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The vast majority of Dead Sea Scroll scholars are committed to the so-called Essene hypothesis—the belief that the scrolls (or at least those scrolls regarded as “sectarian”) were written by the Essenes, an exotic Jewish movement described at some length by the ancient Jewish historian Josephus.
The Essene hypothesis is based primarily on the writings of Josephus. It is the supposed similarities between Josephus’s description of the Essenes and what we find in the scrolls that leads to the supposedly ineluctable conclusion.1
The argument was powerfully put by one of the most influential scroll scholars, Yigael Yadin, more than 50 years ago:
We therefore have before us two alternative conclusions: either the sect of the scrolls is none other than the Essenes themselves; or it was a sect which resembled the 062Essenes in almost every respect, its dwelling place, its organization, its customs.2
I am not an expert in the Dead Sea Scrolls. I have spent my academic life, however, studying the works of Josephus, and I do not find the convergences between the scrolls and Josephus that supporters of the Essene hypothesis rely on. If the scrolls were written by the Essenes, that cannot yet be demonstrated by reference to Josephus.
Josephus (37–c. 100 C.E.) wrote three works that have survived, totaling 30 Greek volumes: the seven-volume Judean War (around 80 C.E.), which is a history of the first Jewish Revolt against Rome in which Jerusalem was burned and the Temple destroyed; the 20-volume Judean Antiquities, a history of the Jewish people ending with a one-volume autobiographical appendix (93–94 C.E.); and the two-volume essay on the antiquity of Judean law known as Against Apion.3
Although these works vary in specific aims and themes, they all presuppose a Roman audience that is keenly interested in matters Judean—and in their exotic author who is both an aristocratic priest and a former general in the revolt against Rome.
As one can easily imagine, the atmosphere in the world capital after the Judean revolt was not outwardly favorable to Jews. Predictable jingoism on the part of the victors was combined with the new rulers’ need to trumpet their military success—as if over a foreign nation, though in fact the suppression of a revolt in a Roman province—as their main credential for holding power. Josephus complains that other writers are “bullying and humiliating” the Judean side.4 All his works, therefore, are aimed at redeeming the Judeans’ national character: by explaining the true causes and course of the war, charting the unique antiquity and superior laws of the Judeans, and confronting slanders about Judean origins.
Josephus emphasizes and illustrates the manliness of the Judeans everywhere throughout his text, because manliness was at the heart of the Roman self-congratulation. In ancient thinking, “virtue” was closely tied to what seemed ideal masculine qualities: toughness, courage, simplicity of life, loyalty, piety, and contempt for suffering and even death. Josephus attributes these qualities to his people at every opportunity, and in War 2 and Antiquities 18 he uses the Essenes, who apparently had some fame outside of Judea, as “Exhibit A.” In War 2 the Essene passage (2.119–161) has an added function: Josephus implicitly contrasts the values of these admirable philosophers with the embarrassing behavior of King Herod’s sons (recounted in his preceding narrative). Archelaus, who inherited Judea, Samaria and Idumea on Herod’s death, would do anything to achieve power, Josephus tells us. But once he got it, he used it only to indulge his brutality and sexual lust. The Spartan-like Essenes—a community of males who reject women and wealth along with all kinds of individual distinction—provide a vivid contrast.
The Qumran-Essene hypothesis relies in large part on supposed parallels between the customs attributed to the Essenes by Josephus and those described in the scrolls. But a careful review of both sides betrays a big difference in both tone and substance. Josephus’s Essenes are characterized by exceptional order, discipline and obedience in dress, deportment, meals (held in “shiver-inducing silence”) and other areas of life. He begins by observing that the Essenes “certainly are renowned for cultivating seriousness (or solemnity, gravitas).”5 He uses the same word for the Essene “order” (tagma) that he otherwise uses for the Roman legions, stressing throughout his account the Essenes’ endurance, courage, self-control and manly virtue.
The acid test of any philosophy in antiquity was the way its believers faced death. Josephus dwells on this as the climax of his presentation of the Essenes:6 Contemptuous of death’s terrors, some of them underwent torture during the then-recent war with Rome. Like other Judeans, only more so, they smiled in their agonies and died cheerfully.
Although these themes are widely paralleled in Greco-Roman moral and philosophical discourse, it is difficult to find striking parallels with the people described in the scrolls. For example, we can assume that all such groups with common meals insisted that people behave well. But Josephus’s Essenes achieved renown for being remarkably disciplined.
The Dead Sea Scroll known as the Community Rule, by contrast, seems to envisage some fairly boorish, even disgusting behavior on the part of the membership. A range of penalties, from reduced rations to expulsion, is assessed for speaking the name of God in a curse, running fraudulent financial schemes, lying down to sleep in a general meeting, practicing vigilante justice, bursting into raucous laughter, spitting into the assembled group, 063repeatedly walking out of a meeting, going around naked, or exposing one’s private parts through flimsy clothing (1QS 6:24–7:25).
These types of behaviors would have been totally incongruent with Josephus’s portrait of the solemn and disciplined Essenes, and therefore such rules would have been unimaginable. One might reasonably object that we do not have a Community Rule equivalent for Josephus’s Essenes, and if we did it might bring their lofty image down a notch or two. That is true: It might. But where are those alleged close and unique parallels between Josephus’s Essenes and the scroll people?
Many scholars have pointed out a superficial commonality: Josephus includes in his description of Essenes a reference to spitting as does the Community Rule, as noted above. But in sharp contrast to the Community Rule, Josephus is not describing punishable offenses in the group. Josephus is talking about the Essenes’ extraordinary discipline: “And most distinctively of all Judeans, they guard against spitting into middles or to the right side, and against applying themselves to labors on the Sabbath days.”7 A single verb governs both rigorous Sabbath observance and the spitting regulation. Josephus cannot be referring to spitting into the group; indeed, his description allows spitting to the left side! Josephus is most likely talking about common superstitious practices in antiquity: spitting into one’s torso or into the right shoe for good luck. This is what Josephus’s Essenes, being unusually scrupulous, guard against. But whatever he means, he frames this issue as one of extraordinary discipline: He is obviously not talking about rude behavior, as is the Community Rule.
Moreover, the Community Rule’s prohibition of spitting in public meetings is not in and of itself distinctive. We find it in rabbinic literature—and I have also seen it in a number of modern gyms, which make no claim to a Qumran heritage.
Many other customs that Josephus attributes to the Essenes are either unparalleled in the scrolls or antithetical to their ethos. Josephus’s Essenes consider olive oil a stain. They maintain a hard, dry skin (like the Spartans) and wear white; if they accidentally get oil on themselves, they scrub it off.8 This is not a purity issue, apparently, since they handle oil for other purposes (e.g., cooking and lighting), which is why they risk getting it on themselves. It is just that these tough guys do not use it on their skin the way most other men did. (Josephus and Tacitus elsewhere make fun of girly men who indulge in cosmetic oil.)
This Essene prohibition against the use of oil on the skin is without parallel in the scrolls and indeed the tough-guy image that this implies is not part of the ethos of the scroll people.
Josephus also makes a point of the Essenes’ reverence for the sun as God: They pray to the sun in the morning, and avoid offending “the rays of God” by making sure that they are wrapped up completely when they relieve themselves.9 This covering is necessary because of the distinctive way they relieve themselves (and is the reason for the small hatchet provided to novices): alone, with no roof over them, digging individual holes in secluded spots and then filling them in. This enhances Josephus’s general picture of the Essenes’ mobile and free life, without the comforts or attachments that others value.
By contrast, the scrolls prohibit worship of the sun on pain of death. Moreover, they envisage built latrines: one has even been identified in Qumran’s main building (see box on p. 64).10
It is true that there are numerous parallels between Josephus’s Essenes and the scroll community: tough initiation rites, rejection of luxury (sometimes of private ownership), community of goods, communal meals of simple food, and simple dress. But these customs are common to many other groups with utopian aspirations, including early Christians, Baptists, Pharisees, the men of the Alexandrian Museum, Spartans and Pythagoreans.
In the quote from Yigael Yadin at the beginning of this article, he mentions, in addition to the similarity of the customs of the Essenes and the Dead Sea Scroll people, the similarity in their organization of society. Many Dead Sea Scroll scholars have followed Yadin’s lead in this regard. When I compare the social organization of the two groups, however, I find no more similarity in them than in the customs I have already discussed. Truly, I cannot imagine what Yadin had in mind here.
For Josephus, Essene leadership is basic to their distinctive ethos of discipline and order.11 He gives a pointed statement on this subject: “The curators of the communal affairs are elected by hand.”12 These curators appear several times, as those who manage the order and give daily direction to the others; they are the only leaders the group seems to have. Election “by hand” was understood in antiquity as an expression of peer respect, in contrast to both 064election by lot (i.e., by chance) and the standard assumption of status by birthright, wealth or other such claims. There is no room for caste-based leadership among Josephus’s Essenes.
In contrast, leadership of the scroll community, as is documented regularly throughout the Community Rule and all other substantial Qumran texts, is caste-based. Yadin himself notes that “in all religious matters they [members of the scroll community] were ruled by the priest or, where there was none, by the Levites; their lay affairs were supervised by a controller.”13
In his description of the Essenes, Josephus distinguishes four grades of Essene, depending on duration of time in the order.14 This description is also in sharp contrast to the hereditary, caste-based leadership of the scroll community. Levites do not appear in Josephus’s Essene descriptions, and priests have no leadership role.
Qumran, whose archaeological remains are so captivating—and puzzling—is often described as the Essene motherhouse, and Yadin refers to Qumran as an Essene “dwelling place.” For this, he cannot rely on Josephus. For Josephus never mentions Qumran—a strange omission if in fact Qumran was the Essene motherhouse. Indeed, Josephus’s portrait of Essene dwelling places is hard to reconcile with any Qumran connection. Josephus describes Essene men as constantly on the move: “No one city is theirs, but they settle amply in each.” This enhances the picture of Essene men as being entirely free of wives, families and material possessions. They take nothing with them as they travel from town to town; a quartermaster in each place looks after them, drawing from the common stock.15
Although Josephus does not mention Qumran, he notes that several Essene leaders (Judas, Menachem, Simon and possibly John) were all active in Judea’s largest city, Jerusalem, where they also taught students. The city has an Essene Gate. King Herod also had dealings with them, but there is no mention of Qumran.
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In sum, so far as I can tell, there is little or no resemblance between Josephus’s Essenes and the scroll community.
For many scholars, the decisive consideration in identifying Qumran as an Essene settlement is Pliny the Elder’s reference to Ein Gedi as “lying below” an Essene settlement. Scholars are divided, however, as to whether this refers to Qumran and even more so as to whether Pliny, who relied only on second-hand evidence, is reliable or accurate.16 By no means does Pliny settle the question as to whether Qumran was an Essene settlement.
An article recently appeared in this magazine by a distinguished Hebrew University philosopher, Edna Ullmann-Margalit, that considered the validity of the Essene hypothesis. She characterized it as a “default theory”—that is, “Unless and until an alternative theory wins you over, you stick with the Qumran-Essene theory, regardless of whether you might consider it less than compelling and regardless of how many faults you may actually find with it.”
Professor Ullmann-Margalit recognizes that the alleged Essene identification of the scroll community depends “almost exclusively” on Josephus. For her, there are “striking points of resemblance,” but there are also “striking discrepancies.” For example, Josephus does not discuss predestination, a central tenet of the scroll community. The scroll community followed a solar calendar, unlike the lunar calendar of other Jews; Josephus does not even mention this critical difference in his description of the Essenes.
What I have tried to show in this article is that from the viewpoint of a student of Josephus, there are even more discrepancies than Ullmann-Margalit mentions and fewer points of resemblance than have generally been supposed by scroll scholars. Scroll scholars understand the scrolls; they are less sensitive to the nuances of Josephus’s historical narratives.
This may perhaps best be illustrated by one characteristic I have not yet discussed: the Essene attitude toward sex. While Josephus generally portrays Essenes as celibate, he includes a brief note on some Essenes who marry. However, they “do not have sexual relations with [their wives] during pregnancy, thus showing that their purpose in marriage is not pleasure but the assurance of posterity.”17 In keeping with their assumptions, scroll scholars look for parallels in the scrolls and in the text of Josephus.
But in this regard, Josephus’s Essenes simply embody the virtues of other Judeans, which were also admired by many Romans. In the ringing final paragraphs of Josephus’s last known work, Against Apion, he stresses general Judean values in much the same language as he used to describe Essene values in the Judean War: simplicity, close fellowship, toughness, severity of law, devotion to that law, preservation of secrets from outsiders, strong belief in the afterlife and contempt for death.18
In Against Apion, Josephus also claims that Judeans have sex only for procreation, not for pleasure, exactly like those exceptional Essenes who take wives in spite of themselves.19 In short, for Josephus, Essene sexual customs are by no means unique in Judean society.
Despite its problems, Professor Ullmann-Margalit considers the Essene hypothesis the most likely of all the alternative theories to be correct. She characterizes it as the “default theory” and concludes that “Barring dramatic new evidence that might yet come to light and cause a sea-change, this status of the Qumran-Essene theory, as far as I can judge, is just about right.”
I share much of her criticism of the Essene hypothesis, but I part company with her apparent acceptance of it on the strength of its being the “default theory.” Historians are not permitted to have default theories. The only acceptable default position is that we simply do not know the answer. That is the dust from which we begin and, if we cannot come up with a theory that convinces, to that dust we must return.
In this we historians are somewhat like detectives. We define the problem we need to solve, we identify and study all possibly relevant evidence in context, and we test hypotheses against the evidence to see which one would explain it all. When we are sure that we have a winner, we present it to a critical audience that has been fully briefed on the evidence to see whether we can convince them.
For historians, this critical audience comprises peers and reviewers; for the detective (now handed 081to the prosecuting attorney), it is the judge and jury. If the evidence does not convince the judge and jury, the accused walks free.
As historians, we cannot say, in effect, “Well someone has to go to jail for this, and I have a right to hold this fellow unless you can provide compelling evidence for someone else!” We must admit that we simply do not know the identity of the Judean community who wrote the scrolls. So far, like so much surrounding the Dead Sea Scrolls themselves, their authors remain a mystery.
