The Essenes were a people of the book before the phrase existed. The historian says they searched the writings of the ancients with extraordinary zeal. The philosopher says they spent the seventh day hearing the books expounded. The caves yielded copies of nearly every book of the Hebrew scriptures, often in several copies, alongside writings no one had read for nineteen centuries. This room introduces those writings and the others that the fellowship reads, tells what each is and why it matters, and says how we read them.
We do not host the ancient texts here. Good translations are easily found and a text deserves a book and a pencil. What we offer is orientation: enough to know what you are holding when you open it. The one text we do host is our own, the Lections of the Morning Watch, and we have marked it plainly as ours.
The Ancient Texts
- The Dead Sea Scrolls
- The library of the desert community, found in eleven caves near Qumran. Copies of the scriptures, writings of the wider Judaism of the age, and the community's own rules, hymns, and commentaries: the Community Rule, the Damascus Document, the Thanksgiving Hymns, the War Scroll, the Temple Scroll, and the interpretations of the prophets. For the first time in history the Essenes speak in their own voice.
- The Book of Enoch
- The visionary ascent of the seventh from Adam, who saw the Watchers fall, the places of the dead, the courses of the stars, and the Son of Man before the Ancient of Days. Treasured at Qumran, quoted by the earliest followers of the Way, preserved complete only in Ethiopia.
- The Nag Hammadi Library
- Thirteen papyrus codices buried in a jar in Upper Egypt: the Gospel of Thomas with its one hundred fourteen sayings, the Gospel of Philip, the Gospel of Truth, and the visionary treatises of those who sought the kingdom within. The other great rediscovery of the twentieth century.
The Fellowship's Readings
- The Lections of the Morning Watch
- Short readings composed by the fellowship over many years for the hours of the day and the seasons of the year, written in the voice of the tradition. Not ancient, and never claimed to be. Offered for use at the Morning and Evening Watch by those who find them helpful.
- How We Read
- The fellowship's method for reading an ancient text with both a critical mind and an open heart: slowly, in context, aloud, with a notebook, and with the willingness to be changed.
The Common Scriptures
The fellowship also reads, as the Essenes did, the Law, the Prophets, and the Writings of the Hebrew scriptures, and as the Way did, the gospels and letters of the Christian scriptures. We have no separate pages for these because they need no introduction from us. We note only which parts the tradition has loved most: the first chapters of Genesis, with the garden and the tree and the walking of Enoch with God; the Psalms, which the community sang; Isaiah, whose voice in the wilderness gave them their vocation; Ezekiel, with his vision of the chariot and the sons of Zadok; Daniel, with his Son of Man; the Sermon on the Mount, with its poor in spirit and its lilies of the field; and the gospel of John, with its light shining in darkness.