Were the Essenes the first Christians?
Oh Prem, I am here to save the intellectual day. In a sense, the Essenes may have been the first “Christians”–or perhaps proto-Christians. Essenes were a mystical, ascetic , “Gnostic” branch of Judaism that existed alongside the Pharisees, Sadducees and Zealots in the 1st century BC. The Romans kind of left them alone because they were apolitical although they did have lore about a spiritual (not political) messiah. The NT description of John the Baptist closely coincides with the description of an Essene ascetic and the teachings and attitudes of Christ in the Gospels and some Gnostic apocrypha reflect Essene ideology. Some Gnostic texts, however, are “Christianized” versions of Hermetic and other pagan Gnostic texts. I’ve read material in passing that suggested that “Christian” ideas and minicults date even as far back as the 3rd centurhy BCE. Over quite a long time, the whole thing turned into a standardized form of Christianity that then tried very hard to wipe out it’s past and a
