Zealot - The Life and Times of Jesus of Nazareth

also speaks of the Essenes in his
Natural History
, written circa 77 C.E . It is Pliny who states that the Essenes lived near Engeddi, on the western shore
     of the Dead Sea, although most scholars believe the Essenes were located at Qumran.
     Pliny’s error may be due to the fact that he was writing after the war with Rome and
     the destruction of Jerusalem, after which the Qumran site was abandoned. Nevertheless,
     a huge debate has erupted among scholars over whether the community at Qumran was
     in fact Essene. Norman Golb is perhaps the best-known scholar who rejects the Qumran
     hypothesis. Golb views the Qumran site not as an Essene community but rather as a
     Hasmonaean fortress. He believes that the documents found in the caves near Qumran—the
     so-called Dead Sea Scrolls—were not written by the Essenes but brought there for safekeeping
     from Jerusalem. See Norman Golb,
Who Wrote the Dead Sea Scrolls? The Search for the Secret Qumran
(New York: Scribner, 1995), and “The Problem of Origin and Identification of the
     Dead Sea Scrolls,”
Proceedings of the American Philosophical Society
124 (1980): 1–24. Golb and his contemporaries make some valid points, and it must
     be admitted that some of the documents found in the caves at Qumran were not written
     by the Essenes and do not reflect Essene theology. The fact is that we cannot be certain
     whether the Essenes lived at Qumran. That said, I agree with the great Frank Moore
     Cross, who argued that the burden of proof rests not with those who connect the Essenes
     with Qumran, but with those who do not. “The scholar who would ‘exercise caution’
     in identifying the sect of Qumran with the Essenes places himself in an astonishing
     position,” Moore writes; “he must suggest seriously that two major parties formed
     communistic religious communities in the same district of the desert of the Dead Sea
     and lived together in effect for two centuries, holding similar bizarre views, performing
     similar or rather identical lustrations, ritual meals, and ceremonies. He must suppose
     that one, carefully described by classical authors, disappeared without leaving building
     remains or even potsherds behind: the other, systematically ignored by classical authors,
     left extensive ruins, and indeed a great library. I prefer to be reckless and flatly
     identify the men of Qumran with their perennial houseguest, the Essenes.” Frank Moore
     Cross,
Canaanite Myth and Hebrew Epic: Essays in the History of the Religion of Israel
(Cambridge, Mass.: Harvard University Press, 1973), 331–32. Everything you could
     ever want to know and more about Essene purity rituals can be found in Ian C. Werrett,
Ritual Purity and the Dead Sea Scrolls
(Leiden, Netherlands: Brill, 2007).
    Among those who believe that John the Baptist was a member of the Essene community
     are Otto Betz, “Was John the Baptist an Essene?”
Understanding the Dead Sea Scrolls
, ed. Hershel Shanks (New York: Random House, 1992), 205–14;W. H. Brownlee, “John the Baptist in the New Light of Ancient Scrolls,”
The Scrolls and the New Testament
, ed. Krister Stendahl (New York: Harper, 1957), 71–90; and J.A.T. Robinson, “The
     Baptism of John and the Qumran Community: Testing a Hypothesis,”
Twelve New Testament Studies
(London: SCM Press, 1962), 11–27. Among those who disagree are H. H. Rowley, “The
     Baptism of John and the Qumran Sect,”
New Testament Essays: Studies in Memory of Thomas Walter Manson, 1893–1958
, ed. A.J.B. Higgins (Manchester: Manchester University Press, 1959), 218–29; Bruce
     D. Chilton,
Judaic Approaches to the Gospels
(Atlanta: Scholars Press, 1994), 17–22; and Joan E. Taylor,
The Immerser: John the Baptist Within Second Temple Judaism
(Grand Rapids, Mich.: Eerdmans, 1997).
    It should be noted that while Isaiah 40:3 was applied to both John and the Essenes,
     there were important distinctions in the way the passage seems to have been interpreted
     by both. For more on John’s possible childhood “in the wilderness,” see Jean Steinmann,
Saint John the Baptist and the Desert Tradition
(New York: Harper, 1958). Regardless of whether John was a member of the Essenes,
     it is clear that there are a number of parallels between the two, including setting,
     asceticism, priestly lineage, water immersion, and the sharing of property. Individually,
     none of these parallels definitively proves a connection, but together they make a
     strong case for