Almost immediately after the discovery of the Dead Sea Scrolls in 1947, several people concluded independently that they were writings of the Jewish sect of the Essenes, who were described by Philo and Josephus, and briefly by the Roman writer Pliny the Elder. In February 1948, one Ibrahim Sowmy, whose brother was an assistant of the Syrian metropolitan, Mar Samuel, remarked to John Trever that he knew of a group called “Essenes” who lived near the Dead Sea in the first century, and suggested that the Scrolls might have belonged to them.1 The report that Essenes lived near the Dead Sea was derived from the notice of Pliny, and this seems to have been the first consideration that prompted their association with the Scrolls. In the announcement issued by Yale University in April 1948, Millar Burrows referred to “the manual of discipline of a comparatively unknown little sector monastic order, possibly the Essenes.” Burrows did not explain his reasoning here, but the reference to a “manual of discipline” suggests that he was impressed by the similarities between the text later known as Serek ha-Yahad, or the Community Rule, and the description of Essene community life in Josephus. On October 3, 1948, the Hebrew newspaper Davar carried an article with the headline: “Discovery last year of Genizah from Judaean Wilderness,” announcing the imminent publication of the first scholarly book on the Scrolls by Eliezer Sukenik. After a brief account of the find, the article commented: “It is not yet clear who the owners of this storehouse were. However, the contents of one scroll, which is a book of regulations for conduct of the members of a society or sect, have enabled Professor Sukenik to suggest that the documents belong to the sect of Essenes, who, according to ancient literary sources, dwelled on the western side of the Dead Sea in the vicinity of En-Gedi.”2 It is not clear exactly when Sukenik reached this conclusion. His son, Yigael Yadin, claimed that his father was the first to suggest the identification with the Essenes, and this claim is endorsed by Neil Asher Silberman, who writes: “The Essene identification seemingly was confirmed when, in March 1948, Sukenik had the opportunity to examine the four additional scrolls,” including the so-called Manual of Discipline.3 In any case, the identification appears to have occurred independently to several people.
The Essenes had long been something of an enigma in the context of ancient Judaism. They are never mentioned explicitly in Hebrew or Aramaic sources, and they are absent from the New Testament. They are known from a small number of Greek and Latin authors, of whom the most important are Philo of Alexandria, Josephus, and Pliny the Elder.
Philo, who calls them Essaeans, says that they were exceptionally virtuous people, who lived in villages. They refrained from animal sacrifices and avoided cities. They lived “without goods or property,” but had all things in common. They had common meals, and whatever belonged to each belonged to all. They had no implements of war, and they rejected slavery. They had no time for philosophy, since it did not lead to the acquisition of virtue, but devoted themselves to the study of ethics, by studying the ancestral laws, especially on the seventh day, when they met in synagogues (Quod omnis probus liber sit, 75–91). Moreover, “shrewdly providing against the sole or principal obstacle threatening to dissolve the bonds of communal life, they banned marriage at the same time as they ordered the practice of perfect continence. Indeed, no Essaean takes a woman because women are selfish, excessively jealous, skillful in ensnaring the morals of a spouse and in seducing him by endless charms” (Apologia pro Iudaeis, quoted by Eusebius, Praeparatio Evangelica, 8:6–7). They have no children or young men among them, because of their immaturity, but they are “men of ripe years inclining to old age” (Apologia, 3).
Josephus gives a much more detailed description in Jewish War (JW) 2.119–61, and also gives a shorter account in Antiquities 18.18–22. He ranks the Essenes as the third of three Jewish schools of philosophy, after the Pharisees and Sadducees. They renounce pleasure as an evil and regard continence as a virtue. Like Philo, Josephus says that they reject marriage, but unlike Philo he claims that they adopt the children of others at a tender age. According to Josephus, “it is not that they abolish marriage, or the propagation of the species resulting from it, but they are on their guard against the licentiousness of women and are convinced that none of them is faithful to one man.” At the end of his main account of the Essenes in JW, however, Josephus adds that “there exists another order of Essenes, who although in agreement with the others on the way of life, usages and customs, are separated from them on the subject of marriage,” out of concern for the propagation of the species. Nonetheless, they restrict their sexual intercourse and do not engage in it when their wives are pregnant, “thereby showing that they do not marry for pleasure but because it is necessary to have children.”
Josephus describes the common life of the sect in greater detail than does Philo. He also emphasizes that the Essenes are not restricted to one town but “in every town several of them form a colony.” They live a peaceful, simple life, and have their possessions in common. They do nothing unless ordered by the superiors. Before sunrise, they recite ancestral prayers to the sun, as if entreating it to rise. When they assemble for meals, they bathe in cold water to purify themselves. Purity is required for entry into the refectory. A priest recites prayers before and after meals. In Ant 18, Josephus tells us further that priests prepare the bread and food. The Essenes “send offerings to the temple but perform their sacrifices using different customary purifications. For this reason, they are barred from entering into the common enclosure, but offer sacrifice among themselves.”
Especially noteworthy is the elaborate process of admission, which is gradual, over a period of three years. First there is a probationary year when they must prove their continence. After this they are admitted to the purificatory baths at a higher degree. Only after two further years are they fully admitted to the community and allowed to partake of the common food. Those who are admitted swear to transmit none of the doctrines except as they have received them, and “to preserve the books of their sect and the names of the angels” (JW 2.142). Those who are expelled from the sect suffer a miserable death, for they are bound by oaths and customs that forbid them to share the food of others.
Josephus attributes to the Essenes the gift of prophecy: “There are some among them who, trained as they are in the study of the holy books and the different sorts of purifications, and the sayings of the prophets, become expert in foreseeing the future: they are rarely deceived in their predictions” (JW 2.159). He illustrates their predictive ability by a number of anecdotes.
According to Josephus, the Essenes believed in the immortality of the soul, and reward and punishment after death. (The early Christian writer, Hippolytus, in contrast, attributes to them a belief in bodily resurrection.) In the Antiquities, he says that they followed the way of life revealed to the Greeks by Pythagoras (Ant 15.371). This statement has intrigued modern scholars, who have often speculated on whether they might have been influenced by the Pythagoreans. Another remark of Josephus is more enigmatic. He says that they “live in no way different from, but as much as possible like, the so-called majority of the Dacians” (Ant 18:22). The Dacians lived to the east of the Black Sea, and it is not clear how they resembled the Essenes. It is apparent, however, that Josephus wrote for Greek readers and was trying to explain the Essenes by analogies that his readers might understand.
The much shorter notice by Pliny the Elder, in his Natural History 5.17.4 (73), affirms that the Essenes are “a people (gens) unique of its kind … without women and renouncing love entirely, without money, and having for company only the palm trees. He marvels that this celibate community had managed to renew itself “for thousands of centuries.” Unlike Philo and Josephus, Pliny seems to know only one Essene settlement, to the west of the Dead Sea, where they “have put the necessary distance between themselves and the insalubrious shore.” “Below them” (infra hos) was En-Gedi. Pliny’s account is geographical in focus: he is concerned with the Essenes only insofar as they lived in proximity to the Dead Sea. His account does not necessarily preclude the existence of other settlements. He wrote after the Jewish War, when Jerusalem and En-Gedi were in ruins, but he gives no indication that the Essene settlement had been disrupted. The association of the Essenes with the area around the Dead Sea would loom large in attempts to identify the people responsible for the Dead Sea Scrolls.
Philo also writes of a group called the Therapeutae, whom he presents as a counterpart of the Essenes; while the latter are said to pursue the active life, the Therapeutae pursued the contemplative one. Hence the name of Philo’s treatise, On the Contemplative Life. Like the Essenes, these were celibate, but they included women as well as men and were located not in Judea but in Egypt, near Alexandria. Philo describes them as pursuing a mystical life, which included a common meal, allegorical interpretation of scripture, and hymn singing. This group obviously resembles the Essenes, but the actual relationship has always been controversial.
The Essenes had intrigued scholars long before the discovery of the Scrolls. Here was a supposedly Jewish sect that seemed far removed from rabbinic Judaism, and in some respects resembled Christianity, especially Christian monasticism, which did not arise until some centuries later. Long before the discovery of the Scrolls, discussions of the Essenes veered between two vantage points—one of which viewed them in relation to Christianity and the other of which tried to make sense of them in terms of rabbinic Judaism. To a great degree, the debates about the Essenes in the nineteenth century anticipate the debates about the Scrolls a century later.
For a long time, the Essenes were viewed through the lens of Christianity. Eusebius, the scholar and historian who became bishop of Caesarea in 314 CE, thought that the Therapeutae, whom he assumed to be a branch of the Essenes, were Christian ascetics (Ecclesiastical History 2.16). The idea that they were the first monks persisted into the Middle Ages. At the time of the Reformation, the Essenes/Therapeutae served as a proxy for debates about monasticism. Protestants argued that the Essenes were a Jewish group, and so the rise of monasticism represented a lapse back into Jewish ways. Catholics countered that the Therapeutae showed the existence of monasticism in the earliest stages of the Christian movement, and could cite the testimony of the Church Fathers in support. In the heat of the debate, even Jesus, the apostles, and John the Baptist were alleged to be Essenes. The Christian character of the Therapeutae was firmly debunked by the great classical grammarian Joseph Justus Scaliger (1540–1609), although it was still maintained in Catholic and Anglican circles for some time later.
The period of the Enlightenment brought a new set of concerns to the fore. Jesus was now seen as a human being, whose thought was shaped by his environment. He was seen to share with the Essenes an ideal of brotherhood and distrust of riches, with little reliance on the temple. He was even thought to have spent his formative years in the Essene order. Essenism was now thought of as an environment in which a pacifistic, non-materialist spirituality might be nurtured. The philosopher Voltaire admired the Essenes, and the leading biblical scholar, J. D. Michaelis, saw affinities to Essenism in the Gospel of Luke. The Essenes were even proposed as progenitors of the Freemasons, as progressive thinkers, interested in universal morality. Needless to say, there was also significant opposition to such ideas. The deist Robert Taylor (1784–1844), who declared that “in every rational sense that can be attached to the word, they [Essenes] were the authors and real founders of Christianity,”4 was imprisoned for blasphemy. (Admittedly, the charge was not based only on his views of the Essenes.)
The nineteenth century saw the rise of historical methods in the manner of von Ranke, and the attempt to free the study of history from dogmatic concerns. Scholars were increasingly aware of the differences between Jesus and the Essenes. The association of Jesus with the Essenes persisted, however, in popular Christian literature.
Jewish scholars, however, were not willing to abandon the Essenes to Christianity. Already in the sixteenth century, the Jewish scholar Azariah de Rossi (1513/4–1577/8) was bothered by the lack of mention of the Essenes in the rabbinic corpus, and he suggested that they were in fact identical with the Boethusians, a group closely related to the Sadducees. Their Jewish character was thereby assured. Scholars of the Wissenschaft des Judentums (“scientific study of Judaism”) movement in the nineteenth century, such as Zecharias Frankel, made a more influential suggestion. The Essenes should be associated with the Hasidim, or pious ones, who are mentioned in the books of Maccabees, but also in the rabbinic writings. These scholars were distrustful of the Greek and Latin accounts of the Essenes, and sought to integrate them into rabbinic tradition. Both the Pharisees and the Essenes were thought to have developed from the Hasidim. The dominant Jewish view of the Essenes in the mid-second century BCE was summed up well by Isaak Marcus Jost: “The Essenes are exactly the same that the other Rabbis wished to be who endeavoured to practise the Levitical law of purity, as leading to higher consecration. They have neither another creed nor another law, but simply institutions peculiar to this brotherhood … Their views and tenets are therefore also to be found in the utterances of the learned and the Rabbis who did not enter their order, so that they did not look upon the Essenes as opponents or apostates, but, on the contrary, as holding the same opinions with increased claims and some fewer enjoyments, whom many out of their own midst joined, and who were called Chassidim or Zenuim.”5 The view that Essenism was related to Pharisaism, insofar as both were concerned with strict purity, also won favor among Christian scholars. This strand of scholarship reached its apex in the work of Emil Schuerer, the great German historian of Judaism at the end of the nineteenth century, who declared that Essenism was “Pharisaism in the superlative.”6 Specifically Pharisaic were the strict observance of the law, and the anxiety about purity. The latter explains why the Essenes separated themselves from the rest of Judaism and formed their own organization. The rejection of sacrifice amplified the breach with their contemporaries. Schuerer allowed that some foreign influences may also have been at work, but the question was complicated by doubts about the trustworthiness of Josephus, who may have imposed a Greek coloring on his account.
In the mid-nineteenth century, a new way was found to relate the Essenes to their Jewish context. The publication of the Ethiopic book of Enoch in 1821 had opened up a strand of Palestinian Judaism different from the Rabbis, and led to the recognition of apocalyptic literature as a genre. In 1853, Adolf Jellinek, an Austrian Jewish scholar, proposed that the Book of Enoch was a remnant of Essene literature. Adolf Hilgenfeld, a professor of New Testament and Christian history at Jena, related the asceticism of the Essenes more broadly to apocalyptic visionary practice. Fasting is a prelude to visionary experience in Daniel and Enoch, and in other apocalyptic writings. He even suggested that the name Essene was derived from the Aramaic word for “seers” (chozin). Hilgenfeld returned to the subject repeatedly in the course of a long career. He speculated about Persian, and even Buddhist, influence, although he eventually abandoned the latter idea. The idea that Essenism was related to the apocalyptic strand of Judaism, however, was endorsed by several scholars, who did not necessarily make it the primary factor in their account of the Essenes.
One of the scholars who affirmed continuity with the apocalyptic strand of Judaism was Ernest Renan (1823–92), one of the leading French intellectuals of the nineteenth century. In his Life of Jesus, Renan wrote: “Essenism, which seems to have been directly related to the apocalyptic school … offered as it were a first rough sketch of the great discipline soon to be instituted for the education of mankind,” by which he meant Christianity. Renan also wrote that most of the distinctive features of Essenism could be explained as exaggerations of orthodox Judaism. The rejection of sacrifices echoed the ancient prophets. The prudishness of the sect and its exaggerated ablutions were in the spirit of ancient Judaism, and of the Pharisees, but may also reflect some Persian influence. Here Renan thought of John the Baptist. Since the Pharisaic observance of the law rendered life impossible, the Essenes, like John the Baptist, withdrew to the wilderness. Renan accepted Schuerer’s view that the Essenes were the superlative form of Pharisaism. His most famous pronouncement, however, was that “Christianity was an Essenism that survived.” He doubted that there was direct contact between the early Christians and the Essenes, but he thought the similarities were profound, noting the common meal, community of goods, etc. Essenism represented an attempt to draw the moral consequences of Judaism and the preaching of the prophets. Pharisaism, according to Renan, failed because it was “reduced to the observance of the law.” Essenism could not last, because of its extreme form of life, but it anticipated the Christian ideal of the meek who will inherit the earth. Renan’s views would be recalled and invoked after the discovery of the Scrolls, in the course of the first great controversy about their relation to Christianity.
By the early twentieth century, the idea that the Essenes were either related or analogous to the Pharisees was well established. Often, both parties were thought to be descended from the Hasidim of the Maccabean period. Scholars who subscribed to this view included Jews and Christians, Catholics and Protestants. This supposed genealogy of the Essenes would loom large in reconstructions of the history of the sect that produced the Dead Sea Scrolls. Some of these scholars also attributed non-canonical books such as 1 Enoch and the Assumption of Moses to the Essenes.
There was, however, a quite different way of understanding the Essenes, that was prompted by Josephus’ own mention of the Pythagoreans. Pythagoras was a Greek philosopher from the sixth century BCE, who had founded a sect or society that bore his name. He was associated with the doctrine of the transmigration of souls, and was thought to have influenced Plato. He was said to have taught that friends should have all things in common, and his followers were said to have shared their possessions. They formed an exclusive society, greatly concerned with purity, and required an elaborate system of initiation over several years. There was also provision for expulsion from the community. Most of the sources about the Pythagorean way of life, however, date from the third century CE, whereas the community founded by Pythagoras had died out no later than the fourth century BCE. How far the accounts reflected the practice of actual Pythagorean communities is uncertain, but there was at least a literary tradition about the Pythagoreans in the Hellenistic period.
The idea that the Essenes were Jewish Pythagoreans was suggested already in the seventeenth century, and occasionally revived. Major figures who subscribed to the Pythagorean derivation of the Essenes in the nineteenth century included the great Tübingen New Testament scholar, F. C. Baur, in an essay on Apollonius of Tyana and the New Testament in 1832, and the historian of Greek philosophy, Eduard Zeller (1814–1908). Basic to both movements was the anthropological dualism of body and soul. Matter was inherently unclean. Animal sacrifice was unacceptable because of the defilement it entailed. The Pythagoreans were also said to have practiced community of property. Zeller remained to be persuaded that a movement characterized by sun worship, celibacy, and asceticism could be derived from traditional Judaism. The high point of speculation on Pythagorean influence came in the work of a Jewish scholar, Isidore Lévy. Writing in 1927, Lévy argued for wide-ranging Pythagorean influence on ancient Judaism, but found in the Essenes his prime example of a Jewish group modeled on the Neo-Pythagorean way of life, with its emphasis on asceticism and communal living.7 Other syncretistic explanations of the Essenes were occasionally suggested, notably a derivation from Zoroastrianism, which was energetically defended by the English New Testament scholar, J. B. Lightfoot.8
A distinctive position was staked out by the great scholar of Hellenistic Judaism Moritz Friedländer (1844–1919).9 Friedländer argued that to regard Essenism as intensified Pharisaism was to rob it of its inner core. In his view, the Essenes were Greek-speaking Jews, nourished by the kind of philosophical Hellenistic Judaism typified by Philo and the Therapeutae; hence their anthropological dualism of body and soul, and their repudiation of sacrifices. In short, much of what seemed “Pythagorean” to other interpreters was for Friedländer the Greek-speaking Judaism of Alexandria.
It is now obvious that dogmatic interests were at stake in the discussion of the Essenes in the era of the Reformation, and again in the Enlightenment. In the earlier period, the idea that the Essenes were Christian was a way of affirming the antiquity, and therefore the authenticity, of Christianity. Later, in the more humanistic context of the Enlightenment, the suggestion that the Essenes anticipated key aspects of early Christianity was taken in some quarters to undermine the claim of supernatural revelation, and to show that Christianity was human, all too human. Both of these tendencies to impose ideological concerns on the discussion of the Essenes would persist in debates about the Dead Sea Scrolls in the second half of the twentieth century.
It may also be argued that the attempt to reclaim the Essenes for Judaism by assimilating them to the Pharisees sprang from dogmatic concerns. This was true of the systematic distrust of Philo and Josephus, and the attempt to identify references to the Essenes in the rabbinic corpus. In these cases, rabbinic Judaism was taken as authentic Judaism, and the Essenes had to be redeemed by their conformity to rabbinic interests. Conversely, one might suspect that dogmatic or ideological concerns were also at work where scholars sought to emphasize the alien character of the Essenes in the context of ancient Judaism, especially where this was accompanied by a positive evaluation of the sect. In such cases, rabbinic Judaism was viewed as repugnant or deficient, and the Essenes had to be redeemed by showing that they derived from a quite different ideology.
This is not to suggest that all scholarly positions were shaped by dogmatic prejudice. Many scholars simply tried to assimilate the Essenes to the material with which they themselves were most familiar—Greek philosophy in the case of Eduard Zeller, Hellenistic Judaism in the case of Moritz Friedländer, the apocalyptic literature for Hilgenfeld, or the rabbinic tradition for Zecharias Frankel. But ideological considerations indisputably played a significant part in the debate. None of these assessments of the Essenes was entirely without basis. Both Philo and Josephus noted the importance the Essenes attached to the study of scriptures, and also noted their great concern for purity. The latter concern provides a plausible explanation for the separation of the Essenes from the rest of Judaism. Yet the accounts of the Essenes by Philo and Josephus emphasize the dualism of body and spirit associated with the Pythagoreans, and the common life of the Essenes also brings to mind the ancient accounts of Pythagorean communities. The common life of the Essenes also inevitably brings to mind the early Christians as portrayed in the Book of Acts.
When the Damascus Document was published in the early twentieth century, it was attributed to “an unknown Jewish sect” in the words of Louis Ginzberg.10 To be sure, various known Jewish sects were proposed. The first editor, Solomon Schechter, dubbed it a “Zadokite” work and supposed that it derived from a group of Sadducean origin. Various scholars attributed it to Dositheans or Samaritans, or even to the much later Karaites. But no one attributed it to the Essenes. When the Scrolls were discovered, however, the attribution to the Essenes was almost instantaneous, even though these texts were quickly seen to be related to the document from the Geniza.
The attribution of the Scrolls to the Essenes was the result of two considerations, neither of which had applied to the Damascus Document. First was the location of discovery, in an area where Pliny had located an Essene community. Second was the similarity between the description of the Essenes by Josephus and that found in the Community Rule or Manual of Discipline. The most striking similarities concerned the process of admission and the common life, but they extended even to minor details. Some of these, to be sure, were commonplaces, that one might expect to find in any association: respect for elders, a prohibition of spitting in the assembly, provision for expulsion. Even the common meal was a standard feature of the life of many associations in antiquity. But other features were more distinctive. Chief among these was the holding of property in common. Such a practice was known from Greek descriptions of utopian groups, including the Pythagoreans, but was not attested in any Hebrew source until the discovery of the Community Rule. The process of admission outlined in the Rule also provided the closest known parallel to that of the Essenes. Each required an initial probationary period (specified as one year in the case of the Essenes), followed by two more years, and the stages were marked off in relation to degrees of purity. There are minor discrepancies between the Greek and Hebrew accounts, but most interpreters have been more impressed by the similarities.
The Essenes, like the sectarians of the Scrolls, had a problematic relationship to the Jerusalem temple. Philo says that “they have shown themselves especially devout in the service of God, not by offering sacrifices of animals, but by resolving to sanctify their minds” (Quod Omnis 75). Josephus says that they send offerings to the temple, but follow different rituals of purification and are barred from entering the common enclosure. He says that they offered sacrifices separately, on their own. The evidence of the Scrolls is ambiguous. The Damascus Document forbids members to enter the temple “to kindle his altar in vain” (CD 6:11) but leaves open the question whether they offered sacrifices on their own. The Community Rule seems to regard the community as a replacement for the temple cult. While neither position is entirely clear, both the Scrolls and the Greek sources (Philo and Josephus) attest to a strained relationship with the temple.
Another important issue concerns the question of celibacy. The Greek and Latin accounts emphasize the celibacy of the Essenes, even though Josephus acknowledged that one branch of the sect permitted marriage. The Damascus Document clearly allows for married life, but seems to imply that this was not the case for all members of the sect. Damascus Document 7:4–7 contrasts those who walk in perfect holiness, who are promised that they will live for a thousand generations, with those who marry and have children. The Community Rule (1QS) does not mention women or children at all, despite its great concern with issues of purity, and has consequently been understood as a rule for a celibate community. It does not, however, make any explicit demand for celibacy.
Eventually, the interpretation of the site of Qumran would loom large in debates about the identification of the sect as Essene. It is useful to remember, then, that this identification was well established before the site was excavated at all. Roland de Vaux, who excavated Qumran, admitted from the outset that the role of archaeology was secondary, and that the Essene hypothesis could not be established by archeology alone: “There is nothing in the evidence to contradict such an hypothesis, but this is the only assured conclusion that we can arrive at on the basis of this evidence, and the only one which we can justifiably demand of it. The solution to the question is to be sought from the study of the texts, and not from that of the archaeological remains.”11 Even if the site of Qumran should prove to be, say, a military establishment rather than the home of a religious community, the identification of the Community Rule as an Essene document could still stand. To be sure, one major reason for thinking of the Essenes at all would be removed if the location of the Scrolls turned out to be coincidental, and they were not related to the site. But nonetheless, the identification does not stand or fall on the archeological evidence. We shall turn to that evidence in the next chapter, but for the present we will focus on the literary evidence for the identification with the Essenes.
The Essene identification won wide acceptance almost immediately. Prominent scholars who endorsed it included Millar Burrows, Yigael Yadin, Geza Vermes, J. T. Milik, Frank Moore Cross, and the excavator of the site of Qumran, Roland de Vaux. There were always some dissenters. As in the case of the Damascus Document, nearly every known Jewish sect was proposed at some time by someone or other—Pharisees, Sadducees, Hasidim, Zealots, Ebionites, Karaites, and even Christians. Chaim Rabin, a German-born Jewish émigré who taught at Oxford before moving to the Hebrew University, argued that the Qumran sect was “a diehard Pharisee group trying to uphold ‘genuine’ Pharisaism (as they understood it) against the more flexible ideology introduced by the Rabbis in authority.”12 G. R. Driver, the eminence grise of semitic studies at Oxford, and Cecil Roth, an Oxford-trained Jewish historian, thought they were the Zealots in the war against Rome, because of the militant ideology of the War Scroll.13 The Sadducees were proposed early on, and again in the 1980s, when some of the halachic positions in a text known as 4QMMT (“Some of the works of the Torah”) were found to agree with the Sadducees against the Pharisees. The idea that Scrolls were the documents of early Christianity was put forward by maverick scholars, Barbara Thiering14 and Robert Eisenman.15 While some of these suggestions are more fantastic than others, none of them has won the support of scholars. The durability of the Essene identification is due in no small part to the lack of a plausible alternative.
The weightier objections to the Essene hypothesis have not been tied to alternative proposals, but are content to assign the Scrolls to “an unknown Jewish sect.” In an article published in 1952, Saul Lieberman noted similarities between the Community Rule from Qumran and the regulations of the Haverim in rabbinic literature.16 These were early Pharisees who formed associations for table fellowship with strict purity requirements. Like the Qumran sect, they had a process of gradual admission over a period of time. Lieberman warned that many sectarian groups may have had similar regulations, and asserted that Palestine “swarmed” with sects around the turn of the era. Frank Moore Cross allowed that this was the strongest argument raised against the Essene hypothesis, but he countered that this argument had plausibility only when a few manuscripts of uncertain date were known. By the mid-1950s it was apparent that the Qumran sect was not one of the small ephemeral groups of the first century CE. On the contrary, it lasted for some two hundred years and had amassed a huge library. It was not confined to the site of Qumran. We should expect, then, that it could be identified with one of the major sects mentioned by Josephus. In the early days of research on the Scrolls, there was a tendency to argue that the sect could be identified as Essene by a process of elimination: neither the Pharisees, the Sadducees, nor the Zealots separated themselves from the rest of Judaism to this degree. Few scholars now believe that Josephus’ account of the Jewish sects can be taken as exhaustive. Nonetheless, the actual evidence for sects in Judea around the turn of the era is quite limited, and the Scrolls fit the Essenes better than any of the others. In a frequently quoted passage Cross concluded:
The task, therefore, is to identify a major sect in Judaism. To suppose that a major group in Judaism in this period went unnoticed in our sources is simply incredible. The scholar who would “exercise caution” in identifying the sect of Qumran with the Essenes places himself in an astonishing position: he must suggest seriously that two major parties formed communistic religious communities in the same district of the desert of the Dead Sea and lived together in effect for two centuries, holding similar bizarre views, performing similar or rather identical lustrations, ritual meals and ceremonies. He must suppose that one, carefully described by classical authors, disappeared without leaving building remains or even potsherds behind; the other, systematically ignored by the classical sources, left extensive ruins, and indeed a great library. I prefer to be reckless and flatly identify the men of Qumran with their perennial houseguests, the Essenes.17
Cross’s argument rested in part on the assumption that the Scrolls were the library of a community that lived at the site, but even if one were to restrict the argument to the literary evidence, it retains considerable force.
It is not, however, absolutely conclusive. Some discrepancies remain troubling. Minor differences in the accounts of the admission process can be accounted for easily enough, since practice may have varied over time, although it may be argued that sectarian disputes often turn on minute differences. It is surprising, however, that the requirement of celibacy is never explicit. Moreover, the emphasis on the celibacy of the Essenes had a distorting effect on the study of the Scrolls. Despite the testimony of Josephus that there was an order of Essenes who married, the great emphasis of the Greek and Latin sources has been on the celibacy of the sect. According to Pliny, the Essenes lived “without any woman.” But even if a branch of the sect refrained from marriage, it is difficult to imagine that they lived entirely without interaction with women. At the very least they had mothers, probably sisters and other female relatives, and they could hardly avoid occasional contact with the opposite sex. Because of the assumption of celibacy, however, virtually no attention was paid to what the Scrolls have to say about women until the 1990s. Once the subject was raised, however, the Scrolls were found to have quite a lot to say about them. The Damascus Document allows for marriage. A wisdom text, which may not be strictly sectarian, speaks of mothers as an honorific category, parallel to fathers. In fact, the great emphasis of the Greek and Latin authors on celibacy is probably a distortion. Celibacy attracted attention precisely because it was exceptional. The fact that women play a part in the Scrolls is not in itself an argument against the Essene hypothesis, but it shows that any hypothesis is likely to function like blinders, obscuring some aspects of the material even as it illuminates others.
A second problematic issue concerns the apocalyptic beliefs of the sect. The Greek and Latin accounts of the Essenes give no hint of the apocalyptic and messianic ideas found in the Scrolls, even, indeed especially, those that are clearly sectarian. It was the presence of this material, as well as the fact that Qumran was evidently destroyed by the Romans during the Jewish revolt, that prompted scholars like Roth and Driver to attribute the Scrolls to the Zealots, and it has also contributed to Eisenman’s eccentric view of early Christianity as a hate-filled revolutionary movement at odds with the account in the Gospels. Other scholars are troubled by the discrepancy between the eschatological militancy of some of the Scrolls and the depiction of the Essenes as a peace-loving community by Philo and Josephus.
Eschatological militancy is not necessarily incompatible with apparent pacifism in the present. According to the Community Rule (col. 10:16–21), the sectarian recognizes that “to God belongs the judgment,” and consequently he should not be involved in any dispute with “the men of the pit” (the adversaries of the sect) until the day of wrath. To an outside observer, this might look like pacifism, but as often with apocalyptic groups, violence is only deferred to the proper time. It is not disavowed.
Nonetheless, scholars who identify the sect known from the Scrolls with the Essenes must contend that the Greek and Latin accounts are deficient. In fact, many scholars had doubted the reliability of these accounts long before the Scrolls were discovered. Jewish scholars, especially, beginning with Frankel in the nineteenth century, suspected that Philo and Josephus had exaggerated resemblances to movements, such as the Pythagoreans, known to Greek and Roman readers, and had omitted features that these readers might have found offensive. These suspicions were not without foundation. Josephus’ comparison of the Essenes to the Dacians was not made for the benefit of Jewish readers. Moreover, Josephus scarcely acknowledges that any Jews held messianic or apocalyptic beliefs, so we should not be surprised that he does not report them in the case of the Essenes. There can be little doubt that he drew on Greek models in shaping his account. This does not necessarily discredit his information, but it calls for some caution in using it.
Nearly all scholars have agreed that the Essenes had deep roots in Jewish tradition, especially in their concern for purity and for the law of Moses, but that the preserved accounts also attribute to them distinctive features that have more in common with non-Jewish movements, such as Pythagoreanism. Scholarly disputes have centered on the relative weight to be placed on each of these aspects, and also on the degree to which the “Hellenizing” accounts of Philo and Josephus should be trusted. These debates could only be settled by the discovery of authentic Essene sources, authored by the sectarians themselves. Many scholars believe that precisely such documents were discovered in the Dead Sea Scrolls.
There is an awkward appearance of circularity in an argument that identifies the sect as Essene on the basis of the Greek and Latin accounts, and then proceeds to correct those accounts on the basis of the new evidence. Consequently, it is not surprising that doubts about the identification persist. Yet the similarities between the Qumran sect and the Essenes are striking, and no alternative proposal has been found plausible. In the writer’s view, the Essene identification remains probable, but this is an issue on which reasonable people can disagree.
The ambiguity of the evidence, however, scarcely accounts for the passion with which the Essene hypothesis has been debated. At least in some cases (e.g., Norman Golb), scholars seem to feel that attribution to the Essenes impugns the authenticity of the Jewish character of the Scrolls, and diminishes their importance. (It should be noted, however, that there have always been staunch Jewish supporters of the hypothesis, beginning with Sukenik and Yadin.) Conversely, for others the Essene hypothesis affirms the diversity of Second Temple Judaism and shows that a kind of Judaism that has often been considered marginal, and suspiciously akin to Christianity, was in fact a major presence in Judea around the turn of the era. These considerations are also at issue in the debates about the significance of the Scrolls for Judaism and Christianity, which we shall consider in later chapters.
The main ancient sources on the Essenes are helpfully presented, with translations, by Geza Vermes and Martin D. Goodman, The Essenes according to the Classical Sources (Sheffield: Sheffield Academic Press, 1989). In addition to Philo, Josephus, and Pliny, they include passages from Dio of Prusa, Hegesippus, and Hippolytus. For a full discussion of the sources on the Essenes, see Joan E. Taylor, “The Classical Sources on the Essenes and the Scrolls,” in Timothy H. Lim and John J. Collins, eds., The Oxford Handbook of the Dead Sea Scrolls (Oxford: Oxford University Press, 2010), 173–99.
For scholarship on the Essenes before the discovery of the Scrolls, see Siegfried Wagner, Die Essener in der Wissenschaftliche Diskussion vom Ausgang des 18. bis zum Beginn des 20. Jahrhunderts. Eine Wissenschaftsgeschichtliche Studie (BZAW 79; Berlin: Töpelmann, 1960). A discussion of scholarship up to the middle of the nineteenth century can be found in Christian D. Ginsburg, The Essenes. Their History and Doctrines (London: Routledge & Kegan Paul, 1955; originally published in 1864 by Lund Humphries and Co.).
On the Essenes and the Pythagoreans, see Justin Taylor, Pythagoreans and Essenes. Structural Parallels (Paris/Louvain: Peeters, 2004).
The parallels between Josephus’s account of the Essenes and the Dead Sea Scrolls are set out in detail by Todd S. Beall, Josephus’ Description of the Essenes Illustrated by the Dead Sea Scrolls (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 1988).
A forceful argument against the Essene hypothesis is made by Steve Mason, “Essenes and Lurking Spartans in Josephus’ Judean War: From Story to History,” in Zuleika Rodgers, ed., Making History: Josephus and Historical Method (Leiden: Brill, 2007), 219–61.
For the author’s assessment of the arguments, see Collins, Beyond the Qumran Community, 122–65.
On women in the Scrolls, and the neglect of the topic in modern scholarship, see Eileen Schuller, “Women in the Dead Sea Scrolls,” in P. W. Flint and J. C. VanderKam, eds., The Dead Sea Scrolls After Fifty Years: A Comprehensive Assessment (Leiden: Brill, 1999), 2:117–44, and Sidnie White Crawford, “Not According to Rule: Women, the Dead Sea Scrolls and Qumran,” in S. Paul, R. A. Kraft, L. Schiffman, and W. Fields, eds., Emanuel: Studies in Hebrew Bible, Septuagint, and the Dead Sea Scrolls in Honor of Emanuel Tov (Leiden: Brill, 2003), 111–50.