One of the most prominent Jewish sects, whose prominence has only recently come to light, during the Second Temple period in the Judea and, later, Syria Palaestina, was the so-called “Acosmists,” though in their own writings, they refer to their group as “The Wanderers.” The name, it is now believed, is derived from the fact that after the destruction of the Temple and the subsequent failure of Jesus of Nazareth to rise from the dead, one of their primary religious activities was to wander around Judea and the surrounding areas. Their reason for wandering, apparently never stopping except to rest for a few hours after midnight, is given in the fragments of their writings. 

They appear to have once been a Gnostic sect, believing in the One (to whom they refer to as the Tetragrammaton) as well as the Demiurge (whose name is scoured in all of its appearances, though reconstructions give “SH-M[-I]-DH-A”), the latter, of course, being technically subservient to the former. 

It is unclear what initially led them away from Gnostic beliefs, but it is clear that after the execution of Jesus of Nazareth, the break was complete. The Wanderers, it seems, believed that the dualism of the One and the Demiurge had “collapsed,” that the Demiurge had destroyed (and in some textual variant, eaten) the One, and that, since the world was upheld by the One, the world no longer existed. In this, they became the first known religion in which acosmism was established as a fundamental tenet.

This is what led to their wandering—and, quite clearly, why their existence was conclusively established only recently. They wandered, their writings tell us, because to remain in one place for more than a period of one day would render their bodies soulless. Their reasoning is strange yet sound: The world having ceased to be, yet appearances suggesting otherwise, the illusory nature of what was left of the “rind” of the world, as they referred to it, would “bleed” into their veins this very illusory feature. They believed that this bleeding into their bodies, their physical flesh, would paradoxically render their entire being matter alone, unanimated by any spirit or tie to what was once their God. 

Their practices were quite unorthoprax, even compared with the very divergent sects of Second Temple Judaism. A prominent and immediate example: It is unknown whether or not they kept the Sabbath in the manner of most Jews at the time, as their religiously-mandated, daily wandering would certainly have had them violate such. They also appear to have eschewed most religious paraphernalia common to Jews. One particular text, “Against the False World,” condemns in very strong language those who continue to don phylacteries, to put fringes on their garments, and even those who pray at fixed times. Their texts promote practices unique to their new religion. Self-imposed starvation was a religious duty when Wanderers reached the age of forty. Sleeping in the open and on the ground, with stones encircling the head—presumably tied to the incident of Jacob at Beit-El—was the norm. And certain brands and tattoos were mandated for both sexes at various ages and during holidays which find no parallel in any form of Judaism or the nascent Jewish Christianity of the time. 

There were two festivals, each at one of the equinoxes, during which enormous altars of stone were erected. The Binding of Isaac was reenacted, though the man playing the role of Isaac was, indeed, sacrificed during the autumnal equinox. The sacrifice was reversed during the vernal equinox, with the man playing the role of Isaac breaking free of his bonds, grabbing the blade carried by the man playing the role of Abraham, and then throwing the latter onto the altar, proceeding to dismember him while he was still alive. The Abraham in this gory display was not to protest at any point, instead to be “as a statue of worship” and then “as a broken she-ass,” showing no sign of struggle, nor making any sound of agony.

The structure of the Wanderers appears to have been loosely hierarchical, with Levites and the Cohanic Priesthood still retaining certain privileges, and with a king of sorts—queerly referred to as “The Ruling Fool”—who functioned as both leader and High Priest. Laws were strictly and brutally enforced. A literal understanding of Lex talionis was practiced, albeit with alterations for certain crimes deemed particularly untoward: Thievery was punished with the “theft” of the accused thief’s “innards” (the term employed for “innards” is still of unclear meaning, but many suggest “kidney” or “heart”); a knee broken by a fellow Wanderer would have the latter’s legs removed in their entirety; a male rapist was punished with his person being violated by any number of animals, despite the taboo of bestiality; and so forth. Almost a hundred of these draconian punishments are now known, with the recent finding of the famous Blue Jar (“genizah”) in the outskirts of the city of Jerash in Jordan. The hundreds of fragments, along with the lengthier texts of “Against the False World,” “Greatest Darkness,” and a Gospel attributed to the Roman emperor Nero, were written by the hand of a single, evidently ambidextrous, man.

It is, then, quite clear as to the reason for the demise of the Wanderers: A religious society, continually on the move, with death required before the age of wisdom (entailing a complete lack of elders, true bearers of tradition), and gruesome punishments imposed on criminals—would be subject to decline. One would imagine that this decline would be rapid, but there is very recently-discovered evidence that there were small groups of Wanderers which persisted well into the time of the Crusades and even into the early Modern era. It is universally agreed upon that the last sect of Wanderers, who were barely recognizable as such after so many centuries, died out by the year 1700, having wandered far away from the Holy Land, burying the last of their dead a few kilometers from the banks of the eastern course of the Usa river in Siberia.