Note 17 — III JESUS AS CULT-GOD IN THE CREED OF JEWISH SECTS

Jesus was a name given, as will be still more clearly shown, not only to the High Priest of Zechariah and to the successor of Moses, both of whom were said to have led Israel back into its ancient home, both having a decidedly Messianic character. The name in ancient times also belonged to the Healthbringer and Patron of the Physician—namely, Jasios or Jason, the pupil of Chiron skilled in healing17—who in general shows a remarkable resemblance to the Christian Redeemer. Consider also the significant fact that three times at decisive turning-points in the history of the Israelites a Joshua appears who leads his people into their promised home, into Canaan and Jerusalem, into the Kingdom of God—the “New Jerusalem.” Now, as Epiphanius remarks in his “History of the Heretics,” Jesus bears in the Hebrew language the same meaning as curator, therapeutes—that is, physician and curer. But the Therapeutes and Essenes regarded themselves as physicians, and, above all, physicians of the soul. It is accordingly by no means improbable that they too honoured the God of their sect under this name.18 We, moreover, read in a Parisian magic-papyrus recently found and published by Wessely (line 3119 et sq.): “I exort thee by Jesus the God of the Hebrews.” The words are found in an ostensibly “Hebrew Logos” of that papyrus, the tone of which is quite ancient, moreover shows no trace of Christian influence, and is ascribed by the transcriber to “the Pure,” under which name, according to Dieterich, the Essenes or Therapeutes are to be understood.19 The Jessaes or Jessenes (Jessaioi) named themselves after Jesus, or after “the branch from the root of Jesse.”20 They were closely connected on one side with the Essenes and on the other side with the Jewish sect of the Nazarenes or Nazoraes (Nazoraiori), if they were not absolutely identical. These were, as Epiphanius shows, in existence long before Christ, and had no knowledge of him.21 They were, however, called Nazoraes (Nazarenes (Nazarenos) is only a linguistic variation of it, cf. Essaes and Essenes) because they honoured the Mediator God, the divine “son,” as a protector and guardian (Syrian, Nasaryá; Hebrew, Ha-nôsrî) (cf. “the Protector of Israel,” also the fact that Mithras was honoured as “Protector of the World”). According to Acts xxiv. 5 the first followers of Jesus were also called Nazoraes or Nazarenes. The expressions “Jesus” and “Nazorean” were therefore originally of almost like meaning, and by the addition of “the Nazorean” or “Nazarene” Jesus is not characterised as the man of Nazareth, as the Evangelists represent it, but as the Healer and Deliverer.