Introduction

¨     Thomas 39
Jesus said: "The Pharisees and the scholars have taken the keys of knowledge and have hidden them. They have not entered nor have they allowed those who want to enter to do so.

 ¨     Thomas 102
Jesus said: "Damn the Pharisees! They are like a dog sleeping in the cattle manger: the dog neither eats nor [lets] the cattle eat."

Both citations clearly contain the same message, namely, the accusation towards the Pharisees and Torah scholars of hiding certain secret knowledge to which they had access.

Looking at these remarks in the appropriate Jewish-religious context, it is not unlikely that when the writer talks about hidden knowledge, he refers to Jewish mysticism. Jewish mysticism gradually gained attention in the Christian world in the middle ages through so called Cabalistic writings such as the Zohar and the Sefer Yetzirah.

In the introduction of his interesting book on the Sefer Yetzirah, Rabbi Aryeh Kaplan presents a reconstruction of the way this mystical knowledge was passed on through the ages. In this reconstruction Kaplan mentions a certain rabbi Nehunia ben HaKanah, a leading Jewish mystic from the first century. According to what was passed on through the Sefer Ha Tagin, this rabbi Nehunia obtained at least part of his knowledge from Menachem, vice president of the Sanhedrin, the Jewish high counsel under Hillel. Most authorities identify this Menachem with the person of Menachem (or Manahem) the Essene, mentioned by the Jewish historian Flavius Josephus in his Antiquities of the Jews.

Accepting this explanation it becomes clear that the Jewish mystic tradition, known through the Kaballa, had its predecessors in the time that Jesus lived. Rabbi Kaplan draws a second conclusion when he states that, should Menachem the vice president of the Sanhedrin be the same person as Menachem the Essene, this would most likely mean that “the Essenes were conversant in the mystical arts, and that they taught them to at least some of the Talmudic masters”.

Josephus mentions the Essenes repeatedly and in detail in both his Antiquities as in his Jewish Wars . Compared to the Pharisees and the Sadducees, Josephus speaks highly about the Essenes. He attributes to them the quality to foretell the future through the use of the holy names of angels, the methods of the prophets and various purification rituals. Most specifically, Josephus compares the Essenes to the Pythagoreans, the intellectual movement that came forth from the teachings of Pythagoras, probably the most known and respected philosopher of antiquity. Most scholars agree on the fact that Josephus, who wrote his books for a Hellenistic public, probably "over-Hellenized" his picture the Jewish culture, but certain Essene groups, especially those dislocated from the Palestine home grounds might have incorporated foreign philosophical influences in their teachings.

About the fact that the Essenes are not mentioned in the Christian bible, William Whiston, translator of the works of Josephus, explains that “these Essenes did not use to go to the Jewish festivals at Jerusalem, or to offer sacrifices there, which may be one great occasion why they are never mentioned in the ordinary books of the New Testament; though, in the Apostolical Constitutions, they are mentioned as those that observed the customs of their forefathers, and that without any such ill character laid upon them as is there laid upon the other sects among that people”.

There is more evidence that connects the sect of the Essenes to the Pythagoreans. Besides Josephus, there was another famous Jewish historian called Philo of Alexandria. This Philo was an important Pythagorean and member of the Therapeutae, an Alexandrian annex of the Jewish sect of the Essenes.

The Pythagoreans are known for their firm believe in numbers as the basis of a harmonic world order. The Jewish tradition shares this interest. The Torah makes extensive use of symbolic numbers such as seven, twelve and forty. Besides this, numbers are also considered a mystical element capable of revealing the inner significance of the texts of the Torah. Rabbi Kaplan writes that “since the Sefer Yetzirah apparently contains some elements that resemble the teachings of the Pythagoreans, it may be that the text was preserved by the Essenes during the period that preceded the Talmud”.

From these various sources we know that Jewish mysticism and even the Hellenistic Pythagorean teachings had a fixed place in Jewish society during the first century. These traditions also fit much better in the historical context that we can reconstruct through other classical sources, than the rather simplified vision of life that is pictured in the four gospels. The insecurity that went hand in hand with the collapse of the Jewish kingdom in the first century AD, lead to the upcoming of numerous messianic apocalyptic sects like the one that we have learned to know through the writings of Qumran. These writings also fit into a better literary context than the four gospels do. As such it is highly questionable if we can simply classify the gospel of Judas Tomas, as well as the Qumran scrolls as theologically irrelevant Gnostic or sectarian writings. Most likely, these writings picture a mystical way of thinking that was typical of the Judaic environment in which Jesus and his early followers lived.

So when the Jesus in the above mentioned citations talks about the keys of knowledge, it is reasonable to assume that this knowledge was much more mystical than the common biblical tradition would like us to believe. The fact that Jesus knew what this secret knowledge embodied is made clear by his own statements.

It is only through the findings in Qumran and Nag Hammadi, both in the twentieth century, that for the first time in Christian history, the world was confronted with completely new historical material from a period that has left very little original documents. It is regretful that the research into Qumran findings has been performed rather subjectively and unprofessionally. For a long time, only fragmentary parts of these documents were made public by the catholic censorship, but worse than that, important parts of the information are lost because of unprofessional treatment of the ancient manuscripts. It is a shame that even in the twentieth century it was still possible that invaluable scientific investigations were sacrificed because of the will of a Dominican frater, who tried the impossible to prove that the Qumran scrolls belonged to the sect of the Essenes, a statement that still needs to be proved, but led to the fact that the entire world had to wait for decades before it was possible to take notice of the scarce fragments of text that survived Catholic censorship.

It is not surprising that it was the Church who immediately claimed the Qumran findings. Obviously with no other aim that to destruct any piece of information that might in some way contradict the accepted evangelic tradition. Was it not the apostle Paul that said “If my falsehood enhances God's truthfulness and so increases his glory, why am I still condemned a sinner?” (Romans 3:7). Should the Catholic Church not have wanted to load this suspicion on itself, it should have had the investigations done by independent scientists.

What does however result from the texts of Qumran and Nag Hammadi is the fact that there was a huge diversity in the manifestation of both Jewish and Christian believe. The uniformity of the evangelic message that we know from biblical texts hardly corresponds with the contents of these findings. Strangely enough it is the rather confused style of the revelations of John that most closely resembles the messianic desperation expressed in the Qumran texts.

Making up the balance of the religious environment of the Jewish people during the first century AC, it is reasonable to conclude that this was much more mystical than the Bible makes us believe. Through the Qumran findings we learned for instance about the fixation on the use of the correct calendar. This interest in calendars was a direct result of the immediate expectation of the arrival of the Messiah. Lots of Jews saw this Messiah as a liberator from the Roman oppression. However, followers of the many religious sects active in Israel in those days saw this Messiah more as a priest-like savior who would come to prepare mankind for the end of time. In order to calculate the end of time (a whish that remained unchanged trough the centuries), lots of vivid discussions arose about which calendar to use. The Jewish calendar is very complex. Lots of effort is undertaken to adapt the Old Testamental time calculation, which is based on the lunar cycle, to the solar calendar. A Jewish year could as such have a very different length, varying from twelve to thirteen month, and from fifty to fifty-five weeks in a year. A complex system of adjustments makes sure that all religious celebrations can be held at-, or close to the desired days.

Apart from the traditional diversity of the Jewish religious habits, there was another highly important influence that profoundly changed the Jewish culture, which was Hellenism. Decades of deportations and submissions brought the Jewish people in forced contact with the Hellenic culture, which by that time had spread out over the entire Mediterranean area. During the first century, almost all Jews mentioned in the gospels had Greek names, including Jesus himself. Hellenic culture was so completely integrated in Jewish life that Herod the Great reconstructed the holy Temple in Jerusalem in typical mainstream Mediterranean Hellenic stile.

Al these influences formed the scenery of the land in which Jesus and his followers lived. Being confronted simultaneously with religious/nationalistic and Geek philosophical ideas, they must have come in contact with Jewish mystical traditions such as Gematria (numerical manipulations) and apocalyptic calendar speculations, as well as Greek philosophy and sciences such as medicine and mathematics.

In classical times, proportional systems were used frequently in monumental architecture. The reasons why these proportional systems were so widely used had more to do with esthetical and symbolic appeal then practical reasons. The harmony that was chased through these proportional rules often had a higher cause. It is the very same higher cause that returns in many antique religions. The Hellenistic culture that spread out over the Mediterranean area was fascinated by the principles of the harmonic union of geometrical proportions, which often through the use of mathematical equations needed to close the gap between the understandable and the incomprehensible. An accepted belief was that God had left various secrets in his world order which were not accessible for common observers. The keys to these secrets were sought after and treasured by the Egyptians, Greeks, Jews and Romans.

In this article, an attempt will be made to reconstruct some of the “Keys of Knowledge” that must have been available to the early Christians. In this context it will be explained how a Messianic time calculation was used to express the symbolic value of the death an resurrection of Jesus as the end of the old-, and the starting point of an entirely new area. The remarkable coincidence with the series of Fibonacci will be investigated in various chapters that deal with the scientific and especially the mathematical development that preceded the time of Jesus. Throughout this essay it will become clear how this symbolic time manipulation was constructed around elements taken from Egyptian and Greek mathematics and traditional Jewish number symbolism, resulting in a new proprietary early Christian number symbolism. In a separate chapter, a similar example of this mathematically based symbolism will be explained by means of the geometrical form of the Greek cross as symbolic synthesis of the divine and human form of Jesus Christ.

In various chapters it will be possible to learn about the influence of the old Egyptians as well as the upcoming of the popular Pythagorean teachings. Special attention will be required for an example of Roman architecture where number series were clearly used as a method to approach the irrational proportions of the ground plan.

The first chapter is however intended to draw attention to the more accepted number symbolism of the Bible books. In the gospels, even well known biblical numbers like seven and twelve found a new meaning and interpretation that is much more interesting than visible at first sight. Besides this it will be made clear how widespread the use of number symbolism in the Bible is, and which value was attributed to it.

In the last chapters, the full application of the symbolic systems will be explained, while concluding with some hypothesis regarding parallels with other mystical themes dating from the same period.

Each chapter is written in such a way that it can be read by itself, which makes that repetition is sometimes necessary. Considering the complex nature of the treated subjects, a small summary has been provided at the end of most chapters.

Jan Willem Bakker