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Adjacent to the 11 caves on the northwestern shore of the Dead Sea where the famous Dead Sea Scrolls were found are the remains of an ancient settlement overlooking the Wadi Qumran. It is almost certain that the people who lived in this settlement placed the scrolls in the nearby caves. In two of the caves—Cave 4 and Cave 11—archaeologists found regularly spaced holes in the walls where supports for shelves were once anchored. Before the shelves collapsed or were destroyed, banks of scrolls were no doubt neatly stacked on the shelves.
But who were the people who lived in this settlement and collected these scrolls?
Throughout the history of research on the Dead Sea Scrolls, the dominant position has been that the people who inhabited this settlement were part of a Jewish sect known as the Essenes. True, some scholars questioned this view and preferred to identify the group as Pharisaic, Sadducean or even Christian, but their views had only very modest support.
In the last year, however, a distinguished scholar from New York University, Lawrence H. Schiffman, has argued that certain important, more recently available Qumran (that is, Dead Sea scroll) texts exhibit traits of the Sadducees. If so, we must raise anew the question of who the people were that lived at Qumran.
Schiffman relies primarily on a still un-published document known as 4QMMT, or MMT for short, and, to a lesser extent, on the famous Temple Scroll.
In an important article in the October 1990 issue of Bible Review, Schiffman set out his position at some length. He concluded that “MMT revolutionizes the question of Qumran origins and requires us to reconsider the entire Essene hypothesis. It shows beyond question that either the sect was not Essene, but was Sadducean, or that the Essene movement must be totally redefined as having emerged out of Sadducean beginnings.”
I see no justification for Schiffman’s first alternative (“the sect was not Essene, but Sadducean”). His second alternative (“the Essene movement must be totally redefined as having emerged out of Sadducean beginnings”) is, as he has formulated it, misleading, although it ultimately points in the right direction.
From a variety of texts, such as the Writings of the first-century C.E. historian Josephus, the New Testament and the Mishnah, we learn that the two leading Jewish groups during the last two centuries B.C.E. and the first century C.E. were the Sadducees and the Pharisees. But no Sadducean or Pharisaic documents have survived, unless, for the Sadducees, Schiffman is correct about works such as MMT. Accordingly, we learn about the Sadducees and Pharisees only through the reports of others—reports that are sometimes hostile (the New Testament), sometimes later (the Mishnah and the Talmuds) and always biased.
The situation with respect to the Essenes—the third of the three sects or philosophies that Josephus mentions—is even more problematic. There are fewer ancient references to the Essenes than there are to the Pharisees and Sadducees. The Essenes are mentioned by Josephus first in his account of Jewish history during the high priesthood of Jonathan the Maccabee (152–142 B.C.E.).1 Apparently these three groups—the Pharisees, the Sadducees and the Essenes—operated continuously from at 043least the mid-second century B.C.E. until the end of the First Jewish Revolt against Rome (66–70 C.E.).
Although the Essenes are mentioned less frequently than the Pharisees and Sadducees, the Essenes may today have won an advantage over their more famous rivals, since, according to most scholars, the authors and copyists of the Dead Sea Scrolls were Essenes. If they were in fact Essenes, we can now learn their views from their own pens, not merely through the reports and distortions of others. Oddly enough, the little-known Essenes may now have emerged into a brighter public light than their more famous co-religionists.
The identification of the Dead Sea Scroll community as Essene has been based primarily on two kinds of data: (1) evidence from the Roman scholar Pliny the Elder, and (2) the contents of the scrolls themselves as compared with Josephus’ and others’ descriptions of Essene beliefs and practices.
Pliny the Elder (23–79 C.E.) almost certainly mentions the Qumran group, referring to them as Essenes. In his famous Natural History he describes Judea and the Dead Sea:
On the west side of the Dead Sea, but out of range of the exhalations of the coast, is the solitary tribe of the Essenes, which is remarkable beyond all the other tribes in the whole world, as it has no women and has renounced all sexual desire, has no money, and has only palm-trees for company. Day by day the throng of refugees is recruited to an equal number by numerous accessions of persons tired of life and driven thither by the waves of fortune to adopt their manners. Thus through thousands of ages (incredible to relate) a race into which no one is born lives on forever; so prolific for their advantage is other men’s weariness of life!
“Lying below the Essenes [literally: these] was formerly the town of Engedi, second only to Jerusalem in the fertility of its land and in its groves of palm-trees, but now like Jerusalem a heap of ashes.”2 [I have italicized two items to be discussed later.]
The only place on the west side of the Dead Sea north of Ein Gedi where archaeological remains of a communal center were found is Qumran, as scholars have been quick to note. And precisely in that location, says Pliny, were to be found those peculiar Essenes about whose manner of life he seems so well informed.
Small objections have been raised to the inference that Pliny is talking about the inhabitants of the settlement at Qumran. Some have suggested that “lying below these” indicates that Pliny located the Essenes on the hills overlooking Ein Gedi. But there was no settlement at that location. Pliny does make a few mistakes—or the extant witnesses to the text of his book do. (They could be copyist’s mistakes.) The first mention of Jerusalem (italicized above), which was even more fertile than Ein Gedi, should be Jericho; Pliny also seems exceedingly optimistic about the antiquity of the Essenes, suggesting that the “tribe” has endured through “thousands of ages.” These, however, are only minor matters; they have, quite rightly, played little part in the discussion.
More important, some scholars have concluded that, since Pliny refers to the Essenes in the present tense and since his book was written in about 77 C.E., after the Qumran community had been destroyed in 68 C.E.,3 he can hardly have been describing Qumran and its residents. This potentially damaging objection is hardly fatal, however. Pliny regularly describes sites in the present tense. Moreover, in this section of his book it is quite likely that he is basing his description on an earlier source. Pliny himself acknowledged his heavy indebtedness to his sources; he names some 100 of them for the Natural History. For Book 5 alone, he lists 59 authorities from whom he extracted information. H. Rackham has written about Pliny’s own meager contributions, to his book: “[T]hey form only a small fraction of the work, which is in the main a second-hand compilation from the works of others.”4 Accordingly, the date when Pliny finished his book does not necessarily, or even probably, specify the time when his description of the Essenes, which he probably draws from another author was written.
When all is said and done the result is a pleasant surprise: An ancient Roman author who would have had no reason to fabricate this report, found a community of Essenes living alone on the northwestern shore of the Dead Sea—precisely where Qumran is. And he apparently took the trouble to discover that this group did not marry, had no private property and regularly welcomed new recruits.
The second fundamental argument for the claim that the residents of Qumran were Essenes is that the contents of the specifically sectarian texts among the scrolls are in remarkably closely agreement with what the ancient writers—Pliny, Philo and especially Josephus—tell us about Essene beliefs and practices. What the sectarian texts have to say coincides much more closely with Essene thought and action than with what the sources say about the Pharisaic and Sadducean views.
The most important Qumran text in these comparisons is the Manual of Discipline—one of the first of the scrolls to be published.5 The Manual of Discipline (also known as the Community Rule or Serekh ha-yahad, 1QS) describes, among other topics, some fundamental beliefs of the Qumran group, the initiation processes and ceremonies for new members and the rules that governed their daily life and gatherings.
Consider, for example, the striking harmony in the doctrine of fate or predeterminism as reflected first in Josephus and then in the Manual of Discipline. Josephus tells us that the three Jewish parties held differing opinions on this matter:
“As for the Pharisees, they say that certain events are the work of Fate, but not all; as to other events, it depends upon ourselves whether they shall take place or not. The sect of the Essenes, however, declares that Fate is mistress of all things, and that nothing befalls men unless it be in accordance with her decree. But the Sadducees do away with Fate, holding that there is no such thing and that human actions are not 044achieved in accordance with her decree, but that all things lie Within our own power, so that we ourselves are responsible for our well-being, while we suffer misfortune through our own thoughtlessness”6 (italics added).
Compare this with the Manual of Discipline, which articulates a strongly predestinarian theology of world history and human endeavor:
“From the God of Knowledge comes all that is and shall be. Before ever they existed He established their whole design, and when, as ordained for them, they come into being, it is in accord with His glorious design that they accomplish their task With out change.”7
And again:
The Angel of Darkness leads all the Children of righteousness astray, and, until his end, all their sin, iniquities, wicked-ness, and all their unlawful deeds are caused by his dominion in accordance with the mysteries of God.”8
Sentiments like these place the Qumran sectarians furthest from the Sadducean position (as described by Josephus), somewhat nearer the Pharisaic and clearly closest to the Essenes. To be more precise, the views contained in the manual of Discipline are identical with Essene thinking as described by Josephus. From theoretical points like this to other more mundane matters, the series of close resemblances continues. Josephus tells us of the Essenes’ common ownership Property:
“Riches they despise, and their community of goods is truly admirable; you will not find one among them distinguished by greater opulence than another. They have a law that new members on admission to the sect shall confiscate their property to the order, with the result that you will nowhere see either abject poverty or inordinate wealth; the individual’s possessions join the common stock and all, like brothers, enjoy a single patrimony.”9
Compare this with the Manual of Discipline:
“… when [the novice] has completed one year within the Community, the Congregation shall deliberate his case with regard to his understanding and observance of the Law. And if it be his destiny, according to the judgement of the Priests and the multitude of the men of their Covenant, to enter the company of the Community his property and earnings shall be handed over to the Bursar of the Congregation who shall register it to his account and shall not spend it for the Congregation. [….] But when the second year has passed, he shall be examined, [….] ; his property shall be merged.…”10 [The dots indicate lacunae in the text.]
True, there are some differences of detail—for example, in precisely how the years of the initiatory period are divided, but, in the end, the extent of agreement is astonishing.
Or take something as trivial as the rule that when the group is assembled, no one may spit. Josephus wrote: “They are careful not to spit into the midst of the company or to the right.”11 The Manual of Discipline prescribes: “Whoever has spat in an Assembly of the Congregation shall do penance for thirty days.”12
Many more examples could be added, but the point is clear. In a recent analysis of the material in Josephus and in the sectarian scrolls, Todd Beall concluded that there are 27 parallels between Josephus and the scrolls regarding the Essenes, 21 probable parallels, 10 cases in which Josephus makes claims about the Essenes that have no known parallel among the scrolls, and 6 discrepancies between them.13 In two of these six discrepancies, the scrolls are not unanimous, but differ among themselves. And even the discrepancies can be explained. For example, on the issue of common ownership of property: Josephus (and Pliny) and the Manual of Discipline mention it; another sectarian document among the scrolls, the Damascus Document, however, talks about placing the earnings of “at least two days out of every month into the hands of the Guardian Judges” for charitable distribution.14 This doesn’t sound like common ownership of property. However, the standard theory is that the Damascus Document gives the law for the Essenes living in towns and villages; the Manual of Discipline legislates for the branch of the Essene movement that lived at Qumran. Thus, different Essene groups seem to have had different rules about such matters.
Identifying the residents of Qumran with the Essenes does, thus, have. sturdy backing, and most have accepted it.
Before turning to Schiffman’s challenge to this thesis, however, I do want to add a few notes. First, as the preceding discussion has hinted, one must initially establish which documents from the caves are specifically sectarian before making comparisons of these kinds. A text cannot be considered sectarian just because it was found one of the 11 manuscript caves of Qumran. If that alone were sufficient, all the biblical manuscripts would have to be considered Essene, and clearly they are not Essene in origin. Scholars have been surprisingly slow to address this question. The method for determining which of the documents are sectarian must begin with one or two documents that undoubtedly are sectarian—such as the Manual of Discipline, the biblical commentaries and the Hymn Scroll—and then extrapolate from these to other texts15 Although it is sometimes difficult to tell whether a text is a sectarian document—the Temple Scroll is an example—this problem need not detain us here because it is precisely the Manual of Discipline, an undoubted sectarian document, that displays these numerous and weighty agreements with Josephus’ account of the Essenes. This, accordingly, is reassuring support for the identification.
Second, a cautionary note: We can compare the contents of Qumran documents only with what other ancient writers recorded about the parties in reports that have survived. Possibly, if they had written more about them or more of these descriptions had survived, additional agreements or discrepancies would surface.
Third, it is mildly disturbing that there are some very noticeable traits in the scrolls which neither Josephus nor any other ancient cataloguer of Essene beliefs noted. For example, the peculiar 364-day solar 045calendar referred to in several Qumran texts is nowhere mentioned by ancient writers. The same is the case with the belief of the Qumran sectarians that two messiahs would appear. It may be thought that Josephus, for one, did not mention these matters in connection with the Essenes because he believed they would be of no interest to his Greco-Roman audience or because he did not reproduce material of this sort for any of the other Jewish parties; but one wonders whether his audience would have been any more interested in the Essenes’ avoidance of spitting during communal gatherings. In short, these are some puzzling omissions.
Fourth, where differences exist between Josephus and the Qumran texts, it may be that Josephus merely reflects a later version of Essene beliefs which could have changed over time, or that Josephus is talking about another, non-Qumran wing of the Essene party with which he happened to be familiar. All Essenes surely did not agree on everything, nor did their views remain static over some 200 years.
In light of all the evidence adduced above, I think most scholars would agree with Frank Cross’s forceful statement:
“The scholar who would ‘exercise caution’ in identifying the sect of Qumran with the Essenes places himself in an astonishing position: he must suggest seriously that two major parties formed communistic religious communities in the same district of the desert of the Dead Sea and lived together in effect for two centuries, holding similar bizarre views, performing similar or rather identical lustrations, ritual meals, and ceremonies. He must suppose that one [the Essenes], carefully described by classical authors, disappeared without leaving building remains or even potsherds behind; the other [the inhabitants of Qumran], systematically ignored by the classical sources, left extensive ruins, and indeed a great library. I prefer to be reckless and flatly identify the men of Qumran with their perennial houseguests, the Essenes.”16
Cross’s lecture, from which the above quotation was taken, was first presented in 1966, and much has changed since then. For one thing, the Temple Scroll—the longest document from Qumran—has been published. Its heavily legal content has received intense scrutiny. Some regard it as an extremely important statement of sectarian law; others deny that it is Qumranian or Essene. A second text, although unpublished, is also very much part of the Essene-Sadducee discussion— MMT, which its editors bill as a letter, possibly from the Teacher of Righteousness himself, to the opponents of the group.17 In this letter (if that is what it is), the group distinguishes its views from its opponents’ views on some 22 laws. In the text of MMT legal statements are listed with phrases such as “you say” and “but we think,” so we know what the writer’s, view of the law is and what the opponents’ view is. In one copy of this intriguing text—parts of at least seven copies have survived—the “epistolary” part is preceded by a complete annual calendar of 364 days that dates the various festivals within the year. The document is clearly sectarian.
In Schiffman’s view, MMT is a Sadducean document-—that is, the legal views that the text defends significantly overlap with positions that rabbinic literature attributes to the Sadducees. If he is correct and if MMT is a sectarian text that dates from near the beginning of the Qumran writings, it would imply that the sect at its inception was Sadducean or at least exhibited heavy Sadducean influence on its legal positions.18
I consider this view implausible.
A critical element in Schiffman’s case is a series of disagreements between the Pharisees and Sadducees recorded in the Mishnah (Yadayim 4.6–7), where four disputed points are raised. Schiffman finds echoes of these four disputed points in MMT. In each case, the Sadducean position, as recorded in the Mishnah, is consistently defended in MMT, while the Pharisees’ view is attributed to MMT’s opponents. So says Schiffman.
In the sidebar to this article, I examine these four legal points and compare the Mishnah text with MMT in an effort to determine whether in fact the writer of MMT does agree, in each case, with the position of the Sadducees as recorded in the Mishnah. My conclusion is that the writer of MMT probably agrees with the Sadducean position, as presented in the Mishnah, in three of the four cases. Moreover, there are other instances in which the Sadducean and Qumran positions coincide.
But what is one to make of this evidence? I doubt very much that the far-ranging conclusions Schiffman has drawn actually follow from this meager evidence. Even if the Sadducean views given in the Mishnah and the laws of MMT agreed in twice as many instances, it would be interesting but perhaps not terribly significant. There may well have been many areas in which the Sadducees and the Essenes agreed with one another; to be a Sadducee or an Essene presumably did not mean that they disagreed about everything. Especially in the case of these two groups, one would expect some shared views because both had strong priestly roots. The Qumran group was founded and led by priests, the sons of Zadok; the very name Sadducees seems to be derived from this same Zadok, and influential priests are known to have been Sadducees.
Moreover, it is no simple matter to decide how much credence to give to the record of Sadducean-Pharisaic disputes in the Mishnah. The Mishnah may, but may not, preserve a precise recollection of differences between the two groups; the Mishnah was written long after the two parties had ceased to exist (about 200 C.E.). Moreover, the Mishnah regularly sides with the Pharisees and thus sees the disputes from their angle. Indeed, Emil Schürer thought that “[t]he attacks of the Sadducees on the Pharisees mentioned in [this Mishnah passage] can only have been intended as mockery”19
Schiffman bases a major conclusion on a few agreements in religious laws (halakhah): Because the views in MMT and those attributed much later to the Sadducees correspond for a few individual 046laws, Schiffman concludes that the Qumran group was Sadducean or had strong Sadducean influences at its inception. In order to reach this conclusion he has to ignore the contemporary testimony of Pliny. Schiffman also has to ignore the numerous and fundamental agreements between Josephus’ description of Essene thought and practice, on the one hand, and the contents of the sectarian documents from Qumran, on the other.
Equally important, Schiffman ignores the fact that the sectarian texts from Qumran teach such thoroughly non-Sadducean doctrines as the existence of multitudes of angels20 and the all-controlling power of fate. Schiffman tells us nothing about how the Sadducees are supposed to have developed such teachings—certainly strange ones for Sadducees. The fact that an early sectarian document such as the Manual of Discipline enunciates markedly Essene, non-Sadducean positions makes it most improbable that the Qumran residents emerged from Sadducean origins. If they did, they somehow managed to reverse themselves on fundamental theological tenets within a few years—from nonpredestinarians to all-out determinists, to name just one example. Such a scenario is thoroughly implausible. The evidence: from people like Josephus and Pliny (or his source), who had actually witnessed the ways and theology of the Essenes, and the data from central Qumran texts can hardly be outweighed by the few legal details on which Schiffman relies—individual laws that may well be just a few of many points on which Sadducees and Essenes agreed (they agreed with Pharisees on others).
The sparse data that Schiffman (and Joseph Baumgarten before him) have uncovered merely evidence something that was already known: Both the Essenes (including those who lived at Qumran) and the Sadducees had similar origins in the priestly class of Judea, and both (in their strict view of the Law) seem to have opposed the Pharisaic amelioration of some laws and penalties. That Essenes and Sadducees agreed on some points is to be expected; that they disagreed fundamentally on others is why they were identified as different groups. One would have to posit a very strange history for the Qumran group to hold that they began as Sadducees and swiftly evolved into people who held numerous diametrically opposed views. Since we do not know which of the two groups came first—Essenes or Sadducees— it is preferable not to speak of strong Sadducean influences on the origins of the Qumran group. What can be said on the basis of the evidence is that both groups shared deep priestly roots but grew from them in rather different ways.
