The Essenes were a devoutly religious group (similar to an order of monks) who emphasized spiritual purification and frequent praying. They were a mystic Jewish sect during the Second Temple period that flourished from the 2nd century B.C.E. to the 1st century C.E. The Jewish historian Josephus records that Essenes existed in large numbers; thousands lived throughout Roman Judaea.
Founded: 2nd-century B.C.E.
Headquarters: Jerusalem
The Essenes were a separatist group, some of whom formed an ascetic monastic community and retreated to the wilderness of Judea. They shared material possessions and occupied themselves with disciplined study, worship, and work. They practiced ritual immersion and ate their meals communally. One branch did not marry.
What did the Essenes believe?
The Essenes looked forward to the coming of the Messiah. They were preoccupied with a heavenly Messiah, who would bring a heavenly kingdom. The Essenes hoped the Messiah would find people prepared to re-establish David's true priesthood and kingship and battle the forces of spiritual darkness. Note: The Essenes were a Jewish sect not mentioned in the New Testament! Their mission was to prepare the Messiah's way and bring spiritual light to the world.
Are there Essenes today?
There are, indeed, people today who consider themselves modern-day Essenes, usually led by a rabbi. There is even a Modern Essene Movement in Southern California. Their last gathering was a vegetarian potluck supper last November, according to their website.
When did the Essenes live in Qumran?
Some modern scholars and archaeologists have argued that Essenes inhabited the settlement at Qumran, a plateau in the Judean Desert along the Dead Sea, citing Pliny, the Elder, in support and confident that the Dead Sea Scrolls are the product of the Essenes. With few exceptions, they shunned Temple worship and were content to live austere lives of manual labor in seclusion. The sabbath was reserved for day-long prayer and meditation on the Torah (first five books of the Bible). Oaths were frowned upon, but they could not be rescinded once taken. After a year's probation, proselytes received their Essenian emblems but could not participate in common meals for two more years.
The Qumran Community and the Dead Sea scrolls
Excavations at Qumran in the 1950s were led by the French archaeologist Roland de Vaux, whose workers revealed a complex of structures occupying an area about 260 by 330 feet (80 by 100 m). In the eastern part of the ruins stood the principal building, rectangular and large (more than 100 feet on a side), with a massive stone and brick tower in its northwestern corner. East of this tower was a large room with five fireplaces, possibly a kitchen. South of the tower was discovered long benches in one room, and evidence of an upper-story scriptorium - a room set apart for writing, especially one in a monastery where manuscripts were copied - in another—a low bench, three mud-brick tables, and two inkwells were found there. An extensive aqueduct system, fed by the Wadi Qumran, crossed the site from the entrance in the northwest corner to the southern sections and filled as many as eight internal reservoirs (cisterns), as well as two baths. An aqueduct and a reservoir separated the scriptorium from a large assembly hall that may also have served as a cafeteria. Abutting the hall was a pantry stocked with hundreds of pottery jars. Archaeologists further identified a potter’s workshop, two kilns, an oven, a flour mill, and a stable, but they observed that only a few other rooms might have been living quarters. A cemetery near Qumran holds the remains of about 1,100 male adults; two lesser gravesites were reserved for some 100 women and children.
The Essenes separated from the rest of the Jewish community in the 2nd century B.C., when Jonathan Maccabeus and, later, Simon Maccabeus usurped the office of the high priest, which conferred secular as well as religious authority. Simon felt compelled to persecute the Essenes, who opposed the usurpation. Hence, they fled into the wilderness with their leader, the Teacher of Righteousness. Rabbi Harvey Falk identifies Hillel the Elder as the Teacher against a "wicked" Shammai, a significant conflict mentioned in the Talmud. Most scholars date the Damascus Document and many of the Dead Sea scrolls to the decades around 100 BCE. Robert Eisenman has proposed that the Historical Jesus was the Nazarene James, the Teacher of Righteousness against a "Wicked Priest" (Ananus ben Ananus), and a "Spouter of Lies," which Eisenman identifies as Paul of Tarsus. This theory is rejected by mainstream scholarship. Stephen Goranson suggests that Judah the Essene, mentioned by Josephus, is the Teacher. Richard A. Freund writes, "The difference of opinion over the positioning of the Teacher of Righteousness leads me to conclude that perhaps all of these researchers are correct. A Teacher of Righteousness did lead the group in the second century B.C.E. when it was established. Another Teacher of Righteousness led the sect in the first century B.C.E. Finally, one more Teacher emerged in the first century C.E."
Some scholars hold that Essenes established a monastic community at Qumran in the mid-2nd century B.C., probably during the reign of Simon (143/142–135/134 BC) but no later than the time of John Hyrcanus (135/134–104 BC).
Living apart, like other Essenian communities in Judaea, the members of the Qumran community turned to apocalyptic visions of the overthrow of the wicked priests of Jerusalem and the ultimate establishment of their community as the true priesthood and faithful Israel. They devoted their time to studying the Scriptures, manual labor, worship, and prayer. Meals were taken in common, as were prophetic celebrations of the messianic banquet. The baptism they practiced symbolized repentance and entry into the “Elect of God.”
During the reign (37–4 B.C.) of Herod the Great, an earthquake (31 B.C.) and fire caused the temporary abandonment of Qumran. However, the community resumed its life there until the center was destroyed (A.D. 68) by Roman legions under Vespasian. Until about A.D. 73, the site was garrisoned by Roman soldiers; during the Second Jewish Revolt (132–135), rebels under Bar Kokhba were based there.
This sect, referred to in the scrolls as adat hayahad (the "Council of the Community"), apparently formed due to profound controversies on various Temple matters that broke out in Jerusalem, such as the calendar, laws of ritual purity, and tithes. These disputes seem to have prompted the founder of the sect, known in the scrolls as the "Teacher of Righteousness," to abandon what he and his followers regarded as the "defiled" Temple, withdraw from the Jewish community at large, and, at a particular stage, establish an isolated settlement near the Dead Sea.
The members of the sect were extremely reclusive and entertained messianic expectations. They hated their foes with a passion. Their ultimate aim was to return to Jerusalem and restore divine worship in the future, an entirely pure Temple, which they believed would be built by God Himself when Redemption came. These hopes were finally dashed in 68 C.E. when the Roman army destroyed the settlement on its way to Jerusalem to suppress the Jewish Revolt.
Most scholars have argued that the scrolls originally formed part of a sectarian (religious) library located in the community center at Qumran. They were hidden in the caves by the sectarians themselves, who left their home in the face of an advancing Roman army, hoping that they would retrieve the sacred documents from their hiding places shortly. However, an alternative theory has been raised. All the scrolls were placed in the caves by Jewish rebels fleeing from Jerusalem, thus redefining or even negating the former hypothesis regarding the Qumran-Essene origin of the scrolls.
The Dead Sea, or Qumran, community (made famous by discovering the Dead Sea Scrolls) adopted the calendrical system of the noncanonical books of Jubilees and Enoch, which was essentially a solar calendar. Elements of the same calendar reappear among the Mishawites, a sect in the Dead Sea (or Qumran) community Elements of this same calendar reappear among the Mishawites, a sect founded in the 9th century.
The New Testament does not mention them. The accounts given by Josephus, Philo of Alexandria, and Pliny, the Elder, sometimes differ in significant details, perhaps indicating a diversity that existed among the Essenes themselves.
The Essenes separated from the rest of the Jewish community in the 2nd century B.C., when high priests conferred secular and religious authority. Simon felt compelled to persecute Jonathan Maccabeus and, later, Simon Maccabeus usurped the office of the Essenes, who opposed the usurpation. Hence, they fled into the wilderness with their leader, the Teacher of Righteousness.
Until very recently, the association of the words “women,” “Dead Sea Scrolls,” and “Qumran” in the same title would have seemed like an oxymoron. From the beginning of Dead Sea Scrolls research, the people who lived at Qumran and stored the manuscripts in the eleven surrounding caves were identified with the ancient Jewish sect of the Essenes. This identification was based on the descriptions of the Essenes provided by the ancient writers Josephus, Philo, and Pliny, the Elder. Philo and Pliny are unequivocal in their description of the Essenes as an all-male, celibate group. Josephus also focuses his description of the Essenes on those members who shunned marriage and embraced chastity; therefore, it was almost uniformly assumed that the Qumran site housed an all-male, celibate community.
This situation began to change in the early 1990s through such scholars as H. Stegemann, L. Schiffman, E. Qimron, and especially E. Schuller. The change came about not so much because new evidence came to light. However, the pool of evidence became deeper and wider as more and more manuscripts were published. However, these scholars broadened their focus to take in the references to women and try to understand these references in the broader context of Dead Sea Scrolls scholarship. In this paper, I will attempt a somewhat systematic look at what information the Qumran Scrolls can give us about women. This attempt is fraught with several procedural difficulties.
The Qumran documents are the library or collection of the Jewish Essenes in the late Second Temple period. Qumran was a study center for the Essenes, inhabited mainly by males pursuing a rigorous standard of purity and adhering to the Rule of the Community. However, the majority of the Essenes lived throughout Judaea, following the regulations of the Damascus Document. This thesis allows us to place women back into the setting of Qumran studies and resolves the question of so-called Essene “celibacy.”
The Essenes included women, and its members married, but a subgroup within the Essenes avoided marriage for purity reasons.
About 150 years before the birth of Jesus the Messiah, some of God’s people — the Essenes — established a community in the Judea Wilderness near the northern end of the Dead Sea. We know it as Qumran, where the Dead Sea Scrolls were found. Not all scholars agree that Essenes lived at Qumran, wrote the Dead Sea Scrolls, or were the people the scrolls portray, so study and debate about the nature of the community continue. However, given the lack of other significant theories about Qumran, the scrolls, and the Essenes, we will take the position of mainstream Bible scholars that the Qumran ruins are those of the Dead Sea Scroll community that was part of a religious movement that included the Essenes.
In any case, our primary focus is not on the relationship between the people who lived in this community and the Dead Sea Scrolls. We will focus on why this group of God’s people went into the desert to live as they did. We want to know the role they played in God’s great story of redemption.
Part of the answer is revealed in the Hebrew Bible, where the proph¬ets proclaimed God’s command for his people to “prepare the way” for His coming. Malachi wrote that God would come after He sent His messenger to prepare His way (Malachi 3:1). The words of Isaiah add further insight:
In the desert prepare the way for the Lord; make straight in the wilderness a highway for our God. — Isaiah 40:3
The Essenes were passionately committed to learning and obeying every word that came from the mouth of God. They knew that God wanted to dwell among them and believed that He would come if they prepared the way. So they eagerly anticipated the coming of the Messiah and went into the des¬ert to “prepare the way” for Him.
The Essenes spent long hours in the brutal desert heat writing on parchment. Their writings included books from the Hebrew Bible, commentaries on these books, and the regulations of the Essene community. However, anyone who has hiked the rugged mountains of the Judea Wil¬derness will likely ask, “Why did the way for God have to be pre¬pared in the desert, especially this one?” Throughout history, this wilderness has remained virtually uninhabited. Its rough, steep ter-rain and lack of water make it unsuitable for good travel routes. Its summer heat frequently exceeds 120 degrees Fahrenheit, hot winds often dry out any remaining moisture, and chilling temperatures set in soon after sunset.
Wouldn’t it have been easier for God’s way to be prepared in the fer¬tile countryside near the Sea of Galilee or the well¬-watered hillsides near Jerusalem? Why did God choose the desert as the place for His people to prepare for His glory to be revealed? Why did He choose a place where simply surviving is so hard?
Again, part of the answer can be found in the Hebrew Bible. In the exodus story, God worked through His prophet Moses to miracu¬lously bring the Hebrews out of slavery in Egypt, deliver them from Pharaoh’s army at the Red Sea, and lead them into the “vast and dreadful desert” (Deuteronomy 8:15), where He met with them and lived among them for forty years. In the desert, they learned to depend on God and live by His every word. Isolated from the influ¬ence of Egyptian and Canaanite cultures, they became a unified people whom God molded and shaped to be a kingdom of priests who would display His character to the world.
In a sense, the desert is the perfect place for God’s people (including us today) to learn to be His people. In the desert, the diversions of a comfortable lifestyle fade into silence, and God’s powerful whisper can be heard. In the desert, we can survive — and even thrive — but only by God’s faithful provision. In the desert, we learn that it is better to be in the arms of God during tough circum¬stances than to rest in paradise and forget about Him. In the desert, the influence of gods of our own making lose their power, and we are drawn into an intimate relationship with the one true God.
Closing Remarks
The Essenes left upper-class lifestyles for huts in the harsh wilderness of Judea, a measure of their extreme devotion to the Bible. The Essene members were male; however, there is evidence that they lived in the desert with their families as they prepared the Lord’s way of obedience.
So we should not be surprised to find the Essenes in the desert. There, for weeks, months, years — and sometimes a lifetime — they exchanged lives of relative comfort for desert hardships in order to live out their passionate commitment to obey every word that came from the mouth of God. There, they created a community isolated from the self-¬focused, pleasure-¬seeking Hellenistic society and what had become a corrupt priesthood in Jerusalem. In the desert, they dedicated themselves to preparing the way for God.
Moreover, out of that same barren desert, the Bible character we know as John the Baptist took up the cry. With the fiery passion of Elijah, he called on sinners to repent and prepare the way for the Lord. Furthermore, just as the prophets had said, God came as Jesus the Messiah to con¬tinue the next chapter in God’s great redemptive story.
