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Yet the similarity only emphasizes the striking difference between the earliest Christians and the Qumran covenanters (the Dead Sea Scrolls), for example. The Jesus movement equated the purity laws with moral laws, just as the Qumran movement did. But the Jesus movement was not priestly in orientation; rather, it gave special attention to redeeming sinners who had violated the purity rules. Like the Dead Sea Scroll community, groups that eschew sexuality virtually equated purity laws with sin, as a great many of the purity laws dealt with sexuality. Through John the Baptist, baptism became the Christian rite uniquely demonstrating repentance from sin, though there is no good evidence that Jesus performed it (e.g., John 4:2). Its corresponding emphasis on converting the distressed or sinful began in the teaching of John the Baptist, became characteristically Christian, and probably reflected Jesus’ strong charismatic influence.

But, contrary to what many New Testament scholars think, Jesus was not totally uninterested in purity either, as the rite of baptism itself shows. It is not, as many have supposed, that Jesus was opposed to purity rules while the Pharisees fostered them. It is rather that Jesus, something like the Qumran sectarians, interpreted purity obligations in the moral realm, therefore preached the ones that furthered avoidance of sin (not necessarily egalitarianism). The Pharisees and the rabbis after them, separated the two spheres; sin was sin for the Pharisees. But purity was an almost totally separate system that operated without any necessary sin in most cases.39

Although Jesus accepted the Jewish law, he occasionally indulged in symbolic actions designed to provoke questions about the purpose of the Torah, such as healing the chronically ill or picking grain on the Sabbath. These actions could have been directed at the Pharisees or other sectarian interpreters of the Torah without implying that the Torah itself was invalid.40

As the Christian movement developed, some Christians showed signs of a primitive communalism, implicit in their pooling of resources. Christianity did not adhere to the social code of the Essenes, yet it did contain the seeds of a radical criticism of private property and believed strongly in sharing all economic resources (Acts 2). “No man can serve two masters…. You cannot serve God and mammon (money)” (Luke 16:13). Jesus was suspicious of people of means: “It is easier for a camel to go through the eye of a needle than for a rich man to enter the Kingdom of God” (Mark 10:24). This statement does not prevent a rich man from becoming part of the movement but it suggested that the rich would not be much in evidence at Jesus’ table. Jesus certainly established a higher price for the rich than the poor. Early Christianity thus exhibited a deep suspicion of property. Given the command to share all things with the poor, few confident and successful people would have entered the movement at first. At best, those whose wealth had brought with it no feelings of achievement or worth would have been better targets for evangelism-for instance, tax-collectors and prostitutes.

Of special interest is the frequency with which reports of religiously altered states of consciousness appear in early Christianity. Was Jesus a mystic? Not in the modern sense of the term as a person who studiously seeks out visions by disciplined contemplation. But, there is a possibility that he sought these experiences in the frequency with which reports of that type occured in early Christian texts. And it was very hard if not impossible to be an apocalypticist without being a visionary in Jesus’ Jewish culture. If Jesus was a visionary, that means he experienced religiously altered states of consciousness. Three scholars have attempted recently to place Jesus within the mystical tradition and altered states of consciousness.41 It is hard to imagine Jesus being an apocalypticist without also positing RISC and visions. Religious