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... he same way of life, the same table, even the same tastes; all of them loving frugality and hating luxury as a plague for both body and soul. Not only do they share a common table, but common clothes as well. What belongs to one belongs to all.
Available to all of them are thick coats for winter and inexpensive light tunics for summer. Seeing it as an obstacle to communal life, they have banned marriage. They view women as selfish, excessively jealous, skillful in seduction and armed, like actors with all sorts of masks designed to flatter and ensnare men, bewitching and capturing their attention and finally leading them astray. They believe that where children are involved, women become audacious, arrogant, swollen with pride, shamelessly violent and employ attitudes dangerous to the good of the common life. The husband, bound by his wife's spells, or anxious for his children from natural necessity, is no more the same to the others, but becomes a different man; instead of a freeman, he becomes a slave. " Flavius Josephus' first account of the Essene philosophy (26) "The Essenes are Jews by race, but are more closely united among themselves by mutual affection, and by their efforts to cultivate a particularly saintly life. They renounce pleasure as an evil, and regard continence and resistance to passions as a virtue.
They disdain marriage for themselves, being content to adopt the children of others at a tender age in order to instruct them. They do not abolish marriage, but are convinced women are all licentious and incapable of fidelity to one man. They despise riches. When they enter the sect, they must surrender all of their money and possessions into the common fund, to be put at the disposal of everyone; one single property for the whole group. Therefore neither the humiliation of poverty nor the pride of possession is to be seen anywhere among them. They regard oil as a defilement, and should any of them be involuntarily anointed, he wipes his body clean.
They make a point of having their skin dry and of always being clothed in white garments. In their various communal offices, the administrators are elected and appointed without distinction offices. They are not just in one town only, but in every town several of them form a colony. They welcome members from out of town as coequal brothers, and even though perfect strangers, as though they were intimate friends. For this reason they carry nothing with them ashen they travel: they are, however, armed against brigands.
They do not change their garments or shoes until they have completely worn out. They neither buy nor sell anything among themselves. They give to each other freely and feel no need to repay anything in exchange. Before sunrise they recite certain ancestral prayers to the sun as though entreating it to rise. They work until about 11 A. M.
when they put on ritual loincloths and bathe for purification. Then they enter a communal hall, where no one else is allowed, and eat only one bowlful of food for each man, ! together with their loaves of bread. They eat in silence. Afterwards they lay aside their sacred garment and go back to work until the evening.
At evening they partake dinner in the same manner. During meals they are sober and quiet and their silence seems a great mystery to people outside. Their food and drink are so measured out that they are satisfied but no more. They see bodily pleasure as sinful. On the whole they do nothing unless ordered by their superiors, but two things they are allowed to do on their own discretion: to help those 'worthy of help', and to offer food to the needy.
They are not allowed, however, to help members of their own families without permission from superiors. They are very careful not to exhibit their anger, carefully controlling such outbursts. They are very loyal and are peacemakers. They refuse to swear oaths, believing every word they speak to be stronger than an oath. They are scrupulous students of the ancient literature. They are ardent students in the healing of diseases, of the roots offering protection, and of the properties of stones.
Those desiring to enter the sect are not allowed immediate entrance. They are made to wait outside for a period of one year. During this time each postulant is given a hatchet, a loincloth and a white garment. The hatchet is used for cleanliness in sterling for digging and covering up the hole. Having proved his continence during the first year he draws closer to the way of life and participates in the purificatory baths at a higher degree, but he is not yet admitted into intimacy. His character is tested another two years and if 'ne proves worthy he is received into the company permanently.
They are sworn to love truth and to pursue liars. They must never steal. They are not allowed to keep any secrets from other members of the sect; but they are warned to reveal nothing to outsiders, even under the pain of death. They are not allowed to alter the 'books of the sect, and must keep all the information secret, especially the names of the angels. The name of the Lawgiver, after God, is a matter of great veneration to them; if anyone blasphemed the name of the Lawgiver he was sentenced to death. Those members convicted of grave faults are expelled from the order.
In matters of judgement Essene leaders are very exact and impartial. Their decisions are irrevocable. They are so scrupulous in matters pertaining to the Sabbath day that they refuse even to go to stool on that day, They always give way to the opinion of the majority, and they make it their duty to obey their elders. They are divided into four lots according to the duration of thier discipline, and the juniors are so inferior to their elders that if the latter touch them, they wash themselves as though they had been in contact with a stranger. They despise danger: they triumph over pain by the heroism of their convictions, and consider death, if it comes with glory, to be better than the preservation of life. They died in great glory amidst terrible torture in the war against the Romans.
They believe that their souls are immortal, but that their bodies are corruptible. They believe the soul is trapped in the body and is freed with death. They believe that there is a place 'across the ocean' where just souls gather, a place reserved for the immortal souls of the just. The souls of the wicked, however, are relegated to a dark pit, shaken by storms and full of unending chastisement.
Some of the Essenes became expert in forecasting the future. " Josephus's end account of the Essenes (27) "The Essenes declare that souls are immortal and consider it necessary to struggle to obtain the reward of righteousness. They send offerings to the Temple, but offer no sacrifices since the purifications to which they are accustomed are different. For this reason, they refrain from entering into the common enclosure, but offer sacrifice among themselves. They are holy men and completely given up to agricultural labor. " Pliny the Elder's account of the Essenes (28) "To the west (of the Dead Sea) the Essenes have put the necessary distance between themselves and the insalubrious shore. They 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 palm trees. Owing to the throng of newcomers, this people is daily reborn in equal number; indeed, those whom, wearied by the fluctuations of fortune, life leads to adopt their customs, stream in in great numbers.
Thus, unbelievable though this may seem, for thousands of centuries a people has existed which is eternal yet into which no one is born: so fruitful for them is the repentance which others feel for their past lives!" In the accounts of Philo and Josephus above, I have paraphrased many of the quotations, having tried to screen out duplicate material, and leave intact the skeletal framework of the Essene beliefs as related by these authors. As can be seen on a few points they seem to be in some disagreement. Josephus was born and raised in Judea where the Essenes actually dweller. Philo, on the other hand lived in Alexandria Egypt. Philo's somewhat more idealized report may reflect his distance, but the close similarities between both reports suggests that much of the material they relate must have been common knowledge. The fact of the existance of the Essenes and their major beliefs was probably not a great secret among the people of Judea during this time period.
The relationship between the Essenes and the Temple in Jerusalem is not well understood, but they appear to have doted on the ancient writings and on the prophets, '... trained as they are in the study of the holy books and the [sacred] writings, and the sayings of the prophets... ' (29. ) 'On (the Sabbath) they proceed to the holy places called synagogues, where they sit attentive and well-behaved. One of them then takes up the books and reads, and another from among the more learned steps forward and explains whatever is not easy to understand in these books. Most of the time, and in accordance with an ancient method of inquiry, instruction is given them by means of symbols. ' (30. ) Both Josephus and Philo give the number of Essenes in Judea as around 4000 members; a modest size to be sure, but certainly large enough to have been quite visible and compelling, spread out as they were said to have been into every village. For all practical purposes, the great war silenced most of the dissident Jewish voices and this included, apparently, the Essenes. Through the destruction of the temple, the war brought to a cataclysmic end the aristocratic priesthood, together with either the death or enslavement of almost every Jew who had participated hostile against the Remans.
Josephus specifically mentions the heroic death of the Essenes at the hands of the Romans. (31. ) In his expansive account of the Essenes in 'The Jewish War', Josephus seems to imply a continuing major role for the Essenes in postwar Judea, but the fact that he mentions them only briefly in a later work may indicate their rapidly declining numbers and importance just a few decades later. The only wing of Judean politics to survive the great war was a Pharisaitic branch built largely under the auspices of Johann ben Zakkai who obtained permission from Titus, the Roman conqueror of Jerusalem in 70 A. D. , to go to Jamnia and there set up a Rabbinical school. The rabbinical school in Jamnia instrumented sweeping changes in Judean theology and literature, creating what is called 'Rabbinic Judaism', the forerunner of Judaism as it is known today. All avenues of thought and teaching that proliferated in Judea before the great war were abolished by the Jamnia school in favor of this one Pharisaitic interpretation. Only a single Hebrew recension of the Holy Scriptures survived.
The Sadducean priesthood and the Essenes simply disappeared as if they had never existed. All literature that did not reflect the Jamnia party line was destroyed or abolished. This included the exotic Septuagint version of the scriptures. The oral tradition was codified in writing and became an essential part of a new document in Jewish literature called the Talmud. As we have already mentioned, what makes the Qumran documents so important to us is that it consists of pre-Jamnia material.
It presents us with a picture of Judaism as it existed at, and before the days of Christ. From this material and using historical information, scholars have been able to reconstruct a picture of Judea in the messianic age that is far more dimensional than that stemming from the monolithic voice that arose a century later. The question of whether or not the community of Qumran or the scrolls found in the caves there were products of the Essenes is a topic of debate. The similarities between the two are striking and the weight of scholarship leans heavily to the idea that they are one and the same. But for most Christians, the scrolls at Qumran are living proof that the scriptures we have today stem from documents that have changed little, if at all, over two thousand years of copying and recopying by numberless unknown scribes. The 'Isaiah Scroll' which comes from Qumran and is displayed in its entirety at the very center of the The Israel Museum in Jerusalem is at least 100 years older than Jesus.
Its very age absolute proof that Isaiah's words of prophecy ring out a truth that Christians could not possibly have made up, or altered, during the course of their ministry. Bibliography: Bibliography Books 1. Burrows, Millar, The Dead Sea Scrolls. The Viking Press; New York, N. Y. , 1955. 2. Burrows, Millar, More Light on the Dead Sea Scrolls The Viking Press, New York, N.
Y. , 1958. 3. Dupont Sommer, A. , The Essene Writings From Qumran. World Publishing Company; New York, N. Y. 1962. 4. Josephus, Flavius, The Jewish War.
Penguin Books Ltd. ; Harmondsworth, Middlesex, England, 1959. 5. Mazar, Benjamine, The Mountain of the Lord. Doubleday and Company, Garden City, 1975. 6. Murphy O " Connor, J. , Paul and Qumran. The Priory Press; Chicago, Ill. , 1968. 7. Rowley, H.
H. , From Moses to Qumran. Association Press; New York, N. Y. , 1975, pp. 211279. 8. Tyson, Joseph B. , A Study of Early Christianity.
Macmillan Publishing Co. ; New York, N. Y. , 1973, pp... 9. Yadin, Yagael, The Message of the Scrolls. Grosset and Dunlap; New York, N.
Y. , 1957. Periodicals 1. Tushingham, A. Douglas, 'The Men Who Hid the Dead Sea Scrolls'. National Geographic Magazine, December 1958. Footnotes 1.
Dupont Sommer, A. , The Essene Writings From Qumran. World Publishing Co. , New York, 1962. 38. Letterman 16 2. Josephus, Flavius, The Jewish War.
Penguin Books Ltd. , Harmondsworth, Middlesex, England, 1959. 3233. 3. Ibid. , 32. 4. Ibid. , 36. 5. Mazar, Benjamine, The Mountain of the Lord.
Doubleday and Company, Garden City, 1975. 15. 6. Dupont Sommer, A. , The Essene Writings From Qumran. World Publishing Co. , New York, 1962. 23. 7. Ibid. , 27. 8. Burrows, Millar, The Dead Sea Scrolls.
The Viking Press, New York, 1955. 180. 9. Josephus, Flavius, The Jewish War. Penguin Books Ltd. , Harmondsworth, Middlesex, England, 1959. 129. 10. Burrows, Millar, The Dead Sea Scrolls.
The Viking Press, New York, 1955. 278. 11. Ibid. , 294. 12. Ibid. , 293. 13. Burrows, Millar, More Light on the Dead Sea Scrolls. The Viking Press, New York, 1958. 256. 14.
Burrows, Millar, The Dead Sea Scrolls. The Viking Press, New York, 1955. 117, 295. 15. Tyson, Joseph B. , A Study of Early Christianity. Macmillan Publishing Co. , New York, 1973. 118. 16. Josephus, Flavius, The Jewish War. Penguin Books Ltd. , Harmondsworth, Middlesex, England, 1959. 125. 17.
Yadin, Yagael, The Message of the Scrolls. Grosset and Dunlap, New York, 1957. 186. 18. Josephus, Flavius, The Jewish War. Penguin Books Ltd. , Harmondsworth, Middlesex, England, 1959. 129. 19.
Dupont Summer, A. , The Essene Writings From Qumran. World Publishing Co. , New York, 1962. 36. 20. Ibid. , 36. 21. Ibid. , 43. 22.
Ibid. , 21. 23. Ibid. , 21, Footnote 3. 24. Ibid. , 21 - 24. 25. Ibid. , 2426. 26. Josephus, Flavius, The Jewish War.
Penguin Books Ltd. , Harmondsworth, Middlesex, England, 1959. 27. Dupont Summer, A. , The Essene Writings From Qumran. World Publishing Co. , New York, 1962. 36. 28. Ibid. , 37. 29. Ibid. , 3435. 30.
Ibid. , 22. 31. Josephus, Flavius, The Jewish War. Penguin Books Ltd. , Harmondsworth, Middlesex, England, 1959. 128.
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