Essenes
Culture | Defunct
167 BCE to 79 CE
The Essenes are a sect of Second Temple Judaism that flourished from the second century BCE to the first century CE which some scholars claim seceded from the Zadokite priests.
Being much fewer in number than the Pharisees and the Sadducees (the other two major sects at this time), the Essenes live in various cities but congregate in communal life dedicated to asceticism (some groups practice celibacy), voluntary poverty, and daily immersion.
Many separate but related religious groups of this period share similar mystic, eschatological, messianic, and ascetic beliefs. These groups are collectively referred to by various scholars as the "Essenes."
Josephus records that Essenes existed in large numbers, and thousands lived throughout Roman Judaea.
The Essenes have gained fame in modern times as a result of the discovery of an extensive group of religious documents known as the Dead Sea Scrolls, which are commonly believed to be the Essenes' library—although not conclusive.
These documents preserve multiple copies of parts of the Hebrew Bible untouched from possibly as early as 300 BCE until their discovery in 1946.
Some scholars dispute the notion that the Essenes wrote the Dead Sea Scrolls.[2] Rachel Elior questions even the existence of the Essenes.
The first reference is by the Roman writer Pliny the Elder (died CE c. 79 ) in his Natural History.
Pliny relates in a few lines that the Essenes do not marry, possess no money, and had existed for thousands of generations.
Unlike Philo, who did not mention any particular geographical location of the Essenes other than the whole land of Israel, Pliny places them in Ein Gedi, next to the Dead Sea.
A little later, Josephus gave a detailed account of the Essenes in The Jewish War (c. 75), with a shorter description in Antiquities of the Jews (c. 94) and The Life of Flavius Josephus (c. 97).
Claiming first hand knowledge, he lists the Essenoi as one of the three sects of Jewish philosophy alongside the Pharisees and the Sadducees.
He relates the same information concerning piety, celibacy, the absence of personal property and of money, the belief in communality, and commitment to a strict observance of Sabbath.
He further adds that the Essenes ritually immersed in water every morning, ate together after prayer, devoted themselves to charity and benevolence, forbade the expression of anger, studied the books of the elders, preserved secrets, and were very mindful of the names of the angels kept in their sacred writings.
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The Essenes, a religious sect or brotherhood, had fled to the Judaean desert wilderness around Qumran during Antiochus IV Epiphanes' persecution of Palestinian Jews.
Like the Pharisees, the Essenes meticulously observe the Law of Moses, the Sabbath, and ritual purity.
They also profess belief in immortality and divine punishment for sin.
Unlike the Pharisees, the Essenes deny the resurrection of the body and refuse to immerse themselves in public life.
With few exceptions, they shun Temple worship and are content to live ascetic lives of manual labor in seclusion.
The Sabbath is reserved for daylong prayer and meditation on the Torah.
Oaths are frowned upon, but once taken they cannot be rescinded.
The pretender Alexander Balas, in order to outplay Demetrius, the legitimate king of Syria, makes peace with Jonathan, calling him his “friend” and giving him the Seleucid rank of a courtier, thereby legitimizing his position.
Jonathan now withdraws his support from Demetrius and declares allegiance to Balas, who in 153 or 152 elects Jonathan as high priest in Jerusalem.
Thus is born the high priestly Hasmonean line.
The title is not merely nominal: Jonathan becomes the official leader of his people and the Hellenistic party can no longer attack him without severe consequences.
It is unknown whom Jonathan had displaced as High Priest, though some scholars suggest that this was the Teacher of Righteousness, later founder of the Essenes.
In this theory, Jonathan is considered the "man of lies.” The strict upholders of the Law, however, are in any case alienated, because the Law holds that no man should be high priest who is not of priestly descent from Aaron.
From now on, this group will form a strong opposition party, later to be known as the most conservative section of the Pharisees, the religious group whose interpretations and applications of the law, written and oral, will become accepted tradition in later Judaism.
The war continues.
The Akra is still in Seleucid hands, and Jonathan seeks to wall it off from the city.
A Jewish community, possibly Essenes, begins construction in about 150 on a walled complex of buildings at the site of Qumran, located below the cliffs overlooking the northwest corner of the Dead Sea.
Cisterns, fed by canals leading down from the cliffs above, are used to store water.
Most of the Dead Sea Scrolls, found here, date from this period.
A large number of sects proliferate in Judea: orthodox sects, such as the Sadducees and the Pharisees, as well as dissident and sometimes persecuted sects such as the Essenes (whose ascetic practices will be illuminated by the discovery of the Dead Sea Scrolls in the mid-twentieth century.)
Saul, born at Tarsus in Anatolia, probably about the beginning of the first century CE and raised as a pious Jew, is a zealous opponent of Jesus’ followers until about 34, when he has a profound mystical experience that converts him to what will become known by the end of the first century as Christianity and impels him to change his name to Paul.
He follows this transforming experience—a vision of Jesus Christ on the road to Damascus—by missionary activity in Arabia, Syria, and his native Cilicia.
Knowledge of the new sect has by 37, at the end of Tiberius' reign, spread to the gentiles as a result of the preaching of Paul in Anatolia and in Greece.
At the same time, the movement continues to make progress among the Jews of Jerusalem, Alexandria, and Syria and quickly reaches even Osroene and the Parthian towns of the Euphrates, where Jewish colonies are numerous.
The Roman authorities at first have difficulty in distinguishing the Christos believers from the orthodox Jews, but the religion of the former, on leaving its original milieu, will soon become differentiated.
Roman garrisons stationed throughout Judea have exploited Jews with punitive taxation since 63 BCE, exceeding the quota set by the Roman Empire and keeping the surplus revenues for themselves.
The Roman procurators have also subjugated the Jewish High Priesthood, appointing pro-Roman Jews to positions of authority, and desecrated sacred Jewish practices with sacrilegious pagan rituals.
The Roman Emperor Caligula in 39 had declared himself divine and ordered his troops in Jerusalem to place his name on the Temple.
When the Jews refused, he threatened to destroy the temple but his sudden timely demise saved Jerusalem from a premature siege, yet Caligula's threat had caused many of the moderate Jews to shift towards radical anti-Roman political views.
As the Roman burden becomes more onerous, Jewish priests alienated by the pro-Roman high priesthood join in the effort to attain political and religious liberty by any means possible, thus forming the Zealots, who kindle anti-Roman sentiment throughout Galilee and Judea.
Josephus' Jewish Antiquities states that there were three main Jewish sects at this time, the Pharisees, the Sadducees, and the Essenes.
The Zealots are a "fourth sect", founded by Judas of Galilee (also called Judas of Gamala) and Zadok the Pharisee in the year 6 against Quirinius' tax reform, shortly after the Roman Empire declares what had most recently been the tetrarchy of Herod Archelaus to be a Roman province, and that they "agree in all other things with the Pharisaic notions; but they have an inviolable attachment to liberty, and say that God is to be their only Ruler and Lord." (18.1.6).
Some scholars argue that the group was not so clearly marked out before the first war of 66-70 as others have supposed.
The Zealots, as strict interpreters of the Law are extremists who are willing to lay their own lives down for independence from Roman domination.
They have begun to form a growing nationalist resistance movement.
Two of Judas' sons, Jacob and Simon, are from 46 to 48 involved in a revolt and are executed by Tiberius Alexander, the procurator of Iudaea province.
The Romans' brutal suppression of the Jewish Revolt, in which Jerusalem is destroyed, obliterates the last vestiges of ancient Hebrew statehood and, with it, Jewish national autonomy.
Placing Palestine under Roman governors and renaming Jerusalem Aelia Capitolina, the Romans scatter the rebellious segments of the Jewish population, selling thousands of Jews into slavery and thus intensifying the Jewish Diaspora throughout the Roman world.
Berenice, the daughter of King Agrippa I, attempts to ease Judeo-Roman tensions in 65, but she and other moderates prove unable to control the increasingly desperate populace.
There has been a long tradition of hostility between the large Hellenized populations of Palestine and the Jews (also a problem in the Diaspora, most notably at Alexandria during the reign of Caligula).
Gessius Florus, the Roman procurator of Judaea, upon taking office in Caesarea in 64 had begun a practice of favoring the local Greek population of the city over the Jewish population.
The Greeks, noticing Florus' policies, have taken advantage of the circumstances to denigrate their Jewish neighbors.
One notable instance of provocation occurs while the Jews are worshiping at their local synagogue and a Hellenist sacrifices several birds on top of an earthenware container at the entrance of the synagogue, an act that renders the building ritually unclean.
In response to this action, the Jews send a group of men to petition Florus for redress.
Florus, despite accepting a payment of eight talents to hear the case, refuses to listen to the complaints and instead has the petitioners imprisoned.
The organization of the Jews is better than it had been previously.
As the Romans near the pass of Beth Horon, they are ambushed and come under attack from massed missile fire, and are then suddenly rushed by a large force of infantry, twenty-four hundred Zealots led by Eleazar ben Simon.
The Romans cannot get into formation within the narrow confines of the pass and lose cohesion under the fierce assault.
The equivalent of an entire legion is destroyed.
Gallus succeeds in escaping with a fraction of his troops to Antioch by sacrificing the greater part of his army and a large amount of war material.
After the massacre, the Jewish Zealots go through the Roman dead, stripping them of their armor, helmets, equipment, and weapons.
Eleazar, returning to Jerusalem with substantial loot, will use the wealth acquired in this decisive victory as political leverage during the battle for power in Jerusalem in 67-69.
The battle of Beth-Horon is one of the worst defeats suffered by regular Roman troops against a rebelling province in history, encouraging many more volunteers and towns to throw their lot in with the rebels.
A full-scale war is now inevitable.
The rebel government in Jerusalem assigns command of both Galilee and the Golan to Yosef Ben Matityahu (the future Josephus) who (if his own untrustworthy account may be believed), is obstructed in his efforts at conciliation by the enmity of the local partisans led by John of Giscala.
Though realizing the futility of armed resistance, he nevertheless sets about fortifying nineteen of the most important towns of the north against the forthcoming Roman juggernaut.