What Jesus Learned from the Essenes

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Scholars have been cautious about drawing a direct line between Jesus and the Dead Sea Scroll sectarians. Indeed, perhaps the most criticized sentence in the vast literature about the Dead Sea Scrolls is one penned by the great American literary critic Edmund Wilson. Based on the conclusions of the French Dead Sea Scroll scholar André Dupont-Sommer, Wilson wrote:

The monastery [at Qumran, adjacent to the caves where the scrolls were found], this structure of stone that endures, between the waters and precipitous cliffs, with its oven and its inkwells, its mill and its cesspool, its constellations of sacred fonts and the unadorned graves of its dead, is perhaps, more than Bethlehem or Nazareth, the cradle of Christianity.¹

There is much to criticize here. Indeed, it is a gross exaggeration. Yet in certain instances it is difficult to avoid the conclusion that Jesus did indeed base some of his teachings directly on sectarian doctrine found in the Dead Sea Scrolls. I shall discuss two such instances here.

The sectarian Dead Sea Scrolls reflect the teachings of the Essenes from about 150 B.C.E. to 70 C.E. Although some scholars still question the identification of the scrolls as Essene, I believe with time and study this classification will become even stronger. Moreover, I believe (although this remains a bit more of a question) Judaism of the first century C.E., at least Palestinian Judaism, was divided into three main streams: the Pharisees, the Sadducees and the Essenes.² It would therefore be a mistake to minimize the importance of the Essenes.

The first matter on which I wish to focus is the Essene attitude to wealth. The Essenes were the only Jewish religious movement that regarded poverty as a value.

Normative Judaism, to paraphrase Tevye in Fiddler on the Roof, does not regard poverty as a shameful situation, but neither does it see it as something to be proud of. Before the rise of Essenism, the poor were considered wretched creatures who were taken care of by 034a compassionate Lord. The new movement of Essenes, however, made poverty and the sharing of material goods a cornerstone of their theology and the main principle of their organization.³

The first-century C.E. Jewish historian Josephus, who may himself have tried out Essenism, tells us: “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” (see box).⁴

This is exactly what we are told in the sectarian scroll known as the Rule of the Community, or Serekh ha-Yahad (referred to in scholarly shorthand as 1QS): “When he had completed a year within the Community…his possessions and his earnings will also be joined at the hand of the Inspector.”⁵

This people’s dismissive attitude toward wealth is expressed frequently throughout the scrolls. For example, in the hymnic compositions called Hodayot, we read: “The soul of Thy servant has loathed [riches] and gain, and he has not [desired] exquisite delights.”⁶

Compare these sentiments to the Gospels. One of the most famous sayings of Jesus is, “For it is easier for a camel to go through the eye of a needle than for a rich man to enter the kingdom of God” (Luke 18:25; Matthew 19:24; Mark 10:25). This is almost surely an authentic saying of Jesus—it appears in all three Synoptic Gospels^a (Matthew, Mark and Luke) and it agrees with other gospel traditions.

Another terse epigrammatic dictum is, “No one can serve two masters…You cannot serve God and mammon” (Matthew 6:24).

A similar statement can be found in the Beatitudes from the Sermon on the Plain in the Gospel of Luke: “Blessed are you who are poor, for yours is the kingdom of God” (Luke 6:20). “But woe to you who are rich, for you have received your consolation” (Luke 6:24).⁷

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This attitude toward wealth (and poverty) has had a marked influence on human history. It seems well-nigh certain that it was originally an Essene doctrine that was passed on to the Jesus movement.

Where did Jesus learn this Essene doctrine? It seems probable that he was directly exposed to Essene preaching. He may also have learned this from John the Baptist, who was himself a follower of certain Essene principles. Indeed, John the Baptist may even have lived at Qumran for a time.^b It was John himself who said, “He who has two coats, let him share with him who has none. And he who has food, let him do likewise” (Luke 3:11).

The second doctrine that I believe came directly from the Essenes to Jesus is his attitude toward divorce. Indeed, the best-attested tradition in the Gospels is the prohibition on divorce. No reasonable doubt can be cast upon its authenticity.⁸ It appears four times in the Synoptic Gospels, in two short pericopes and two long ones, and again in one of Paul’s epistles: “Every one who divorces his wife and marries another commits adultery, and he who marries a woman divorced from her husband commits adultery” (Luke 16:18; Mark 10:10; cf. Matthew 5:32; 19:9; 1 Corinthians 7:1–40).

As the rationale for this doctrine, the Gospel of Mark specifically cites two passages in Genesis. Mark writes, “But from the beginning of creation, ‘God made them male and female’” [quoting Genesis 1:27]. ‘For this reason a man shall leave his father and mother and be joined to his wife, and the two shall become one flesh’ [Genesis 2:24]. So they are no longer two but one flesh. What therefore God has joined together, let not man put asunder” (Mark 10:6–8; see also Matthew 19:4–6).

This is a very different attitude from that of the Pharisees, who accepted divorce. Indeed, in the Gospel of Mark (and in Matthew 19), Jesus gives his views on divorce in answer to a question put to him by Pharisees: “And Pharisees came up and in order to test him asked, ‘Is it lawful for a man to divorce his wife?’” (Mark 10:2). The Pharisees then put forth their own opposing doctrine: “Moses allowed a man to write a certificate of divorce, and to put her away” (Mark 10:4). It is clear that the Pharisees wish to test Jesus on a matter on which their views are diametrically opposed.

The Mosaic law on divorce, which the Pharisees cite in Mark, is explicit and unequivocal: Divorce is the prerogative of the husband (Leviticus 21:7; Numbers 30:10; Deuteronomy 22:19, 29). Moreover, this was the practice of rabbinic Judaism as well. The school of Hillel says: “[He may divorce her] even if she spoiled a dish for him, for it is written—‘because he has found some indecency in her’ [Deuteronomy 24:1].” Rabbi Akiva said: “Even if he has found another fairer than she, for it is written—‘If then she finds no favor in 037his eyes’ [Deuteronomy 24:1]” (Mishna, Gittin 9.10). A man is also allowed to divorce (literally, to chase away) his wife if she is a scold (Mishna, Ketuboth 7.6).

The Essenes were the only group in Judaism to take a dim view of divorce. That’s because the Essenes, like the followers of Jesus, considered marriage a sacred union in which two people become one.⁹

The Dead Sea Scroll known as the Damascus Document speaks of those who are “caught in fornication twice by taking a second wife while the first is alive.”¹⁰ The text then cites as Biblical authority the very passage cited in Mark: “Male and female He created them” (Genesis 1:27).

The Temple Scroll places this prohibition even on the king: “And he shall not take upon her [his first wife] another wife, for she alone shall be with him all the days of her life. But should she die, he may take unto himself another [wife] from the house of his father, from his family.”¹¹ In the Damascus Document, the Qumran sectarians cite the prohibition in Deuteronomy 17:17 against a king’s having many wives.

Thus, remarriage is permitted to the Essenes only after the death of a spouse. While the prohibition against divorce is not an Essene absolute (contrary to 064what many scholars believed until recently),¹² divorce must have been extremely rare in light of the ban on remarriage while the divorced spouse was still alive. Interestingly, Jesus, too, allowed divorce in cases of porneia (fornication or unchastity) (Matthew 5:31, 19:9).

In sum, Jesus must have been deeply influenced by the Essene attitude toward marriage as a sanctified union. In both the Dead Sea Scrolls and the Gospels, doctrine on marriage and divorce is based on the same passage in the Hebrew Bible (Genesis 1:27: “Male and female He created them”). There is thus good reason to think that this attitude was adopted by Jesus from the Essenes.

The two doctrines discussed here—toward poverty and toward marriage—have shaped the lives of millions of Christians in the past two millennia. These attitudes, I believe, were directly shaped by the attitudes on the same subjects of the Essenes as revealed to us in the Dead Sea Scrolls.

Of course, the Essene doctrines in many respects differed markedly from that of the Jesus movement. Jesus viewed the Essenes as pious simpletons. In the parable of the unjust steward (Luke 16:8–9), he says: “For the sons of this world are wiser in their generation than the sons of light [a reference to the Essenes]. And I tell you make friends for yourselves by means of unrighteous mammon, so that when it fails they may receive you into the eternal habitations.”

For further details, see Magen Broshi, “Matrimony and Poverty: Jesus and the Essenes,” in Bread, Wine, Walls and Scrolls, Journal for the Study of the Pseudepigrapha Supplement Series 36 (Sheffield, UK: Sheffield Academic Press, 2001), pp. 252–258; reprinted from Revue de Qumran, 19 (2000), pp. 628–634.

Scholars have been cautious about drawing a direct line between Jesus and the Dead Sea Scroll sectarians. Indeed, perhaps the most criticized sentence in the vast literature about the Dead Sea Scrolls is one penned by the great American literary critic Edmund Wilson. Based on the conclusions of the French Dead Sea Scroll scholar André Dupont-Sommer, Wilson wrote: The monastery [at Qumran, adjacent to the caves where the scrolls were found], this structure of stone that endures, between the waters and precipitous cliffs, with its oven and its inkwells, its mill and its cesspool, its constellations of sacred fonts […]