Was Jesus the Essene "Teacher of Righteousness"?

Long before the purported life of Jesus, the Essenes followed a man known as the Teacher of Righteousness, known in Hebrew as Moreh ha-Zedek (Zedek means righteousness, and is the same word used in Melchizedek).

From this site

In the spring of 1950 Andre Dupont-Sommer, Professor of Semitic Languages and Civilizations at the Sorbonne, presented to the academic community a paper about the Moreh ha-Zedek which caused a sensation.

"Jesus," he claimed, "appears in many respects as an astonishing reincarnation of the Teacher of Righteousness. Like the latter, he preached penitence, poverty, humility, love of one's neighbor, chastity.... Like him, he was the Elect and the Messiah of God.... Like him, he was the object of the hostility of the priests.... Like him, he was condemned and put to death. Like him he pronounced judgment on Jerusalem, which was taken and destroyed by the Romans for having put him to death.... Like him, he founded a Church whose adherents fervently awaited his glorious return.... All these similarities -- and here I only touch upon the subject -- taken together constitute a very impressive whole."

In 1950, Andre Dupont-Sommer could not have simply come out and suggested that Jesus and the Teacher of Righteousness were one in the same.

The ancient historian Josephus wrote of the Essenes. According to Josephus, they were mostly pacifist, ascetic, celibate, separatist, and apolitical mystics, although some were married and some were revolutionary zealots. Some resided in Jerusalem according to Josephus. Josephus wrote of three sects of Jews; Pharisees, Sadducees, and Essenes. The New Testament is very critical of the first two, but never mentions the third. That makes a lot of sense if the Essenes are in fact the heritage of Christianity.

The Teacher of Righteousness predates Christianity by as much as ~200 years. If The Teacher of Righteousness and Jesus are one in the same, that would explain why there is such a collective fog regarding the man Jesus in the earliest Christian writings, and it would also explain how it was possible for such divergent Christian sects to have been in existence only 20 years after Jesus' supposed crucifixion; they were offshoots of the much older Essene tradition.

To read more about the Essenes from Josephus, see this site. The similarities between early Christianity and Essene tradition are so striking that they simply can not be denied.

There is speculation that the "The Liar" referred to in the Damascus Document of the Dead Sea Scrolls is none other than Paul himself, who from their perspective, was attempting to corrupt Essene tradition with pagan concepts. More detail on this theory here

Your ideas are intersting.

Here's an interesting take on John the baptist being the ToR.
Dead Sea Scrolls Teacher of Righteousness as John the Baptist

Something else to consider is the gospel story of Jesus returning to his home town, called Nazareth, where due to his teaching in the synagogue, a crowd gathered to throw him from a cliff. There are no cliffs anywhere near the modern Nazareth, but there certainly are plenty of them in the Qumran region. If "nazareth" was a transliteration error for the Nazarenes (the Essenes of Qumran), or perhaps a colloquial name for Qumran, then this makes sense.

might be off topic but,


Jesus giving mankind two fishes and bread to eat.

Jesus also known as King Fisher.

In the video they claim Jesus being the initiator of the age of Pisces.

I found that quite an interesting claim, since it's about 2000 years ago. And the 'Ages' having a timespan of about 2150 years.

who knows.

Originally posted by spamandham
Something else to consider is the gospel story of Jesus returning to his home town, called Nazareth, where due to his teaching in the synagogue, a crowd gathered to throw him from a cliff. There are no cliffs anywhere near the modern Nazareth, but there certainly are plenty of them in the Qumran region.

Mount Carmel is north of Qumran, west of Galilee--on the seashore. This sect was known as the 'Nazoreans.' Elijah was the founder of this older Essene sect--Mt. Carmel is his stomping grounds. Surely one wouldn't need to look far for a precipice in that location...

If "nazareth" was a transliteration error for the Nazarenes (the Essenes of Qumran), or perhaps a colloquial name for Qumran, then this makes sense.

I've never heard of the southern Essenes being called Nazoreans...
John the Baptist supposedly was raised there--and so he did not know Jesus as his cousin.

Nazareth was a town before and after the time period said to have been the lifetime of Jesus--but for about 400 years (up until after the siege of 70AD) Nazareth was uninhabitated--especially by Jews. This is certain because the caves there were used for tombs in that time period. Jewish law prohibits habitation near tombs (the dead). Moreover, a Nazarite could not come in contact with a corpse during the time of separation. Which seemed to have ended at the wedding in Cana.

Hey Spam,

The concepts you introduce in this thread are not intirely new to me. They seem to parrallel some information I obtained when reading a book entitled "The Hiram Key", and some similiar books by the same authors.

Just curious if you've heard of this book, or similiar ones, and if so, have you read them?

I think you might be interested in some of their interpretations of historical facts. Good thread!

Here is a link, with some more info. A lot of people think of their work as fiction, but their case of how they connect the dots of real history is compelling to say the least. Their concepts (Lomas & Knight) are intriguing.

link/source:
www.knight-lomas.com...

Here is what a little of how someone else describes their work on the above stated link:

When Christopher Knight and Robert Lomas, both Masons, set out to find the origins of freemasonry they had no idea they would find themselves unravelling the true story of Jesus Christ and the original Jerusalem Church. As a radically new picture of Jesus and his ultra-Jewish sect started to emerge, the authors came to the controversial conclusion that the key rituals of modern Freemasonry were practiced by the sect as a means of initiation into their community.
Rigorously analysing and comparing ancient Egyptian records, the Old and New Testaments, early Christian and Rabbinical texts, the Dead Sea Scrolls and the rituals of Freemasonry, the authors have been able to reconstruct the lost story of Jesus and his brother James and describe their struggle to establish the 'Kingdom of heaven' upon earth using Masonic-style rituals. The establishment of the Christian Church is shown to be a political invention that has little connection with the man we call 'Christ'.

Originally posted by Esoteric Teacher
The concepts you introduce in this thread are not intirely new to me. They seem to parrallel some information I obtained when reading a book entitled "The Hiram Key", and some similiar books by the same authors.

Just curious if you've heard of this book, or similiar ones, and if so, have you read them?

Haven't read that one.