David Koresh<\/a>, whose sense of his own importance, shared by a small circle of followers, was decidedly apocalyptic in character. But were it not for\u00a0the events surrounding his death, few would probably know who he is today. Mythicists are frequently ready to list allegedly parallel movements and literature to that of early Christianity, drawing from far and wide and often with relatively slim similarities. Yet the closer parallels, from apocalyptic millenialist movements which viewed their leader as God\u2019s chosen one of the end times, are barely given a mention, even though the apocalyptic character of the teaching of Jesus and of the early Christian movement\u00a0is well-established.<\/p>\n![\"communityrule\"](\"https:\/\/wp-media.patheos.com\/blogs\/exploringourmatrix\/files\/2014\/11\/communityrule.gif\")
<\/p>\n<\/body><\/html>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"
A comment was left\u00a0here recently by a mythicist, which asked why, if there was a historical Jesus, he (1) is mentioned for the first time by people other than his followers so much later, (2) none of his contemporaries took an interest in him, and (3) his biography seems pieced together\u00a0out of parts of the […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":136,"featured_media":26995,"comment_status":"closed","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[39,152,64],"tags":[1353,2487,3149,4652,4656,4660,5706,5978,7853,7856,9848,12307],"class_list":["post-26992","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","hentry","category-historical-jesus","category-judaism-religion","category-mythicism","tag-branch-davidians","tag-david-koresh","tag-essenes","tag-historical-jesus","tag-historicity","tag-history","tag-jewish","tag-judaism-religion","tag-mythicism","tag-mythicists","tag-qumran","tag-teacher-of-righteousness"],"yoast_head":"\n
Mythicism and the Teacher of Righteousness<\/title>\n<meta name=\"description\" content=\"A comment was left\u00a0here recently by a mythicist, which asked why, if there was a historical Jesus, he (1) is mentioned for the first time by people other\" \/>\n<meta name=\"robots\" content=\"index, follow, max-snippet:-1, max-image-preview:large, max-video-preview:-1\" \/>\n<link rel=\"canonical\" href=\"https:\/\/www.patheos.com\/blogs\/religionprof\/2014\/11\/mythicism-and-the-teacher-of-righteousness.html\" \/>\n<meta property=\"og:locale\" content=\"en_US\" \/>\n<meta property=\"og:type\" content=\"article\" \/>\n<meta property=\"og:title\" content=\"Mythicism and the Teacher of Righteousness\" \/>\n<meta property=\"og:description\" content=\"A comment was left\u00a0here recently by a mythicist, which asked why, if there was a historical Jesus, he (1) is mentioned for the first time by people other\" \/>\n<meta property=\"og:url\" content=\"https:\/\/www.patheos.com\/blogs\/religionprof\/2014\/11\/mythicism-and-the-teacher-of-righteousness.html\" \/>\n<meta property=\"og:site_name\" content=\"Religion Prof: The Blog of James F. 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The same can be said of other figures, like John the Baptist, and even more so, the figure we know only as the Teacher of Righteousness at Qumran. The latter was\u00a0completely\u00a0<\/em>unknown to us until we happened to discover that sect\u2019s trove of texts in the middle of the 20th century. Just about everything they say about him is couched in the language of the Jewish Scriptures, if not indeed direct quotes with commentary. And whereas the Essenes viewed him as possibly the most important person to yet have lived in history, no one else takes any notice of him, and the sect itself gets scant\u00a0attention from ancient authors.<\/p>\n