The historian who described the Essenes said that the Jews of his time had three philosophies, and he compared them to the schools of the Greeks. The comparison was for his Roman readers and should not be pressed. The three were not philosophies but ways of being faithful to the same God, the same Law, and the same land, and the differences among them were differences of emphasis, of class, and of hope. Still, the three-way division is a useful map, and a student of the Essenes should know the other two roads.
The Sadducees
The Sadducees were the party of the temple and the high priesthood. They were few, wealthy, and powerful. They accepted as binding only the written Law of Moses and rejected the oral traditions that had grown up around it. They denied the resurrection of the dead, the existence of angels and spirits in the developed sense, and the idea of fate; the historian says they held that human beings have entire freedom and that God does not concern himself with our doing good or evil. They were practical men. When the temple fell they disappeared, for they had been the temple's men.
To the Essenes the Sadducees were the problem. The scrolls speak of a Wicked Priest who defiled the sanctuary and persecuted the Teacher, of priests who followed a wrong calendar and offered unclean sacrifices, of a temple that had become a den of robbers. The Essenes considered themselves the true Sons of Zadok, keeping the true priesthood in exile until God should cleanse his house.
The Pharisees
The Pharisees were the party of the people and of the scribes. They were many, and the historian says the common people followed them in matters of prayer and worship. They accepted both the written Law and the oral tradition of the elders, which they believed went back to Moses. They taught the resurrection of the dead, the reality of angels, a judgment to come, and a balance between fate and freedom. They built the synagogue as the center of Jewish life alongside the temple, and when the temple fell they built the Judaism of the rabbis on its foundation.
The Essenes and the Pharisees were in some ways close. Both were movements of the pious, both separated themselves from impurity, both studied intensely and expected a judgment. But they differed sharply on the calendar, on the degree of purity required, and on whether the temple could be reformed from within. The scrolls seem to mock the Pharisees as seekers of smooth things, those who interpret the Law to make it easier. The Pharisees, for their part, would have found the Essene withdrawal from the common life of Israel both proud and unnecessary.
The Essenes
The Essenes were the party of withdrawal and of the covenant. They were fewer than the Pharisees and had no power in the temple or the court. They accepted the written Law with a rigor that exceeded the Pharisees, kept a solar calendar of 364 days that they held to be the calendar of heaven, and added to the Law their own rules of community, which they believed had been revealed to the Teacher. They taught the immortality of the soul, the two spirits, the appointed end, and the coming of anointed ones. They did not sacrifice in the temple, holding it defiled, but sent offerings and waited for its cleansing.
What set the Essenes apart above all was the common life: the shared property, the common table, the daily washing, the white garment, the ranks and the examinations, the oath of entry. The Pharisee was a pious householder among his neighbors. The Essene was a member of a body, a limb of the Unity, and his piety was not his own but the community's.
A Fourth Way, and Others
The historian adds a fourth philosophy, the revolutionaries who held that God alone should rule Israel and that no tax should be paid to Caesar. Later Christian writers list seven Jewish sects and add names the historian did not know: Hemerobaptists who washed daily, Ossaeans, Nazarenes, and others. The fellowship suspects that Judaism in the time of Jesus was far more various than any list, and that the Essenes themselves were not one thing but a family of related communities, some celibate and some marrying, some in the desert and some in the towns, united by a common discipline and a common hope.
Why This Matters for a Student
A student of the mystical way may wonder why the sects of ancient Judea matter. They matter because the Way did not arise in a vacuum. When Jesus speaks of the poor in spirit, the sons of light, the new covenant in his blood, the kingdom at hand, he speaks a language that his hearers knew, and the Essenes had been speaking it for a century and a half. When the first church holds all things in common, it does what the Essenes did. When John washes in the Jordan and reads Isaiah's voice in the wilderness, he stands where the desert community stood.
The fellowship does not say that Jesus was an Essene. We say that the soil in which the Way was planted had been tilled by them, and that a student who knows the soil understands the plant.