Essenes:
The community at Qumran is thought to have been made up of Essenes, who were considered to be vegetarian by Pliny the elder, Josephus and Philo of Alexandria. They were Pythagorean in their beliefes and habits, a community sharing all worldly goods, ascetic and meatless, a pacific community with a beliefe in the transmigration of souls.
They also referred to themselves as Nazarenes and keepers of the covenant.
The finds from Qumran and Nag Hammadi indicate the possibility of another Jesus, quite different from the one we find in the Pauline version, a Jesus who had connections with sects which were not meat- eating. Some of the Gnostic literature predates the Gospels, and the Jesus revealed there is far more psychologically subtle and in many ways nearer to Buddha. If this Jesus had been publicised, praised and believed in, the history of the relationship between humankind and animals in the last two thousand years would probably have been vastly different. Imagine a Christian religion which had colonised half the world and was basically vegetarian and akin to Buddhism."
From Vegetarianism: A history by Colin Spencer.
Chapter five, if anyone's interested.
You can look up the Essenes yourselves if you want to. Essenes are jews, by the way, so it's not diverting. There may be Essenes in this country, but I don't know any.
The Virgin Mary was an Essene, as was Joseph.
