General insights from the discipline of religious studies may contribute to a better understanding of the Essene Hypothesis. In its “softer” form, the Essene hypothesis posits a sub-group relationship between the Qumran community and a larger Essene movement as described, above all, by Josephus. This effort to accommodate differences between accounts of the Essenes and the Scrolls can be better understood when contextualized in light of the so-called “insider/outsider” problem. Josephus’s use of the term “Essene” can be productively compared to generalized labels for groups of sub-groups, like “Quaker,” “Mormon,” “Hasidic” and “Gnostic”—terms used more often by outsiders, and frequently by writers of introductory religion textbooks. The Essene Hypothesis makes a greater deal of sense when seen in light of the ways generalized labels are used in a variety of descriptions of religious groups, both ancient and modern.
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Edna Ullmann-Margalit, Out of the Cave: A Philosophical Inquiry into the Dead Sea Scrolls Research (Cambridge, Mass.: Harvard University Press, 2006).
Albert I. Baumgarten, The Flourishing of Jewish Sects in the Maccabean Era: An Interpretation (Leiden: Brill, 1997), esp. 36–39. Although my analysis disagrees with Baumgarten’s in some important respects, the overall debt the present analysis owes to his should be clear.
Frank Moore Cross, Canaanite Myth and Hebrew Epic (Cambridge: Harvard University Press, 1973), 331–32. For critical discussions of this passage, see Ullmann-Margalit, Out of the Cave, 38, and Norman Golb, Who Wrote the Dead Sea Scrolls? The Search for the Secret of Qumran (New York: Scribner, 1995), 89–90. For a similarly certain view, see Burrows, Dead Sea Scrolls, 280: “If they were not the same, there was hardly room for both Essenes and covenanters in the vicinity of the Wady [sic] Qumran.”
Cecil Roth, The Dead Sea Scrolls: A New Historical Approach (New York: W. W. Norton, 1965) and G. R. Driver, The Judaean Scrolls: The Problem and a Solution (Oxford: Basil Blackwell, 1965).
Chaim Rabin, Qumran Studies (Oxford: Oxford University Press, 1957).
J. Massingberd Ford, “Can we exclude Samaritan influence in Qumran?” RevQ 6/21 (1967): 109–29.
See Shemaryahu Talmon, “The Community of the Renewed Covenant: Between Judaism and Christianity,” in The Community of the Renewed Covenant (ed. E. Ulrich and J. VanderKam; Notre Dame: University of Notre Dame Press, 1994), 3–24 (esp. 6–7); Talmon, The World of Qumran from Within: Collected Studies (Jerusalem/Leiden: Magnes/Brill, 1989), esp. 7–8. In rejecting any identification with other known groups, Talmon was preceded by M. H. [Goshen-] Gottstein, “Anti-Essene Traits in the Dead Sea Scrolls,” vt 4 (1954): 141–47.
Baumgarten, “A Crisis in the Scrollery: A Dying Consensus,” Judaism 44.4 (1995): 399–413.
So, e.g., John J. Collins, Beyond the Qumran Community: The Sectarian Movement of the Dead Sea Scrolls (Grand Rapids, Mich.: Eerdmans, 2010), 2–3, 122, 209; Ullmann-Margalit, Out of the Cave, 21.
Geza Vermes, The Complete Dead Sea Scrolls in English (Revised ed.; New York: Penguin, 2004), 48; compare Burrows’s earlier assessment: “it is clear that the sect of Qumran was more closely related to the Essenes than to any other group known to us” (Dead Sea Scrolls, 298).
See, e.g., Collins, Beyond the Qumran Community, 10–11, 65–79.
Mason, “What Josephus Says,” 423–24; compare Baumgarten, “The Temple Scroll, Toilet Practices, and the Essenes,” Jewish History 10.1 (1996): 9–20, esp. 9–10, and [Goshen-] Gottstein, “Anti-Essene Traits,” 142.
Hempel, Qumran Rule Texts, 25–26; Jokiranta, Social Identity, 50n. 140.
So, e.g., Lawrence H. Schiffman, Reclaiming the Dead Sea Scrolls: The History of Judaism, the Background of Christianity, the Lost Library of Qumran (Philadelphia: Jewish Publication Society, 1994), 75, 87–89. For a recent, even more guarded statement, see Schiffman, Qumran and Jerusalem: Studies in the Dead Sea Scrolls and the History of Judaism (Grand Rapids, Mich.: Eerdmans, 2010), 34: “Does this mean that the sect was Sadducean? Not quite. . .”
Louis Ginzberg, An Unknown Jewish Sect (New York: Jewish Theological Seminary, 1976), 159–62, 407–8; Rabin, Qumran Studies, 69–70, 80–81.
Burrows, The Dead Sea Scrolls, 285; Collins, Beyond the Qumran Community, 10, 128, 138, 147–48; Cross, The Ancient Library of Qumran (3rd Ed.; Minneapolis: Fortress Press, 1995), 66; A. Dupont-Sommer, The Essene Writings from Qumran (trans. G. Vermes; Oxford: Blackwell, 1961), 67; Tessa Rajak, “Ciò che Flavio Giuseppe Vide: Josephus and the Essenes,” in The Jewish Dialogue with Greece and Rome: Studies in Cultural and Social Interaction (Leiden: Brill, 2002), 219–40 (esp. 236); E. P. Sanders, “The Dead Sea Sect and other Jews: Commonalities, Overlaps and Differences,” in The Dead Sea Scrolls in their Historical Context (ed. Timothy H. Lim, with Larry W. Hurtado, A. Graeme Auld, and Alison Jack; London: T&T Clark, 2000), 7–43 (esp. 33); Morton Smith, “The Description of the Essenes in the Josephus and the Philosophumena,” huca 29 (1958): 273–313 (esp. 288n.55); de Vaux, Archaeology, 137–38; Vermes, Complete Dead Sea Scrolls, 48. See also Stephen Goranson, “Others and Intra-Jewish Polemic as Reflected in Qumran Texts,” in The Dead Sea after Fifty Years: A Comprehensive Assessment (ed. Peter W. Flint and James C. VanderKam; 2 vols.; Leiden: Brill, 1999), 2:534–51 (esp. 540–42). Baumgarten also uses the criterion, though to different effect (e.g., comparing Pliny to a “Martian”); see “The Rule,” 137). See also Goodman, “A Note,” 165, who follows Baumgarten in using the insider/outsider distinction to counter the Essene hypothesis.
See Hugh Barbour, “Quakers,” in Encyclopedia of Religion (2nd ed.; ed. Lindsay Jones; 15 vols.; Detroit: Macmillan Reference usa, 2005), 11.7546–50. See also the website of the Quaker Information Center, which has a page detailing “Quaker branches”: url: http://www.quakerinfo.org/quakerism/branches/index (accessed 6/29/2015).
Baumgarten, “Who Cares,” 175–76; Rachel Elior, Memory and Oblivion: The Mystery of the Dead Sea Scrolls [Hebrew] (Jerusalem: Van Leer Jerusalem Institute Press, 2009), 30–31, 40, 70–71; Goodman, “A Note,” 164. Some, however, maintain that the term is to be found among the Qumran texts: e.g., Goranson, “Others and Intra-Jewish Polemic,” 539–40 (Essenes = עושי התורה; see 1QpHab 7:11, 8:1, 12:4–5); cf. Baumgarten, “Who Cares,” 176n.8. Taylor suggests that a careful reading of Philo (Prob. 75) suggests that he introduces “Essene” as a term used by outsiders to describe the group; see The Essenes, 25–26. For an investigation into insider/outsider language in evidence among the rabbis and Qumran (without reference to the question of “Essene” in particular), see P. S. Alexander, “Insider/Outsider Labeling and the Struggle for Power in Early Judaism,” in Religion, Language, and Power (ed. Nile Green and Mary Searle-Chatterjee; New York: Routledge, 2008), 83–100.
Mason, “The Essenes,” 239–40; “Historical Problem,” 247; Judean War 2 (BJP1b), 84.
So, e.g., Jeffrey Brood, et al., Invitation to Western Religions (New York: Oxford University Press, 2015), 141–42; Carl S. Ehrlich, “Judaism,” in World Religions: The Illustrated Guide (ed. Michael Coogan; London: Duncan Baird Publishers, 2003), 14–51, esp. 49; John L. Esposito, Darrell J. Fasching, Todd T. Lewis, Religions of the West Today (3rd ed.; New York: Oxford University Press, 2014), esp. 112–14; Lewis M. Hopfe and Mark R. Woodward, Religions of the World (11th ed.; Upper Saddle River, n.j.: Pearson, 2009), 272–73; Theodore M. Ludwig, Sacred Paths of the West (3rd ed.; New York: Routledge, 2006), 110; Michael Molloy, Experiencing the World’s Religions: Tradition, Challenge, and Change (6th ed.; New York: McGraw Hill, 2012), 309–10; Michele Murray, “Jewish Traditions,” in World Religions: Western Traditions (4th ed.; ed. William G. Oxtoby, Amir Hussain, Roy C. Amore; Don Mills, Ontario: Oxford University Press, 2011), 74–147, esp. 113–16. See also, Winfried Corduan, Neighboring Faiths: A Christian Introduction to World Religions (2nd ed.; Westmont, Ill.: InterVarsity Press, 2012), 76–77.
Brood, et al., Invitation to Western Religions, 141–42; Esposito, Fasching, and Lewis, Religions, 112–14; Hopfe and Woodward, Religions, 272–73.
Esposito, Fasching, and Lewis, Religions, 114; compare War 2:154–158, where Josephus describes Essene immortality beliefs in relation to Greek myths.
Corduan, Neighboring Faiths, 77; compare Josephus’s hostility toward the Sadducees in War 2:166 and Ant. 18:17.
Hopfe and Woodward, Religions, 272–73; Molloy, Experiencing, 309–10.
See Shaye J.D. Cohen, Josephus in Galilee and Rome (Leiden: Brill, 1979), 181–83.
Jonathan Z. Smith, Map is Not Territory: Studies in the History of Religions (Leiden: Brill, 1978), 309.
See Karen L. King, What Is Gnosticism? (Cambridge, Mass.: Harvard University Press, 2003) and Michael A. Williams, Rethinking “Gnosticism”: An Argument for Dismantling a Dubious Category (Princeton: Princeton University Press, 1996). For introductory discussions of definitions, see Meyer, The Gnostic Discoveries, 38–43; Willis Barnstone and Marvin Meyer, eds., The Gnostic Bible (Boston: Shambhala, 2003), 7–16, and, with greater detail, Gilles Quispel, “Gnosticism: Gnosticism from its Origins to the Middle Ages [First Edition],” er2, 5.3507–15 and Aldo Magris, “Gnosticism: Gnosticism from its Origins to the Middle Ages [Further Considerations],” er2, 5.3515–22.
See, for instance, Marvin Meyer, The Gnostic Discoveries, 38–43.
Cross, Canaanite Myth, 331; cf. Burrows, Dead Sea Scrolls, 280.
Goodman, “Constructing Ancient Judaism from the Scrolls,” in The Oxford Handbook of the Dead Sea Scrolls (ed. Timothy Lim and John J. Collins; Oxford: Oxford University Press 2010), 81–91 (esp. 84). Compare Mason, “Historical Problem,” 249: “Given the diversity of pietistic groups in ancient Judea, I do not see any need to identify the Essenes, who emerge from independent contemporary accounts with perhaps greater clarity than Pharisees or Sadducees, with other groups.”
Talmon, “The Emergence of Jewish Sectarianism in the Early Second Temple Period,” in King, Cult and Calendar in Ancient Israel: Collected Studies (Jerusalem: Magnes Press, 1986), 165–201 (esp. 193–94).
Baumgarten, “The Rule,” 125; cf. Stark and Bainbridge, The Future, 138.
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General insights from the discipline of religious studies may contribute to a better understanding of the Essene Hypothesis. In its “softer” form, the Essene hypothesis posits a sub-group relationship between the Qumran community and a larger Essene movement as described, above all, by Josephus. This effort to accommodate differences between accounts of the Essenes and the Scrolls can be better understood when contextualized in light of the so-called “insider/outsider” problem. Josephus’s use of the term “Essene” can be productively compared to generalized labels for groups of sub-groups, like “Quaker,” “Mormon,” “Hasidic” and “Gnostic”—terms used more often by outsiders, and frequently by writers of introductory religion textbooks. The Essene Hypothesis makes a greater deal of sense when seen in light of the ways generalized labels are used in a variety of descriptions of religious groups, both ancient and modern.
All Time | Past 365 days | Past 30 Days | |
---|---|---|---|
Abstract Views | 1152 | 131 | 9 |
Full Text Views | 329 | 11 | 0 |
PDF Views & Downloads | 228 | 29 | 0 |