RE: orion-list Enochian Sects: Samaritan vs. Judah-ite

2002-08-18 Thread Geoff Hudson



-Original Message-
From: [EMAIL PROTECTED] [mailto:[EMAIL PROTECTED]]On
Behalf Of George Brooks
Sent: 17 August 2002 23:54
To: [EMAIL PROTECTED]
Subject: orion-list Enochian Sects: Samaritan vs. Judah-ite


George wrote:
Jeremiah's discussion of the Rechabites [who elsewhere are
connected with the region of Hamath] explains that the Rechabites
had retreated to Jerusalem to avoid Assyrian predations.
But how had they become so closely involved with the Yahweh cult
to receive the commendations of Jeremiah?  Was there faith a recent
acquisition?  Or had it been acquired a generation or generations
earlier?

The Old Testament provides a clue; in 2 Kings 17 we read:

2 Kings 17:24-31
The king of Assyria brought people from ... Hamath... and
settled them in the towns of Samaria to replace the Israelites.
They [Hamathites and others] took over Samaria...Then the king
of Assyuria gave this order:  'Have one of the priests you took
captive from Samaria go back to live there and teach
the people what the god of the land requires.'...Nevertheless,
each national group made its own gods in the several towns...
the men from Hamath made Ashima [which is probably a-shai-ma
a reference to the Caravan god Shai al Qaum, the Rechabite
god who prohibited the consumption of wine].

But the text continues in a strange duality:
2 Kings 17:32-34a
They [the deportees, including those of Hamath] worshipped
the Lord, but they also appointed all sorts of their own
people to official for them as priests in the shrines...
to this day they persist in their former practices.

This then alternates with the opposing view contained in
verse 34b:
They nieghter worship the Lord nor adhere to the decrees and
ordinances, the laws and commands that the Lord gave the
descendants of Jacob.

This is then followed by yet ANOTHER contradictory doublet:
2 Kings 17:41
Part A -
Even while these people were worshipping the Lord...

Part B - they were serving their idols.

And this is concluded with To this day their children and
grandchildren continue to do as their fathers did.

This appears to be an on point explanation for how and
where this alien Rechabite guild comes from.  Their ancestors,
being deported by the Assyrians from the home territories of the
Rechabites (i.e., Hamath) are settled in Samaria and are taught
the cult of Yahweh.  And that despite their interest in Yahweh,
they continue to include alien elements in their religious
life.

Later, as Assyrian hostilities begin to creep south again,
eventually to swallow up even Jerusalem, they flee southwards,
to a safe haven for Yahweh worshippers.  Jeremiah is obviously
impressed with them.
[And I find it conceivable that Jeremiah is, himself, a highly
placed Rechabite.  But let's not digress.]
**

Dear George,

1.  Jehonadab son of Recab (2 Kings 10.15) was around before the exile
described in 2 Kings 17.  So presumably the Rechabite lifestyle was already
in evidence.

2.  How do you reconcile the nomadic, tent dwelling, Maverick Rechabites
with settled, law-bound, controlled, agricultural Essenes?

Geoff

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orion-list Enoch vs. Zadok

2002-08-18 Thread George Brooks

More interesting items from Boccaccini's work, which
describe some of the factors towards the creation of
the Qumran community.  The author believes the Qumran
community is an offshoot of the Essene movement, and
that the Enochian elements of the Essene movement considered
their priesthood much older than the Zadokite priesthood.
Details below.


Page 73:
While the Zadokites founded their legitimacy on 
their responsibility to be the faithful keepers of the cosmic
order, the Enochians argued that this world had been corrupted by an
original sin of angels, who had contaminated God's creation
by crossing the boundary between heaven and earth and
by revealing secret knowledge to human beings.

Despite God's reaction and the subsequent flood, the original
order was not, and could not be, restored.  The good angels,
led by Michael, defeated the evil angels, led by Semyaz
and Azaz'el.  The mortal bodies of the giants, the offspring
of the evil union of angels and women, were killed, but their
immortal souls survived as evil spirits (! En 15:8-10) and
continue to roam about the world in order to corrupt human
beings and destroy cosmic order.

While Zadokite Judaism describes creation as a process from
past disorder to current divine order, the Enochians claim
that God's past order has been replaced by the current 
disorder.  While being  a member of the heavenly court
(Job 1:6-12; 2:1-7; Zech 3:1-2; 1 Chr 21:1), Enochic Judaism
would be ultimately responsible for the creation of the concept
of the devil.  While Zadokite Judaism struggles to separate
evil and impurity from the demonic and makes their spread
depend on human choice, Enochic Judaism removes control of
these disruptive forces from humans.

...The myth of the fallen angels was not merely a bizarre
or folkloric expansion of ancient legends; it disrupted the
very foundations of Zadokite Judaism.  Enochic Judaism
directly challenged the legitimacy of the second temple and
its priesthood

Page 74:
...the attribution to Enoch of priestly characteristics 
[Footnote 45:  M. Himmelfarb, Enoch as Priest and Scribe,
in Ascent to Heaven in Jewish and Christian Apocalypses
(New York: Oxford University Press, 1993) 23-25...] suggests
the existence of a pure prediluvian, and pre-fall, priesthood
and disrupts the foundations of the Zadokite priesthood, 
which claimed its origin in Aaron at the time of the exodus,
in an age that, for the Enochians, was already corrupted
after the angelic sin and the flood.

Page 185:
The roots of the Essene movement (and therefore of the 
Qumran community) are in a priestly anti-Zadokite tradition
of the second temple period that expressed itself in the
earliest Enochic literature (Book of the Watchers, Aramaic
Levi, Astronomical Book).  The generative idea of this dissident
movement was that the good universe created by God was no longer
such, since it had been corrupted by the sin of rebellious
angels.  Claiming to represent a competing (and more ancient)
priestly line than that of the ruling Zadokite priesthood,
the Enochians did not recognize the legitimacy of the second
temple and maintained that Israel was still living in exile.

The view that Essenism was a Zadokite reaction following the
Maccabean crisis has no foundation in our sources.  After the 
death of Onias III, the strictly Zadokite party fled to Egpyt,
and the closest heirs of Zadokite Judaism, the Sadducees,
accepted the Hasmonean rule and priesthood.  The Essenes
had many reasons to oppose the Hasmoneans, but their Enochic
genetic code never made them miss the Zadokite high priests.

Page 186:
...What in the early second temple period was probably only
a minority phenomenon of some priestly families spread [to
other priestly families] and won adherents during the Maccabean
crisis.  The end of the Zadokite priesthood gave confidence to
the group, while the harshness of the struggle seemed to prove
the soundness of their ideas about the spread of evil and the
degeneration of history.

The Enochians contributed to the coalition of groups (the
Hasidim) that supported the Maccabees against the high priest
Menelaus and King Antiochus IV (Dream Visions).  The success
of the uprising opened new horizons.  A group or documents expressed
dissatisfaction with the earlier Enochic concept that all human
beings, including the Jews, were affected by evil.  God's historical
determinism restored the foundations of Israel's election and gave sense
to a concrete political and religious agenda for the chosen people even
in this corrupted world.  The inclusive theology of
Jubilees and the Temple Scroll suggests that the Enochians became
the center of a vast and composite movement that aimed to replace
the Zadokite leadership.

The self-consciousness of the Enochians as the chosen among the 
chosen and as having a message significant for the entirety of Israel
gave to their party a clear and distinct identity and led them to seek a
certain degree of separation from the rest 

orion-list What Happened to the Watchers

2002-08-18 Thread George Brooks

Boccaccini, on page 142 of BEYOND THE ESSENE HYPOTHESIS 
mentions a text that I had not encountered before:

Pages 141-142:
In the Testaments the emphasis on human responsibility
reaches a degree of intensity that was unknown in the previous
Enochic tradition.  The document signals an epochal change in the
interpretation of the sin of the Watchers.  Human beings are not
mere victims of the angelic sin but jointly responsible.  The 
blame shifts from angels to women.  They [women] charmed the
Watchers, who were before the flood.  As they continued looking
at the women, they were filled with desire ... for them.  They
they were transformed into human males... Since the women's
minds were filled with desire for these apparitions, they
gave birth to giants (Testament of Reuben 5:6-7).

The psychologization of the myth of the fallen angels denies
the equation of impurity and evil that Jubiliees had established
and the Qumran sectarians turned into one of the foundations
of the doctrine of evil.

[END OF CLIPS]

So here we have the chain of events.  The fallen angels
become human males.  They have giants as children.  The
giants are killed, but the evil spirits of the fallen
angels live on as immortal souls.

In these discussion of the Watchers, I cannot help but 
wonder how any ancient student of these ancient texts could
have avoided linking the wicked Watchers with the
wickedness of the Samaritans/Keepers/Watchers.  The
New Testament appears to be a snapshot of Jewish bias against
sinners people who are not gentile, but live north
of Judah.  Couldn't this be a part of Jewish bias against
Samaritans?  Centurions don't seem to excite nearly the
same level of wrath that these sinners appear to.

Boccaccini, at the front of the book, depicts a flow chart
of the evolution of Jewish sectarianism on FIGURE 2. A MAP OF
MIDDLE JUDAISMS.  On this chart, he shows Samaritanism as a
4th century offshoot of Zadokite Judaism, while Enochic 
Judaism is depicted emerging PARALLEL to Zadokite thought,
and leading directly into Essene thought.

In the book it is sometimes suggested that Enochian thought 
had its source the obscure period in Persia, prior to the return.
And yet, the only reference in the Old Testament that connects
to a dissident form of priesthood opposed to the Zadokite views
AND yet is still a part of the Jersusalem cultus is the reference
by Ezekiel to the priestly faction that prays to the sun with
its back to the Temple.

This description precedes the deportation to Babylon, for the
temple is still standing.  Who could this priestly faction
have been?  I have suggested the Rechabites, since they were
in Jerusalem before its destruction.  Suda ALSO suggests the
Rechabites, for reasons unknown.  And in a completely independent
thread, we see congruence between the Syrian cult of Shai al' Qaum
and the Nabataean practices of avoiding wine, living in houses,
and avoiding agriculture.

In the Books of the Maccabees we find a close affinity between
the Maccabean forces and the Nabateans.  In Josephus we find Banus
who still avoids agriculture.  And in Deuteronomy we find an unsually
kind view of Edomites, with other Old Testament references to the
Edomites also having their promised covenants with Yahweh.

While I can't pretend to have all the answers proved, I think
there is more than enough here to suggest further investigation.

George Brooks
Tampa, FL

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