The Essenes - An Introduction
The
Essenes were a society of ascetic Jews who lived throughout
the Holy Land, but apparently concentrated around the area of the Dead
Sea (in the modern state of Israel).
The Essene
Network International and the International
Biogenic Society serve today's Essenes. Although opinions differ as
to the origins and history of the Essene, archaeological excavations at
Khirbat Qumran provided documents known as the  Dead
Sea Scrolls which support a date around the middle of the second century
B.C. It is generally held that this brotherhood evolved as early as the
early part of the second century B.C., possibly as a countermovement to
the Hellenization of Judaea; first by the Ptolemeys (Greek rulers of Egypt)
and the Seleucids (Greek rulers of Syria), and then by Antiochus Epiphanes
(d. 92 B.C.) who officially promoted a program of Hellenization throughout
Judaea. The decline of their society is believed to have begun after the
earthquake in 31 B.C.
They were the smallest of four sects of Jews, the others being the Pharisees,
Sadducees, and Zealots. Most of what is known comes from the commentaries
of the Jewish historians Philo of Alexandria and Flavius Josephus, from
the first century A.D., who both estimate their numbers to be 4,000 by
the first century A.D. After the destruction of the temple in Jerusalem
by the Romans in A.D. 70, the Essene brotherhood apparently disintegrated.
There is, however, evidence that they may have integrated into the early
Christian church; with its similarities
as an apocalyptic faith, the practice of ritual bathing and initiation
rites by immersion in water, and the emphasis on moral purity and nonattachment
to material existence.
They were first and foremost Jews who believed in the one almighty God Yahweh
and followed the laws of God as set forth by the patriarch Moses (see
"Judaism"). According to Josephus, they believed "that
bodies are corruptible and that the matter they are made of is not Permanent:
but that the souls are immortal and continue forever; and that they come
out of the most subtle air and are united in their bodies as in prisons
into which they are drawn by a certain natural enticement; but when they
are set free from the bonds of flesh they then as released from a long
bondage rejoice and mount upward."
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