In this lecture, we discuss the apocalyptic outlook of the Jewish religious sect that lived at Qumran and deposited the Dead Sea Scrolls in the nearby caves. We will also examine the beliefs and practices of the Essenes and the status of women as members of the sect. In conclusion, we will consider whether Jesus and John the Baptist were Essenes.
The Sons of Light
• The sect at Qumran believed that at the end of days, there would be a 40-year war between the forces of good and evil. This sect called themselves the forces of good-the Sons of Light. Everyone else, including all other Jews, were the Sons of Darkness. One of the peculiarities of this sect is that its members believed in predetermines—that is, everything is preordained by God. In fact, this sect believed that there was no such thing at all as free will.
• The outcome of the 40-year war between the Sons of Light and the Sons of Darkness was preordained by God: a victory for the Sons of Light. This apocalyptic scenario also involved the arrival of a messianic figure. Specifically, the Dead Sea Scrolls refer to two and perhaps three anticipated messianic figures:
☼ A royal messiah descended from David
☼ A priestly messiah descended from Aaron
☼ A prophetic messiah.
• These beliefs differ from those of Jesus and his followers, who anticipated a single messianic figure. What’s more, Jesus’s followers essentially came to believe that Jesus combined, in himself, all three aspects of the anticipated messiah-royal, priestly, and prophetic.
• For the Qumran sect, the current apocalyptic era would usher in the rebuilding of an ideal Temple of Jerusalem, which is described in the Temple Scroll.
The Essenes
• Scholars glean much of our information about the Essenes from Flavius Josephus, the Jewish author and historian who lived in the 1st century A.D.; Philo Judaeus, the Jewish philosopher who lived in Alexandria, Egypt, in the late 1st century B.C. and early 1st century A.D.; and Pliny the Elder, the Roman naturalist and historian who lived in the 1st century A.D.
• These authors describe a Jewish sect called the Essenes, and in fact, these Essenes have beliefs and practices that are remarkably similar to what we read about in the Dead Sea Scrolls. Pliny the Elder includes a point of geographical information that is not found in the other ancient authors. Pliny specifically describes the Essenes as living in the area where Qumran is located; he observes, “To the west of the Dead Sea, the Essenes have put the necessary distance between themselves and the insalubrious shore.”
•Because of the similarities between these authors’ descriptions of the Essenes and what we read in the Dead Sea Scrolls, many scholars identify the sect that lived at Qumran as Essenes. However, the word Essene never occurs in the Dead Sea Scrolls. There are at least two possible reasons for this.
☼ One is language: Our sources have come down to us in Greek and Latin, whereas the overwhelming majority of the Dead Sea Scrolls are in Hebrew and Aramaic.
☼ It is also possible that Essene does not occur in the Dead Sea Scrolls because it is not a term the members of the sect used to describe themselves but was used by outsiders. In particular, the Qumran sect called themselves the Sons of Light, the Sons of Zadok, or yahad, which means “the unity” or “the community.”
The Philosophical Lifestyle
• In studying the descriptions of the Essenes in Philo, Josephus, and Pliny, we note that there is a lack of women in the sect. It is described as a sect of celibate adult men. According to Pliny, the Essenes “are a people unique of its kind and admirable beyond all others in the whole world, without women and renouncing love entirely, without money and having for company only the palm trees.”
• However, if we examine the sectarian Dead Sea Scrolls, we see legislation regulating marriage, divorce, childbirth, and the rearing of children. For this reason, some scholars argue that the sect that lived at Qumran could not be the Essenes, because clearly the Dead Sea Scrolls inform us that women were a part of this sect.
• The reason for this discrepancy may be that the Dead Sea Scrolls represent literature that the sect at Qumran used for its own internal purposes, whereas the outside authors were creating a very different category of literature. Josephus and Philo were both Jewish men who lived and wrote in a Diaspora environment, as part of a small Jewish minority in an overwhelmingly Greco-Roman milieu. Although these writers were influenced by the Greco-Roman way of thought, they were also concerned with highlighting the value and importance of Judaism.
• One of the characteristic features of Greco-Roman philosophy is the ideal philosophical lifestyle-that one should live a life of simplicity. Josephus and Philo may have been trying to present the Essenes as a Jewish group that lived this lifestyle. They took a relatively small and obscure sect-the Essenes-and elevated them as a sort of philosophical ideal.
Cellbacy and the Status of Women
• Celibacy was not mandated in Jewish law. To the contrary, in Genesis, God says, “Be fruitful and multiply.” What’s more, members of the Qumran sect lived their everyday lives as if they were priests serving in the Temple of Jerusalem. And Jewish priests were not celibate; they were married and had families.
• However, priests who served in the Temple of Jerusalem served in rotations; that is, for a couple of weeks at a time, they would leave their families and go to serve in the Temple. During that time, they had no contact with their families, because of purity concerns. Perhaps the sect at Qumran left their families behind at certain times and practiced occasional celibacy, like the priests in the Temple of Jerusalem.
• It is quite probable that women could not join the Qumran sect. The Dead Sea Scrolls contain no regulations describing admission procedures for women. Similarly, our outside sources contain no descriptions of how a woman could join the sect. lt is likely that women were only able to join the sect by being born into it or marrying someone who was a member of the sect. What’s more, it is unlikely that women could attain the same high status as men in the sect, just as women could not serve as priests in the Temple of Jerusalem.
Was Jesus an Essene?
• There are some strong similarities between the Qumran sect—the Essenes—and the movement surrounding Jesus. These similarities include the practices of pooling possessions and holding communal meals. Both movements were apocalyptic and anticipated the imminent arrival of the end of days.
• At the same time, there are also important differences between the Qumran sect and Jesus’s movement. The Qumran sect believed that everything is predetermined by God and there is no free will. Jesus certainly did not preach that there is no human free will.
• The Qumran sect anticipated the arrival of two or, perhaps, three messianic figures, whereas Jesus’s followers believed that Jesus embodied all three of the messianic aspects: priestly, royal, and prophetic.
• Another key difference is that the Qumran sect adopted a priestly lifestyle. Every full member lived his everyday life as if he were a priest officiating in the Jerusalem Temple, which meant that full members observed the highest level of Jewish ritual purity. But according to the Gospel accounts, Jesus regularly came in contact with members of the Jewish population who were impure. ln fact, Jesus’s approach to the observance of Jewish purity laws was the polar opposite from the approach of the Qumran sect.
• Another broad difference between the Qumran sect and Jesus’s movement is their inclusive versus exclusive approaches. The Qumran sect was an exclusive sect; full membership was not open to the majority of the population. Jesus’s approach, however, was inclusive. He welcomed everyone into his movement. These differences strongly suggest that Jesus could not have been an Essene.
John the Baptist
• Although Jesus could not have been an Essene, there is another figure in early Christian tradition who might have been a member of this sect or at least may have had contacts with the Essenes: John the Baptist.
• John the Baptist was from a priestly family that was active in the area close to Qumran-near the Jordan River-at the same time that Qumran was settled by the Jewish religious sect. He lived a simple and ascetic lifestyle. What’s more, he is best known for his practice of baptism-that is, immersion in water, which recalls the ritual purification procedures that are characteristic of Judaism in that time and the Essenes in particular.
• However, there are still some significant differences between John the Baptist in the Gospel accounts and the beliefs and practices of the Essenes. For one, John’s clothing and diet are quite different from what the Essenes wore and ate. According to Matthew 3:4, “Now John wore clothing of camel’s hair, with a leather belt around his waist. And his food was locusts and wild honey.” By contrast, members of the Essenes wore linen clothing, emulating the clothing of the priests in the Temple of Jerusalem. And they had their own particular pure food and pure drink, not a diet of locusts and honey.
• Although the beliefs and practices of the Essene sect might have had some influence on John, his theology is also quite different. In Judaism, it was necessary to continually repeat the process of ritual purification. The process of becoming ritually impure is unavoidable if you are a human being; at various points in your life, you need to purify yourself again.
• What’s more, ritual purification in Judaism is a mechanical process-that is, becoming impure is not associated with being sinful or evil. However, according to the practices of John the Baptist and in later Christianity, baptism becomes a one-time process for cleansing sin.
Suggested Reading
VanderKam, The Dead Sea Scrolls Today, chapter 6, “The Scrolls and the New Testament.”
Questions to Consider
1. Was Jesus or John the Baptist an Essene?
2. What are the similarities and differences between the Qumran sect and Jesus’s movement?
