Religion: Out of the Desert

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The Setting. The black and fragile bits of leather that now make nests for rats in desert rock holes, or repose in battered cigarette boxes with such labels as Gold Star and Friends, are not the only puzzle pieces that need gathering and fitting together. There are also human and historical fragments from which scholars are trying to reconstruct the story of the Qumran sect itself—one of the great dramas of the Judeo-Christian tradition.

It is now assumed as almost certain that they were Essenes, an ascetic Jewish sect hitherto known chiefly from the accounts of Josephus and Philo. Much information about the Dead Sea covenanters is contained in the original scrolls (now in the Hebrew University just across the bristling boundary from the Jordanian Scrollers in the Israeli half of Jerusalem). Those first seven scrolls included, in addition to two versions of the book of Isaiah and a collection of apocryphal stories based on Genesis, four documents relating to the Dead Sea sect itself: 1) the Rule of the Community (also known as the Manual of Discipline); 2) a Commentary on Habakkuk, which indirectly reflects some of the sect's story because it treats the Old Testament book as prophecy concerning the Essenes' own history; 3) The War of the Sons of Light with the Sons of Darkness, which seems to be an account of the end of the world told like a detailed battle plan for Armageddon, and 4) Essene Psalms. Besides these documents, there is the evidence of pick and shovel—the site itself, worked over five times by expeditions since 1949.

The settlement resembled a fortified medieval monastery (see map). There was a central building, originally about 124 ft. square, adjoined by a complex of rooms, passageways and cisterns. At one corner was a formidable tower with three-foot-thick walls, probably designed as a lookout post and last-ditch defense point. Other rooms included kitchens and refectories, a scriptorium and a pottery (where the scrolls' storage jars were presumably made). Flour mills, storage bins and ovens have also been 'uncovered, indicating a highly self-sufficient community.

This was the setting of their life. How did they lead it? Their two guiding principles were both profoundly Jewish—ritual purity and apocalypticism, i.e., the expectation of the end of the world. They saw their desert retreat as symbolizing the desert wanderings of the Jews under Moses. And their asceticism was not for its own sake but a preparation for the new dispensation. Like the first Christians they held all things in common, looking forward to the characteristics of life in the New Age: unity, brotherhood, love. They identified themselves, the Congregation of the Poor, with the "meek who shall inherit the earth."

Love of Law. Twice a day they celebrated a solemn communion meal, with blessing of bread and wine. This, says Scholar Cross, was "a liturgical anticipation of the Messianic banquet" in the coming kingdom—a concept that was a common theme in the Judaism of the time. Another regular practice of the Essenes was baptism. On entering the community, individuals received a baptism on repentance of sins (unlike the later Christian practice, however, the Essene baptism was renewed each year and supplemented by continued daily ritual washings or lustrations).