Three men who lived in the first century of the common era wrote about the Essenes, and almost everything that was known of them for the next eighteen centuries came from those three. One was a Jewish philosopher of Alexandria, elderly when Jesus was young, who wrote in Greek for educated readers of both his peoples and who held up the Essenes as living proof that virtue was possible. One was a Jewish priest and general turned Roman client and historian, who claimed to have spent time among the sects of his people as a young man and who described the Essenes at length in two works. One was a Roman naturalist and administrator who died in the eruption that buried the cities of the bay of Naples, and who devoted a paragraph of his vast encyclopedia to a people on the shore of the Dead Sea.
They did not know one another. They wrote from different places, for different readers, with different purposes. Where they agree, the fellowship takes it as solid ground. Where they differ, we take it as a sign that the Essenes were not one thing.
Where They Agree
All three say the Essenes held property in common. The philosopher says they had a single treasury and common expenditures, common clothes, common meals, and that no one owned a house that was not shared with all. The historian says a newcomer surrendered his goods to the order and that among them no one was found richer than another. The naturalist says, with a Roman's astonishment, that they lived without money.
All three say they were few and lived apart in some sense. The philosopher gives a number, four thousand, and says they lived in villages, shunning the cities for their wickedness. The historian says they had no one city but settled in large numbers in every town. The naturalist places them by the Dead Sea with only palm trees for company. Taken together: a movement of a few thousand, with a desert center and a wide scattering through the towns.
All three say they lived strictly. The philosopher says they were trained in piety, holiness, justice, and the knowledge of good and evil, and that they studied the laws of their fathers, especially on the seventh day, interpreting them by allegory. The historian gives the full discipline: the dawn prayers, the washings, the white garments, the silent meals, the three-year entry, the oaths, the ranks, the penalties. The naturalist says only that they renounced pleasure and that their number was renewed daily by those who came to them weary of life.
Where They Differ
On women. The naturalist says flatly that they had none. The philosopher says they shunned marriage, holding that a wife is a selfish creature who corrupts a man's virtue. The historian says the same of the main body, but adds a second order of Essenes who married, agreeing with the rest in every other way, and who held that those who did not marry cut off the chief part of life. The scrolls agree with the historian: the Community Rule knows no women; the Damascus Document legislates for wives and children. There were two orders, or more.
On slaves. The philosopher says they had none and condemned slaveholders as unjust. The historian says they had none because they considered it a cause of injustice. On this they agree, and the fellowship notes that the Essenes were among the very few in the ancient world to say so.
On sacrifice. The historian says they sent offerings to the temple but did not sacrifice there, using a different purification. The philosopher says they did not sacrifice animals at all but sanctified their minds. The scrolls show a community that held the temple defiled and had designed a better one, and that spoke of its own prayer as the offering of the lips. The fellowship reads this as a movement in transition, from a priesthood that sacrificed to a community that had become the sacrifice.
On the soul. The historian gives the full Greek-sounding doctrine: immortal souls, drawn into the prison of the body, released at death to an island of the blessed or a stormy pit. The philosopher says nothing of it. The scrolls speak of eternal life and eternal light in a more Hebrew idiom. The fellowship suspects the historian dressed an Essene teaching in Greek clothes for his Roman readers, and that the teaching underneath was real.
What the Scrolls Add
The scrolls add the inside. The three witnesses described a people from the outside: what they did, how they looked, what they refused. The scrolls tell us what they thought they were doing. They were the remnant of Israel, the Sons of Zadok, the men of the new covenant, who had gone into the wilderness to prepare the way of the Lord. They kept the true calendar while the temple kept a false one. They had a Teacher to whom God had revealed the meaning of the prophets. They expected the end, soon, with a war and a judgment and the coming of anointed ones. And they had, already, been raised from the dust to stand with the holy ones.
The scrolls also add the darkness: the hatred of outsiders, the curses on the men of the lot of Belial, the penalties for the smallest slip. The ancient witnesses admired the Essenes and did not dwell on this. The scrolls are honest. The fellowship tries to be too.
What We Still Do Not Know
We do not know what Essene means. We do not know whether the community at Qumran was the whole movement, its center, or one branch of it. We do not know the name of the Teacher or the Wicked Priest, though there are good guesses. We do not know what the Essenes thought of John who baptized or of Jesus, or whether they thought of them at all. We do not know how many of them joined the Way after the war, or how many kept the hours in silence for generations afterward. We do not know whether the tradition of a northern branch on Carmel preserves a memory or a wish.
The fellowship finds this not knowing bracing rather than discouraging. The ancient community ranked its members by understanding, and understanding begins with knowing the edge of one's knowledge. We stand at the edge. The desert is on the other side of it, and the desert, as the Lection says, does not give answers. It takes away the noise that hides them.