Playing Pretend with People and Places: Gurdjieff’s Fanciful Portrait of Father Evlissi the Essene

G. I. Gurdjieff

Those who have not seen what he [Gurdjieff] is after in this book [Meetings with Remarkable Men], and who read it just as a kind of autobiographical account, or as amusing escapades, can have no idea at all of the purpose of the book.  Or, if they expect to find in the book some part of his practical teaching, they also are mistaken, because it has no claim to contain that.  But what it contains is really very important, and hardly anyone has understood this.  It is probably that the time was not ready, had not come yet for this.  –J. G. Bennett[1]

Our knowledge of the early life of George Ivanovich Gurdjieff bottle-necks down to what has been described by James Moore as his “ahistorical, auto-mythopoeic” autobiography, Meetings with Remarkable Men (1963).”[2]  A key question in relation to the work is whether the so-called Sarmoung brotherhood with their remote monastery where Gurdjieff reports having spent time imbibing their ancient teachings, ever existed.[3]  Of that many are doubtful, including Gurdjieff’s sympathetic biographer Roger Lipsey. “Does it or did it [i.e., the monastery] exist?” Lipsey asked in his magisterial Gurdjieff Reconsidered (2013), “Is it a composite of several centers of knowledge and practice?  Is it marked on some map somewhere?”[4] Others, not least the advocates of the Enneagram of Psychology, often repeat the claim without qualms as presumably being true. One of the difficulties in coming to any decisive conclusion on the matter is the fact that the mysterious brotherhood and its monastery are attested to nowhere else.  Still, Gurdjieff does provide in the same book other opportunities to test his general veracity when speaking about such things.  I refer to another “brotherhood” of which Gurdjieff claims to have had both direct and indirect knowledge, namely, the Essenes.

In the fourth chapter of Meetings, Gurdjieff introduces his readers to a man named Bogachevsky or Father Evlissi, whom he says he met soon after the latter had finished a course at the Russian Theological Seminary and become both a deacon at the military cathedral in Gurdjieff’s home town of Kars and Gurdjieff’s teacher.[5]   Gurdjieff opens his chapter on Father Evlissi with the following claims:

Bogachevsky, or Father Evlissi, is still alive and well, and has the good fortune to be an assistant to the abbot of the chief monastery of the Essene Brotherhood, situated not far from the shores of the Dead Sea.

This brotherhood was founded, according to certain surmises, twelve hundred years before the Birth of Christ; and it is said that in this brotherhood Jesus Christ received his first initiation.[6]

When Gurdjieff wrote these words he could not have known that in the later years of his own final decade the actual site of the ancient Essene Community at Qumran along with the beginnings of its extensive library would be discovered not far from the place where he spoke of one still being active, with his old friend and tutor allegedly serving there as “assistant to the abbot.”[7]  Although his location for the ancient monastery was right, no such active Essene Monastery had existed there since ancient times.  

The reason Gurdjieff got the location basically right before the discovery of the Qumran site along with the Dead Sea Scrolls is no mystery.  It was common knowledge that the Essenes community had been on the shore of the Dead Sea ever since Pliny the Elder made mention of it in his Natural History, written in the first century of our era:[8]

On the west side of the Dead Sea, but out of range of the noxious exhalations of the coast, is the solitary tribe of the Essenes...Lying below the Essenes was formerly the town of Engedi, second only to Jerusalem in the fertility of its land and in its groves of palm-trees, but now like Jerusalem  a heap of ashes.  (Natural History 5.15.73/ ET: H. Rackham).[9] 

Pliny’s passage concerning the location of the ancient Essene community was widely known in Gurdjieff’s day, and of particular interest to those wanting to claim, as Gurdjieff did, that Jesus was associated with the mysterious group.  This was especially the case in the kinds of esoteric circles Gurdjieff had contact with.  Thus, for example, reference to Pliny’s passage on the Essenes and their location is included in Arthur Lille’s Buddhism and Christendom, or Jesus, the Essene (1887),[10] and in E. Planta Nesbit’s Jesus an Essene (1895).[11]

The contention of Gurdjieff and others that Jesus had a connection with the Essenes had already been suggested by earlier authors reviewed in Albert Schweizer’s The Quest for the Historical Jesus (1906) in his chapter on “the earliest fictitious lives of Jesus.”  The particular authors Schweizer was dismissively referring to, were Karl Friedrich Bahrdt at the end of the eighteenth, and Karl Heinrich Venturini, at the beginning of the nineteenth centuries, both of whom connected Jesus with the Essenes.[12] Both also hypothesized that Jesus had survived the crucifixion with the help of fellow members of the Essene order.[13]  Despite the fact that Schweizer very rightly regarded the arguments of Bahrdt and Venturini as “crude and fantastic,” the theory has continued to have enthusiastic supporters down to the present day, primarily among theosophical and “New Age” writers, though not among the vast majority of actual scholars of ancient Judaism and Christianity.[14]   So, for example, in the middle years of the 19^th century, a letter was forged and published that had allegedly been written by an Essene Elder[15] who had actually witnessed the Essene rescue of Jesus from the tomb after the crucifixion, along the lines proposed by Bahrdt and Venturini.[16] Along similar lines,  in 1916 George Moore published his Brook Kerith which again presents Jesus as an Essene, a member of “the brotherhood by the Dead Sea.”[17]  Naturally the extent to which Gurdjieff would have had access to books of this type in Western European languages is an open question.  Still the ideas contained in them were pervasive and popular in Eastern parts as well, as Maria Carlson points out:

While Spiritualism, in both its French, mystical variant and its Anglo-American pseudo-scientific guise, was by far the most popular of the occult movements entrancing Russians at the end of the 19th century, it was Theosophy that took particular hold of certain influential members of the Russian creative intelligentsia. Their attitude toward Theosophy was complex; it was not a naive acceptance of Theosophy as a pat answer to the 19th century's crisis of culture and consciousness. They took their engagement with Theosophy seriously, viewing it as a legitimate voice in the larger, rather confused dialogue on topics of culture, religion, and philosophy that characterized their age.[18]

As an illustration of the dissemination of such ideas in circles Gurdjieff frequented, J. G. Bennett informs us that it was the same man, Prince Sabaheddin of Constantinople, who gave him Édouard Schuré’s universalistic The Great Initiates (1889) and later introduced him to Gurdjieff.[19] Schuré’s book fancifully presented Jesus as the “last great initiate” in a line that allegedly included such other worthies as Rama, Krishna, Moses, Orpheus, Pythagoras, and Plato.   And predictably, Schuré, like Gurdjieff, places the Essenes on the shore of the Dead Sea and has Jesus trained there, referring to “all these secrets which the patriarch of the Essenes unfolded to the young Galilean on the solitary banks of the Dead Sea, in lonely Engaddi.”[20]

Sabaheddin was a friend of both Gurdjieff and Rudolph Steiner, one-time Theosophist and founder of his own esoteric school called Anthroposophy.[21]  Like Schuré, Steiner also claimed Jesus was trained by Essenes, [22] but seemed to think (without evidence) that they had a settlement in Nazareth and that Jesus first encountered them there, although he does speak of Jesus going elsewhere to study with them.[23]  That Gurdjieff was familiar with Steiner is proved by negative comments he makes about Anthroposophy.[24]

Madame H. P. Blavatsky, the colorful founder of the Theosophical Society, also claimed that Jesus was trained by the Essenes, [25] and reminds her readers of Pliny’s comment about their being located on the shore of the Dead Sea.[26]

Gurdjieff was familiar with Madame Blavatsky too, claiming to have read at least two of her works, From the Caves and Jungles of Hindostan and The Secret Doctrine,[27] and to have met her as a teenager of 17 or 18, at which time she allegedly fell in love with him.[28]  

Few actual scholars, even including those who wrote before the discovery of  the Dead Sea Scrolls, credit the claim that Jesus was an Essene or strongly influenced by them.  And they rejected the idea for good reason, because in fact there really are striking differences between Jesus and the Essenes both in spirit and in practice. Some of these are immediately obvious, others less so.  A brief survey of a few of these differences is provided in an excursus at the end of this article.

Evlissi Joins the Essenes

At another point in Meetings Gurdjieff tells the following story of Evlissi’s career between the time he knew him in Kars and his alleged tenure as the assistant to the abbot of the (non-existent) Essene main monastery beside the Dead Sea.  He tells us of running into him after their first acquaintance “quite by accident” coming out of the house of the local bishop in the town of Samara, this time dressed as a monk in the habit of a “well-known monastery,” after which meeting, we are told, Gurdjieff “never saw him again.”[29]  Gurdjieff then gives the following account of what he heard from/about him subsequent to that last meeting at Samara:

I heard later that he had not wished to remain in his monastery in Russia and had soon left for Turkey, then for Holy Athos, where he also did not stay very long.  He had then renounced his monastic life and had gone to Jerusalem.  There he chanced to become friends with a vendor of rosaries who traded near the Lord’s Temple.

This trader was a monk of the Essene Order who, having gradually prepared Bogachevsky, introduced him into his brotherhood. Owing to his exemplary life, Bogachevsky was appointed warden and, a few years later, prior in one of the branches of this brotherhood in Egypt; and later, on the death of one of the assistants to the abbot of the chief monastery, Bogachevsky was appointed in his place.

Of his extraordinary life during this period I learned much, what I was in Broussa, from the tales of a certain friend of mine, a Turkish dervish who had often met Bogachevsky.  Before this time I had received another letter from him, again sent through my uncle.  In addition to the few words of blessing, there were enclosed a small photograph of him in the dress of a Greek monk and several views of holy places in the environs of Jerusalem. [30]

From what we saw previously, Gurdjieff took something generally known about the location of the main Essene Community in ancient times and contemporized it in the story of Father Evlissi being assistant to the abbot there.   Now we see him doing the same thing again by having Father Evlissi serving as “prior in one of the branches of this brotherhood in Egypt,” before coming to the main monastery on the Dead Sea.  Why did Gurdjieff choose Egypt as the location of this other branch of the Essenes? Here again he is simply creating a contemporizing fiction from what was already commonly known, but this time with an additional twist.  In addition to Josephus, whom we’ve met already, another writer, the first-century Philo of Alexandria, a Hellenistic Jew and older contemporary of Jesus, also wrote about the Essenes.[31]  But Philo also refers to another Jewish monastic group called the Therapeutae, most of whose communities were to be found in Egypt, and primarily near Alexandria on a hill beside Lake Mareotis (Philo, On the Contemplative Life 21-22).

Despite the fact that Philo’s description of the Therapeutae show them differing in some respects from the Essenes, some have argued for the identity of the two groups based on speculation that the word Essene meant healer.  Those who make this case base themselves in part on Josephus’s reference to the Essenes' keen interest in the treatment of diseases.[32] They reason that since Therapeutae is related to the Greek word for healing, and Essene might have a similar meaning, couldn’t we really be dealing with two different names given to the same group?  This view, though by no means universally held,[33] was often advanced in the theosophical circles in which Gurdjieff lived and moved and had his being.  For example, Édouard Schuré in his Great Initiates, which was mentioned earlier, claimed the Essenes “had two principal centres, one in Egypt, on the banks of Lake Maoris [sic] the other in Palestine, at Engaddi, near the Dead Sea.[34]

Gurdjieff, then, seems to have relied on this same apparent identification between the Therapeutae and the Essenes as part of the basis for his creation of the modern fiction about the career of Father Evlissi among the Essenes.[35]

Gurdjieff Among the Essenes?

The final relevant detail in Meetings touches on Gurdjieff’s own alleged encounter with the Essenes:

I told her how thanks to a letter of introduction from a certain great man, Father Evlissi, who had been my teacher in childhood, I had been among the Essenes, most of whom are Jews, and that by means of very ancient Hebraic music and songs they had made plants grow in half an hour, and I described in detail how they had done this.[36]

Gurdjieff does not provide a location as to where this remarkable encounter with the Essenes took place.  But he does tell us that he’d gained access to the group by means of “a letter of introduction from a certain great man, Father Evlissi.”  Yet in saying this, Gurdjieff seems to introduce a further implausibility to his story in the form of a chronological difficulty.  From what he’d previously said, the question of when Father Evlissi could have written the supposed letter of introduction and how it ultimately came into Gurdjieff’s hands becomes problematic. 

As the reader will recall, the last time Gurdjieff actually saw Father Evlissi, he was a monk in a Russian Monastery. Sometime after that final meeting, Evlissi was said to have left his monastery in Russia, gone first to the famous Mount Athos (a Greek monastery), but then ultimately abandoned that, renounced being a monk, and moved to Jerusalem.  It was there, Gurdjieff tells us, that Evlissi, eventually met the Essene merchant who recruited him to join the brotherhood.  Only after that, according to Gurdjieff, did he rise to positions of prominence in the group.[37]  Gurdjieff says he had learned of this, “from the tales of a certain friend of mine, a Turkish dervish who had often met Bogachevsky.”[38]  He goes on to say however that,

Before this time I had received another letter from him, again sent through my uncle.  In addition to the few words of blessing, there were enclosed a small photograph of him in the dress of a Greek monk and several views of holy places in the environs of Jerusalem. [39]

The seeming reference of the words before this time in the context is to the period after Evlissi’s arrival in Jerusalem but before his connection with the Essenes. The mention of the photographs of Evlissi wearing “the dress of a Greek monk” and of several holy places in Jerusalem, implies that the letter was written around the time he’d renounced being a monk and had gone to Jerusalem, which would have been prior to his joining the Essenes, and presumably long before he’d risen to positions of prominence among the Essenes.  Since the impression is given that this letter was the last Gurdjieff had heard from Father Evlissi, the latter would not yet have been in a position with the Essenes to provide Gurdjieff the letter of introduction later referred to.

Such detailed considerations as this last one pale in comparison with the larger facts associated with the matter.  In the first place, Evlissi could not have held the positions in the Essene monasteries described simply because neither the ancient Essenes, nor the Therapeutae, nor either of their monasteries, continued to exist beyond ancient times.[40]  And then secondly, even supposing that Evlissi, if such a man ever existed, had provided Gurdjieff with a letter of introduction to gain access to the Essene community, Gurdjieff could not have done so, since no such community existed at that time.  

It must be stressed in connection with this final point, that no such community existed, is tacitly admitted everywhere in the scholarly literature on Qumran and the Essenes.  As, for example, when my old teacher Géza Vermes defended Qumran as the site of the ancient Essene community by remarking that “There is no better site to correspond to Pliny’s settlement between Jericho and Engedi.”[41] But beyond such indirect allusions, there were during the nineteenth century extensive surveys of the shore of the Dead Sea and surrounding areas that regularly addressed the question of which of the ancient ruins might have been associated with the ancient Essene community.[42] And from these surveys it is absolutely clear that there was no functioning Essene monastery anywhere along the Dead Sea at that time. Pliny’s ancient reference naturally made the ruins at Engedi (Engaddi/Ain Jidy) a particular point of interest to these writers.  But, as one of them, Henry Baker Tristram, noted regarding the site in his day: “the only inhabitants are a few Arabs, who occasionally encamp and plant cucumbers and melons on the gravelly soil.”[43]

Recreating the Past in the Present.

What I have tried to show here is that Gurdjieff, when weaving his fanciful tale about Father Evlissi and the Essenes, did not make it up out of whole cloth.  Rather he picked up odds and ends of information he’d picked up here and there in order to provide his tale with a modicum of plausibility. But notice that no more than a hint of plausibility was necessary to serve Gurdjieff well enough to use as the catalyst for his own expansive literary invention. 

On one occasion J.G. Bennett, reflecting upon why it might be that Gurdjieff only spoke of Rudolph Steiner’s Anthroposophy “in slighting terms,” remarkably surmised that “he objected to the uncritical acceptance of statements which were unsupported by historical evidence.”[44]  If such truly was Gurdjieff’s objection it would have been remarkable, since he as much as anyone was guilty of doing precisely the same thing.

At any rate in this case Gurdjieff simply made real and present, what his other esoteric associates spoke of as something in the past.  

Parallel Brotherhoods: Essenes and Sarmoung

So where does this leave us with regard to the question of the existence of the Sarmoung Brotherhood and monastery? We have shown that when we look at an example of Gurdjieff discussing a parallel “secret brotherhood,” namely the Essenes, we can confidently say that almost everything Gurdjieff said about it was complete fiction; the survival of the Essenes into modern times, Father Evlissi’s bring recruited into the group and then rising through its ranks, Gurdjieff’s being introduced into their good graces by means of a letter of introduction from Evlissi and observing a remarkable horticultural miracle, all of it, fiction.  If all of these things were simply made up, why should we expect that the situation would be any different with Gurdjieff’s story about the Sarmoung Brotherhood and their alleged monastery somewhere in the “heart of Asia?”[45]

There is abundant evidence that the Essenes and the Therapeutae existed, but no firm evidence that the Sarmoung Brotherhood ever did.  All we have is a number of after-the-fact attempts on the part of Gurdjieff’s followers to invent ingenious explanations and etymologies as, at best, evidence of the possibility of their existence.  And yet in each case we must ask whether the alleged “evidence” presented represents real evidence of the existence of the Sarmoung or of the pretext that somehow came to serve as a catalytic inspiration for Gurdjieff’s expansive imaginative invention of the larger story.  We may think, for example of J. G Bennett’s energetic attempts to derive the name Sarmoung (Sarmān) from the Old Persian word for “bee,” which, he says, “has always been a symbol of those who collect precious ‘honey’ of traditional wisdom and preserve it for future generations.”[46]

Yet even supposing Bennett could demonstrate that the word Sarmoung was a transliteration of a real word, it scarcely proves the existence of a real brotherhood.[47] If  bees “always” symbolized the collection and passing on of traditional wisdom, as Bennett claims, then what better word could Gurdjieff have chosen as the name for an imaginary brotherhood he was wanting to invent?

A similar problem attaches to speculations as to real places Gurdjieff might have had in mind when transliterating Sarmoung.  To offer only one example, what if William Patrick Patterson’s off-hand speculation that Gurdjieff’s Sarmoung monastery might in fact be the Surmang monasteries, over which the famous Tibetan lama Chögyam Trungpa Rinpoche presided before fleeing to the West and eventually founding Naropa University in Boulder, Colorado?[48]  But again, what would that mean? Would it mean that Gurdjieff had really visited and learned his teaching and doctrine there, had gotten the Enneagram symbol there, and so on, or was it the other way around? Had he merely heard the name Surmang and creatively formed his own imaginary story about a Sarmoung monastery upon it?  In this case the answer can potentially be discovered. If Gurdjieff got his teaching at the Surmang monasteries, then it really ought to match the teaching that has been consistently presented there down through the centuries, namely, the teaching of the Kagyü School of Tibetan Buddhism, beginning with its 11^th and 12^th century founder Gampopa’s teaching which is preserved in Ornament of Precious Liberation, a work that “remains to this day the quintessential understanding of the Buddhist path to enlightenment in the Kagyü school of Tibetan Buddhism.”[49] Does Gurdjieff’s teaching parallel Gampopas in any significant way, or does it echo mostly the very trendy Eastward-looking occidental esotericisms that were all the rage at the end of the nineteenth century?  I leave the question in the capable hands of my readers.

Excursus: Differences between the Essenes and Jesus

Oil Defilement

The Essenes regarded oil as a defilement, such that “anyone who accidentally comes into contact with it scours his person” (Jewish War 2.123, cf. Damascus Document xii.16).  Jesus urged those who were fasting not to “look dismal, like the hypocrites,” who “disfigure their faces so as to show others that they are fasting,” but rather to “put oil on your head and wash your face.” (Matthew 6:16-17). 

Hierarchy

The Essenes were in general very big on hierarchical ranking, especially in their separated communities. If a higher-ranking member so much as touched a lower-ranking one he had to bathe, “as after contact with an alien” (Josephus, Jewish War 2.150, cf. Damascus Document XVI.5-6, 4Q279, Community Rule III.19-25).  This naturally also affected who the Essenes in their various rankings would sit down and eat with and who they would not (Community Rule [1QS] V.10-19).

Jesus, in contrast, rejected such ranking, insisting that his disciples had one teacher and were all brothers. They were not to put up with being called “Rabbi,” nor were they to call anyone “father on earth, for you have one Father, who is in heaven” (Matt 23:8-10). Jesus, in fact, actually subverted the very notion of ranking among his followers, by telling them that “the greatest among you should be like the youngest, and the one who rules like the one who serves.” (Luke 22:26).

Eating with Tax Collectors and Sinners

Essenes were not allowed even to eat from the community’s table until they had taken dietary oaths so strict that if for some reason one of them was ejected from the community, he might well starve, as Josephus reports: “For, being bound by their oaths and usages, he is not at liberty to partake of other men’s food, and so falls to eating grass and wastes away and dies of starvation” (Jewish War 2.139-143).

Jesus in contrast insisted that it is not what goes into the mouth that defiles a person, but what comes out of it, that is to say, from the heart (Matt 15:11 and 1-20, Mark 7:14-23).  It was in this saying that the author of the Gospel of Mark sees Jesus declaring “all foods clean” (Mark 7:19).

Jesus’ practice of eating with the very sort of “questionable people,” the Essenes would have avoided as unclean, caused his opponents to ask his disciples, “Why does your teacher eat with tax collectors and sinners?” (Matt 9:11).  And when a sinful woman came to Jesus and wet his feet with her tears and wiped it with hair and then anointed them, he did not draw back, as the Pharisee, in whose house he was dining, assumed he would have done had he really been a prophet of God who knew “what sort of woman this is who is touching him” (Luke 7:36-48).  But Jesus did know and he still did not draw back.  This incident underscores another striking difference between Jesus and the Essenes.  There is not in Jesus even a hint of the kind of misogyny reflected on the part of the Essenes, for example, in Josephus’s report that they “wish to protect themselves against women’s wontonness, being persuaded that none of the sex keeps her plighted troth to one man” (Jewish War 2.121).

Keeping the Sabbath

Among the Jewish sects, the Essenes were the strictest with regard to keeping Sabbath regulations, even to the point of avoiding going to the bathroom on the Sabbath (Josephus, Jewish War 2.147-148).  In contrast, we find Jesus almost continually under attack throughout the Gospels for his seemingly relaxed attitude toward Sabbath regulations. In fact, one of these occasions may represent the single instance in the Gospels where Jesus actually refers to an Essene teaching and rejects it.  The incident in question was when Jesus healed a man with dropsy in the house of a leading Pharisee on the Sabbath.  His audience in that case were the experts in the law and Pharisees.  Before Jesus heals the man, he challenges his hearers: “Which of you, having a son or an ox that has fallen into a well on a Sabbath day, will not immediately pull him out?” (Luke 14:5). The presumed answer, which Jesus’s hearers refused to give, was that none of them would, unless they were Essenes.  The Essenes had a rule that “No man shall assist a beast to give birth on the Sabbath day. And if it should fall into a cistern or pit, he shall not lift it out on the Sabbath” (Damascus Rule XI).  This passage from the Damascus Document goes on to say that it is permissible to rescue a person in such a situation, so long as you don’t use any secondary extenders such as a ladder or rope. 

We may well wonder whether in framing the question as he did, Jesus was appealing to an Essene rule that both he and his hearers would have regarded as totally absurd.  Anyway, the question makes his larger point well. If it is lawful to rescue a man from a pit on the Sabbath, who could object to rescuing him from some long-term illness on that day? 

So, although books still appear making the claim that Jesus was an Essene, and shall continue to do so, we expect, in the future, they are not generally credited by scholars of Early Judaism and Christianity.[50]  One does find, to be sure, the occasional scholar with real credentials in any given generation who may say so,[51] just as one also find one who says that Jesus was married,[52] or that his story arose out of a hallucinogenic experience in the context of a psychedelic mushroom cult,[53] or that he never existed.[54] 

© Ronald V. Huggins Th.D. (July 2019)

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[1] J. G. Bennett, Gurdjieff: A Very Great Enigma (New York: Samuel Weiser, 1973), 25-26.

[2] James Moore, “George Ivanovich Gurdjieff (c. 1866-1949),” in Encyclopedia of New Religious Movements (ed. Peter B. Clarke; New York & London: Routledge, 2006), 246.  In his biography of Gurdjieff, Moore called the section in which he discusses this “Auto-Mythology” (James Moore, Gurdjieff: The Anatomy of a Myth: A Biography [Shaftesbury, UK & Rockport, MA: Element, 1991]).

[3] G. I. Gurdjieff, Meetings with Remarkable Men (New York: E.P. Dutton, 1969), 148.

[4] Roger Lipsey, Gurdjieff Reconsidered, The Life, The Teachings, The Legacy (fwd. Cynthia Bourgeault; Boulder, CO: Shambhala, 2019), 39.

[5] Gurdjieff, Meetings, 58.

[6] Ibid.

[7] The ruins of Qumran were previously known.  Louis Félicien de Saulcy was convinced on the basis of “l’analogie bien étrange” between the names Qumran and Gommorah that the ruins represented along with two other nearby sites the ancient city of Gommorah: “Je déclare donc, sans aucune espèce d’hésitation, que les ruines nommées par les Arabes Kharbet-el-Yahoud, Kharbet-Fechkhah et Kharbet-Goumran, ruines qui n’en font qu’une et qui se prolongent sur une étendue de plus de six kilomètres, sans interruption, sont en réalité, pour moi, les ruines de la Gomorrhe biblique” (Voyage autour de la mer Morte et dans les terres bibliques, éxecuté de décembre 1850 à avril 1831 [2 vols.; Paris: Gide and J. Baudy, 1853], 2.165).

[8] Pliny the Elder was one of the victims of the eruption of Mount Vesuvius in 79.

[9] Another reference to the Essenes may be found in Synesius of Cyrene (c. 370-413), who wrote in his biography of Dio Cocceianus (i.e., Dio Chrysostom): “Also somewhere he praises the Essenes, who form an entire and prosperous city near the Dead Sea, in the centre of Palestine, not far from Sodom” (Geza Vermes & Martin D. Goodman, The Essenes: According to the Classical Sources [Sheffeld, UK: JSOT Press, 1989], 59).

[10] Arthur Lille, Buddhism and Christendom, or Jesus, the Essene (London: Kegan Paul, Trench, 1887), 130.

[11] E. Planta Nesbit, Christ, Christians and Christianity, Book 1: Jesus an Essene (London: Simpkin, Marshall, Hamilton, Kent, 1895), 120 and 121 (As with many writers who argued that Jesus as an Essene, Nesbit sees Jesus actually surviving the Crucifixion [192-209]).

[12] Albert Schweizer, The Quest for the Historical Jesus (trans. W. Montgomery; pref. F.C. Burkitt: London: Adam and Charles Black, 1910), 38-47.

[13] Ibid., 43 and 47.

[14] See., e.g., Claudio Naranjo, Ennea-Type: Self Analysis for the Seeker (Nevada City, CA: Gateway/IDHHB, 1990), which includes a picture that purportedly represents an “Enneagram and honey bee—symbols associated with the Sarmouni Order since ancient times.”  However, in a June 2010 interview with D. J. Gold, Naranjo admitted he had claimed the Enneagram of Psychology was ancient in order to get people to take it seriously.

[15] Or, as the English translation for some reason prefers to call them, “Esseer,” though explaining that it is another name for “Essene” (The Crucifixion, By an Eye-Witness: A Letter, Written Seven Years after the Crucifixion, by a Personal Friend of Jesus in Jerusalem, to an Esseer Brother in Alexandria (Chicago, IL: Indo-American Book Co., 1907), 158.

[16] Soon after the book appeared, the author was accused of having plagiarized Venturini’s book (See Per Beskow, Strange Tales about Jesus: A Survey of Unfamiliar Gospels [2^nd ed.; Philadelphia, PA: Fortress, 1985], 47 referring to Johann Nepomuk Truelle, Für jeden Christen höchst nothwendige Aufklärungen über die allein wahre Todesart Jesu Christi [Regensburg: Georg Joseph Manz, 1849], and Enthüllungen über Geburt und Todesart Jesu (bei Chr. Ernst Kollmann) sind ein „Literarischer Betrug” [Regensburg: Georg Joseph Manz, 1850]). See further on this forgery, Edgar J. Goodspeed, Strange New Gospels (Chicago, IL: University of Chicago Press, 1931), 31-41.

[17] George Moore, The Brook Kerith: A Syrian Story (Edinburgh: Riverside Press for T. Werner Laurie, 1916), 121.

[18] Maria Carlson, “Fashionable Occultism: The World of Russian Composer Aleksandr Scriabin,” The Journal of the International Institute 7.3 (Summer 2000). (Online edition).

[19] J. G. Bennett, Witness: The Story of a Search (4^th ed.; n.p.: J. G. Bennett Foundation, 2017 [orig. ed., London: Hodder & Stoughton, 1962]), 48:

 Sabaheddin took upon himself to fill gaps in my education. He gave me books to read—and moreover obliged me to read them by discussing them the following week. One of the first was Edouard Schuré’s Les Grands Initiés, which astonished me by the suggestion that all religions are the same in their origin and that the contradictions between them are due only to our imperfect understanding. This agreed so closely with my own convictions that I wanted to know more. Sabaheddin spoke to me of Rudolph Steiner, who was his personal friend, and of the teachings of Theosophy and Anthroposophy. He also told me of seekers after initiation whom he had known in France, such as the occultist Charles Lancelin.

On Bennett’s meeting with Gurdjieff, which took place in 1920, see J. G. Bennett’s Gurdjieff:  Making a New World (New York Harper & Row, 1973), 22, 90-91, and his first impressions of the man in Is There “Life” On Earth? (New York: Stonehill, 1973), 63-64.

[20] Édouard Schuré, The Great Initiates: Sketch of the Secret History of Religions (2 vols.; trans. Fred Rothwell; London: William Rider, 1920), 2.288.

[21] Bennett, Witness, 48. See quotation above.

[22] Lecture in Oslo, Norway (5 Oct 1913) in Rudolph Steiner, The Fifth Gospel: From the Akashic Records (trans. A. R.. Meuss, based in part on trans. of D. Osmond and C. Davy; Forest Row, UK:  The Steiner Press, 1995), 55-56.

[23] Steiner, The Fifth Gospel, 55-58.

[24] Gurdjieff is presumably referring to this Steiner in “Sherm’s [Sherman Manchester’s] Orage Notes” (2 May 1927), 129, in Meeting with Orage, (unpublished: https://archive.org/details/OrageGurdjieff MeetingNotes).  He lumps “anthroposphism” together with other “isms” in Beelzebub’s Tales to His Grandson: All and Everything, First Series (New York: Penguin, 1950), 576.  Also, G. Gurdjieff, The Herald of Coming Good: First Appeal to Contemporary Humanity (New York: Samuel Weiser, 1973 [1933]), 26. 

[25] H. P. Blavatsky, Isis Unveiled: A Master-Key to the Mysteries of Ancient and Modern Science and Theology (2 vols., New York: J. W. Bouton, London: Bernard Quaritch, 1877), 1.434.

[26] Blavatsky, Isis Unveiled, 1.xxx.

[27] “L.S.M. [Larry  S. Morris] Orage Lectures,” 42. in Meeting with Orage (7 March 1927): “G. in his youth read Mmme Blavatsky From the Caves and Jungles of Hindustan and Secret Doctrine. G. went and reported that nine out of ten of her references are not based on first-hand knowledge.  This cost him nine years.” Cf. Paul Taylor Beekman, Gurdjieff and Orage: Brothers in Elysium (York Beach, ME: Weiser Books, 2001), 30-31.

[28] J. G. Bennett, Gurdjieff: A Very Great Enigma (New York: Samuel Weiser, 1973), 66.

[29] Gurdjieff, Meetings, 72.

[30] Ibid, 72-73.

[31] Philo, Hypothetica  11.1-18; Every Good Man is Free 12. 75-91; Apology for the Jews, quoted in Eusebius, Praeparatio evangelica 8. 6-7.

[32] “They display an extraordinary interest in the writings of the ancients, singling out in particular those which make for the welfare of soul and body; with the help of these, and with a view to the treatment of diseases, they make investigations into medicinal roots and the properties of stones” (Jewish War 2.136).

[33] Géza Vermes once pointed out “There is no general agreement regarding the meaning of the group’s name: Essaioi or Essenoi in Greek, and Esseni in Latin. The designation may signify ‘the Pious’, or ‘the Healers’, devoted to the cure of body and soul. If the latter interpretation is adopted, it provides a parallel to the Greek Therapeutai, the title given by Philo to an Egyptian–Jewish ascetic society akin to the Essenes” (The Complete Dead Sea Scrolls in English [7^th ed.; New York: Penguin, 1997], 46). See in more detail Geza Vermes & Martin D. Goodman, The Essenes: According to the Classical Sources (Sheffeld, UK: JSOT Press, 1989), 1-2.

[34] Édouard Schuré, Great Initiates: Sketch of the Secret History of Religions (2 vols.; trans. Fred Rothwell; London: William Rider, 1920), 2.288.

[35] This may be behind the remark in the notes of the lectures of A. R. Orage, where it says that “Jesus Christ trained among the Essenes, an Egyptian sect” (“Note Books of L. S. M. [Larry S. Morris] Orage Lectures,” 6.

[36]  Gurdjieff, Meetings, 133.

[37] Ibid., 72-73.

[38] Ibid., 73.

[39] Ibid., 72-73 (italics mine).

[40] “When the members were dispersed by the Romans in AD 68,” wrote Jerome Murphy O’Conner referring to the Essene community at Qumran, “at least one member escaped to Masada with a scroll, ‘The Songs of the Sabbath Services.’  What happened to the others no one knows” (“Essenes,” in Jerome Murphy O’Conner, OP, The Holy Land: An Archaeological Guide from the Earliest Times to 1700 [4^th ed.; Oxford, New York: Oxford University Press, 1998], 251).

[41] Vermes, Complete Dead Sea Scrolls, 47.

[42] See, most importantly, William Francis Lynch, Narrative of the Expedition to the River Jordan and the Dead Sea (new corr. ed.; Philadelphia, PA: Lea and Blanchard, 1849), esp. 282-335.  Note his speculations as to where the ancient Essene community may have been located (294, 304).  Also, Henry Baker Tristram, The Land of Israel: A Journal of Travels in Palestine, Undertaken with Special Reference to its Physical Character (London: Society for the Promotion of Christian Knowledge,1865), 245-300. See his reference to the ruins of Ein gedi (En-gedi /Ain Jidy/Engaddi) on 290, which refers to the Pliny passage (though wrongly referenced as coming from 5.17 not 5.15).  See, also the foundational work, E. Robinson and E. Smith, Biblical Researches in Palestine, Mount Sinai and Arabia Patraea: A Journal of Travels in 1838 (2 vols.; London: John Murray,1841) 204-257, esp, 210-211.  In the fourth century, Eusebius (followed by Jerome) remarked that Engaddi in his day was “a very large villiage of Jews…lying beside the Dead Sea, from which balsam comes.” (Palestine in the Fourth Century A.D.: The Onomasticon by Eusebius of Caesarea [trans., G.S.P. Freeman-Grenville, indexed, Rupert L. Chapman III, ed. Joan E. Taylor; Jerusalem: Carta, 2003], 51).  Tristam discusses this passage in reference to some ruins there (299), as does Robinson and Smith (215).

[43] Henry Baker Tristram, Bible Places, or the Topography of the Holy Land (London: Society for Promoting Christian Knowledge, 1897), 113-116, quotation on 116.

[44] Bennett, Making a New World, 60.

[45] Gurdjieff, Meetings, 148.

[46] Bennett, Making a New World, 57.

[47] Ibid., 56-57.

[48] William Patrick Patterson, Eat the “I” (ed. Barbara E. Allen; San Anselmo, CA: Arete Communications, 1992), 36: “I recalled the rumor that Gurdjieff was the Tibetan lama, ‘Lama Dorjieff.’  More interesting, Gurdjieff had received initiation and teaching at the mysterious Sarmoun Monastery.  Surmang and Sarmoun?  Could it be the same monastery?” See Chögyam Trungpa (as told to Esmé Cramer Roberts), Born in Tibet (4^th ed.; fwds. Sakyong Mipham Rinpoche and Marco Pallis: Boston & London: Shambhala, 2000).

[49] Gampopa, Ornament of Precious Liberation (fwd. His Holiness the Karmapa; trans. Ken Holmes; ed. Thupten Jinpa; Somerville, MA: Wisdom, 2017), ix.

[50] See, e.g., Edmond Bordeaux Szekely, The Essene Gospel of Peace, Book One (n.p.: International Biogenic Society, 1981 [orig. 1928]); Charles Francis Potter, The Lost Years of Jesus Revealed (2^nd ed.; Greenwich, CT: Fawcett, 1962) and Did Jesus Write this Book? (Greenwich, CT: Fawcett, 1965), Donovan Joyce, The Jesus Scroll (New York: New American Library: A Signet Book, 1972), Delores Cannon, Jesus and the Essenes (Huntsville, AR: Ozark Mountain, 2000), and Anne and Daniel Meurois-Givaudan, The Way of the Essenes: Christ’s Hidden Life (Rochester, VT: Destiny Books, 1993). None of these works warrant being taken seriously by scholars, or for that mtter by serious students (see summaries, e.g., in Beskow, Strange Tales, 81-91 (on Szekely), 92-95 (on Joyce), and James VanderKam & Peter Flint, The Meaning of the Dead Sea Scrolls: Their Significance for Understanding the Bible, Judaism, Jesus and Christianity (fwd. Emanuel Tov; London: T & T Clark, 2002), 329 (on Cannon). As for the Meurois-Givaudans.  Their claim is to have been eye-witnesses to the life of Jesus with the aid of the Akashic Records, which they claim they consulted “through a series of astral or out-of-body journeys” (viii).

[51] E.g., Barbara Thiering, Jesus and the Riddle of the Dead Sea Scrolls (New York: Doubleday, 1992). See summary and critique in VanderKam & Flint, Meaning, 325-29.

[52] E.g., William E. Phipps, The Sexuality of Jesus: Theological and Literary Perspectives (New York: Harper & Row, 1973), and Was Jesus Married? (New York: Harper & Row, 1970).

[53] John M Allegro, The Sacred Mushroom and the Cross (London: Hodder & Stoughton, 1970). See for summary and critique, VanderKam & Flint, Meaning, 323-25.

[54] Robert M. Price, The Incredible Shrinking Son of Man: How Reliable Is the Gospel Tradition (Amherst, NY: Prometheus Press, 2003).