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Temple was guarded by Roman soldiers, but it was administered by Jews. In the forecourts money- changers, merchants with their stalls and artisans in their booths carried on their business. So at the time of the Roman occupation, the time of Jesus, the Torah - the basic law of the Jewish state since 443 B.C. -was still the religious doctrine of the Jews. The Sadducees, representatives of the conservative religious party, were strict guardians, preservers and teachers of the Mosaic law. One possible school for the infant Jesus could be sought among them ... The Sadducees' opponents were the Pharisees, the progressives, who admittedly also kept the letter of the Mosaic Law, but who accepted angels and resurrection from the dead in their teaching. As scribes they gained considerable influence of Judaism at the time of Jesus with their law schools. Here was a second possible answer to the problem of Jesus’ schooling. 'If we follow the gospels, Jesus did not agree with the Sadducees or the Pharisees. He often made fun of the 'scribes' and the New Testament also states that they did not accept the forward young man as one of their kind. But if Jesus had been a graduate of a Sadducees' or Pharisees school, he would have been recognized or expelled as a renegade. Nothing of the kind has been handed down: the name of Jesus of Bethlehem or Nazareth does not figure in any writings by the scribes. The disputatious Jesus must have acquired his knowledge somewhere, else. Where? Was there a. third school? There was, but it has not been common knowledge for very long. Until A.D. 68 the extraordinary conservative fraternity of the Essenes lived deliberately isolated from temple Jewry in a monastic-like habitat that had been rebuilt after an earthquake. It was situated at Chirbet Qumran in a fissured mountainous region on the Dead Sea. The 'Army of Salvation’ traced their origin to a "Teacher of Righteousness’ from the time of the Maccabees, centuries before Christ. The Essenes concluded their 'New Covenant in order to prepare the Messianic king- dom. The oldest reports about this ascetic sect are found in an essay by Philo of Alexandria (25 B.C. - A.D. 50): 'Quod Palestinian Syria, inhabited by a considerable section of the very numerous people of the Jews, is also not unfruitful in the production of virtues. Certain of them, more than 4,000 in number, are called Essenes; in my view, although it is not strictly speaking a Greek word, it is connected with the word ‘holiness’; these are in fact men who are quite specially devoted to the service of God; .but they do not make animal sacrifices. They find it more advisable to consecrate their thoughts. ... They amass neither silver, nor gold, and they do not cultivate large tracts of land because they want to get income from them, but limit themselves to providing _for the necessaries of life. Almost alone among men, they live without goods or property ... nevertheless they consider themselves rich because they rate sufficiency and a good disposition as a genuine excess ... They reject everything that could awake avarice in them. ... They do not possess a single slave, on the contrary they are all free and help each other mutually. ... Thousands of examples testify to their love of God ... contempt for wealth and honours, aversion from pleasure ... They have a single fund for all, and communal expenses ... and the custom of communal meals ... nowhere else could one find a better practical example of men sharing The intriguing nature of the Essene community also struck the Jewish historian and general Flavius Josephus (37-97), who mentioned them in his books The Jewish War and Antiquities of the Jews. In omnis probus liber sit'[14] the same roof, the same way of life and the same table ...