The Qumran Library of The Essenes

 I just finished reading this book by Hartmut Stegemann and found it fascinating, even if somewhat overwhelming in its detail. The Essenes were a highly religious Jewish group that established the Qumran Community near the Dead Sea, about 10 miles west of Jerusalem, roughly 150 years before Jesus’ time. They were destroyed by the Romans in 70 AD. It’s a captivating, if overly detailed, account of this group, the Dead Sea Scrolls, and how it all connects to Christianity. 

     In addition to providing a complete account of the history, beliefs, and lifestyle of this group, the author makes it clear that they had nothing to do with Jesus’ life and teachings, nor with the life and work of John the Baptist. When they learned of their impending destruction at the hands of the Romans, they hid about 1000 of their manuscripts in the caves directly above their community. Believe it or not, these scrolls were not discovered until 1900 years later in the 1950s, and they are now famous as the Dead Sea Scrolls.

Their primary purpose was to distribute copies of the Hebrew Old Testament throughout the then Hebrew world so that Jewish people would be prepared when the New Testament era arrived. They copied and spread hundreds of copies of the Hebrew Scriptures all around Palestine before the Romans destroyed them. According to the highly regarded author, this group had absolutely nothing to do with either John the Baptist’s or Jesus’ ministry. In fact, most of what they believed was in harmony with traditional Jewish thought and life. They were just another sectarian Jewish group operating in Palestine during the time of Jesus, among others, with a specific agenda. 

Stegemann clearly explains the differences among all these issues and groups. As he states: “Essene is simply an anglicization of the Old Greek translation of the Aramaic essen, which means ‘the pious ones’. It was more like a religious fraternity with a specific goal to make and spread copies of the scripture before the ‘end time’. Their buildings and practices were designed explicitly for this purpose and did not constitute a special religious order. Many of them lived in caves where the scrolls were discovered almost two thousand years later. There is no reason to believe that either John the Baptist or Jesus had anything to do with them. Detailed but fascinating stuff.