The scrolls never name anyone. The founder is the Teacher of Righteousness, his enemy is the Wicked Priest, a rival is the Man of the Lie, and the members are the many, the sons of light, the men of the Unity. A community that believed every member's understanding and deeds belonged to the whole had little use for the names of individuals, and the scrolls keep that silence even about the man to whom God revealed all the mysteries of the prophets.
The ancient witnesses describe the Essenes as a type: a company in white, rising before the sun, eating in silence. But the historian, who loved a story, names a handful of them as individuals, and they turn up in places a reader of the Community Rule would never expect. This page gathers them.
Judas, Who Taught in the Temple
In the reign of Aristobulus, about a century before the common era, there was an Essene named Judas, the historian says, whose predictions had never once failed. He was in the temple one day, sitting with his disciples, for he had many who came to learn from him the art of foretelling, when he saw Antigonus, the king's brother, pass by. Judas cried out that it was better for him to die, since truth had died before him: he had foretold that Antigonus would be killed that very day at Strato's Tower, and Strato's Tower, the city on the coast, was many miles away, and most of the day was already gone. While he was still lamenting, word came that Antigonus had been murdered in an underground passage of the palace, a passage that also bore the name of Strato's Tower.
The prophecy is the point of the story for the historian, who elsewhere says the Essenes are seldom wrong in their predictions because they are trained from youth in the holy books and the sayings of the prophets. For the fellowship the setting is the point. An Essene teacher, a century before the Way, sat in the courts of the temple with a circle of students around him. He was not hidden in the desert. He was in the middle of the city, teaching in the open, known by the people who passed.
Menahem and the Boy Herod
The historian tells a second story, about an Essene named Menahem, who was known for the goodness of his life and for his foreknowledge of things to come. When Herod was still a boy, going to his lessons, Menahem met him in the street and greeted him as king of the Jews. The boy thought the old man did not know who he was, or was mocking him. Menahem smiled, struck him lightly on the back, and said: you will be king, and you will reign with good fortune, for God has found you worthy. Remember the blows of Menahem, as a sign that fortune changes. It would be best for you to love justice and piety toward God and fairness toward your people. But I know you will not.
Years later, at the height of his power, Herod sent for Menahem and asked how long he would reign. Menahem said nothing. Ten years, then? Yes, said Menahem, twenty, even thirty, and would not name the end. Herod gave him his hand and sent him away, and from that day, the historian says, he continued to honor all the Essenes. Elsewhere the historian adds that Herod excused the Essenes from the oath of loyalty he required of his subjects, since they would swear no oaths.
The fellowship loves this story for Menahem's honesty. He blessed a boy who would become a tyrant, told him exactly what he ought to be, told him to his face that he would not be it, and was right on every count. The Essene did not flatter the powerful. He also did not refuse to speak to them. The blows of Menahem are worth remembering for anyone who has had a run of good fortune: it changes.
Simon and the Ears of Grain
After Herod's death his son Archelaus ruled Judea, harshly. Near the end of his rule he dreamed that he saw ears of grain, full and ripe, being eaten by oxen. He summoned the diviners, who gave him the answers diviners give to princes. Then an Essene named Simon asked leave to speak. The ears, he said, are years, and the oxen are a change in things, because oxen turn the soil over when they plough. Your rule is ending. Five days later Archelaus was summoned to Rome by the emperor, and was sent into exile in Gaul, and never returned.
Again the historian's interest is in the prophecy. Again the fellowship notices the man. Simon was at the court of the ruler of Judea, among the advisers, close enough to be asked. He told a prince that his reign was over, and he was right.
John, Who Went to War
When the war with Rome began, the leaders of the revolt in Jerusalem appointed generals for the districts of the land. Over the district of Thamna, with Lydda and Joppa and Emmaus, the historian says, they set John the Essene. Not long after, John led an assault on the coastal city of Ascalon, and was killed there with many of his men.
Some readers think the historian meant a John from a place with a similar name, and not a member of the order at all. If he was an Essene, he complicates the picture of a people who would not shed blood. The fellowship notes that the historian also says the Essenes carried weapons when they traveled, for fear of robbers, that the War Scroll describes a holy war in great detail, and that the Essenes he saw tortured by the Romans had been captured in that war. The teaching of the Sanctity of Life comes from the wider stream of the tradition and from the gospel of the Way, and we have said so on its page. John the Essene is one of the reasons we have said so.
The Hermit Bannus
One more name belongs here, though the historian does not call him an Essene. Describing his own youth, the historian says that at about sixteen he resolved to try the three schools of his people, the Pharisees, the Sadducees, and the Essenes, and passed through all three with hard discipline. Not content, he heard of a man named Bannus who lived in the wilderness, wore clothing that grew on trees, ate only what grew of itself, and bathed in cold water by day and by night for the sake of purity. The historian became his disciple and lived with him three years. Then he returned to the city and began to order his life by the rule of the Pharisees.
The fellowship does not know who Bannus was. He sounds like John who baptized, and like the holy ones of the Dead Sea, and like neither exactly. What we notice is that our chief witness to the Essenes, the man whose description underlies so much of this site, spent three years of his youth in the desert with a hermit who washed day and night. When he writes that the Essenes bathed in cold water before every meal, he is not repeating gossip. He had stood in the cold water himself.
Why the Names Matter
Taken together, the named Essenes are a surprise. One taught in the temple. One met a boy in the street and later stood before him as king. One advised a prince at court. One may have commanded troops. None of them is placed in the desert settlement whose ruins we visit. They lived in the city and the towns, among the people, known by name to rulers who honored them.
This is the Essene way as the philosopher and the historian both describe it: a movement with a desert center and a wide body, its members scattered through every town, keeping their discipline in the middle of ordinary life. It is the second order the historian describes, the order of the towns, and it is the order to which almost every student of the fellowship belongs. The Gate of the Essenes page follows them into Jerusalem itself.
And there is a smaller lesson in the contrast between the scrolls and the stories. The community wrote no names, because each life belonged to the whole. The historian wrote names, because each life was a story. The fellowship's keepers sign what they write, so that a reader knows who is speaking. But we have come to love the silence of the scrolls too, and the thousand graves by the Dead Sea marked only with a heap of stones. Most of the faithful in every age are known by name to God alone. That is not a loss. It is the ordinary condition of holiness.