The Essenes and Qumran, Religion, College Term Papers.com


		Data Bases
		• Custom Term Papers • Free Term Papers • Free Research Papers • Free Essays • Free Book Reports • Plagiarism?

		Links
		• Top 100 Term Paper Sites • Top 25 Essay Sites • Top 50 Essay Sites • Search 97,000 Papers @ DirectEssays.com • Search 101,000 Papers @ ExampleEssays.com • Search 90,000 Papers @ MegaEssays.com

		Free Essays
		• Term Paper Sites • Chuck III's Free Essays • Free College Essays • TermPaperSites.com • My Term Papers • Get Free Essays • Essay World • Planet Papers

Search Lots of Essays

Back to Subjects - Religion

The Essenes and Qumran

The Essenes and Qumran In 1947 an Arab shepherd boy was throwing stones at the opening of a cave above him near the shore of the Dead Sea. He heard a jar break and climbed up the cliff to investigate. What he discovered has revolutionized the study of the Bible. There, in that cave, stuffed in jars, were scores of papyrus scrolls covering almost every book of the Old Testament. While other scrolls have been discovered since, in caves all along the Dead Sea, the scrolls at Qumran are by far the most important as far as Christians are concerned because they are the only ones throughout the Dead Sea region that pre-date or are contemporary with Jesus Christ. They are, in fact, the only original writings of Hebrew scripture known to exist that are as old or older than Jesus and John the Baptist. All the other Dead Sea Scrolls are later works which bear the trademark of the Jewish Rabbinical School at Jamnia. These were written well after Christianity had converted great numbers of followers throughout Judea, the Roman Empire, Greece and the lands around the Mediterranean Sea. Unlike the scrolls at Qumran, the later scrolls were written after the Romans had destroyed Herod's temple in Jerusalem and had either killed or taken into Roman slavery millions of Jewish citizens. Because these later Dead Sea Scrolls were all penned after these shattering events had taken place, one cannot be certain that they were not written with an eye to counter and block the events and teachings that were swirling about them at the time. The scrolls at Qumran, however, because they were written before any of these events occurred, give us an unbiased picture of the original state of Jewish scripture at the time of Jesus Christ. They show us, for instance, that there was not just one rescension of the Hebrew scripture being used at the time of Christ -- there were dozens; and they show us that the Greek (Septuagint) Old Testament was used extensively in Judea, and without the onus that it later received from the Rabbinical scholars. It is for these reasons -- and especially because the Qumran scrolls are the oldest known copies of Jewish scripture in existance -- that Qumran and the sect that produced these scrolls are so vital to the study of Judaism and Christianity. Who wrote them? What kind of people occupied this monastic compound in the harsh, rocky and barren Judean wilderness that overlooked the Dead Sea? A widely held theory is that Qumran was inhabited by the Hebrew sect called 'the Essenes.' This was an ascetic Jewish religious community that existed in Palestine at the time the occupation of the Qumran site flourished, and which was both contemporary with and pre-dated John the Baptist, Jesus of Nazareth and the Roman destruction of the Jerusalem temple in 70 A.D. The Essenes must have been quite important during these times because information concerning them in the ancient literature is more prevalent than for the other two major Jewish sects, the Pharisees and the Sadducees. First hand reports concerning the Essenes comes to us from the Jewish philosopher of the Egytian dispersion, Philo of Alexandria, who lived between 30 B.C. and 40 A.D. Philo's writings about the Essenes comes down to us through two works, 'Quod omnis probus Fiber sit' and 'Apologia pro Judais.' The second work has been lost but the information was retained in Eusebius' 'Praeparatio Evangilica.' Another writer contemporary with the Essenes was Flavius Josephus, the famous Jewish historian and priest-general at the time of the Jewish war. His most elaborate description of this group is contained in 'The Jewish War', followed by an interesting, but far less detailed account in 'Jewish Antiquities.' Josephus wrote his first work sometime between 70 and 75 A.D., and the second somewhat later, but before 100 A.D., the year of his death. Another first-hand report concerning the Essenes comes from the Roman writer, Pliny the Elder, who died in 79 A.D. Pliny incorporated information about the sect in his work entitled 'Natural History.' A Greek orator and philosopher, Dio Chrysostom, also mentioned in passing the existence of an Essene community near the Dead Sea. His report is dated somewhat later than Pliny. (1.) Writing two centuries later, Hippolytus of Rome detailed a long account of the Essenes that, for the most part, is said to have paralleled Josephus' information, but in a few instances provided unique material, though he was not an eyewitness of this sect. The first reference to the Essenes comes from Josephus, writing about the death of Antigonus in 103 B.C. Josephus relates that the Essenes had an uncanny ability to successfully predict future events, and that the death of Antigonus at the hands of his brother, Aristobulus, ruler of Judea, had been accurately forecast by an Essene named Judas. (2.) Josephus states that 'Judas was an Essene born and bred, indicating that he had been born into the movement at least a few decades earlier. (3.) On this occasion, according to Josephus, Judas was sitting in or near the Jerusalem temple with a number or his pupils, showing that he Bibliography:

Word Count: 860