Reading History with the Essenes of Elmira

Abstract

This article studies a modern Essene movement based in the United States for its unusual merging of New Age practice with Christian fundamentalism with ancient history. By harkening back to the mystical religions of the ancient Mediterranean, these modern Essenes are able to engage in syncretistic practices while claiming to preserve the traditions of the ancient Essenes.

Receptions of Revelations: A Future for the Study of Esotericism and Antiquity

“…We are in a similar situation with the so-called "New Testament Apocrypha," the reception and invention of which is closely related to that of the Old Testament Pseudepigrapha (Reed, 2015). More recently, Enochic Pseudepigrapha and the Dead Sea Scrolls discovered at Qumran in 1947 (less than two years after the discovery of the Nag Hammadi Codices) have come to acquire authoritative status among New Religious Movements closely related to New Age and esoteric milieus and practices (Kreps, 2019). The same could be said of "New Testament Apocrypha," which, together with works from the Coptic Gnostic corpus, are often packaged for New Age, Neo-Gnostic, or "esoteric" readership as revealing a lost or hidden Christianity, whose content addresses contemporary alternative religious concerns (Burns, 2007;Burns and Radulović, 2019;Kreps, 2019;Winter, 2019).…”

“…More recently, Enochic Pseudepigrapha and the Dead Sea Scrolls discovered at Qumran in 1947 (less than two years after the discovery of the Nag Hammadi Codices) have come to acquire authoritative status among New Religious Movements closely related to New Age and esoteric milieus and practices (Kreps, 2019). The same could be said of "New Testament Apocrypha," which, together with works from the Coptic Gnostic corpus, are often packaged for New Age, Neo-Gnostic, or "esoteric" readership as revealing a lost or hidden Christianity, whose content addresses contemporary alternative religious concerns (Burns, 2007;Burns and Radulović, 2019;Kreps, 2019;Winter, 2019). And after all, it is only logical that any study of "esotericism" also include the study of "apocrypha," which in ancient usage simply meant "hidden, secret, obscure things" before it came to have the specific sense of "secret, non-canonical books" (see LSJ 204b; Reed, 2015, pp.…”