WHO ON EARTH WERE THE ESSENES?

Chances are you have not been lying awake at night wondering about the Essenes! Understandably so. Nevertheless they provide an important background for understanding Judaism between 200 B.C. and 68 A.D. And they provide an important background for understanding early Christianity.

In the time of Jesus there were about 4000 Essenes living in Israel-Palestine, Damascus, Syria and in Qumran, a settlement on the northwest shore of the Dead Sea. It is the Qumran group that is of most interest because they copied and preserved the famous Dead Sea Scrolls discovered in caves around the Dead Sea between 1947 and 1956.

The Essenes were one of four Jewish sects of the time, the others being the Sadducees, Pharisees and Zealots. Readers of the New Testament will remember Jesus tangled with the Sadducees and Pharisees from time to time. And one of Jesus’ 12 apostles was Simon, the Zealot, the Zealots being a right wing, religious-political, radical group.

But the Essene group at Qumran had many practices which in some ways prefigured early Christianity. They believed they were living at the end of time, as did early Christians. They had a governing council of 12 men something like the 12 apostles. They held property in common as did the earliest Jerusalem Christians. They had a Teacher of Righteousness who accurately interpreted the Hebrew Scriptures for them much like Jesus. And they shared a common meal each evening presided over by the priest.

Believing the current Sadducean priesthood in Jerusalem to be corrupt, they went into the Judean wilderness at Qumran to prepare for the coming of God in the persons of his political and priestly Messiahs.

John the Baptist may have been part of the Essene community before he went off to preach on his own in the vicinity of Qumran. And what was his message? He was the “voice in the wilderness” to prepare for the coming of God’s anointed, the Messiah.

At your next party, drop into the conversation a few words about the importance of the Essenes in the development of Judaism and Christianity. Jaws will drop in amazement at your erudition!