Topics from Sanders, Judaism, Chapter Sixteen: The Essenes

Sources:

• External:
  
  • Josephus.
    
  • Philo
    
  • Latin writers: Pliny, etc.
    Note: No explicit mention in New Testament or Rabbinic works.
  
  
• Internal records :
  
  • Qumran (etc.). Community Rule [= Manual of Discipline] agrees remarkably with Josephus description of Essene ideas and communal organization.

Methodological problems:

• Do all Qumran documents emanate from the same group?
  
• Standard reconstructions of Essene history and belief are based on harmonizations of separate sources.
  
• How to account for contradictions among sources (e.g., regarding celibacy, pacifism). Differences in laws between Manual of Discipline and Damascus Fragment.

Conventional view of Essene origins:

Description of Essene Community:

• Membership :
  
  • Stages of acceptance
    
  • Trial periods
    
  • Participation in communal food and water
    
  • Communal property
    
  • Sanctions for disobedience: Guardians ; Removal from pure meal [=starvation?]; etc.
  
  
• Worship:
  
  • Communal prayer
    
    
  • Sun worship?
  
  
• Exclusivism:
  

  Fragment from "The War of the Children of Light and the Children of Darkness"

  
  
• Adoption of Priestly practices ? Immersion, pure garments, loincloths, refraining from wine (?) and oil. White clothing.
  
• The Purity/Pure Meal
  
• Calendar
  
• Secrecy to outsiders, openness to fellow members
  
• Rejection of Temple cult in its current form
  
• Role of Zadokite priests
  
• Decline in their numbers and influence?
  
• Submission to absolute authority of leaders

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