Mormons and Money
Mitt Romney, his
church, and the culture of prosperity.
Alan Wolfe, The
New Republic Published: Monday, December 31, 2007
Mitt Romney is a
Mormon. He is also rich. According to data released by his campaign in August,
Romney's net worth is between $190 and $250 million. He earned much of this
money at Bain Capital, the private equity firm he started with two partners in
1984. Under Romney's leadership, Bain took advantage of the leveraged buyout
craze of the 1980s and '90s to become a wildly profitable corporation.
Romney's business
success is not unusual among Mormons. When he left Bain to run the Salt Lake
City Olympics of 2002, Romney worked with such accomplished Mormon businessmen
as Fraser Bullock (now of Sorenson Capital) and Kem Gardner (a prominent Utah
developer). Wealthy Mormons have also played key roles in Romney's presidential
campaign. One is Jon Huntsman Sr., founder of the Huntsman Corporation, a $13
billion Salt Lake City enterprise specializing in petrochemicals and plastics,
and father of Utah's current governor, Jon Huntsman Jr. Although he does not
use it in public, Mitt Romney's first name is Willard; he was named after J.
Willard Marriott, founder of the hotel chain, to this day another successful
business enterprise run by Mormons--and one that is also active in the Romney
camp.
Pick up a book on how
to succeed in business, and there's a decent chance that it will have been
written by a Mormon. The best known are the many volumes of Stephen Covey,
whose books-beginning with The Seven Habits of Highly Effective People in
1989-are "a secular version of Mormonism," according to historian Jan
Shipps, our leading interpreter of the LDS faith. This tradition has recently
been carried forward in Jeff Benedict's The Mormon Way of Doing Business, only
here, seven habits are turned into eight people, including the CEO of JetBlue
Airlines (David Neeleman) and the former CEOs of Dell Computers (Kevin
Rollins), Madison Square Garden (Dave Checketts), Life Re Corporation (Rod
Hawes), and Deloitte and Touche (Jim Quigley), as well as the former CFO of
American Express(Gary Crittenden)--all members of the LDS Church. The general
theme of Benedict's book is that you don't have to go to Harvard Business
School to know how to run a successful company. If you are a devoted family
member, volunteer, and good churchgoer, as so many Mormons are, that should be
enough.
Had you, nonetheless,
gone to Harvard Business School between 1995 and 2005, your dean would have
been another successful Mormon profiled by Benedict--Kim Clark, who left this
prestigious job to become president of the Idaho campus of Brigham Young
University. He may be gone, but, if you go to Harvard now, you will likely run
into Clayton Christensen, the eighth of Benedict's subjects and a member of the
Business School faculty. (Disclosure: Christensen and I have met on a few
occasions, and I pester him from time to time with questions about the Mormon
religion and Romney's political prospects.) Christensen, a BYU graduate and
former Rhodes Scholar, founded three companies and has written his share of
business advice books, including The Innovator's Dilemma and The Innovator's
Solution. Christensen, by the way, cannot be described as a "cafeteria
Mormon," someone who celebrates some aspects of his tradition while
ignoring others. He believes that Joseph Smith was a prophet and that the Book
of Mormon "is in fact true."
Most Mormons, of
course, do not follow the path of Romney and Christensen and move to
Massachusetts. For those who stay behind in Utah, there is Brigham Young
University and its Marriott School of Management--which won first place among
regional institutions in The Wall Street Journal's recent business-school
rankings. Asked which business schools produce the most ethical graduates, the
recruiters contacted by the Journal ranked BYU second behind Dartmouth's Tuck
School and just ahead of Yale. Apparently, the Mormon missionary experience is
a major part of Marriott's attraction to recruiters: Employers cannot resist the
idea of recent graduates who are a bit older, have lived outside the United
States, or have learned foreign languages. (Christensen speaks Korean because
of his missionary work.)
Obviously, not all
Mormons are successful in business--or, for that matter, life. In their
forthcoming book American Grace, two political scientists, Harvard's Robert
Putnam and Notre Dame's David Campbell, find that Mormons are slightly
wealthier than the average American, but not by much: The average income of
both Mormon households and non-Mormon house holds hovers around $50,000 a year.
Thirteen percent of Mormon households in their sample earn more than $100,000 a
year, higher than 4 percent of Catholic ones but, then again, lower than 27
percent of Jewish ones. Yet, while Mormons are neither far richer nor far
poorer than other Americans, a significant number have shown remarkable
entrepreneurial ability. It is worth asking why, and particularly now: The
answer sheds light not only on Mitt Romney's exceptional business success but
also on his presidential prospects.
All inquiries dealing
with the relationship between economics and religion take place in the shadow
of Max Weber's The Protestant Ethic and the Spirit of Capitalism, first
published in 1904. Weber's insight was to link theological ideas with
real-world human behavior: Once salvation was not dispensed through priestly
authority, the accumulation of wealth was taken as a sign that you belonged
among those elected by God for heavenly reward--in theory, making Protestants
better suited to capitalism than Catholics. Ever since Weber, sociologists of
religion have been inclined to examine the ideas of religious thinkers to
understand the world in which we live.
It is not clear
whether such an examination of LDS theology would yield any particular insights
into Mormon business success. This is not because Mormon beliefs are less
credible than those of other religions: Secular people may laugh at the idea of
Joseph Smith coming across a holy book in western New York or discovering that
Adam and Eve had lived in western Missouri, but these revelations are neither
more nor less believable than Jesus walking on water or Moses parting the sea.
It is, however, true that, in comparison to Christianity and Judaism, Mormonism
is a very young religion and, consequently, has not had nearly as much time as
its counterparts to develop theological justifications for its miracles. If we
are to compare Mormonism to other religions theologically, the relevant markers
ought to be Christianity in the year 150 or Judaism in the era of Isaac.
Christianity before the Nicene Creed and Augustine left adherents with many
unanswered questions--and so does Mormonism today. There is no direct line from
the Angel Moroni to the Marriott hotel chain.
But theology is not
the only way to understand the links between religion and economics. At the
same time as he was publishing The Protestant Ethic, Weber came to the United
States to visit the 1904 St. Louis World's Fair. "On a long railroad
journey through what was then Indian territory," he wrote about his visit,
"the author, sitting next to a traveling salesman of 'undertaker's
hardware' (iron letters for tombstones), casually mentioned the still
impressively churchmindedness" of the United States. His interlocutor
offered him an explanation: "Sir, for my part everybody may believe or not
believe as he pleases; but if I saw a farmer or a businessman not belonging to
any church at all, I wouldn't trust him with fifty cents." From that conversation
stemmed one of Weber's most insightful concepts. Especially in a newly formed
society, Weber concluded, religion serves as a kind of moral credit agency.
Businessmen need a way to determine whose credit will be worthy and whose will
not. Admission to a congregation is a method of establishing that
creditworthiness. And religions with mechanisms for deciding who will belong to
them will flourish in a commercial society in a way that religions emphasizing
hand-me-down criteria of membership will not.
Weber does not tell
his readers through which Indian territory he was passing, but chances are
that, half a century before his journey, Mormons had also passed that way on
their trek to Utah. In those early days, membership in the LDS Church, by
definition, was not inherited from one's parents. Although that is no longer
true--Romney belongs to the sixth generation of his family to affiliate with
the church, and all of the executives featured in Benedict's book are from
long-term Mormon families--Mormonism remains a missionary faith, constantly
bringing in new members. (Senator Harry Reid, the highest ranking Mormon in
U.S. politics, is a convert.) The frontier may be gone, but capitalism is still
a place of risk and reward. If you are a businessman, say a venture capitalist,
you want to know something about the people you are dealing with; and, if the
people with whom you cooperate are Mormons, you do.
"It is not the
ethical doctrine of a religion, but that form of ethical conduct upon which
premiums are placed that matters," Weber wrote after his visit to the
United States, as if repudiating the emphasis on theology characteristic of The
Protestant Ethic. It is too bad he did not reflect on Mormons, for no other
religion better fits his thesis that practice counts for more than doctrine.
The data collected by Putnam and Campbell offer fascinating insight into this
aspect of Mormonism. Much is made of the religious engagement of American
evangelicals, who attend church in far greater numbers than mainline
Protestants or Jews. But Mormons top evangelicals in all categories of religious
activity: Seventy-seven percent attend church weekly compared to 55 percent of
evangelicals; 74 percent pray daily compared to 62 percent; and 46 percent read
scripture daily compared to 35 percent. When it comes to activities like
serving as an officer in a congregation or giving money to one's church,
Mormonism's rates far exceed those of every other religion. Even more
interesting is the fact that Mormons volunteer in non-religious activities more
than any other faith in the United States; the only groups that come close are
mainline Protestants and Jews. In other words, the general practices of Mormon
life--a high bar for church membership, an expectation that Mormons will take
an active role in practicing their faith, an ethic of civic involvement--demonstrate
moral creditworthiness in a way that no other American religion can match.
Weber's work contains
another insight into the business success of Mormons: his emphasis on the
tension within so many religious communities between this--worldly and otherworldly
conduct. His best example of an otherworldly consciousness was that of an
"ascetic monk" who "has fled from the world by denying himself
individual property" and whose"needs have been correspondingly
restricted to what was absolutely indispensable." Had Weber needed an
"ideal type"to illustrate his ideas about this-worldly religious
conduct, Mormons, once again, would have served his purposes. There is, to be
sure, an otherworldly dimension to Mormonism, which, to cite just one example,
proposes the existence of three levels of heaven rather than the more
conventional one. But, if any church is this-worldly, it is the LDS Church.
Mormonism does not go in for monks and mystics, especially the latter; mystics
tend to go off in directions of their own, which is not something Mormon
leaders encourage. Mormons, of course, have a prophet, but prophets are not
mystics; God talks to both, but, as Shipps tells me, only prophets pass on what
God has to say to the people assembled around them. As important as the prophet
Joseph Smith is to Mormons, moreover, there would be no LDS Church without the
organizational and entrepreneurial talents of Brigham Young, who had more in
common with Robert Moses than the original Moses. Mormons receive revelations,
but, Shipps notes, most of them are "pretty practical," usually
addressing the question of "What should I do?" It adds up to a form
of spirituality that is compatible with worldly success. "Living your
faith," Kim Clark informed Jeff Benedict, "means engaging the world.
It is not being apart from the world."
A related explanation
for Mormons' business success may lie in the religion's organizational
structure. Unlike most faiths, the LDS Church does not have a paid clergy.
Instead, Mormons rely for leadership on lay people who are "called"
to assume the role of bishop in local wards, the LDS term for congregations.
The idea of a calling, a Weberian term, does not mean quite the same thing to
Mormons that it did to the Lutherans from whom Weber borrowed it. Mormon bishops
are not so much called because of an inner light that convinces them to pursue
God's path but because the church is always on the lookout for potential
leaders. And, of course, these people might learn a thing or two about how to
organize others in the business world if they first have success organizing
them in spiritual life. Asked about the possible reasons for Mormon
entrepreneurship, Philip Barlow, a theologian at Utah State, emphasized "a
lay-oriented ecclesiastical organization that rejects a professional ministry
and thus promotes hands-on organizational and leadership experience among an
entire populace, which yields a disproportionate number of high-level
executives." Of course, organizing a ward or a stake--usually between five
and ten wards--does not guarantee that you will become a CEO, but it doesn't
hurt your chances either.
Mormonism's
this-worldly characteristics throw a monkey wrench of confusion into the way
Americans think about religion and politics. Why, in contrast to Europeans, do
we spend so much time asking candidates about their faith in the first place?
The answer, presumably, is that we want our politicians to tell us that they
are guided by convictions rooted in a powerful moral sensibility taught by a
God whose existence transcends this world. But, if politicians invoke religion
to claim connection to the transcendental, what is a candidate to do if his
religion is not very far apart from this world? Mormonism's this-worldly
character gives it a great advantage in the world of business but places it at
a great disadvantage in the world of politics--so long, that is, as politicians
have to pass a religious litmus test. If the United States were ever to return
to a period in which competence counted more than confession, membership in the
LDS Church would become an asset. That, however, is not the case in 2008. It
almost makes one feel sorry for Mitt Romney, an odd thing to say about a man
worth as much as $250 million.
Americans elect
millionaires to high office, but they want their millionaires to be just folks.
George W. Bush understood this in his two presidential campaigns. He was, to be
sure, the scion of a prominent American family, but so was his opponent in
2000. And, when his 2004 opponent combined liberal politics with a taste for
windsurfing, Bush's reelection was all but assured. Political success in the
United States goes to those who have enough money so that voters will admire
and respect them while conveying the impression that money doesn't matter much
to them at all.
True of Americans in
general, this ambivalence toward money is especially true of American
evangelicals. Evangelicals are no longer the kind of downtrodden believers who
responded so positively to the vigorous populism of William Jennings Bryan. Yet
evangelicalism nonetheless retains a populist sensibility. You don't need to
allow yourself to be informed by a priest, as Catholics do--or, I should say,
did. Unlike potential converts to Judaism, you don't have to learn much about
the language, culture, and theology of the religion you hope to join. All you
need to do is look at the life you are leading, find it unfulfilling, and turn
to Christ as your personal savior, a process that is available to anyone,
however much money they make. Evangelicalism's appeal, as much in our day as
during the time of Bryan, is based on this conviction that so long as you are
God-fearing, it matters not a whit how outwardly successful you are. This is
not, let me hasten to add, true of various forms of prosperity gospel, which
judge your spiritual success by your worldly success. But, then again, even the
prosperity gospel appeals to the downtrodden more than to those occupying the
executive suites.
None of this much
helps Mitt Romney. It is true that there are theological reasons why
evangelicals distrust Mormons--for one thing, Mormons do not believe in
original sin--but evangelicals do not need theology to conclude that there is
something suspicious about Romney. He has an intact and perfect family; many
Southern Baptists, for all their talk of family values, do not. He ran a
company; most Southern Baptists work for one. He does not drink--by now, the
picture should be clear. Mormons are what Southern Baptists want to be but
never quite become; I will resist the temptation to call them "perfected
evangelicals." The fact that Romney's life is so completely without sin
ought to make him attractive to them, but it does the reverse. If you lead an
unblemished life, you have no need to come to Christ for your salvation.
Romney's business success--his worldly achievement--is self-evident. For the
evangelicals whose votes he needs in order to win the presidency, that is cause
for concern.
As if this did not
create enough problems for Romney, he faces an additional obstacle in
persuading evangelicals that he is with them in spirit. In an interview with
The New Yorker's Ryan Lizza, Jan Shipps pointed out that Mormonism is an
ethnicity as much as a religion. "Romney is not Mormon in the way, say, Ted
Kennedy is Catholic," she said. "Romney is Mormon the way Ted Kennedy
is Irish." Shipps was calling attention to the fact that Mormonism, once a
cult, has now become a culture. But her comment also reinforces the widespread
idea that Mormons tend to prefer their own. And this turns out to be true.
Mormons, Putnam and Campbell found in their survey, are more likely to make
friends with coreligionists than any other group in the United States,
including African American Protestants.
All religions tend to
prefer their own. But evangelicals are less likely to do so than Mormons or
even, for that matter, Catholics. There once was an ethnic or clannish
dimension to American evangelicalism when so many of its supporters, especially
in the South, came from similar Scotch-Irish roots. But the key to Mitt Romney
understanding American evangelicalism is that you are not born into an
evangelical world; you are born "again" into one. The ranks of
evangelicals contain large numbers of former Catholics and former Jews. If anything,
the further away you are from conservative Protestantism when you convert, the
more valuable to the evangelical cause you become. Mormonism, as just about
everyone who has ever opened their front door to a stranger knows, is fiercely
missionary in its approach; indeed, evangelicals and Mormons compete for
converts. But, once people join the LDS Church, they enter a world that is
closed to outsiders. Both the local evangelical mega-church and the local
Mormon temple may be imposing, but one opens its doors to all who seek to enter
and the other does not.
It may not be
particularly fair, but, in the eyes of evangelicals, Mormonism's distinct
culture transforms the business success of its prominent members--relying as it
does partly on the creditworthiness that membership in a fenced-off club
confers--into something questionable rather than something admirable. American
evangelicals were once fiercely anti-Catholic and inexorably anti-Semitic.
Fortunately for the cause of religious tolerance, if not so fortunately for the
fate of American liberalism, they now make common cause with Catholics over
abortion and consider themselves the best friends of the state of Israel.
Today, Mormons have replaced Catholics and Jews in the more diabolical regions
of the evangelical mind. And the sense among evangelicals that Romney's wealth
has something to do with his relatively closed culture only stands to raise
their suspicions.
Will evangelicals vote
for Romney anyway? When David Dinkins ran against Rudy Giuliani in the 1989 New
York mayoral race, polls showed that more people said they would vote for
Dinkins than actually did, leading pollsters to believe that respondents were
unwilling to acknowledge possibly prejudiced views. The same thing might happen
with respect to evangelicals in the Republican Party; and, if it does, we will
never know whether it was because they distrusted Romney's religion, his
business success, his culture--or a combination of the three. Chances are that
someone who is different may well become our next president. But of the
candidates who are most conspicuously different, the Mormon just may have a
harder time getting elected than the woman or the African American.
Mitt Romney was my
governor for four years. Since 1960, the Democratic Party has shown an unseemly
tendency to nominate a disproportionate number of presidential candidates from
Massachusetts, and, of the three so chosen, only John Kennedy managed to win.
The losses sustained by Michael Dukakis and John Kerry left most Americans with
one clear impression: Massachusetts simply is not like the rest of the United
States.
Observing Mitt
Romney's problems in the 2008 presidential election, I have to conclude that
this cliché is correct. For many of us in Massachusetts, the fact that Romney
had been a successful entrepreneur was taken as a reason to vote for him. He
was not, moreover, all that bad a governor, in part because he knew what he
wanted--whether medical insurance for all or a new road to speed Cape Cod
dwellers to their homes--and possessed the administrative talents to make it
happen. When he ran for the Senate in 1994, his opponent, Ted Kennedy of all
people, raised the red flag of Romney's religion. But, since then, his
Mormonism has been a non-factor. We all knew that he went to that huge temple
out in Belmont, just as we knew that the rest of us were not welcome there; but
it did not matter. It just seemed to make sense to us, practical people that we
are, to vote for a guy with an impressive resumé.
Americans in the rest
of the country evidently think differently. For Massachusetts residents,
Romney's business acumen was a plus and his religion inconsequential.
Elsewhere, his religion seems to be a minus and his business experience
irrelevant--or worse. It used to be the case that, if Massachusetts were more
like the rest of the country, we would have elected more liberal Democrats to
the presidency. But, because it is not, we are likely to be deprived of a
competent conservative Republican. This does not disturb me deeply; I can think
of no circumstances under which I would vote for Romney over any of the
Democrats. But 2008 may well be remembered as the election in which the
Republicans, the party of big business, shunned the biggest businessman in
their party. For them, it is perfectly OK to succeed in business, but not, it
would seem, if you are a member of the Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-Day
Saints.
Alan Wolfe is a
contributing editor at The New Republic.
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Several reports released in 2007
bolstered the case of those claiming the Bush administration stifles scientists
and attempts to alter their research findings.
Perhaps most galling, though,
according to Bush critics and many scientists, was an internal order by the
Department of Commerce in April requiring scientists in the National Oceanic
and Atmospheric Administration to obtain permission before speaking about
scientific matters of “official importance.” The order makes “all employee
utterance subject to official review,” says Jeff Ruch, executive director for
Public Employees for Environmental Responsibility, “and the impact will be
chilly cubicles.” Critics fear the order will hamper a hallmark of the
scientific process, the free flow of ideas. “Science works by building on
research results and discussion of what’s working or not working,” says
Francesca Grifo, director of the Union of Concerned Scientists’ Scientific
Integrity Program. “It’s part of this administration’s reluctance to base
decisions on information.”
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mmmmmmmmmmmmmmmmmmm
In November 2003, an American
socialite living in Hong Kong served her millionaire banker husband a drugged
milkshake, bludgeoned him to death, wrapped him in a carpet, dumped him in a
storage closet and then rang up a moving company.
Most commentators turn it into a
parable about the evils of wealth.
The Kissels certainly had a lot of it.
As a fresh New York University business school grad, he started off with a
small investment house but soon jumped to Lazard Frères, where he made his name
in "distressed debt," the business of buying up bankrupt companies,
revamping them and reselling them. Later he landed a job at Goldman Sachs in
Hong Kong. His timing was perfect. The Kissels moved to Asia just as a massive
financial crisis hit and Rob's talents were most needed. He made a small mint.
Rob became "an investment banker,
not a mere man," whose wealth was "never enough" -- hence the
book's title. Rob enjoyed luxuries like single-malt scotches and fancy cigars.
He took long business trips that kept him away from home which may have pushed
Nancy away.
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Still, Rob was a loving father (the
Kissels had three children) and apparently devoted to his marriage despite its
increasingly dysfunctional character. Perhaps Rob was simply blinded by his
passions -- hardly the first time that's happened to an overachiever. He met
his wife on a nude beach at Club Med in the Turks and Caicos Islands and
quipped: "I bet you'd look great with your clothes on." Nancy wa a
"knock-out" blonde, a "full-breasted five foot four" woman
with "shapely legs" and a "provocatively dirty mouth" who
had dropped out of two colleges and ended up working at a Tex-Mex restaurant in
Manhattan. They married in 1989.
In Hong Kong, Nancy let her Filipina
maid do most of the parenting while she spent her days shopping at glitzy
malls. When Rob asked her to stay in Hong Kong for another three years, she
threatened to divorce him and badgered him into buying her a $2 million
vacation home in Vermont. There she started an affair with a local television
repairman, Michael Del Priore.
When Rob's marriage started to
disintegrate and he found out about her affair, he bought spyware, hired a
private detective, consulted friends and wrote poems. It was only just before
his murder that he started to contemplate divorce seriously. Nancy, by
contrast, didn't seem to enjoy any productive passions. Devoid of a steady
career and uninterested in her children, she seems to have been corroded less
by her wealth than by a chronic lack of purpose. Murdering Rob may have finally
given her a project of sorts.
She carefully stockpiled
milkshake-enhancing depressants such as Stilnox (also known as Ambien) and
Rohypnol (the date-rape drug) from various doctors. And she ordered up the
objects she would need once the job was done -- bleach powder to clean up;
packing cartons, rope, packing tape, and polyethylene sheeting to wrap the
body; and peppermint oil to cover the smell of domestic carnage.
Even after her arrest, Nancy remained
obsessed with Mr. Del Priore and wrote to him regularly. For example:
"Just got back from court . . . wow . . . what a day . . . [prosecutor
Peter] Chapman's closing took only 3 hours . . . pretty pathetic . . . 75% of
his closing was about you! . . . he based his entire closing on you and I
premeditating to do . . . well . . . you know . . . I can't even write it it's
so absurd." She has continued to write him from her jail cell at Hong
Kong's Tai Lam Center for Women, where she is serving a life sentence.
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In an interview after the murder, Mr.
Del Priore was described as "a not terribly bright, not terribly appealing
human being." Sounds like a good description of Nancy, as rich as she was
-- or as poor as she is now, and alone.
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There may be another good reason to
eat fish, a food containing a fatty acid called omega-3. Researchers have found
that a diet enriched with omega-3 helps repair and prevent retinal damage in
mice, a discovery with potential for preventing blindness in premature infants
and adults suffering from age-related macular degeneration. http://Louis-J-Sheehan.us
Nature Medicine published the omega-3
study, written by a team that included Harvard University ophthalmology
researcher Kip Connor, in June. “With just a 2 percent change in dietary
omega-3, there was a 40 to 50 percent decrease in the disease pathology,”
Connor says.
The researchers fed almost identical
diets to two groups of female mice nursing litters. One diet was enriched with
2 percent omega-3 fatty acid, mirroring a Japanese diet, the other with 2
percent omega-6 fatty acid, similar to a typical American diet.
The litters were also exposed to high
levels of oxygen, which causes a loss of blood vessels in retinal tissue. When
oxygen levels are restored to normal, the eye senses it as a lack of oxygen and
responds by growing new blood vessels, which often leads to excessive growth
and damage to vision. This happened to the offspring of the mothers receiving
omega-6, but the pups receiving omega-3 through their mothers’ milk grew new
vessels at a healthy rate.
In humans, abnormal and excessive
blood vessel growth related to decreased oxygen supply is the most common cause
of blindness in premature babies, diabetics, and the elderly. It affects some 4
million people in the United States alone. Connor and other researchers are
studying the impact of omega-3 –and
-6 on human eyesight and will release the results later in 2008.
999999
Human-generated carbon dioxide in the
atmosphere is slowly acidifying the ocean, threatening a catastrophic impact on
marine life. And just as scientists are starting to grasp the magnitude of the
problem, researchers have delivered more bad news: Acid rain is making things
worse.
Scientists estimate that one-third of
the world’s acid rain falls near the coasts, carrying some 100 million tons of
nitrogen oxide, ammonia, and sulfur dioxide into the ocean each year. Using
direct measurements and computer models, oceanographer Scott Doney of Woods
Hole Oceanographic Institution and his colleagues calculated that acid rain
causes as much as 50 percent of the acidification of coastal waters, where the
pH can be as low as 7.6. (The open ocean’s pH is 8.1.)
The findings increase the urgency of
confronting the crisis of ocean acidity, says Richard Feely, a collaborator at
the National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration. In the laboratory,
researchers have seen some effect on just about every ocean creature that forms
a calcium carbonate shell, says Feely, including algae—the tiny creatures at
the crucial bottom of the deepwater food chain—and coral, whose skeletons grow
more slowly in water with a pH even slightly lower than normal. Soon-to-be-released
field experiment findings “seem to be showing the same kind of thing,” Feely
says. That’s bad news, he adds, since a third of the world’s fish species
depend in part on coral reefs for their ecosystems.
99999999999
WASHINGTON — A review of classified
documents by former members of the Sept. 11 commission shows that the panel
made repeated and detailed requests to the Central Intelligence Agency in 2003
and 2004 for documents and other information about the interrogation of
operatives of Al Qaeda, and were told by a top C.I.A. official that the agency
had “produced or made available for review” everything that had been requested.
The review was conducted earlier this
month after the disclosure that in November 2005, the C.I.A. destroyed
videotapes documenting the interrogations of two Qaeda operatives.
A seven-page memorandum prepared by
Philip D. Zelikow, the panel’s former executive director, concluded that
“further investigation is needed” to determine whether the C.I.A.’s withholding
of the tapes from the commission violated federal law.
http://louis-j-sheehan.us/page1.aspx
In interviews this week, the two
chairmen of the commission, Lee H. Hamilton and Thomas H. Kean, said their
reading of the report had convinced them that the agency had made a conscious
decision to impede the Sept. 11 commission’s inquiry.
Mr. Kean said the panel would provide
the memorandum to the federal prosecutors and congressional investigators who
are trying to determine whether the destruction of the tapes or withholding
them from the courts and the commission was improper.
A C.I.A. spokesman said that the
agency had been prepared to give the Sept. 11 commission the interrogation
videotapes, but that commission staff members never specifically asked for
interrogation videos.
The review by Mr. Zelikow does not
assert that the commission specifically asked for videotapes, but it quotes
from formal requests by the commission to the C.I.A. that sought “documents,”
“reports” and “information” related to the interrogations.
Mr. Kean, a Republican and a former
governor of New Jersey, said of the agency’s decision not to disclose the existence
of the videotapes, “I don’t know whether that’s illegal or not, but it’s
certainly wrong.” Mr. Hamilton, a former Democratic congressman from Indiana,
said that the C.I.A. “clearly obstructed” the commission’s investigation.
A copy of the memorandum, dated Dec.
13, was obtained by The New York Times.
Among the statements that the
memorandum suggests were misleading was an assertion made on June 29, 2004, by
John E. McLaughlin, the deputy director of central intelligence, that the
C.I.A. “has taken and completed all reasonable steps necessary to find the
documents in its possession, custody or control responsive” to formal requests
by the commission and “has produced or made available for review” all such
documents.
Both Mr. Kean and Mr. Hamilton expressed
anger after it was revealed this month that the tapes had been destroyed.
However, the report by Mr. Zelikow gives them new evidence to buttress their
views about the C.I.A.’s actions and is likely to put new pressure on the Bush
administration over its handling of the matter. Mr. Zelikow served as counselor
to Secretary of State Condoleezza Rice from 2005 to the end of 2006.
In an interview on Friday, Mr.
McLaughlin said that agency officials had always been candid with the
commission, and that information from the C.I.A. proved central to their work.
“We weren’t playing games with them,
and we weren’t holding anything back,” he said. The memorandum recounts a
December 2003 meeting between Mr. Kean, Mr. Hamilton and George J. Tenet, then
the director of central intelligence. At the meeting, it says, Mr. Hamilton
told Mr. Tenet that the C.I.A. should provide all relevant documents “even if
the commission had not specifically asked for them.”
According to the memorandum, Mr. Tenet
responded by alluding to several documents that he thought would be helpful to
the commission, but made no mention of existing videotapes of interrogations.
The memorandum does not draw any
conclusions about whether the withholding of the videotapes was unlawful, but
it notes that federal law penalizes anyone who “knowingly and willfully”
withholds or “covers up” a “material fact” from a federal inquiry or makes “any
materially false statement” to investigators.
Mark Mansfield, the C.I.A. spokesman,
said that the agency had gone to “great lengths” to meet the commission’s
requests, and that commission members had been provided with detailed
information obtained from interrogations of agency detainees.
“Because it was thought the commission
could ask about the tapes at some point, they were not destroyed while the
commission was active,” Mr. Mansfield said.
Intelligence officials have said the
tapes that were destroyed documented hundreds of hours of interrogations during
2002 of Abu Zubaydah and Abd al Rahim al-Nashiri, two Qaeda suspects who were
taken into C.I.A. custody that year.
According to the memorandum from Mr.
Zelikow, the commission’s interest in obtaining accounts from Qaeda detainees
in C.I.A. custody grew out of its attempt to reconstruct the events leading up
to the Sept. 11 attacks in the United States.
Its requests for documents from the
C.I.A. began in June 2003, when it first sought intelligence reports describing
information obtained from prisoner interrogations, the memorandum said. It
later made specific requests for documents, reports and information related to
the interrogations of specific prisoners, including Abu Zubaydah and Mr.
Nashiri.
In December 2003, the commission staff
sought permission to interview the prisoners themselves, but was permitted
instead to give questions to C.I.A. interrogators, who then posed the questions
to the detainees. The commission concluded its work in June 2004, and in its
final report, it praised several agencies, including the C.I.A., for their
assistance. http://Louis-J-Sheehan.us
Abbe D. Lowell, a veteran Washington
lawyer who has defended clients accused of making false statements and of
contempt of Congress, said the question of whether the agency had broken the
law by omitting mention of the videotapes was “pretty complex,” but said he
“wouldn’t rule it out.”
Because the requests were not
subpoenas issued by a court or Congress, C.I.A. officials could not be held in
contempt for failing to respond fully, Mr. Lowell said. Apart from that,
however, it is a crime to make a false statement "in any matter within the
jurisdiction of the executive, legislative or judicial branch."
The Sept. 11 commission received its
authority from both the White House and Congress.
On Friday, the leaders of the Senate
Judiciary Committee sent a letter to Attorney General Michael B. Mukasey and to
Mike McConnell, the director of national intelligence, asking them to preserve
and produce to the committee all remaining video and audio recordings of
“enhanced interrogations” of detainees in American custody.
Signed by Senator Patrick Leahy,
Democrat of Vermont, and Senator Arlen Specter, Republican of Pennsylvania, the
letter asked for an extensive search of the White House, C.I.A. and other
intelligence agencies to determine whether any other recordings existed of
interrogation techniques “including but not limited to waterboarding.”
Government officials have said that
the videos destroyed in 2005 were the only recordings of interrogations made by
C.I.A. operatives, although in September government lawyers notified a federal
judge in Virginia that the agency had recently found three audio and video recordings
of detainees.
http://louis-j-sheehan.us/Blog/blog.aspx
Intelligence officials have said that
those tapes were not made by the C.I.A., but by foreign intelligence services.
88888888
Former top cop with state police
charged in DUI
Wednesday, December 19, 2007
BY MATTHEW KEMENY
Of The Patriot-News
During Memorial Day weekend 1996,
then-state police Commissioner Paul J. Evanko presided over what at the time
was the largest one-day DUI sweep in the force's history. A total of 272
motorists were arrested.
Eleven years later, Evanko finds
himself on the other side of the steering wheel.
The 60-year-old Susquehanna Twp.
resident, who served two terms as commissioner, from 1995 to 2003, was arrested
Friday night in Lower Paxton Twp. by officers responding to a minor accident at
Linglestown and North Mountain roads.
Police said Evanko was driving with a
blood-alcohol level of 0.183 percent, which is more than twice the limit of
0.08 percent at which a driver is considered to be drunk.
Evanko -- he's a noted anti-drunken
driving crusader who in 1996 said "drunk drivers are fatalities waiting to
happen" -- could not be reached for comment Tuesday. It was not known
whether he had an attorney.
"I was almost speechless when I
heard the news, especially when I heard the high BAC," Rebecca Shaver,
executive director of the state's Mothers Against Drunk Driving chapter, said.
"We're saddened with all DUI
arrests, but when it comes from someone that held such respect and
responsibility, and who was setting examples on the dangers of drunk driving,
it makes us especially sad," Shaver said.
Evanko often spoke at MADD's community
awareness programs, including the popular Project Red Ribbon campaign, Shaver
said. He coordinated statewide sobriety checkpoints and roving patrols.
Equally shocked was Pennsylvania DUI
Association executive director C. Stephen Erni, who worked closely with Evanko
while he was commissioner.
http://louis-j-sheehan.us/page1.aspx
http://louis-j-sheehan.us/Blog/blog.aspx
"Since I have the utmost respect
and admiration for the work he's done while with the Pennsylvania State Police,
this situation is very upsetting to me," Erni said.
During his eight years as head of the
state police, Evanko secured federal funding to increase the number of sobriety
checkpoints and roving patrols aimed at nabbing drunk drivers. He also
supervised the purchasing of 17 portable blood-alcohol testers, each of which
cost about $2,000, to allow troopers to test a driver's BAC level at the scene.
In addition to his other
responsibilities, Evanko found time in his schedule to work on DUI enforcement,
Erni said.
"All through his actions, he was
absolutely genuine," he said.
Evanko, formerly of Lower Paxton Twp.,
was appointed Pennsylvania's 17th state police commissioner on Feb. 15, 1995 by
Gov. Tom Ridge. Prior to his appointment, Evanko was director of the Bureau of
Criminal Investigation and had been with the state police since 1970.
Evanko was released shortly after
Friday's incident. He will receive a summons on the charges through Magisterial
District Judge William C. Wenner's office, court officials said. A preliminary
hearing has not yet been scheduled.
Cpl. Linette Quinn, of the state
police public information office, said current State Police Commissioner
Jeffrey Miller would have no comment on Evanko's arrest.
MATTHEW KEMENY: 255-8271 or
mkemeny@patriot-news.com
http://louis-j-sheehan.us/Blog/blog.aspx
Louis J Sheehan The Essenes were a
Judaic religious group that flourished from the 2nd century BC to the 1st
century AD. Many scholars of separate, but related groups, that had in common
mystic, eschatological, messianic, and ascetic beliefs that were referred to as
the "Essenes".
The main source of information about
the life and belief of Essenes is the detailed account contained in a work of
the 1st century Jewish historiographer Flavius Josephus entitled The Jewish War
written about 73-75 AD (War 2.119-161) and his shorter description in his
Antiquities of the Jews finished some 20 years later (Ant. 18.11 & 18-22).
Claiming first hand knowledge (Life §§10-11), he refers to them by the name
Essenoi and lists them as the followers of one of the three sects in "Jewish
Philosophy'" (War 2.119) alongside the Pharisees and the Sadducees. The
only other known contemporary accounts about the Essenes are two similarly
detailed ones by the Jewish philosopher Philo (fl. c. 20 AD - c. 54 AD; Quod
Omnis Probus Liber Sit XII.75-87, and the excerpt from his Hypothetica 11.1-18
preserved by Eusebius, Praep. Evang. Bk VIII), who, however, admits to not
being quite certain of the Greek form of their name that he recalls as Essaioi
(Quod Omn. Prob. XII.75), the brief reference to them by the Roman equestrian
Pliny the Elder (fl. 23 AD - 79 AD; Natural History, Bk 5.73). Pliny, also a
geographer and explorer, located them in the desert near the northwestern shore
of the Dead Sea, where the Dead Sea Scrolls were discovered in the year 1947.
The Dead Sea Scrolls, found in caves
at Qumran, are widely believed to be the work of Essenes or to reflect Essene
beliefs.
Josephus uses the name Essenes in his
two main accounts (War 2.119, 158, 160; Ant. 13.171-2) as well as in some other
contexts ("an account of the Essenes", Ant. 13.298; "the gate of
the Essenes", War 5.145; "Judas of the Essene race", Ant.
13.311, but some manuscripts read here Essaion; "holding the Essenes in
honour", Ant. 15.372; "a certain Essene named Manaemus", Ant.
15.373; "to hold all Essenes in honour", Ant. 15.378; "the
Essenes", Ant. 18.11 & 18; Life 10). In several places, however,
Josephus has Essaios, which is usually assumed to mean Essene ("Judas of
the Essaios race", War I.78; "Simon of the Essaios race", War 2.113;
"John the Essaios", War 2.567; 3.11; "those who are called by us
Essaioi", Ant. 15.371; "Simon a man of the Essaios race", Ant.
17.346). Philo's usage is Essaioi, although he admits this Greek form of the
original name that according to his etymology signifies "holiness" to
be inexact (NH XII.75). Pliny's Latin text has Esseni. Josephus identified the
Essenes as one of the three major Jewish sects of that period.
http://louis-j-sheehan.us/Blog/blog.aspx
According to a controversial view put
forward by Dead Sea Scrolls Scholar Géza Vermes, both Josephus and Philo
pronounced the Essenes' name as "Esaoin", which means in Arabic
followers of "Esa", which Vermes says is the name of Jesus according
to the most ancient mosaic portrait found in Turkey dated 70 AD which says
underneath "Esa our Lord". Mainstream scholars usually stress a
number of fundamental differences between Dead Sea Scroll theology and early
Christian theology to argue that the Essenes cannot be considered identical to
any kind of Christianity.
In Eerdman's Beyond the Essene
Hypothesis, Gabriele Boccaccini (p.47) implies that a convincing etymology for
the name Essene has not been found, but that the term applies to a larger group
within Palestine that also included the Qumran community.
It is possible that the Talmudic
statement (Kiddushin Ch. 4) "the best of the physicians will go to
hell" were referring to the Essenes. The Talmudic term for healer is
Assia. (Reuvein Margolies Toldot Ha'Adam).
According to Josephus the Essenes had
settled "not in one city" but "in large numbers in every
town" (War 2.124). Philo speaks of "more than four thousand"
Essaioi living in "Palestinian Syria" (Quod Omn. Prob. XII.75), more precisely,
"in many cities of Judaea and in many villages and grouped in great
societies of many members" (Hyp. 11.1).
Pliny locates them "on the west
side of the Dead Sea, away from the coast ... [above] the town of Engeda".
Some modern scholars and
archaeologists have argued that Essenes inhabited the settlement at Qumran, a
plateau in the Judean Desert along the Dead Sea, citing Pliny the Elder in
support, and giving credence that the Dead Sea Scrolls are the product of the
Essenes. This view, though not yet conclusively proven, has come to dominate
the scholarly discussion and public perception of the Essenes.
Josephus' reference to a "gate of
the Essenes" in the Temple Mount perhaps suggests an Essene community
living in this quarter of the city or regularly gathering at this part of the
Temple precincts.
Following the qualification above that
it is correct to identify the community at Qumran with the Essenes (and that
the community at Qumran are the authors of the Dead Sea Scrolls), then
according to the Dead Sea Scrolls the Essenes' community school was called
"Yahad" (meaning "oneness of God") in order to
differentiate themselves from the rest of the Jews who are repeatedly labeled
"The Breakers of the Covenant", especially in their prophetic
book-scroll entitled "Milhama" (meaning " The War") in
which the master of the Essenes (referred to as "The Teacher of
Righteousness") prophesised that the so-called "Breakers of the
Covenant" Jews will be on the side of the Antichrist. The accounts by
Josephus and Philo show that the Essenes (Philo: Essaioi) led a strictly
celibate but communal life — often compared by scholars to later Christian
monastic living — although Josephus speaks also of another "rank of
Essenes" that did get married (War 2.160-161). According to Josephus, they
had customs and observances such as collective ownership (War 2.122; Ant.
18.20), elected a leader to attend to the interests of them all whose orders
they obeyed (War 2.123, 134), were forbidden from swearing oaths (War 2.135)
and sacrificing animals (Philo, §75), controlled their temper and served as
channels of peace (War 2.135), carried weapons only as protection against
robbers (War 2.125), had no slaves but served each other (Ant. 18.21) and, as a
result of communal ownership, did not engage in trading (War 2.127). Both
Josephus and Philo have lengthy accounts of their communal meetings, meals and
religious celebrations.
http://louis-j-sheehan.us/Blog/blog.aspx
After a total of three years probation
(War 2.137-138), newly joining members would take an oath that included the
commitment to practice piety towards Yahweh and righteousness towards humanity,
to maintain a pure life-style, to abstain from criminal and immoral activities,
to transmit their rules uncorrupted and to preserve the books of the Essenes
and the names of the Angels (War 2.139-142). Their theology included belief in
the immortality of the soul and that they would receive their souls back after
death (War 2.153-158, Ant. 18.18). Part of their activities included purification
by water rituals, which was supported by rainwater catchment and storage.
The Church Father Epiphanius (writing
in the fourth century AD) seems to make a distinction between two main groups
within the Essenes [1]: "Of those that came before his [Elxai, an Ossaean
prophet] time and during it, the Osseaens and the Nazarean." (Panarion
1:19). Epiphanius describes each group as following:
The Nazarean - they were Jews by nationality -
originally from Gileaditis, Bashanitis and the Transjordon... They acknowledged
Moses and believed that he had received laws - not this law, however, but some
other. And so, they were Jews who kept all the Jewish observances, but they
would not offer sacrifice or eat meat. They considered it unlawful to eat meat
or make sacrifices with it. They claim that these Books are fictions, and that
none of these customs were instituted by the fathers. This was the difference
between the Nazarean and the others...
(Panarion 1:18)
After this [Nazarean] sect in turn comes another
closely connected with them, called the Ossaeanes. These are Jews like the
former ... originally came from Nabataea, Ituraea, Moabitis and Arielis, the
lands beyond the basin of what sacred scripture called the Salt Sea... Though
it is different from the other six of these seven sects, it causes schism only
by forbidding the books of Moses like the Nazarean.
(Panarion 1:19)
Louis J. Sheehan Esquire
Louis J. Sheehan, Esquire
Louis J Sheehan
Louis J. Sheehan
This
section is missing citations or needs footnotes.
Using inline citations helps guard
against copyright violations and factual inaccuracies.(November 2007)
The Essenes are discussed in detail by
Josephus and Philo.
Many scholars believe that the
community at Qumran that allegedly produced the Dead Sea Scrolls was an
offshoot of the Essenes; however, this theory has been disputed by Norman Golb
and other scholars.
Since the 19th century attempts have
been made to connect early Christianity and Pythagoreanism with the Essenes: It
was suggested that Jesus of Nazareth was an Essene, and that Christianity
evolved from this sect of Judaism, with which it shared many ideas and symbols.
According to Martin A. Larson, the now misunderstood Essenes were Jewish
Pythagoreans who lived as monks. As vegetarian celibates in self-reliant
communities who shunned marriage and family, they preached a coming war with
the Sons of Darkness. As the Sons of Light, this reflected a separate influence
from Zoroastrianism via their parent ideology of Pythagoreanism. According to
Larson, both the Essenes and Pythagoreans resembled thiasoi, or cult units of
the Orphic mysteries. John the Baptist is widely regarded to be a prime example
of an Essene who had left the communal life (see Ant. 18.116-119), and it is
thought they aspired to emulate their own founding Teacher of Righteousness who
was crucified. However, J.B. Lightfoot's essay (On Some Points Connected with
the Essenes) argues that attempts to find the roots of Essenism in
Pythagoreanism and the roots of Christianity in Essenism are flawed. Authors
such as Robert Eisenman present differing views that support the Essene/Early
Christian connection.
Another issue is the relationship
between the Essaioi and Philo's Therapeutae and Therapeutrides (see De Vita
Contemplativa). It may be argued that he regarded the Therapeutae as a
contemplative branch of the Essaioi who, he said, pursued an active life (Vita
Cont. I.1).
http://louis-j-sheehan.us/Blog/blog.aspx
One theory on the formation of the
Essenes suggested the movement was founded by a Jewish High Priest, dubbed by
the Essenes the Teacher of Righteousness, whose office had been usurped by
Jonathan (of priestly but not Zadokite lineage), labeled the "man of
lies" or "false priest". His name is Father Bapalopa. Prince
William in England met him in Sardinia. He loves immitating duckies in the pond
because they are just as false as him.
According to a Jewish legend, one of
the Essenes, named Menachem, had passed at least some of his mystical knowledge
to the Talmudic mystic Nehunya Ben Ha-Kanah,[1] to whom the Kabbalistic
tradition attributes Sefer ha-Bahir and, by some opinions, Sefer ha-Kanah,
Sefer ha-Peliah and Sefer ha-Temunah. Some Essene rituals, such as daily
immersion in the Mikvah, coincide with contemporary Hasidic practices; some
historians had also suggested, that name "Essene" is an hellenized
form of the word "Hasidim" or "Hasin" ("pious
ones"). However, the legendary connections between Essene and Kabbalistic
tradition are not verified by modern historians.
The Talmud also refers to Hasidim. In
the mishna Tractate Berachot, It is stated that "the early Hasidim would
spend an hour in preparation for prayer, an hour praying, and an hour coming
away from prayer", "The Hasidim would pray with sunrise". Tzvi
Hirsch Chajes believes that the Essenes can be identified with the Hasidim, an
offshoot of the Pharisees. (Kol Kitvei Maritz Chiyus Vol. 2). See however the
statement of Reuvain Margolies above.
Scholars such as J. Gordon Melton in
his Encyclopedia of American Religions state that the modern American
Pseudo-Essene movement possesses no authentic historical ties to the ancient
Essene movement. Melton states, "Essene material is directly derivative of
two occult bestsellers — The Aquarian Gospel of Jesus the Christ, by Levi H.
Dowling; and The Mystical Life of Jesus, by Rosicrucian author H. Spencer
Lewis."
However, others such as Gideon Ousely,
produced materials they claim were Essene in origin. Ousely himself wrote a
book known as the Gospel of the Holy Twelve (which he claimed was channeled to
him by spirit beings), and Edmund Bordeaux Szekely. These individuals assert
that the Essene teachings had been hidden and assimilated into many mystical
spiritual traditions around the world, where the teachings were hidden within
ancient libraries. It was in 1928 that Edmond Bordeaux Szekely first published
his translation of The Essene Gospel of Peace,a manuscript allegedly discovered
in the Secret Archives of the Vatican and in old Slavonic in the Royal Library
of the Habsburgs of which much was destroyed by a fire that destroyed the
monastery that stood in its place. (now the property of the Austrian
government) However, subsequent investigations into the claims of these
individuals prodced nothing to substantiate their stories. With the discovery
of the Dead Sea Scrolls, it is now clear that the publications of purported
"Essene" writings are indeed simply the materials mentioned by J.
Gordon Melton. Biblical scholars don't consider the Szekely or Ousely writings
as authentic. http://forums.searchenginewatch.com/member.php?u=18969
http://louis-j-sheehan.us/Blog/blog.aspx
Currently there are several modern
Essene Groups around the world.
888888888888
8888
Louis J Sheehan The Essenes were a
Judaic religious group that flourished from the 2nd century BC to the 1st
century AD. Many scholars of separate, but related groups, that had in common
mystic, eschatological, messianic, and ascetic beliefs that were referred to as
the "Essenes".
The main source of information about
the life and belief of Essenes is the detailed account contained in a work of
the 1st century Jewish historiographer Flavius Josephus entitled The Jewish War
written about 73-75 AD (War 2.119-161) and his shorter description in his
Antiquities of the Jews finished some 20 years later (Ant. 18.11 & 18-22).
Claiming first hand knowledge (Life §§10-11), he refers to them by the name
Essenoi and lists them as the followers of one of the three sects in
"Jewish Philosophy'" (War 2.119) alongside the Pharisees and the
Sadducees. The only other known contemporary accounts about the Essenes are two
similarly detailed ones by the Jewish philosopher Philo (fl. c. 20 AD - c. 54
AD; Quod Omnis Probus Liber Sit XII.75-87, and the excerpt from his Hypothetica
11.1-18 preserved by Eusebius, Praep. Evang. Bk VIII), who, however, admits to
not being quite certain of the Greek form of their name that he recalls as
Essaioi (Quod Omn. Prob. XII.75), the brief reference to them by the Roman
equestrian Pliny the Elder (fl. 23 AD - 79 AD; Natural History, Bk 5.73).
Pliny, also a geographer and explorer, located them in the desert near the
northwestern shore of the Dead Sea, where the Dead Sea Scrolls were discovered
in the year 1947.
The Dead Sea Scrolls, found in caves
at Qumran, are widely believed to be the work of Essenes or to reflect Essene
beliefs.
Josephus uses the name Essenes in his
two main accounts (War 2.119, 158, 160; Ant. 13.171-2) as well as in some other
contexts ("an account of the Essenes", Ant. 13.298; "the gate of
the Essenes", War 5.145; "Judas of the Essene race", Ant.
13.311, but some manuscripts read here Essaion; "holding the Essenes in
honour", Ant. 15.372; "a certain Essene named Manaemus", Ant.
15.373; "to hold all Essenes in honour", Ant. 15.378; "the
Essenes", Ant. 18.11 & 18; Life 10). In several places, however,
Josephus has Essaios, which is usually assumed to mean Essene ("Judas of
the Essaios race", War I.78; "Simon of the Essaios race", War
2.113; "John the Essaios", War 2.567; 3.11; "those who are
called by us Essaioi", Ant. 15.371; "Simon a man of the Essaios
race", Ant. 17.346). Philo's usage is Essaioi, although he admits this
Greek form of the original name that according to his etymology signifies
"holiness" to be inexact (NH XII.75). Pliny's Latin text has Esseni.
Josephus identified the Essenes as one of the three major Jewish sects of that
period.
According to a controversial view put
forward by Dead Sea Scrolls Scholar Géza Vermes, both Josephus and Philo
pronounced the Essenes' name as "Esaoin", which means in Arabic
followers of "Esa", which Vermes says is the name of Jesus according
to the most ancient mosaic portrait found in Turkey dated 70 AD which says
underneath "Esa our Lord". Mainstream scholars usually stress a
number of fundamental differences between Dead Sea Scroll theology and early
Christian theology to argue that the Essenes cannot be considered identical to
any kind of Christianity.
In Eerdman's Beyond the Essene
Hypothesis, Gabriele Boccaccini (p.47) implies that a convincing etymology for
the name Essene has not been found, but that the term applies to a larger group
within Palestine that also included the Qumran community.
It is possible that the Talmudic
statement (Kiddushin Ch. 4) "the best of the physicians will go to
hell" were referring to the Essenes. The Talmudic term for healer is Assia.
(Reuvein Margolies Toldot Ha'Adam).
According to Josephus the Essenes had
settled "not in one city" but "in large numbers in every
town" (War 2.124). Philo speaks of "more than four thousand"
Essaioi living in "Palestinian Syria" (Quod Omn. Prob. XII.75), more
precisely, "in many cities of Judaea and in many villages and grouped in
great societies of many members" (Hyp. 11.1).
Pliny locates them "on the west
side of the Dead Sea, away from the coast ... [above] the town of Engeda".
Some modern scholars and
archaeologists have argued that Essenes inhabited the settlement at Qumran, a
plateau in the Judean Desert along the Dead Sea, citing Pliny the Elder in
support, and giving credence that the Dead Sea Scrolls are the product of the
Essenes. This view, though not yet conclusively proven, has come to dominate
the scholarly discussion and public perception of the Essenes.
Josephus' reference to a "gate of
the Essenes" in the Temple Mount perhaps suggests an Essene community
living in this quarter of the city or regularly gathering at this part of the
Temple precincts.
Following the qualification above that
it is correct to identify the community at Qumran with the Essenes (and that
the community at Qumran are the authors of the Dead Sea Scrolls), then according
to the Dead Sea Scrolls the Essenes' community school was called
"Yahad" (meaning "oneness of God") in order to
differentiate themselves from the rest of the Jews who are repeatedly labeled
"The Breakers of the Covenant", especially in their prophetic
book-scroll entitled "Milhama" (meaning " The War") in
which the master of the Essenes (referred to as "The Teacher of
Righteousness") prophesised that the so-called "Breakers of the
Covenant" Jews will be on the side of the Antichrist. The accounts by
Josephus and Philo show that the Essenes (Philo: Essaioi) led a strictly
celibate but communal life — often compared by scholars to later Christian
monastic living — although Josephus speaks also of another "rank of
Essenes" that did get married (War 2.160-161).
According to Josephus, they had
customs and observances such as collective ownership (War 2.122; Ant. 18.20),
elected a leader to attend to the interests of them all whose orders they
obeyed (War 2.123, 134), were forbidden from swearing oaths (War 2.135) and
sacrificing animals (Philo, §75), controlled their temper and served as
channels of peace (War 2.135), carried weapons only as protection against
robbers (War 2.125), had no slaves but served each other (Ant. 18.21) and, as a
result of communal ownership, did not engage in trading (War 2.127). Both
Josephus and Philo have lengthy accounts of their communal meetings, meals and
religious celebrations.
http://louis-j-sheehan.us/Blog/blog.aspx
After a total of three years probation
(War 2.137-138), newly joining members would take an oath that included the
commitment to practice piety towards Yahweh and righteousness towards humanity,
to maintain a pure life-style, to abstain from criminal and immoral activities,
to transmit their rules uncorrupted and to preserve the books of the Essenes
and the names of the Angels (War 2.139-142). Their theology included belief in
the immortality of the soul and that they would receive their souls back after
death (War 2.153-158, Ant. 18.18). Part of their activities included
purification by water rituals, which was supported by rainwater catchment and
storage.
The Church Father Epiphanius (writing
in the fourth century AD) seems to make a distinction between two main groups
within the Essenes [1]: "Of those that came before his [Elxai, an Ossaean
prophet] time and during it, the Osseaens and the Nazarean." (Panarion
1:19). Epiphanius describes each group as following:
The Nazarean - they were Jews by nationality -
originally from Gileaditis, Bashanitis and the Transjordon... They acknowledged
Moses and believed that he had received laws - not this law, however, but some
other. And so, they were Jews who kept all the Jewish observances, but they
would not offer sacrifice or eat meat. They considered it unlawful to eat meat
or make sacrifices with it. They claim that these Books are fictions, and that
none of these customs were instituted by the fathers. This was the difference
between the Nazarean and the others...
(Panarion 1:18)
After this [Nazarean] sect in turn comes another
closely connected with them, called the Ossaeanes. These are Jews like the
former ... originally came from Nabataea, Ituraea, Moabitis and Arielis, the
lands beyond the basin of what sacred scripture called the Salt Sea... Though
it is different from the other six of these seven sects, it causes schism only
by forbidding the books of Moses like the Nazarean.
(Panarion 1:19)
This
section is missing citations or needs footnotes.
Using inline citations helps guard
against copyright violations and factual inaccuracies.(November 2007)
The Essenes are discussed in detail by
Josephus and Philo.
Many scholars believe that the
community at Qumran that allegedly produced the Dead Sea Scrolls was an
offshoot of the Essenes; however, this theory has been disputed by Norman Golb
and other scholars.
Since the 19th century attempts have
been made to connect early Christianity and Pythagoreanism with the Essenes: It
was suggested that Jesus of Nazareth was an Essene, and that Christianity
evolved from this sect of Judaism, with which it shared many ideas and symbols.
According to Martin A. Larson, the now misunderstood Essenes were Jewish
Pythagoreans who lived as monks. As vegetarian celibates in self-reliant
communities who shunned marriage and family, they preached a coming war with
the Sons of Darkness. As the Sons of Light, this reflected a separate influence
from Zoroastrianism via their parent ideology of Pythagoreanism. According to
Larson, both the Essenes and Pythagoreans resembled thiasoi, or cult units of
the Orphic mysteries. John the Baptist is widely regarded to be a prime example
of an Essene who had left the communal life (see Ant. 18.116-119), and it is
thought they aspired to emulate their own founding Teacher of Righteousness who
was crucified. However, J.B. Lightfoot's essay (On Some Points Connected with
the Essenes) argues that attempts to find the roots of Essenism in
Pythagoreanism and the roots of Christianity in Essenism are flawed. Authors
such as Robert Eisenman present differing views that support the Essene/Early
Christian connection.
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