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Historical context

The Essenes and Qumran

The Dead Sea Scrolls

A strict Jewish group awaiting the end of days, and the library hidden in caves by the Dead Sea, with copies of the Bible a thousand years older than any known before.

A shepherd, a cave and clay jars

In the winter of 1946–47, according to the best-known account, Bedouin shepherds were looking for a stray animal on the slopes by the northwest shore of the Dead Sea. One of them, Muhammad edh-Dhib, threw a stone into an opening in the rock and heard pottery breaking. Inside the cave were cylindrical jars holding leather scrolls, some wrapped in linen. The first seven manuscripts passed through antiquities dealers in Bethlehem, a Syrian Orthodox archbishop in Jerusalem and scholars who at first doubted their age. In 1947 Professor Eleazar Sukenik of the Hebrew University recognized that they were texts from the Second Temple period, about two thousand years old. It was the start of the greatest discovery of biblical manuscripts in modern times, made a short walk from the ruins of Khirbet Qumran, about 20 kilometers (12 miles) east of Jerusalem.

Eleven caves and a library

Between 1947 and 1956, Bedouin and archaeologists located eleven caves with manuscripts. Cave 4, right beside the ruins, held about 15,000 fragments, the remains of hundreds of scrolls. In all, parts of some 900 manuscripts are known, mostly in Hebrew, some in Aramaic and a few in Greek, copied between the third century BC and the first century AD. About a quarter are biblical books; the rest include commentaries, prayers, hymns, community rules, calendars and works known from other traditions, such as Enoch and Jubilees. From 1951 to 1956 the Dominican Roland de Vaux excavated Khirbet Qumran and found a complex of buildings with assembly rooms, cisterns, stepped pools, a pottery workshop and even inkwells. He concluded that the site was destroyed by the Romans around AD 68, during the Jewish war; it is plausible that the scrolls were hidden shortly before.

A Bible a thousand years older

Before 1947, the oldest complete manuscripts of the Hebrew Bible were medieval codices, such as the Aleppo Codex from the tenth century and the Leningrad Codex from 1008. At Qumran, portions of every Old Testament book turned up except Esther. The most copied were Psalms, Deuteronomy and Isaiah, the very books the New Testament quotes most. The Great Isaiah Scroll from Cave 1 contains all 66 chapters of the prophet on about 7 meters (24 feet) of leather and is usually dated to the second century BC. Compared with the medieval texts, it shows spelling differences and some variants, but the content is essentially the same after more than a thousand years of copying. Other manuscripts reveal that different forms of the text circulated, some close to the Greek translation, the Septuagint. For Bible readers today, Qumran bears witness to careful transmission and helps translators with difficult passages.

Who the Essenes were

The Essenes do not appear in the New Testament, but three first-century writers describe them. Philo of Alexandria and Josephus count more than four thousand members, spread through the towns and villages of Judea. Josephus, who says he tried the group’s way of life in his youth, describes a severe discipline: about three years of probation before full admission, shared property, white garments, purifying baths before meals eaten in silence, solemn oaths to guard the teachings and obedience to superiors (Jewish War 2). They kept the Sabbath more strictly than any other Jewish group. Many lived unmarried, though Josephus mentions a branch that married. Pliny the Elder speaks of a solitary people, without women and without money, living among palm trees on the west side of the Dead Sea, above En-gedi (Natural History 5.73). That note is what led researchers to think of Qumran.

Children of light awaiting the end

The community’s own texts, such as the Community Rule and the Damascus Document, reveal a group that saw itself as the true Israel of the last days. Its members called themselves children of light and awaited a final battle against the children of darkness, described in the War Scroll. They remembered a founder, the Teacher of Righteousness, persecuted by an opponent called the Wicked Priest, perhaps one of the Hasmonean high priests. They followed a 364-day solar calendar, different from the one used in the Temple, and so they judged Jerusalem’s worship flawed. They expected not one but two anointed figures, one priestly and one royal, as well as a prophet. To explain life in the desert, the Rule quotes Isaiah 40:3: prepare in the wilderness the way of the Lord, which they understood as studying and keeping the Law. They practiced strict purity and communal meals, and excluded people with physical defects from the holy assemblies.

Was Qumran Essene? An open debate

Most specialists identify the people of Qumran with the Essenes, or with a branch of them. The reasons are strong: the location Pliny describes, communal life, shared property, ritual baths, Sabbath strictness and an emphasis on God’s providence, all similar to what Josephus reports. But there are differences, and the word Essene never appears in the manuscripts. Some scholars note that certain purity laws in the scrolls match positions rabbinic tradition assigns to the Sadducees. Others have proposed that Khirbet Qumran was a fortress, a country villa or a pottery workshop, and that the scrolls came from Jerusalem libraries, hidden during the war. These alternatives are minority views, but they call for caution. The safest statement is this: the library belonged to a sectarian Jewish movement very similar to the Essenes, and many scrolls reflect ideas shared by other Jews of the time.

John the Baptist and Jesus: neighbors, not disciples

John the Baptist preached and baptized in the Judean wilderness and by the Jordan, a few hours’ walk from Qumran, and Luke says he lived in the desert until his mission began (Luke 1:80). Like the community, he applied Isaiah 40:3 to himself, announced an imminent judgment and used water as a sign of cleansing. So many ask whether John spent time at Qumran. It is a possible hypothesis, but unproven, and the differences are great: John spoke to crowds, baptized only once, welcomed tax collectors and soldiers (Luke 3:12-14) and did not withdraw into a closed community. Something similar happens with Jesus. Like the scrolls, he speaks of a coming kingdom and quotes Isaiah 61. But while the community forbade lifting an animal out of a pit on the Sabbath and kept the lame and blind out of the assembly, Jesus heals on the Sabbath and tells his hearers to invite them to the banquet.

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