The great flaw of the theory that Yeshua belonged to the Zealot movement is that Yeshua emphasized non-violence, particularly in the oldest sayings attributed to him. Other theories about his movement emphasize the apocalyptic trend in and beyond the Judaic world, or an over-riding concern for ritual purity [Chilton 2000]. Some speak of influence from the “Pharisaic table-fellowship” customs, which were enthusiastically adopted by early Christians. [Schaberg, 268] The Pharisees led a movement toward rabbinical Judaism, which rose to the forefront after destruction of the temple.

Because the gospels emphasize Yeshua’s challenges and conflicts with the Pharisees, most people don’t realize how much he had in common with them. [Carroll, 110] Both groups mounted opposition to the corrupt high priesthood that collaborated with the Romans. Both were angry with the chief priest Caiaphas for bringing vendors of sacrificial animals into the temple itself. Both were deeply concerned with ritual purity, even though Yeshua’s forays against “unclean spirits” were unorthodox in bypassing the temple priesthood. Some of his controversies involved confrontations with Pharisees, who he sometimes denounced. But he also had Pharisee friends and hosts, such as Nicodemus and Joseph of Arimathea. Some had warned him to escape before the colonial establishment had him killed. [Mack?]

   It was once fashionable to claim that Yeshua was a teacher of the Essenes, an ascetic Jewish desert sect. But the resemblances are based on the source both had in common: Judaic beliefs and practices of their time. Like Yeshua’s teacher Yokhanan (“John the Baptist”), the Essenes used baptism, and told of a Teacher of Righteousness who was persecuted and martyred by a Wicked Priest. They awaited his return in the flesh. Their hymns show a belief “that God achieves his purpose by permitting the persecution of his faithful servant in order that through his sufferings he may redeem the world...” The Sons of Light would battle the Children of Darkness, led by the evil Belial. [Allegro, 18; 90; 32] Elements of this myth contributed to Christian theology.

    The origin of the name “Essenes” has been endlessly debated. Some think it is a hellenized Aramaic word meaning “physicians.” According to this theory, it derives from Aramaic Assayya, “healers,” with parallels to the Jewish Therapeutae in northern Egypt. [Vermes, 298 n. 3; 175] The name appears as Ossaioi in Josephus, and some derive this from a Hebrew phrase ‘Osey haTorah, observers of the Law. [Goranson 2005] However, few scholars now link the Nazarene rabbi to the Essenes, nor do they use this name for the community at Qumran (although that name appears in some texts there). [All this was discussed on the ANE listserv, University of Chicago, Mar. 2005]

Yeshua was credited with the power to heal, like many other wonder-working rabbis, especially those from his own region. The famous Galilean healer Khanina ben Dosa, who effected his cures through prayer, hailed from a village near Nazareth. Many others are described as healing by touch or by their spittle, in a direct transmission of vitality. [Chilton 2000: 109-110] In John 9:1-12, Yeshua mixes his spittle with earth and puts it in the eyes of a blind man, then tells him to bathe in the Pool of Siloam, which restores his vision. Sacred pools are the context for more than one of these healings. In John 5:1-18 Yeshua heals a paralyzed man at the Pool of Bethesda. In Mark 7:31-37, he again touches a deaf man with spittle. He heals by words and by touch. People brought their sick relatives and friends to be cured, amassing in such numbers that, according to Mark 1:45, he had to enter towns clandestinely. [Vermes, 170-3]

Pre-Rabbinical literature shows that many Jewish exorcists were active in this period. [Chilton 2000: 89-92] Yeshua is frequently shown healing by casting out demons: “And he healed many that were sick of divers diseases, and cast out many devils.” [Mark 1:34] Some of the people healed were mentally ill, like the demoniac of Gerasa [Matthew 8:28-34; Mark 5:1-20; Luke 8:26-39] and a Canaanite girl [Matthew 15:22–28]; two men who were mute (and also regarded as possessed) [in Matthew 9:32-34 and 12:22-32; Luke 11:14-23; Mark 3:20-30] and an epileptic boy [Mark 9:14-29; Luke 9:37-49], among others. The ministry of Yeshua was notable for “a charismatic atmosphere.” [Chilton?] He is described as entering into a spiritual frenzy in some of these exorcisms, so that his brothers restrained him, thinking he’d gone mad: “they went out to lay hold of him, for they said, ‘He is out of his mind’.” [Mark 3:21]

Yeshua was far from being the only charismatic Jew in his time to “cast out demons.” In fact, exorcism was widely practiced as a healing rite across many religions, from Babylonian times forward. Healing by exorcism is emphasized in Matthew 10:1, in which Yeshua instructs his disciples to do so also: “Jesus called his twelve disciples to him and gave them authority to drive out impure spirits and to heal every disease and sickness.” He tells them (10:8), “Heal the sick, raise the dead, cleanse those who have leprosy, drive out demons.” He also warns (10:17), “Be on your guard; you will be handed over to the local councils and be flogged in the synagogues.” [New International Version]

This is because the spectre of sorcery accusations loomed over charismatic healers of all stripes. The Gospel accounts of Yeshua’s miracles show religious authorities condemning him for calling up unauthorized powers and even for demonic possession (which, historically, has often been a negative take on spiritual inspiration by someone of a different religious persuasion—or of the “wrong” status: sex, ethnicity, or class):

And the scribes who came down from Jerusalem said, “He is possessed by Beelzebul, and by the prince of demons he casts out the demons!”— Matthew 12:24, Mark 3:20-30, and Luke 11:14-23

In one of history's ironies, the Church later used similar diabolist language to condemn witches for ecstatic trances and healing, and also to persecute Jews. As a Christian textual scholar observes, “Jesus uses magic… but the only objective distinction between magic and religion is that we have religion while they have magic.” [Crossan, 104]

This distinction applied in rabbinic Judaism too, which admired and praised wonder-working rabbis, while condemning women as witches. But not only women. One Talmudic passage alleges that Yeshua was executed for sorcery. [Mock, 34, citing bSanh. 342; Van Voorst, 114, has bSanh 43a.] The gentile deification of this figure, combined with anti-Jewish attitudes among Christians, must have factored into this assessment.

Jewish authorities were not the only ones suspicious of charismatic healers, or who interpreted their cures as demonic. The eminent Neoplatonist Plotinus condemned exorcists who used spells to cast out demons, recommending instead treatment by medicines, poultices, and restraint in food and drink. [MacMullen, 78] The pagan Celsius charged that Yeshua accomplished his miracles by sorcery. [Van Voorst, 66]

Simon Magus

Christians made the same accusation of the charismatic Samaritan Simon of Gitta. The author of Acts claimed that he “beforetime in the same city used sorcery, and bewitched the people of Samaria, giving out that himself was some great one: to whom they all gave heed, from the least to the greatest, saying, ‘This man is the great power of God.’ And to him they had regard, because that of long time he had bewitched them with sorceries.” [Acts 8: 9-11]

These claims resemble those made for Yeshua, but the miracles were turned inside out, into “sorcery.” Christian sources would go on demonizing Simon Magus for centuries, while the Simonian Gnostics embraced him as a divinely-inspired person. Christian texts, notably the Acts of Paul and Thecla, also show the sorcery charge being applied to Paul of Tarsus. Apocryphal books describe Simon as having the power of flight and levitation. [Acts of Peter; Epistle of the Apostles, Pseudo-Clementines]

Justin Martyr, who was from Samaria, wrote that nearly all the Samaritans were followers of Simon of Gitta.” [First Apologia xxvi) The author of Acts (and later patristic literature) defamed him as a sorcerer and depicted him as greedy and power-hungry: “And when Simon saw that through laying on of the apostles’ hands the Holy Ghost was given, he offered them money, saying, ‘Give me also this power, that on whomsoever I lay hands, he may receive the Holy Ghost.’ But Peter said unto him, ‘Thy money perish with thee, because thou hast thought that the gift of God may be purchased with money’.” And they cast Simon out. [Acts 8:18-20] (From this myth, the Church called attempts to buy office “simony.”)

No evidence exists that the Samaritan Simon ever attempted to join this Judaean sect, as Acts claims. The two groups were not on good terms, as indicated by scriptural stories about Samaritans. The defamatory stories about Simon come from a rival tradition, which continued to churn out ever-more-fantastic tales. One claimed that Simon challenged Peter before emperor Nero, and trying to display his powers of flight, fell to his death from atop the Roman Forum. [www.britannica.com/biography/Simon-Magus ]

By the early 4^th century, Eusebius of Caesarea was maligning Simon as “the author of all heresy” who “performed some mighty acts of magic by the art of demons operating in him, and was considered a god.” [Hist. Eccles. II.13.6 and .3] And Eusebius repeated some of the same accusations that were flying around the empire against heterodox Christians or Gnostics or pagans, saying that the Simonians had secret ceremonies of “excessive baseness and lewdness,” in which they sexually used women: “For whatever could be conceived of, viler than the vilest thing—all that has been outdone by this most abominable sect,” which “make sport of those miserable females...” [II. 13. 7-8]

In the late first century, fame spread of a pagan wonderworker, the itinerant mystic Apollonius of Tyana, from Cappadocia. He was a Pythagorean who was said to have precognitive vision and the ability to levitate and fly. Late in the 1^st century, Apollonius was tried and put to death on charges of conspiring to harm the emperor with magic, but was said to have ascended to heaven. Elements of his story parallel that of Yeshua, as Porphyry pointed out in the late 200s, in comparing the miracles of Apollonius to those of Yeshua. Both were accused of sorcery, though only Apollonius was tried on charges of witchcraft and wonder-working, according to Philostratus, and defended himself before emperor Domitian. [Holland-Smith, 46] Both were said to have mysteriously ascended in some manner.

The early Christian theologian Origen indicates that some pagans were accusing Christians of sorcery: “Celsus asserts that it is by the names of certain demons, and by the use of incantations, that the Christians appear to be possessed of (miraculous) power, hinting, I suppose, at the practices of those who expel evil spirits by incantations.” [Contra Celsum Book I, 6] Celsus also opined that Jesus had “acquired some miraculous powers” learned from the Egyptians, who were famous for magic. [Contra Celsum I.28] Origen returns again and again to this accusation that the Nazarene’s acts were sorcery.

But Celsus (whose ideas we know only through Origen’s presentation of them) defends the Egyptian Mysteries from Christian ridicule, for example the forms taken by their gods and goddesses: “they teach us that such rites are acts of worship offered to eternal ideas, and not, as the multitude think, to ephemeral animals.” [Contra Celsum III. 19] Origen himself was Egyptian, as was Philo, who however took a very different tack: “for as for the customs of the Egyptians, it is not creditable even to mention them, for they have introduced irrational beasts, and those not merely such as are domestic and tame, but even the most ferocious of wild beasts to share the honours of the gods…” [De Vita Contemplativa, 1. 8] We’ll return to Origen on the subject of Christian polemics against Jews.