The historian who described the Essenes added, almost as an afterthought, that there was another order of them who agreed with the rest in way of life, customs, and laws, but differed on marriage, holding that those who did not marry cut off the chief part of life, the succession of the race. This second order married, he says, but only after three years of proof that the woman was fit to bear children, and lived with their wives in a chastity directed at offspring rather than pleasure. One sentence. From it a great deal has grown.
What the Ancient Writers Said
The historian's two orders are confirmed by the scrolls, which give us a Community Rule for a celibate settlement and a Damascus Document for camps of families. Beyond this the ancient evidence is scattered among the catalogues of Jewish and Christian sects compiled by Christian writers of the second to fifth centuries, who were more interested in condemning than in describing. One such writer lists seven Jewish sects: Sadducees, Scribes, Pharisees, Hemerobaptists, Ossaeans, Nazarenes, and Herodians. He places the Nazarenes in the north and east of the land, says they were Jews who kept the Law but would not sacrifice or eat flesh, and connects them with the Ossaeans, whom he describes as a related sect from the lands east of the Dead Sea. He also knows a Christian sect of Nazarenes, Jewish followers of Jesus who kept the Law, and is at pains to distinguish them from the Jewish Nazarenes who came before.
The gospels say that Jesus was called a Nazarene, and that this fulfilled what was spoken by the prophets, though no surviving prophet says it. The Acts of the Apostles has Paul accused of being a ringleader of the sect of the Nazarenes. The word has been derived from Nazareth, the town; from the Hebrew for branch, as in the shoot from the stump of Jesse; from the Hebrew for one who keeps or guards; and from the Nazirite vow of the old Law. Scholars have not settled it and the fellowship does not expect them to.
What Tradition Made of It
Out of these scraps a tradition has grown, taught in the last two centuries as Essene history, which the fellowship has received and which we set out here with its pedigree plainly marked. In this tradition the Essenes had two great branches. The southern branch, the Ossaeans, were the celibate ascetics of the Dead Sea, the copiers and keepers of the scrolls, severe, secretive, and priestly. The northern branch, the Nazarenes, were centered on Mount Carmel and in the villages of Galilee, married and raised families, were healers and teachers among the people, honored the prophets above the Law's letter, and would not shed blood or eat flesh. From the northern branch, the tradition says, came John who baptized and the family of Jesus, and the gospel's He shall be called a Nazarene is the fulfillment of a promise made to them.
The fellowship cannot prove a word of this. We can say that it is consistent with the historian's two orders, with the later writer's geography, with the Damascus Document's families, and with the gospels' use of the word. We can also say that it is exactly what one would invent if one wanted the Essenes to be the ancestors of Jesus. Both things are true. We hold the tradition as tradition.
The Two Orders Today
What the fellowship does hold firmly is the thing the historian's one sentence establishes: that the Essene way was never only one way. There was a way for the celibate in the desert and a way for the family in the town, and both were Essene, and the historian says they agreed in everything but marriage. This matters enormously for the student, because almost every student of the fellowship is of the second order. We have jobs, spouses, children, mortgages. We cannot go to Qumran. The tradition of Carmel, whatever its historical worth, is the tradition that says we do not have to.
The fellowship has shaped its practices for the northern branch. The Morning Watch takes twenty minutes because a parent cannot take more. The common table is the family's supper. The white garment is a clean heart because no one at an office can wear linen. The Noon Peace is five minutes because that is what a lunch break allows. We have kept the discipline of the desert and fitted it to the mountain, and the historian's second order is our warrant.
A Word on the Southern Branch
The fellowship honors the celibate order too, and some of our students belong to it by circumstance or by choice. Theirs is the harder road in some ways and the easier in others; they have more silence and fewer excuses. We ask them to remember the historian's report that the marrying Essenes held celibacy to cut off the chief part of life, and we ask the married to remember that the celibate order produced the scrolls. Neither branch is the trunk. The trunk is the way, and both branches draw from it.
The Mount Carmel page in the history room gives the fellowship's account of the northern mountain and its traditions.