January/February 2006 Spirituality
Letter to the Editor

I would like to respond to the criticism by Janice Robertson of my interview in Mary Magdalene and The Holy Grail, May/June 05 issue of New Connexion.

First, let me acknowledge that I, like virtually all other scholars of religion, once believed that the Essenes lived at Qumran and authored the Dead Sea Scrolls, [but there is] new evidence that disproves that theory. When the Dead Sea Scrolls were discovered in the 1940’s, only a small team of scholars appointed by the Vatican had any access to them for fifty years. Thus, all that the rest of us knew about the scrolls was what that small team chose to tell us. That team believed that the Dead Sea Scrolls were authored by the Essenes because the scrolls were discovered on the western shore of the Dead Sea, and three ancient writers -- Josephus, Philo, and Pliny, -- had described an Essene settlement as having existed on the western shore of the Dead Sea. However, as the years went by, more and more scholars who were not a part of the small Vatican team began to point out flaws in the theory that Qumran was an Essene monastery and that the Essenes authored the Dead Sea Scrolls. For one thing, the word Essene never appears in a single Dead Sea Scroll, and the philosophy of those scrolls did not match very well with what the ancient writers had said about the Essenes. Also, and as it turned out, significantly, several scholars pointed out that the ancient writers had said that the Essenes lived on the "western shore of the Dead Sea in cliffs above En Gedi." Qumran, where the Dead Sea Scrolls were discovered, is not in the cliffs above En Gedi, but is located along another part of the western shore of the Dead Sea. Finally, in the late 1990’s, a Jewish archaeologist named Yitzar Hirschfeld drove the final nail into the coffin of the Essene/Qumran theory. Because he realized that the ancient writers described the Essene settlement as being in the cliffs above En Gedi, he decided to launch an archaeological excavation of those cliffs. There he discovered the true Essene settlement on the western shore of the Dead Sea, exactly where the ancient writers had described it as having been. Because that discovery was so recent, only specialists in the field even know that it occurred. The general public and non-specialists still read books about the Dead Sea Scrolls written prior to the Hirshfeld discovery and so still think that the Essenes lived at Qumran and wrote the Dead Sea Scrolls. Ten years ago, I believed that the Essenes had lived at Qumran; but so did all the other scholars of the era, being dependent on what little info we could get from the Vatican team that held the scrolls. In fact, as Hirshfeld has demonstrated, Qumran was a Rabinical school associated with mainstream Judaism, not with the Essenes. He also points out that the Essenes who lived in the cliffs above En Gedi were historically described as being vegetarians, and that his excavations of that location confirm that the residents were, indeed, vegetarian, as not a single bone was found. In contrast, Qumran excavations turned up tens of thousands of animal bones, and evidence of animal sacrifice, which the Essenes were known to abhor.

In regard to the assertion that the Essenes were celibate and thus Jesus, if an Essene, must have been celibate, the ancient writers make clear that some Essenes practiced celibacy, but most did not. That is true in most religions.

-- Nazariah, High Priest, Essene Church of Christ
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