Theopedia

Essenes

Definition

The Essenes were a Jewish sect of the Second Temple period, known chiefly through the histories of Josephus, distinguished from the Pharisees and Sadducees by strict communal discipline, celibacy, and a shared eschatology in which the soul survives the body’s death.12 They arose somewhat later than the Pharisees,1 and are not named in the New Testament, but modern scholarship generally identifies them with the community that produced and preserved the Dead Sea Scrolls.3

Historical Origin

Benedict Pictet’s Christian Theology places the Essenes among the several Jewish sects that had arisen by the time of Christ’s coming, alongside the Pharisees and Sadducees, noting that theirs “sprung up a little after the Pharisees.”1 Admission was restricted to serious candidates: the sect did “not admit into their society any except grave and aged men,” and required “a four years’ probation to their disciples” before full membership.1 Charles Hodge likewise groups the Essenes as one of three sects dividing Judaism “at this period,” alongside the Sadducees and Pharisees.4

Beliefs and Practices

Pictet describes a communal, ascetic way of life: the Essenes “maintained the community of goods, and celibacy,” “allowed of no attendants, or provision for a journey,” “followed no trades,” and “superstitiously observed the sabbath,” while aiming “at piety, beneficence, and hospitality” and avoiding “all strife and disputes.”1

On the oral traditions that the Pharisees held alongside the written law, Petrus van Mastricht groups the Essenes with the Sadducees and Samaritans as likewise opposed to the Pharisees’ oral law.5

The Essenes held a body-soul dualism that set them apart from both the Pharisees and the Sadducees on the question of life after death. Herman Bavinck, citing Josephus directly, describes their view:

“The Essenes believed that the body was mortal but that the soul was immortal. Originally the souls dwelt in the finest ether but, being caught up in sensual lust, were placed in bodies, from which they are again liberated by death. Good souls are given a blessed life on the other side of the ocean in a place untouched by rain, snow, or heat, but the bad must suffer everlasting pains in a place of darkness and cold.”2

Charles Hodge describes the same belief in similar terms: the Essenes held “that the souls of the just being freed at death from the prison of the body, rejoice and are borne aloft where a happy life forever is decreed to the virtuous,” while “the wicked are assigned to eternal punishment in a dark cold place.”4 Because this view located the soul’s blessedness in its release from the body rather than in the body’s own restoration, John Gill records that the Essenes, like the Sadducees, denied the resurrection of the body.6

Relationship to the Dead Sea Scrolls

The Essenes are widely identified with the Jewish community whose writings survive as the Dead Sea Scrolls, recovered from caves near Qumran.3 That community’s own self-understanding as “the people of the New Covenant, the true remnant of Israel living in the end-time,” its distinctive interpretive method centered on the “Teacher of Righteousness,” and its point of contrast with Paul’s use of the prophet Habakkuk are treated at length in the Dead Sea Scrolls article.7

Related Doctrines

References

  1. Benedict Pictet, Christian Theology, trans. Frederick Reyroux (Philadelphia: Presbyterian Board of Publication, 1845), 238. ↩ ↩2 ↩3 ↩4 ↩5

  2. Herman Bavinck, Reformed Dogmatics: Abridged in One Volume, ed. John Bolt (Grand Rapids: Baker Academic, 2011), chap. 23, “The Intermediate State.” ↩ ↩2

  3. Michael J. Kruger, The Question of Canon: Challenging the Status Quo in the New Testament Debate (Nottingham: Apollos, 2013), chap. 3, “The Writing of Canon,” 79-118. ↩ ↩2

  4. Charles Hodge, Systematic Theology, vol. 3 (New York: Charles Scribner and Company, 1873), 717-718. ↩ ↩2

  5. Petrus van Mastricht, Theoretical-Practical Theology, vol. 1, Prolegomena, trans. Todd M. Rester, ed. Joel R. Beeke (Grand Rapids, MI: Reformation Heritage Books, 2018), chap. 2, “Holy Scripture,” 246. ↩

  6. John Gill, A Body of Doctrinal Divinity; or, A System of Evangelical Truths, Deduced from the Sacred Scriptures, 2 vols. (London: Printed for the Author, and Sold by George Keith, 1769), book VII, chap. 4. ↩

  7. Philip Chase Sears, “The Jewish Apocalyptic Mystery Schema,” in “Mysterion and the Salvation of ‘All Israel’ in Romans 9-11” (PhD diss., The Southern Baptist Theological Seminary, 2019), 23-61. ↩