Preface to The Essene Origins of Christianity by E.B. Szekely:

Some two thousand years ago, in a remote corner of the Roman World now part of the Middle East, an event took place which transformed the whole history of our planet. In the entire history of western civilization there is nothing comparable in importance and influence to this single event.

In the titanic struggle between two colossi: the Roman World Empire, the strongest of all empires; and the incessant flood of Asiatic invaders, who brought the classical age to an end; a third force appeared which in the most mysterious way, with the most astonishing speed, overcame both the apparently invincible giants.

The new force—gradually to be known as Christianity—became the supreme political and military power throughout the western world, ruling over kings and emperors as well as over the masses. Wars, crusades, inquisitions, all proved the unlimited military power of organized Christianity.

Hundreds of thousands of books, pictorial, musical and archeological masterpieces, show the result of this dominating power over western culture. Religious, educational and social institutions over all the five continents of the world illustrate the lasting influence and importance of this highly organized religion.

Yet despite these achievements Christianity suffers from a great, even a fatal, weakness: the whole of its ethical and spiritual superstructure rests on a false historical foundation.

The material in this book is extremely radical and inexorably revolutionary. Its task is twofold. First: to prove to believers that this Christianity which they defend as the salvation of mankind has no foundation and, therefore, is not worth defending; and, on the other hand, to prove to the non-believers, who consider it as the source of all evils, that their fight against this same Christianity is similar to the fight of Don Quixote against the windmills, which he believed to be rival knights. In our contemporary world-arena, believers are defending a fictitious value—while non-believers are fighting a fictitious enemy. Secondly: to furnish all possible historical, geological, archeological, philological and exegetical proofs to the all-sided truth, in order to dispel one of the greatest deceptions in human history and thus end the quixotic fight of believers and non-believers, raging through century after century in all parts of the world.

And believers will certainly not enjoy being told, even though sine ira et studio—without anger or prejudice—that, as a part of western humanity, they have been the dupes of a small but ruthless and well-organized group of scribes and mystificators of antiquity. Difficile est satiram non scribere—it is difficult not to write satire.

In the long history of the world, the civilizations of Sumeria, Chaldea, Assyria, Egypt, Greece and the Roman Empire cover a period of from six to eight thousand years, while Christianity is not more than sixteen hundred years old and its victory not yet a thousand. The masses, the multitudes, have no history, least of all in the inaccessible sphere of faith. In fanaticism no less than in politics the multitude follows where it is led. Devoid of critical sense, and nearly always prompted by more or less atavistic sentiments, mundus vult decipi; ergo decipiatur—the world wants to be deceived; therefore, let it be deceived.

Fanatical and intolerant Christianity was to the Roman Empire and ancient civilization what the totalitarian (both right and left) of modern times are to democracy and individual rights of human beings. We find the same means and techniques of propaganda being employed. There is the same bigotry and violence, under the guise of justice and reform, resulting in social, economic and individual defeatism. There is the same mysticism which exploits man's atavistic instincts, as well as his urge for something better.

But, "What is Truth?" you may ask, like Pontius Pilate, in the canonical Gospel of John. History gives the answer together with the complete authentic reconstruction by Josephus Flavius, the great Roman historian, of the original purity, simplicity and harmony of the free creative life of the Essenes, first christian brotherhoods in Palestine, Syria and Egypt (who have no connection whatsoever with the subsequent organized church). They have given to humanity the greatest figures of antiquity, among whom is Jesus, the Essene, who is not identical with the fictitious crucified "Christ" of the invented ecclesiastical history.

To complete our investigation we may add testimonies by Philo, the Alexandrian philosopher, and Gaius Publius Plinius, the Roman natural scientist, on the life and teaching of the First Century Essenes. The Essenes represent the most unique brotherhod in the history of humanity, with their all-sided optimal synthesis of all the cultures of antiquity, as well as the total spectrum of all the natural and cosmic laws.

For those interested in the historical truth, and in the positive, constructive values taught by the real Jesus, the Essene Jesus, I suggest reading for further reference my following books: all the volumes of The Essene Gospel of Peace; Discovery of the Essene Gospel of Peace; Teachings of the Essenes, from Enoch to the Dead Sea Scrolls; The Essene Book of Creation; and The Essene Jesus.

Edmond Bordeaux Szekely

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Article from The Sunday Times
November 7, 1999

"Scroll Names Jesus As Sect Member"

Since their discovery almost half a century ago, the Dead Sea scrolls have fascinated biblical scholars. The mystery surrounding them has deepened, however, with claims that a hitherto unknown scroll, which threatens to challenge the originality of Christian theology, was spirited out of the Holy Land and ended up in the hands of Benedictine monks, who tried to suppress its contents. According to a bizarre tale that has unfolded over the past few weeks in Israel, the so-called Angel scroll was found by a Bedouin tribesman in Jordan in the late 1960s on the eastern shore opposite the Qumran caves, where the Dead Sea scrolls made famous by the late Professor Yigael Yadin were discovered in ancient pottery jars several years earlier. The Bedouin is then said to have sold it to an antiquities dealer in the Jordanian capital, Amman.

As news of the find circulated, scholars began frantic talks to buy the scroll through an intermediary, an international arms dealer identified only as Ziyad H. It was then that a German Benedictine monk—named as Matheus Gunther, which is believed to be a pseudonym—became involved. Armed with huge sums of Benedictine money, he allegedly negotiated for a year and was finally allowed a 3mm fragment of the scroll. Finally, in 1981, the deal was completed and the scroll, bearing 1,000 lines of mixed text, was smuggled out of Jordan to a Benedictine monastery somewhere near the German-Austrian border, to be studied by a team of monks who had taken a vow of silence.

Gunther died in 1996, but is said to have bequeathed his notes and a copy of the text to an Israeli friend known as Steve Daniels. For the past three years, Daniels has been allegedly preparing it for publication, together with two other Israelis who knew the monk. According to the two Israelis—one of whom spoke to The Sunday Times on condition of anonymity—the text contradicts the official origins of Christianity and is so explosive that church authorities decided to suppress it. Gunther could not bear to see it left mouldering in the vaults, they claimed, and he decided that his vow of silence should be broken after his death.

"I saw in this scroll the crowning achievement of my scholarly work and of my religious mission," the monk wrote in his notes, some of which were shown to the Jerusalem Report, a leading Israeli news magazine. "I promised that I would not carry to my grave the secrets of this remarkable scroll." The text, said to have been carbon-dated to the 1st century, supposedly describes a religious vision experienced at Ein Elgatain, a desert encampment on the eastern shore of the Dead Sea, by Yeshua ben Padiah, who was taken by an angel, Panameia, through the gates of a palace and into the heavens. Yeshua is Hebrew for Jesus.

It is said to mirror the teachings of Jesus to such an extent that it calls their originality into question. Many of the ideas described in the scroll imply that Jesus was heavily influenced by, or even a member of, the Essenes sect widely credited with writing the Dead Sea Scrolls. Scholars who have studied excerpts from a computerised transcript are divided over the text's authenticity, however. To give a definitive answer, they say they must first see the original—or at least a photograph.

"If it is the real thing, we'll be talking about something phenomenally important to understanding the background of Christianity and Jewish mysticism," said Professor Stephen Pfann of the University of the Holy Land, an expert on the scrolls. "I haven't yet seen anything that discredits it in such a way that I would put it outside the realms of possibility." Pfann, who has translated some of the text into English, said that Yeshua's vision contained many concepts similar to the other Dead Sea scrolls. It is dated some 100 years later, however, indicating it was written during, or shortly after, Jesus's lifetime.

Many scholars are still unconvinced. "The text itself is very queer. There is Hebrew with Aramaic words," said Magen Broshi, former curator of the Jerusalem museum that holds the Dead Sea scrolls. "The whole thing is so strange and I think, if I were about to commit a forgery, this is what I would have done."

Another problem authenticating the story has been tracing Gunther's origins. Father Bargil Pixner, a Benedictine monk and scholar in Israel, said he never knew of any such monk and was "very sceptical" about the story.

In favour of the monk's account, however, is the supposed content of the Angel Scroll. The text is said to contain embalming recipes for resurrection and the use of herbs and stones for healing, practices attributed to the Essenes by the Jewish historian Josephus. Other phrases often associated with the mystic sect recur in the scroll, such as the "children of light," a term used by the Essenes for those endowed with the power of God, and the contrasting "children of darkness."

It also uses the word "EL" for God, and Pfann has said grammar and spellings throughout the text are similar to those in the acknowledged Dead Sea scrolls. He said he had even found a complete phrase in the Angel scroll that he had been trying to reconstruct for years from other documents. "This new discovery may well prove to be an important witness or missing link to the connection between Qumran, early Christianity and early Judaism during the 1st century," Pfann concluded.