We have just enough religion to make us hate, but not enough to make us love one another.

Swift

Essene Life and Beliefs 4

Village Essenes
Some Criticisms Answered

Abstract

Each year, at the annual renewal of the covenant held at Pentacost, the wilderness chaste brotherhood (called priests and levites) and the village Essenes (called people and Israelites) congregated in the desert for a covenant renewal ceremony. New members were admitted to be instructed by the Master, when they would hear the Essene interpretation of the law of Moses and commit themselves to it. They were taught they were living in the last days (End Time) and that strict adherence to the law was essential to enter God’s kingdom or, as the Scrolls more often called it, “house” or “sanctuary”. Those who were saved were those who held fast to the community’s rules, followed the law, listened to the righteous teacher and confessed before God. The life and beliefs of the Essenes.

Village Essenes

For a village Essene matters were less rigid but many requirements were the same as those for the monastic order. Both branches:

considered themselves the true Israel
followed the Zadokite priesthood—every group of ten or more had to include a priest
partook of a common meal
arranged themselves in a strict hierarchy
insisted on a correct interpretation and strict adherence to the Laws of Moses
swore to uphold the New Covenant
followed a solar calendar precisely so as not to deviate from his appointed times, including holding an annual congregation.

The children of any Jew—those who had entered the covenant granted to all Israel forever—could become an Essene by swearing an oath on their reaching twenty, the age of enrolment. Before then nothing of the statutes was to be revealed to them. Particular rules for village Essenes were given in the Damascus Rule and the Rule of the Congregation, or the Messianic Rule as Vermes has renamed it.

Members had to cleave to the laws of Moses
the Mebaqqer of the camp or village community was its head, its teacher and its director. He allowed commerce with the impure and the imperfect but had absolute power over it, permitting no casual contacts
temple sacrifice was permitted and demanded absolute ritual purity
full maturity was reached according to the Rule of the Congregation only at the age of 30
observance of the sabbath was strict, the rule expressly forbidding the picking and eating of fruits from the fields
members were not allowed to bear witness in the courts of the gentiles—the Romans. The punishment was death but since the Community had no powers of capital punishment it is plain that expulsion was meant. Expulsion was eternal death, but for a strict Essene was often physical death too.

Note that village Essenes brought up in an Essene community were not considered mature until the age of thirty, the age at which Jesus was baptized. No Jewish priest was allowed to enter office until he was thirty years old and the Essenes were a priestly sect.

Village Essenes, unlike the monastic variety, owned their own property. Instead of holding goods in common they donated two days’ wages a month into a common fund to provide for orphans, the old and needy and widows. The Community whether in the monastery or the camps was bonded by a common meal. Only the perfect were allowed to partake of it and in particular to partake of the “new wine” which is to say the unfermented grape juice of the congregation.

The Damascus Rule requires that the village Mebaqqer “love his people as a father loves his children and shall carry them in all their distress like a shepherd his sheep”—two metaphors, children and sheep, used by Jesus for his followers tumbling out of one scroll sentence. He had to ensure that there was no friendly contact with those outside the sect, the sons of the pit. The Mebaqqer would allow commerce but not friendship. Transactions must have been very abrupt and matter-of-fact.

Some Criticisms Answered

Entering the new millennium, the idea that Qumran had nothing to do with Essenes seems to be reviving in popularity. One set of arguments, and the basis of the following list, can be found at a contrary but interesting and well presented website run by Ian Hutcheson.

The Essenes are located in the Dead Sea region by Pliny who relates them to being in the vicinity of Engedi. Why would he make that connexion when Qumran was much closer to the better known Jericho?

Who says that Pliny was talking only about Qumran? He speaks of the Essenes being on the western littoral of the Dead Sea and “below” them was Engedi, and “beyond” or “next” was Masada. He is therefore defining the part of the Western littoral that they occupied—that north of Engedi, or from Engedi to roughly Qumran, or the mouth of the Jordan. The Essenes were not only at Qumran but were also at Ain Feshka, confirming that they occupied this region of the wilderness of Judaea.

Philo tells us the Essenes were held as exemplary and had no clashes with any of the rulers of Palestine. The DSS however shows a central episode in the history of the Qumran Sect as being a conflict with authorities in Jerusalem.

No allowance is made for propaganda purposes here, or for the time factor. Philo, like Josephus wants to paint them as exemplary, and doubtless in normal behaviour, they were. If I declared that the presidency of the USA was corrupt and should be abolished, would it necessarily mean that I do not lead an exemplary life?

The Essenes of the classic authors, Pliny, Philo and Josephus, were pacific, whereas some of the scrolls, especially the War Scroll sound militant.

Critical emphasis has traditionally been put on the direct statements of the classic authors that the Essenes were peaceful, and so the DS Scrolls have been accused of not being Essene. Yet, Josephus speaks of an Essene that fought in the Jewish War. One could say that the orders of monks in the Middle Ages were pacific, but there were some decidely militant orders, like the Templars. Josephus assures us there were at least two types of Essenes, so some Essenes might not have been pacific. Furthermore, Josephus might have been deliberately coy about the nature of the Essenes to avoid any further punitive or suppressive action by the Romans.

Besides that, it could be valid to call Essenes pacific in general, even though they were preparing for what they considered as a Holy War. Pliny will therefore have seen them as simple monks or communal farmers but, when they thought the time was ready for the Holy War to commence, they abandoned their farming and pacifism believing that they were soldiers of God, just as Christians did. They certainly cannot have been openly training as liberation troops in an occupied and subject country, so they had to have a pacific face to survive at all.

There were only 4000 Essenes all together, according to Josephus, and they lived in all the cities of Judaea. They must therefore have been thinly spread and few of them can have lived near Qumran.

It is a silly argument that takes no account of whether the 4000 were only males or men women and children. If they were only males as seems likely then the total of men, women and children might have been around 25,000 (the celibate Essenes being only the most devout, leading members of the sect, the equivalent of catholic priests).

It also ignores the total population of Judaea. Even in 1960, the population of Israel was only 2 million, and it seems likely it was much less in the year dot, so 4000 active men would have been significant.

Finally, when Josephus speaks, almost as an afterthought about the Essenes who married, did he include these married ones within his 4000 or were they in addition to them. If the latter, the 4000 were most significant, because they were the celibate leadership and we can guess that the “lay” Essenes, if that is what they were, were far more numerous. Who is to say that the Essenes were not the main sect of the time, taking into account the diaspora, and not the Pharisees as the Rabbis claim.

Why were the Essenes only mentioned explicitly in three authors’ works, if they were a major part of Judaism, or even the main part of it.

The answer surely is precisely that. The gentile authors knew only of the Jewish cult of the temple and were not interested in internal disagreements between the Jewish parties, which doubtless seemed like nit-picking to observers.

The Qumran sect is said not to have been celibate, on the ground that graves of women were found at the ruined site, and provisions were made for marriage in some of the scrolls.

A bit flimsy, this! The classic authors all said the Essenes were celibate, though Josephus distinguishes a class of Essenes that was not. Again, we could look at the monks of the Middle Ages and, from them alone, claim that Catholic Christians were celibate. Josephus seems to be telling us that there were monkish Essenes and there were more pragmatic Essenes. Furthermore, some of the graves at Qumran might have been those of visitors, especially if the buildings were a centre of an annual renewal ceremony.

The Essenes disapproved of slavery. The Qumran Sect tolerated it.

So disapproval and toleration are incompatible? Cults with rules peculiar to themselves often have to live in a world that operates on the basis of different laws—laws of which they might disapprove but which they have to tolerate. A recently discovered ostracon at Qumran speaks of the transfer of the property of a neophyte to the community and includes a slave, but there is no necessity to believe that having been so transferred, he remained a slave of the community. He probably joined too.

The Essenes disapproved of animal sacrifices. The Qumran Sect admitted it and paid special deference to priests.

The same comment, and which priests did they defer to? The scroll authors claimed they were priests, but they still disapproved of the temple as polluted. In fact the scroll authors preferred a sweet savour to offer to God not sacrifice, as they say several times.

The Essenes avoided oaths. The Qumran sect prescribed them, on certain occasions.

The same comment, avoidance is not proscription, so they could avoid them but prescribe them. They prescribed them when they entered the order and therefter proscribed them, just as Josephus says.

“Baptism” among the Essenes had a regenerative power. There is no evidence in the voluminous Dead Sea literature that this was the case in the Qumran Sect.

So the Qumran sectaries, in an arid and waterless region, were just being hygienic in insisting on immersing their whole body before eating each meal. The Community Rule forbids the unjust from entering “the water to partake of the pure meal of the men of holiness.” Josephus also says the Essenes bathed before their meals twice a day.

The Essenes practised community of property. The Qumran Sect did so, if at all, in only a restricted degree.

If a community of property is practised even in a restricted way, it is practised. But, what was the restriction? The Community Rule 6:20-21 is clear that the novice must hand over all property to the bursar on acceptance, and line 25 says the punishment for deception in regard to property is severe—exclusion for a year and partial starvation. The ostracon found at Qumran seems to be an account of a novitate handing over his possessions, a house, orchards and a slave, to the bursar.

This also shows how the order of Essenes could have been extremely rich while the initiates practiced the spirit of poverty. Their successors, the Christian churches, are precisely the same, though their officials have shown more inclination to make a personal use of the institution’s wealth.

Whoever occupied the site before it was abandoned about 37 BC would have reoccupied the site after the earthquake and not waited another 33 years to do so. If Essenes were there before 37 BC, they are not likely to have reoccupied the site.

Why indeed should an earthquake have made them abandon the site, when they would have been expected to set to work immediately to repair the damage? Since they, or someone else, lived there later, it was not irreparable. This is not evidence but an opinion. Another opinion is that the Essenes were wooed by Herod in this intervening period because he wanted to rebuild the temple, and wanted the support of Essenes, not their disapprobation. Herod later welched on the Essenes and they left Jerusalem to return to their old wilderness base.

Pliny’s account, and indirectly Josephus’s account as well, describe the “Essenes as flourishing undisturbed after the hostilities”, the Jewish War.

Who says they flourished in the same place as before? If the Romans had seen Qumran as a fortress they would have been obliged to “flourish” elsewhere. The scrolls say they lived in camps, imitating the Israelites in the desert. They doubtless did this again, and those who lived in the cities could have flourished anyway, but later many would have abandoned apocalyptic for Rabbinism or for Christianity, notably after the Bar Kosiba war.

If the Essenes “were held up as models of behaviour by the Romanophile Josephus” and so admired by Pliny, why was their centre destroyed by the Romans?

Is this serious? Both were writing after the War, and Josephus had political and probably personal reasons for painting the Essenes as innocents. After the failure of the Jewish uprising, the Essenes would have returned to passivity for practical reasons and to revise their cosmic schemata.

The sheer number of scribal hands, of up to 800, seen in the scrolls tells against them all being written by a local sect at Qumran.

The fallacy here is the assumption that this was only a local sect. The Essenes, as Josephus says were represented throughout Judaea. Furthermore, they might have been accumulating the library for some considerable time, perhaps 200 years. If the centre of the sect was at Qumran as Pliny implies, then books collected throughout Judaea for this long period of time would have been deposited at Qumran.

Critics of the Essene hypothesis try to make a lot of arguments like Norman Golb’s that the scrolls actually were brought from Jerusalem to Qumran for safekeeping (during the war) or to deposit in a geniza of old sacred texts. If books were brought from Jerusalem at the time of the Jewish war for safekeeping, the collection was still a library of a sect, rather than a general library.

Nor would owners of a library in Jerusalem have gone so far as Qumran to find caves to deposit the books into—there were suitable inaccessible caves closer to Jerusalem. The caves at Qumran were not particularly inaccessible for some of them have been used as dwellings. In other words, the books were most likely to have been deposited by the locals but, if the books came from elsewhere, they were brought to Qumran because the sect dwelling there were of the same persuasion.

Wherever the scrolls came from, some of them are plainly sectarian in being markedly eschatological and militant, and these are the books that are kept in multiple copies. It would be impossible to claim that mainstream Judaism as defined by the temple organization fitted into the category indicated by the sectarian works, and most Jewish scholars would add that they are also not the source of Rabbinism. They are therefore describing Essenes or some related sect.

Yet for Josephus there were only three sects he thought worthy of note, and the prevalence of the sectarian material among the scrolls shows that this was important enough to be one of them. Two of Josephus’s sects were Sadducees and Pharisees, and the other was the Essenes. Only the Galilaeans, the followers of Judas of Gamala, or Judas the Galilaean, are mentioned besides these three. This sect, Josephus implies became the Zealots, but he also implies by association that they were a type of Essene. Admittedly, against this, he says they held the ideas of the Pharisees, but such ideas as he describes fit the scrolls and not the Pharisaic ideas, if the gospel descriptions of them are true.

Many of these criticisms are those of Cecil Roth who thought that the Qumran Sect were Zealots. Quite so. The Essenes were Zealots, and so was Jesus.

Differences between the scrolls and the descriptions of the classic writers, particularly Josephus, are often cited, but the astonishing agreements indicate that Josephus was accurately describing the sectaries identified in the scroll manuals and pesharim—Josephus called them Essenes! As to the differences, they might easily have been because the sect evolved between the time the sectarian manuals were written and Josephus learnt what he knew about them, or Josephus’s recollection might have been faulty, or he might have been altering some things for his own reasons such as to mitigate possible Roman retaliation, or Essenism was already split into factions such as Hemerobaptists, Galilaeans, Nazarenes and so on. Obviously, the details of all of this cannot now be clearly seen, but a coherent outline certainly can.

A criticism of Jesus that he is too often depicted as angry is used by non-Christians to show that Jesus was not good enough to be God incarnate.

It seems a silly argument when Jesus’s anger is compared with that of the Old Testament God, but more realistically it has been argued as proof that Jesus was not an Essene. It is true that the rules of conduct in the scrolls have strong penalties for members of the brotherhood who show anger to each other, but scrolls like the War Scroll show that the Essenes were exceedingly angry with other people. Jesus was angry with unrepentant cities, for example, and his Pharisaic opponents, and even sometimes with his own converts, but he was not angry with John the Baptist when he criticised him in Matthew, and the Essenes had no rule against damning even a brother with faint praise!

Another criticism is that Jesus unreasonably demands that his followers should choose to live in poverty and yet still love other people—a hard requirement.

This is simply a failure to understand from the gospels what we now know from the scrolls—that Jesus meant by the “Poor” his own sect of the Essenes, the Ebionites (the Poor Men). The Ebionites valued poverty for its spiritual value, but it did not mean that the Ebionites were destitute or in any way economically insecure. When they joined the order, they gave it all their possessions except for certain personal items, so each individual Essene was impoverished but the order was not, and it had bursars who dealt with purchasing, from the common purse, anything the brothers could not produce themselves. The village Essenes, who must have been the large majority of them, had quite a different system, that adopted by the modern Mormons—they gave a proportion of their income to the order, but otherwise their earnings were their own. Either way, Essenes were not destitute and so were free to concentrate on matters of God, whether it was loving fellow Essenes or preparing for a holy war.

Jesus also is criticised for asking the impossible of his followers in wanting them to be perfect even as his Father was perfect.

There is little doubt that the Essenes knew just as any modern Jew knows that there is no perfection outside of heaven, so to demand perfection seems to ask too much. But Jesus was expecting the world to end and the renewed world to be part of heaven and therefore, like heaven, perfect. He asked Jews to repent—thus absolving them of all previous sins—and then to practise perfection for the short time he expected before the kingdom came—not such an onerous task, for as Christians still tell us, it was to be “soon”.

Professor John Knox raised this issue in the context of the man whose brother had stolen his inheritance. Knox points out that Jesus had no useful advice, telling the man effectively not to bother. The man however was concerned with the injustice of it—he did bother. For Jesus, if the world was going to end soon, there was no point in getting angry about such matters and risking an adverse judgement that meant no eternal life. His message was to renounce covetousness to enter the kingdom. It was a minor sacrifice by comparison but the man was not convinced. Jesus therefore had no general advice about injustice in this world, because it was only temporary and its end was nigh!

J J Cadbury points out that nowhere is Jesus interested in the rights or needs of another party or in society as a whole.

He was interested only in securing Jewish sinners—apostates from the faith—for God’s kingdom through repentance. Third parties like the gentiles and unrepentant Jews were of no interest to him, though righteous gentiles might be considered for God’s kingdom if they came in supplication. John Bowden put it succinctly when he said, “His aim was personal repentance not structural reform.” What is the point of reforming what will be destroyed?

Jesus is absolutely positive in Mark’s gospel in his teaching on divorce—it is impossible (Mk 10:1-12).

The underlying reason was that God was betrothed to Israel—the land and people personified as a woman—and God would not abandon her however wayward she was. Matthew 19:1-9 defeats the entire point, bringing back as a practical reason for divorce the very failing that Jesus was forbidding—adultery. If this were the law of God, then God would have been justified in abandoning his faithless spouse. Matthew’s author either did not understand this or, since the Jews had indeed been abandoned by God with the crucifixion of their apocalyptic leader, he decided the practical law could be restored!