity, which is a central dogma in both the Catholic
Church and in the Protestant Reformation.
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- This set me off on a search for the sources of his beliefs;
and I found that Michael Servetus, burned at the stake by Calvin in 1553,
may have been the heretic who inspired Milton to reject this basic dogma.
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- However, when I was no longer a teacher but had to make
my living in the business world, I had no time for research; and had to
put this off until 1950, when I had both leisure and financial independence;
then I plunged into new research in the religious area.
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- I soon conceived an intense interest in the Dead Sea
Scrolls, which had been found in 1947; and together with this, I sought
to discover the ultimate as well as the immediate sources of the Christian
gospel, as set forth in the New Testament. I therefore began research which
involved the reading and examination of hundreds of esoteric volumes and
the editing of a large book, entitled The Religion of the Occident, published
in 1959, which has since been reprinted at least five times and is now
entitled The Story of Christian Origins.
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- As my interest in the Dead Sea Scrolls intensified, I
prepared another volume dealing largely with this subject and entitled
The Essene-Christian Faith.
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- A few years ago, I gave a talk at IHR's Third International
Revisionist Historical Conference on the Dead Sea Scrolls, in which I emphasized
two points:
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- that there is a definite relationship between the Essene
cult and the teachings found in the New Testament gospels, especially that
of Luke; and that both the Jewish authorities and the present Christian
denominations seem determined to negate and deny any such relationship,
and if possible, to prevent the publication of the Scrolls. In 1947, two
Bedouins stumbled into a cave near the Dead Sea and found there several
scrolls, which were sold to some people in New York and published without
delay. These furnished very strong evidence to support the belief that
Jesus may himself have been an Essene before he appeared at the Jordan
to be baptized by John, and that the New Testament Gospels contain many
ideas and teachings very similar to those of the Essenes. After this first
discovery, several well-financed expeditions were sent into the area to
explore any other caves that might be found; several caves were discovered,
containing rich treasures of Essene material; and Millar Burrows, the leading
scholar in the field, stated that original Essene scriptures sufficient
to fill two large volumes had been recovered.
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- It is indeed interesting to note that more than a hundred
years before the discovery of the Scrolls, a famous English author, Thomas
De Quincey, had written a long essay called "The Essenes," in
which he maintained that there never had been such a separate community,
but that the people described by Josephus, Philo Judaeus, and Pliny were
simply Christians gone underground as a result of persecution. Even on
the basis of the slight evidence available in 1830, this renowned scholar
arrived at this momentous conclusion.
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- I wish to point out the fact that having any scrolls
at all was simply an accident of history. The Bedouins who happened upon
them had no interest in them except to obtain some money; and those who
bought them had the same objective. As a result, these first Scrolls saw
the light without any delay whatever.
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- Then, however, a completely different process began.
The expeditions undertaken by religious groups, which recovered much additional
treasure, placed this material in a Jordanian museum in Jerusalem. There
it remained until 1967, when the Jewish government seized the area, the
museum, and the Scrolls in the war which occurred that year. Since then,
virtually no one has been permitted access to any Essene material, although
the Isaiah Scroll, found in one of the caves, has long been on public display.
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- We should note that even while the museum was under Jordanian
control, strict secrecy was maintained. I know that, for when I wrote the
curator asking permission to photograph certain pieces of parchment from
the Testaments of the Twelve Patriarchs, the reply was that should I journey
there I would not be allowed even to look at them!
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- Nearly forty years have now elapsed since great quantities
of original Essene material were found, much of which would undoubtedly
have a definite bearing on the origins of Christianity. Many years ago,
eight scholars were appointed to study, collate, arrange, publish and translate
the Scrolls. However, all of them, except one, had religious commitments
or obligations; only John Marco Allegro was free of such limitations; he
was assigned the difficult task of unraveling the Copper Treasure Scroll,
which he did promptly and expertly; he also translated and published a
few fragments from the Scrolls which are most interesting.. The others,
of whom four were Roman Catholics and three Protestants, simply malingered
on the job; and to this day, while the Scrolls may be disintegrating with
age and exposure, virtually nothing of the task imposed upon these men
has been accomplished.
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- I consider this failure perhaps the greatest and most
contemptible cover-up that has ever occurred in the religious field. And
we should note that while those in control see to it that the Scrolls are
not published, they deny vehemently that there is any attempt to delay
or prevent their publication.
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- At this point, I want to say a few words about the importance
of religion. In my experience, I found that bigots in this area are more
intolerant of others and more certain that they and they alone possess
the truth -- even though they actually know nothing - than is the case
in any other realm of belief. There is nothing which creates more antagonism
than an opinion or a fact which is at variance with their persuasions.
For this reason, I try to avoid religious controversy. I usually withhold
my personal opinions or beliefs and try to limit any discussion, if any,
to unquestionable facts -- such as those pertaining to the Dead Sea Scrolls.
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- Since it is a fact that one of the greatest cover-ups
in history relates to the suppression of these documents, it is certainly
pertinent to ask why this has occurred. What powerful interests wish to
suppress their contents? As far as I am concerned, the answer is not far
to seek; both the Israelis and the Christian denominations wish to ignore
the content of the Scrolls and see them into oblivion for reasons which
seem obvious enough to me.
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- And we should note that religion is perhaps the most
powerful influence that exists on earth. Although there are several major
faiths and although Christianity itself is divided into hundreds of sects
and denominations, one of them alone, the Roman Catholic Church, is considered
by some scholars as powerful an economic and political force in the Western
world as either the United States or the Soviet Union. Although all Christian
divisions agree on certain matters, they differ sharply on various others.
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- Why, then, do Christian organizations desire the oblivion
of the Scrolls? The reason is that they have always held that their creed
was a single, unique, miraculous, and supreme revelation without predecessor
or outside contributor. But the fact is that nothing could be further from
the truth; Christianity is a composite of doctrines, teachings, and ideologies
which have forerunners in previous religions, with a proximate source in
the Essene cult. If these facts were widely known, the authority of the
Church or the churches would be drastically reduced. For this reason the
reigning churches are determined to show that there is little or no similarity
between Essenism and original Christianity. Or they prefer simply to ignore
the whole thing as if it did not exist It would be virtually impossible
to do this if all the Scrolls were published.
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- We know also from the Scrolls as well as from many passages
in the New Testament that both the Essenes and Jesus were bitterly opposed
to the Jewish authorities, especially the religious. There can be little
doubt that the Scrolls now crumbling into dust include many passages in
which the Pharisees, the Sadducees, and the Scribes are excoriated in the
most bitter terms and that the tyranny exercised by them over the dissident
Essenes is described in full detail. We know that about 104 B.C. the Essenes
became a secret cult, went underground as it were, and forbade its members
to discuss any of its beliefs with outsiders. We know also that about 70
B.C. the Teacher of Righteousness, the Essene leader, appeared in the temple
in Jerusalem, where he denounced the authorities, and that, as a result,
he was executed, probably by crucifixion; and that his followers therafter
declared that he had risen from the grave on the third day, ascended to
heaven, and would send a great messiah before the end of the generation
to conduct the Last Judgment and inaugurate the Kingdom of the Saints on
earth.
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- In addition, I think we would be correct in concluding
or assuming that the Jews prefer not to believe that Christianity sprang
from an obscure and secret cult existing practically underground among
their own people.
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- I can assure you that I am not the only one who believes
that there is a general conspiracy to conceal the content of the remaining
Scrolls and, if possible, to hasten their destruction. One of these is
the same John Allegro, mentioned earlier, who lost his position as a professor
in an English university because of what he said, and who was denied all
future access to the Scrolls after he declared that a predecessor of Jesus
may also have been crucified about a century before. In an article entitled
"The Scandal of the Unpublished Scrolls," published on May 18,
1987, in The Daily Telegraph of London, England, he states that the Scrolls:
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- Pose questions too hot for the scholars' liking. He considers
the delays in publication pathetic and inexcusable... for years, his colleagues
have been sitting on the material, which is not only of outstanding importance,
but also quite the most religiously sensitive.
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- Mr. Allegro has no doubt that the evidence from the Scrolls
undermines the uniqueness of Christianity as a sect "In fact,"
he declares, "we know all about the origins of Christianity";
however,
-
- ... these documents lift the curtain. But the members
of the international team are all ecclesiastically connected in some way
and I think thay are quite glad to sit on the stuff ... that has been the
trouble with the Scrolls; they impinge so much on Judaism and on Christianity
... they became a political football when the Israelis marched in and seized
Jerusalem from the Jordanians in the War of 1967.
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- "They are," he continues,
-
- ... now in Israeli custody and are stilt so far as I
am aware, locked up in cabinets in the basements of the museum in Jerusalem,
where one bomb could destroy them at any time.
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- Some thirty years ago, it was made clear that all the
members of the team appointed to work on the Scrolls would soon make the
documents assigned to them available for publication in learned journals
and by the Oxford University Press; however, Allegro was the only member
of the team who fulfilled this duty.
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- The only solution for the problem, he declares, "is
the formation at once of an international, interdenominational and ecumenical
committee to complete the study and decide how best to make the contents
of the Scrolls available to the public." He might, I think have added
that such a committee should consist largely of dedicated scholars who
are without specific commitments or obligations to religious organizations.
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- Will this happen? I very much doubt it. I am afraid that
the cover-up will continue until the Scrolls have withered into dust -
forever lost. The seekers for truth will probably have to be satisfied
with what we already have; but even that, I assure you, is ample to establish
the fact that there is a close relationship between the Essene cult and
original Christianity.
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-
- Comment
Mr.* *Larson:
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- I would not argue with much of what you have illustrated,
I think the title says it all. Howeveer I would like to make two observations.
The first is that I think you are missing the bigger picture if you believe
that the authority of the Church is reliant on the histoicity, or even
honesty, of its traditions. The power of blind faith is much stronger
than you let on to realize. The second, and parralell point is your need
for the Essene texts to be published shows a lack of true faith, not in
religion, but in humnaity. By its nature, all "holy texts" are
readily available to those who care to seek them out, regardless of the
media in which they are presented.
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- Glenn McCarhty
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