The Essenes and the Dead Sea Scrolls

Abstract

by Stella-Maris Wassell

(Stella Wassell is a third-year undergraduate in the M.Theol. honours programme at the University of St. Andrews.--JRD)

The Essenes were a Jewish group known to have been active from the mid-second century BCE to the time of the first Jewish revolt against Rome. We know of their existence mainly from the classical writers Philo, Pliny and Josephus. Scholarly interest in the group was reawakened after the discovery of the Dead Sea Scrolls, when it was thought that the Scrolls may give us further insight into the Essene community. I have been looking at the writings of Josephus (_Jewish War_), Pliny (_Natural History_) and Philo (_Quod Omnis Probus Liber Sit_) and trying to find similarities between their descriptions of the Essene sect and descriptions of the Qumran community in the Dead Sea Scrolls. As well as looking at evidence of the beliefs and practices of the Essene and Qumran Communities, I have considered the archaeological and geographical information in order to try and discover whether the communities were related.

(c) 2001
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