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Essene Origins: Palestine or Babylonia?

Some Essenes may have survived almost 1000 years after Qumran

The preceding article described the discovery, 50 years before the Dead Sea Scrolls were found, of what has been dubbed the “First Dead Sea Scroll.” It was found in Cairo in 1897 and became known to scholars as the Damascus Document. Fragments of other earlier copies of the Damascus Document were later found in the Dead Sea caves.

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Footnotes

1.

Jerome Murphy-O’Connor, “The Essenes In Palestine,” Biblical Archeologist, Volume 40, (September, 1977), pp. 100–124.

2.

Although it is impossible to identify the Teacher of Righteousness who led the Essenes at the time of the Wicked Priest, the Wicked Priest was probably Jonathan Maccabeus or Simon Maccabeus. Scholars are divided on this question. See Frank Moore Cross, “The Dead Sea Scrolls and the People Who Wrote Them,” BAR 03:01.

3.

Consistent with this theory, there may well have been other centers of Essenes in Palestine. Some scholars contend they have found archaeological evidence of Essene occupation on Mount Zion (see Bargil Pixner, “An Essene Quarter on Mt. Zion?” Studia Hierosolymitana in onore di P. Bellarmino Bagatti, Studium Biblicum Franciscanum Collectio Maior. N. 22–23 Vol. I Studi Archeologici, [Franciscan Printing Jerusalem, 1979], pp. 245–284), and at Haifa (see Stephen Goranson, “On the Hypothesis that Essenes Lived on Mt. Carmel,” Revue de Qumran, Vol. 9, No. 4, pp. 563–567, 1978.) (Josephus notes that the Essenes “occupy no one city, but settle in large numbers in every town.” (The Jewish War 11, 122–128 (4)).

4.

CD is the abbreviation scholars use to designate the Cairo copy of the Damascus Document.

5.

Others read the passage from Amos as ordering the exiles to Damascus. In either case, the symbolism is the same. Damascus is used for Babylon.

6.

Even before Solomon Schechter published the Damascus Document, scholars of Karaite history noted the similarities between the Essenes and Karaites. The Jewish Encyclopedia of 1902–1905 states that the Karaites “borrowed” from the Essenes. Other scholars reject this contention, however, arguing that “nowhere in early Karaite literature so far known is there mention of the discovery of pre-Karaite documents confirming the righteousness of the Karaite teachings” (Encyclopedia Judaica, Vol. 10, p. 762 (1972)).

7.

Nazi authorities were greatly concerned as to whether the Karaites were Jews. They posed this question to three rabbinical authorities who, in order to save the Karaites, all gave the opinion that Karaites were not of Jewish origin. The Karaites were spared by the Nazis.