Did he acknowledge them as a sect, of the Jew's?
Where are the essenes mentioned?
I think Roman rule should be taken into consideration here. What fell under a Judaism, as a sect? This would have been extremely important to maintain a legal status in ancient Rome. As well as maintain the exemption from idols, which Rome extended to Jew's. Therefore sectarian practices, could maintain legal religious status within the Empire? A very serious issue in ancient Rome.
Of the various factions that emerged under Hasmoneanrule, three are of particular interest: the Pharisees, Sadducees, andEssenes.
The Pharisees
The most important of the three were the Pharisees because they are the spiritual fathers of modern
Judaism. Their main distinguishing characteristic was a belief in an
Oral Law that God gave to
Moses at Sinai along with the
Torah. The
Torah, or
Written Law, was akin to the U.S. Constitution in the sense that it set down a series of laws that were open to interpretation. The Pharisees believed that God also gave
Moses the knowledge of what these laws meant and how they should be applied. This oral tradition was codified and written down roughly three centuries later in what is known as the
Talmud.
The Pharisees also maintained that an after-life existed and that God punished the wicked and rewarded the righteous in the world to come. They also believed in a
messiah who would herald an era of world peace.
Pharisees were in a sense blue-collar Jews who adhered to the tenets developed after the destruction of the
Temple; that is, such things as individual prayer and assembly in
synagogues.
The Sadducees
The Sadducees were elitists who wanted to maintain the priestly caste, but they were also liberal in their willingness to incorporate
Hellenism into their lives, something the Pharisees opposed. The Sadducees rejected the idea of the
Oral Law and insisted on a literal interpretation of the
Written Law; consequently, they did not believe in an after life, since it is not mentioned in the
Torah. The main focus ofSadducee life was rituals associated with the
Temple.
The Sadducees disappeared around 70 A.D., after thed estruction of the
Second Temple. None of the writings of the Sadducees has survived, so the little we know about them comes from their Pharisaic opponents.
These two "parties" served in the
Great Sanhedrin, a kind of Jewish Supreme Court made up of 71 members whose responsibility was to interpret civil and religious laws.
The Essenes
A third faction, the Essenes, emerged out of disgust with the other two. This sect believed the others had corrupted the city and the
Temple.
(HARK!'s note: Sounds Like Yahshua to me.) They moved out of
Jerusalem and lived a monastic life in the desert, adopting strict dietary laws and a commitment to celibacy.
(HARK!'s note: Sounds much like John the Immerser to me.)
The Essenes are particularly interesting to scholars because they are believed to be an offshoot of the group that lived in
Qumran, near the
Dead Sea. In 1947, a Bedouin shepherd stumbled into a cave containing various ancient artifacts and jars containing
manuscripts describing the beliefs of the sect and events of the time.
The most important documents, often only parchment fragments that had to be meticulously restored, were the earliest known copies of the
Old Testament. The similarity of the substance of the material found in the scrolls to that in the modern scriptures has confirmed the authenticity of the Bible used today.
Pharisees, Sadducees & Essenes