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Editor's Note
life. He promised that after some years He would be sending them one of His disciples who would impart them more knowledge.
After his arrival in Israel, Jesus went directly to Jordan where his cousin John, the Master of the Essenes, was being baptized. There His Christhood was revealed to John and to those who had “the eyes to see and the ears to hear.” In this way His brief mission to Israel was begun. His preaching is well known and so there is no need to recount it here, says Gandhi.
Virchand Gandhi throws light on Indian Religion and Brahminical practices manifested among Essenes - the followers of Jesus. These followers practiced strict non-violence and they were absolute vegetarians Neither they would touch alcohol in any form, nor would they eat any food cooked by a non- Essen. They refused to wear anything of animal origin, such as leather or wool, usually making their clothes of linen. ... They rejected animal sacrifice, insisting that the Torah had not originally ordered animal sacrifice; but that its text had been corrupted in regard to that and many other practices as well. Their assertion was certainly corroborated by passages in the scriptures such as: "Will I eat the flesh of bulls, or drink the blood of goats?" "To what purpose [is] the multitude of your sacrifices unto me?" Saith the Lord:... “I delight not in the blood of bullocks, or of lambs, or of he goats.” “For Ispake not unto your fathers, nor commanded them in the day that I brought them out of the land of Egypt, concerning burnt offerings or sacrifices.”The quotations from Isaiah are particularly relevant since he was himself the Master of the Essenes.
'It was the Essenes' contention that the “animals" originally offered in sacrifice were symbolic effigies of animals that represented the particular failing or fault from which the offerer wished to be freed. (Apollonius of Tyana taught this same thing in relation to the ancient Greek sacrifices, and urged a return to that
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