Glossary - Essenes.org

Every tradition has its words, and a student who does not know them stands outside the door. These are the words that recur on this site, some ancient and some the fellowship's own. Where a word is ours we say so.

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Ascetic: One who practices self-denial for spiritual ends. The ancient writers call the Essenes ascetic because of their plain food, plain dress, and refusal of luxury. The fellowship prefers the word simplicity, which keeps the aim in view.
Children of Light: The name the desert community gave to those who had chosen the way of truth over the way of falsehood. See the teaching of the same name.
Communion: In the fellowship's usage, a brief morning or evening contemplation of one of the fourteen forces of the Tree of Life: the earthly forces at morning, the heavenly at evening.
Community Rule: The scroll that lays out the discipline of the desert community: its entry procedures, its common meals, its ranks, its penalties, and its teaching on the two spirits.
Covenant: The binding agreement between God and a people. The desert community spoke of a new or renewed covenant, entered by oath, that set them apart from the rest of Israel.
Damascus Document: A sectarian text known both from the caves and from a medieval copy, which addresses members living in towns and camps rather than in the desert settlement, and which recalls the exile of the community under a Teacher of Righteousness.
Dead Sea Scrolls: The manuscripts found between the late nineteen-forties and the fifties in caves near the ruined settlement of Qumran by the Dead Sea. They include copies of nearly every book of the Hebrew scriptures, other Jewish writings of the period, and the community's own rules, hymns, and commentaries.
Earthly Mother: In the Tree of Life teaching, the source of the earthly forces: sun, water, air, earth, life, and joy. A way of speaking of creation as the nurturing matrix of bodily life, not a second deity.
Enoch: The seventh from Adam, who in Genesis walked with God and was not, for God took him. The Book of Enoch recounts his heavenly journeys and was treasured by the Essenes.
Essene: The name given by Greek and Latin writers to a Jewish movement of the second century before the common era to the first century of it, known for communal life, ritual washing, dawn prayer, and strict observance. The origin of the name is uncertain; suggestions include words for holy ones, healers, doers of the Law, and the silent ones.
Evening Watch: The fellowship's name for the short evening practice of gratitude, examination, and the heavenly communion.
Gnosis: Greek for knowledge, particularly the direct inner knowledge of divine things. The sayings gospels and the visionary treatises of Egypt belong to a wider stream often called gnostic.
Heavenly Father: In the Tree of Life teaching, the source of the heavenly forces: power, love, wisdom, eternal life, creative work, and peace.
Lections: Readings appointed for a time or season. The Lections of the Morning Watch are the fellowship's own compositions in the voice of the tradition.
Living water: Water that flows, as in a stream or spring, as opposed to still water in a cistern. Required for ritual washing in the old Law and in the practice of the desert community, and taken up as a symbol of the Spirit.
Morning Watch: The hour before and at dawn in which the fellowship keeps its principal practice, after the ancient report that the Essenes prayed toward the rising sun.
Nag Hammadi: A town in Upper Egypt near which, in the mid twentieth century, a jar was found containing thirteen papyrus codices of early Christian and gnostic writings.
Nazarene: A name given in the New Testament to Jesus and to his earliest followers, and later used by Christian writers for a Jewish-Christian group that kept the Law. Some have connected it with a pre-Christian Essene branch. The matter is debated.
Noon Peace: The fellowship's midday pause for a contemplation of one of the seven peaces.
One Law: The fellowship's name for the single order of balance that governs nature and the soul alike, the first of the key teachings.
Ossaean: A name given by a later Christian writer to a sect he counts among the Jews, which many take to be a variant of Essene. Some traditions use it for the celibate desert branch as distinct from the marrying Nazarene branch.
Pesher: Hebrew for interpretation. The scroll commentaries that read the words of the prophets as coded references to the community's own history and expected future.
Qumran: The ruined settlement on a marl terrace above the northwest shore of the Dead Sea, near the caves where the scrolls were found. Many hold it to have been an Essene center.
Rule: A written discipline of common life. The desert community had more than one.
Sevenfold Peace: The teaching that a whole life is made of peace with the body, the mind, the family, humanity, one's heritage, the earth, and the Eternal.
Sons of Zadok: The priestly line descended from the high priest of David's and Solomon's time. The scrolls give this title to the community's priests, who held themselves the true heirs of the temple.
Still Lamp: The fellowship's name for its central meditation practice: sitting in stillness as a lamp sits, lit and unmoving.
Teacher of Righteousness: The unnamed founder or early leader of the desert community, remembered in the scrolls as the one to whom God made known all the mysteries of the prophets.
Therapeutae: A contemplative Jewish community near a lake outside Alexandria described by the Alexandrian philosopher, whose name means healers or attendants. Often considered cousins to the Essenes.
Tree of Life: The ancient symbol, found in Genesis and in many traditions, used in the fellowship's teaching for the fourteen forces that sustain a human life.
Two Spirits: The teaching in the Community Rule that God appointed two spirits for humanity, of truth and of falsehood, of light and of darkness, and that every person walks in both until the appointed end.
War Scroll: The scroll describing the final battle between the Sons of Light and the Sons of Darkness, read by the fellowship as an image of the inner struggle.
Watch: A division of the night or day kept by sentries, and by extension a set time of prayer. The fellowship keeps a Morning Watch and an Evening Watch.
Way, The: The earliest name for the movement of Jesus's followers in the Acts of the Apostles, and the self-designation of the desert community, which spoke of preparing the way in the wilderness.
Wicked Priest: The adversary of the Teacher of Righteousness in the scroll commentaries, usually taken to be a high priest in Jerusalem.
Yahad: Hebrew for unity or community, the word the desert sectarians most often used of themselves.