The Dead Sea Scrolls exhibit will open in May 2013 in Boston. Credit: Museum of Science

Read more in The Brandeis Hoot.

The Israel Antiquities Authority, in collaboration with Google, has launched The Leon Levy Dead Sea Scrolls Digital Library, a new website that allows visitors to view and search high-resolution images of the complete Dead Sea Scrolls archive online.

This week, the Israel Antiquities Authority, in collaboration with Google, launched The Leon Levy Dead Sea Scrolls Digital Library, a new website that allows visitors to view and search high-resolution images of the complete Dead Sea Scrolls archive online. The project uses the most advanced and innovative technologies available to image the entire collection of about 930 manuscripts, comprising thousands of Dead Sea Scrolls fragments, in high resolution and multiple spectra. Through this process, hundreds of images are now accessible to anyone, anywhere in the world over the web, with many thousands more on the way. Several hundred fragments are already viewable, and it is hoped that transcriptions and translations for many scrolls will soon be available as well.

View the digital Dead Sea Scrolls archive.

Ada Yardeni identified the same ancient scribe’s unique handwriting on this Hosea commentary and many other Qumran scrolls.

There has been a great deal written about the community of scribes that penned the Qumran scrolls. These studies rarely focus on an individual ancient scribe; they generally consider the religious orientation and scholarship of the broader community. Israeli paleographer Ada Yardeni recently identified over 50 Qumran scrolls penned by the same scribe; moreover, she identified a manuscript from the desert fortress at Masada written by the same scribe. In the November/December 2012 issue of Biblical Archaeology Review, Sidnie White Crawford discusses the implications of the important paleographic discoveries made by Ada Yardeni.

Ada Yardeni identified the handwriting of a single ancient scribe on Qumran scrolls found in six different caves. According to Sidnie White Crawford, the discovery of a single scribal hand in multiple caves suggests that “the scribe was a member of that sect who also copied Jewish scriptural scrolls, countering the idea that the Qumran collection was a non-sectarian ‘general Jewish’ library.” Moreover, she argues that a single scribe’s penmanship in multiple caves counters the idea that each cave reflects a separate collection belonging to a different Jewish group.

Ada Yardeni noticed that the ancient scribe who penned these Qumran scrolls also penned an apocryphon woven on the Book of Joshua that was discovered at Masada. The text bears resemblance to certain Qumran scrolls, and even before Yardeni’s handwriting analysis, scholars suggested that the manuscript may have been the product of a Qumran scribe.

Sidnie White Crawford establishes a second scribal connection between Masada and the Qumran scrolls. Nine copies of the sectarian Songs of the Sabbath Sacrifice manuscript were discovered in two caves at Qumran, and another was discovered at Masada in the same locus as the Joshua Apocryphon. Sidnie White Crawford posits that “it seems likely that some manuscripts from Qumran were carried south by refugees fleeing the Roman destruction of Qumran in 68 C.E. But that’s only a best guess.”
 

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The scrolls were written during a time of significant turmoil and strife between the Greek-influenced elite and the more traditional Jewish populations of Judea. From the time of Alexander the Great’s death to the fall of Masada at the hands of the Romans, a series of historic events would influence the authors of the scrolls and the population as a whole. This is the historical context for the creation of the scrolls and the foundations of both Christianity and Rabbinic Judaism.

332 B.C.E.
Alexander the Great defeats Persia and conquers Judea beginning widespread Hellenization of the area.

323 B.C.E.
Alexander the Great dies creating a power struggle between the Seleucids of Syria and the Ptolemies of Egypt.

250 B.C.E.
Date of the oldest Dead Sea Scrolls

197 B.C.E.
Judea becomes a province of the Seleucid Empire

175 B.C.E.
Jerusalem becomes a polis

175-167 B.C.E.
Forced Hellenization and persecution of the Jews including the banning of circumcision and religious observances such as the Sabbath, and forced paganism and consumption of foods forbidden by Jewish law.

166 B.C.E.
Rise of the Maccabees

150 B.C.E.
Nash Papyrus, oldest known Biblical manuscript fragment before discovery of the Dead Sea Scrolls

140 B.C.E.
Foundation of the Maccabbean, or Hasmonean, dynasty

140-67 B.C.E.
Period of unrest between Hasmoneans and Pharisees. Jews in opposition flee to Judean desert and settle at Qumran

63 B.C.E.
Judea conquered by Rome

37 B.C.E.
Herod the Great appointed ruler by Rome, end of Hasmoneaen dynasty

ca. 4 B.C.E.
Birth of Jesus of Nazareth

26-36 C.E.
Pontius Pilate prefect of Judea

ca. 30 C.E.
Crucifixion of Jesus

66 C.E.
First Jewish Revolt against Rome

68-73 C.E.
Gospel of Mark composed

68 C.E.
Date of the last Dead Sea Scrolls

70 C.E.
Fall of Jerusalem to Roman army

70-100 C.E.
Gospel of Matthew composed

73 C.E.
Fall of Masada, last Jewish stronghold against Rome

85 C.E.
Gospel of Luke composed

90 C.E.
Gospel of John composed

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The Dead Sea Scrolls have a long, complicated and mysterious history and many “facts” have been lost in the intervening years. The timeline below presents, as accurately as possible, the events surrounding the discovery and acquisition of the scrolls and the players involved.

• Nov 1946 – Feb 1947
Muhammed edh-Dhib Hassan and at least two other Bedouin discover the first cave and scrolls while sheparding sheep (or goats) near the Dead Sea

• Mar 1947
The Bedouin begin seeking a buyer for the scrolls

• Apr 1947
Khalil Iskander a.k.a. Kando acquires three scrolls (1QIsaiaha; 1QpHab; and 1QS-the Community Rule)

• May/June 1947
Bedouin sell scrolls 1QIsaiahb; 1QM-the War Scroll; and 1Q35 to Fiedi Salahi

• July 5, 1947
Kando sells his three scrolls to Syrian Orthodox Metropolitan Athanasius Yeshue Samuel who tries for months to have them authenticated

• Nov 23, 1947
Eleazar Lipa Sukenik is contacted by Mister X about Salahi’s scrolls and gets his first glimpse of a scroll fragment through the barbed-wire fence in Jerusalems Military Zone B

• Nov 27, 1947
Sukenik meets with Mister X at his shop in the Old City

• Nov 29, 1947
Sukenik and Mister X make the bus trip to Bethlehem to visit Salahi. Sukenik arranges purchase. The United Nations votes to partition Palestine

• Feb 1948
Reverend Butros Sowmy, Mar Samuel’s assistant, calls the American School of Oriental Research about the scrolls. John C. Trever, acting director of the school invites Sowmy to bring the scrolls to the school

• Mar 15, 1948
Trever photographs the scrolls and sends a copy to famed American scholar William F. Albright, who authenticates the date of the scrolls to about 100 B.C.

• Mar 25, 1948
Sowmy takes the scrolls to Beirut for safekeeping

• Jan 29, 1949
Mar Samuel arrives in the United States with the scrolls and meets with Trever

• Feb 15 – Mar 1949
Père Roland De Vaux and G. Lankester Harding excavate Cave 1 recovering more fragments

• Nov 24 – Dec 12, 1951
de Vaux and Harding begin excavating Qumran, an ancient settlement near Cave 1

• Feb 1952
Cave 2 is discovered

• Mar 10-20, 1952
Explorations of surrounding caves and discovery of Cave 3

• Aug 1952
Cave 4 discovered by Bedouin, 80% of scrolls removed. The Palestine Archaeological Museum begins purchasing them from Kando

• Sep 22-29, 1952
de Vaux and his team excavate Cave 4

• Sep 1952
Cave 5 is discovered by Jozef T. Milik, Cave 6 is discovered nearby

• Jun 1954
Mar Samuel places ad in The Wall Street Journal for the Four Dead Sea Scrolls

• Jun 11, 1954
Yigael Yadin, Sukenik’s son, secretly arranges purchase of the four scrolls

• Feb 13, 1955
Yadin announces the return of the scrolls to Israel

• Feb-Apr 1955
Caves 7, 8, 9, and 10 discovered

• Feb 1956
Cave 11 discovered by Bedouin

• Jun 1967
Yadin seizes the Temple Scroll from Kando

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The Book of Enoch

“Book of Enoch” (1 Enoch)

The “Book of Enoch” (1 Enoch) is a collection of texts composed between about 350 B.C.E. and the turn of the era. It is the earliest extant example of an apocalyptic blend of Israelite prophetic and wisdom theologies best known from the Book of Daniel, and it witnesses the variety within Israelite religion in the Greco-Roman period.

Two myths shape the Book of Enoch. The first, related to Genesis 6:1–4,* ascribes the origins of evil to the rebellion of certain angels who mated with women and begat a race of giants that devastated the earth and whose demonic spirits continue to produce sin and misery. According to the second myth, Enoch (as said in Genesis 5:21–24) was taken to heaven, where he learned the secrets of the universe and of the coming judgment.

The Enochic texts claim to be Enoch’s revelations transmitted through his son, Methuselah. The various parts of 1 Enoch were composed in Aramaic and translated into Greek, and from Greek into ancient Ethiopic, in which version alone the entire collection has survived.

Qumran Cave 4 yielded fragments of 11 Aramaic manuscripts of parts of 1 Enoch that cover perhaps one fifth of the Ethiopic text, as well as nine ­Aramaic manuscripts of “the Book of the Giants,” a text not included in 1 Enoch.¹ The 1 Enoch manuscripts attest both to how closely the Ethiopic text corresponds to its Aramaic prototypes in some places and to where it differs in others. The Giants fragments indicate that the Enochic tradition was richer than 1 Enoch suggests. Missing at Qumran are fragments of the Book of Parables (1 Enoch 37–71), a Jewish text that provides a context for New Testament “Son of Man” christology. The absence of the Book of Parables from Qumran probably indicates that this expression of Enochic theology developed in circles different from those directly ancestral to the group that collected the texts at Qumran. The other Enochic writings were authoritative at Qumran, however, and were popular among early Christian writers as well. The Enochic texts remain a canonical part of the Bible of the Ethiopian Church.

—George W.E. Nickelsburg, The University of Iowa

* This refers to the episode in Genesis when “the sons of God went in to the daughters of humans, who bore children to them,” thus creating a race of giants called the Nephilim.

1 For the Qumran fragments, see any comprehensive translation of the scrolls. For the whole of 1 Enoch, see George W.E. Nickelsburg and James C. VanderKam, 1 Enoch: A New Translation (Minneapolis: Fortress, 2004). For a commentary, see George W.E. Nickelsburg, 1 Enoch 1: A Commentary on the Book of Enoch, Chapters 1–35, 81–108 (Hermeneia: Minneapolis, 2001).

The Temple Scroll

The Temple Scroll

The Temple Scroll is the longest Dead Sea Scroll (over 28 feet, preserved almost to its entire length) and one of the most important. It was excavated by Bedouin in Cave 11 in 1956 (since then no more scrolls have been discovered at Qumran).*

The Dead Sea Scrolls can be divided into three main categories: Biblical, sectarian and other. The Temple Scroll is sectarian, that is, it belongs to the Dead Sea sect, identified by most scholars with the Essenes. It was composed, most probably, in the second part of the second century B.C.E., approximately 200 years before the destruction of the Second Temple.

The scroll is a halakhic (legal) composition, a rewriting of Pentateuchal passages, dealing with the laws as they were interpreted by the sect (mostly laws that differ from the laws of normative, Pharisaic Judaism).

In the Pentateuch the Lord speaks to Moses and Moses speaks to the people. Here the Lord speaks directly to the people in the first person singular, and the style tries to imitate the language of the Book of Deuteronomy, but numerous slips betray its late origin.

Five major subjects are dealt with in the scroll: the Temple, the king’s statutes, the feasts, the festival sacrifices, and laws of purity. More than half of the scroll, however, is devoted to the Temple and the Temple City, hence its name. The members of the sect did not participate in the cult of the Temple that existed in their period because they regarded it as unclean. The temple described in the Temple Scroll is an ideal edifice that was never built.**

According to the scroll, the sect had a calendar of its own that was different from the calendar of the rest of the Jewish people. In addition to the regular Jewish feasts, the sect celebrated festivals of the first fruits such as the Festival of the First Wine and the Festival of the First Oil.

The law code of the sect is characterized by its harsh and ultra-conservative laws. For instance, they prohibited sexual relations in Jerusalem, and they prescribed that lavatories were to be built at a distance of about a mile away from the Holy City.

—Magen Broshi, former curator of the Shrine of the Book, The Israel Museum in Jerusalem

*It was recovered in 1967 and published in 1977 (Hebrew edition) and 1983 (English) by Yigael Yadin

**See Magen Broshi, “The Gigantic Dimensions of the Visionary Temple in the Temple Scroll,” BAR, November/December 1987.

The War Scroll

The Scroll of the War of the Sons of Light Against the Sons of Darkness

The Scroll of the War of the Sons of Light Against the Sons of Darkness (or in short, the War Scroll) is one of the first seven Dead Sea Scrolls to have been discovered. Its genre is unique, describing an eschatological war that is to put an end to evil in the world. It is a kind of military manual, intended for priests, describing their role in providing ceremonial, cultic, and even tactical leadership to the army of the Sons of Light.

The introduction (Columns 1–2) gives the historical background to the war and the sequence of its development. It will begin with a “War against the Kittim,” a short but intense battle against Israel’s eschatological enemy (Numbers 24:24). After six rounds during which the Sons of Light will alternate between gaining and losing the upper hand, God will intervene with his mighty hand to miraculously bring victory.

This battle will introduce a second stage in the eschatological war, the “War of Divisions,” one that will be launched after six years of war preparations during which Israel’s exiles will be able to return to Jerusalem. The fighting itself will be spread out over 35 years, with breaks every sabbatical year, until the entire world is conquered.
Columns 3–9 are a series of rules (called serakhim in Hebrew), describing the trumpets and banners to be used, the different infantry and cavalry units, various purity rules, as well as tactical matters. These rules, originally intended for the War of Divisions, were eventually adapted to fit the War against the Kittim, as in Columns 15–19. Columns 10–14 are a series of prayers, imported from other sources, to be recited on the battlefield.

From Cave 4, seven additional scrolls related to the eschatological war were found (4Q491–7), being either copies of the War Scroll or compositions closely related to it, or perhaps its sources. They further support the impression gathered from the War Scroll that it had at least two stages in its composition, a first dating to the Maccabean period (Columns 1–9), and a second (Columns 10–19) intended to adapt the composition to a new reality resulting from the Roman conquest of Judea in 63 B.C.E.

—Brian Schultz, Bar-Ilan University

Steve Mason argues that the texts of Josephus cannot be relied upon to support the conclusion that the Essenes were the authors of the Dead Sea Scrolls and the inhabitants of Qumran

Flavius Josephus was a first-century Jewish historian, politician and soldier whose literary works provide crucial documentation of Roman Palestine in the first century A.D. At age 29, he was appointed general of the Jewish forces in Galilee. He was eventually captured by Vespasian, who was at that time the supreme commander of the Roman army. Josephus capitulated and sought to ingratiate himself with the Roman general, eventually becoming part of the imperial court in Rome. He was an eyewitness to the destruction of Jerusalem and the Second Temple by the Roman army in 70 A.D. He spent the rest of his life in Rome pursuing his literary career, the surviving results of which comprise a vital source of historical information.

Josephus’s commentaries on the laws and characteristics of the Essene community have been invaluable to scholars studying ancient Jewish laws and customs. They have also been the subject of much debate, particularly as they pertain to the Dead Sea Scrolls. Researchers have relied heavily on Josephus’s works as they try to determine who wrote the Dead Sea Scrolls, who inhabited Qumran, and whether or not the authors of the scrolls and the community at Qumran were in fact one and the same.

Professor Steve Mason asserts in his article “Did the Essenes Write the Dead Sea Scrolls? Don’t Rely on Josephus” (BAR, November/December 2008) that the texts of Josephus cannot be relied upon to support the conclusion that the Essenes were the authors of the Dead Sea Scrolls and the inhabitants of Qumran. So what does Josephus have to say about the Essene community? Following is a translated excerpt from The Jewish War, in which Josephus provides his main description of this fascinating group.

This deliberately literal translation of the Greek is from Steve Mason, Flavius Josephus: translation and commentary, vol. 1b: Judean War (Leiden: Brill, 2008).

The Jewish War, Book II. Chapter 8

(8.2)

119 For three forms of philosophy are pursued among the Judeans: the members of one are Pharisees, of another Sadducees, and the third [school], who certainly are reputed to cultivate seriousness, are called Essenes; although Judeans by ancestry, they are even more mutually affectionate than the others. 120 Whereas these men shun the pleasures as vice, they consider self-control and not succumbing to the passions virtue. And although there is among them a disdain for marriage, adopting the children of outsiders while they are still malleable enough for the lessons they regard them as family and instill in them their principles of character: 121 without doing away with marriage or the succession resulting from it, they nevertheless protect themselves from the wanton ways of women, having been persuaded that none of them preserves her faithfulness to one man.

(8.3)

122 Since [they are] despisers of wealth—their communal stock is astonishing—, one cannot find a person among them who has more in terms of possessions. For by a law, those coming into the school must yield up their funds to the order, with the result that in all [their ranks] neither the humiliation of poverty nor the superiority of wealth is detectable, but the assets of each one have been mixed in together, as if they were brothers, to create one fund for all. 123 They consider olive oil a stain, and should anyone be accidentally smeared with it he scrubs his body, for they make it a point of honor to remain hard and dry, and to wear white always. Hand-elected are the curators of the communal affairs, and indivisible are they, each and every one, [in pursuing] their functions to the advantage of all.

(8.4)

124 No one city is theirs, but they settle amply in each. And for those school-members who arrive from elsewhere, all that the community has is laid out for them in the same way as if they were their own things, and they go in and stay with those they have never even seen before as if they were the most intimate friends. 125 For this reason they make trips without carrying any baggage at all—though armed on account of the bandits. In each city a steward of the order appointed specially for the visitors is designated quartermaster for clothing and the other amenities. 126 Dress and also deportment of body: like children being educated with fear. They replace neither clothes nor footwear until the old set is ripped all over or worn through with age. 127 Among themselves, they neither shop for nor sell anything; but each one, after giving the things that he has to the one in need, takes in exchange anything useful that the other has. And even without this reciprocal giving, the transfer to them [of goods] from whomever they wish is unimpeded.

(8.5)

128 Toward the Deity, at least: pious observances uniquely [expressed]. Before the sun rises, they utter nothing of the mundane things, but only certain ancestral prayers to him, as if begging him to come up. 129 After these things, they are dismissed by the curators to the various crafts that they have each come to know, and after they have worked strenuously until the fifth hour they are again assembled in one area, where they belt on linen covers and wash their bodies in frigid water. After this purification they gather in a private hall, into which none of those who hold different views may enter: now pure themselves, they approach the dining room as if it were some [kind of] sanctuary. 130 After they have seated themselves in silence, the baker serves the loaves in order, whereas the cook serves each person one dish of one food. 131 The priest offers a prayer before the food, and it is forbidden to taste anything before the prayer; when he has had his breakfast he offers another concluding prayer. While starting and also while finishing, then, they honor God as the sponsor of life. At that, laying aside their clothes as if they were holy, they apply themselves to their labors again until evening. 132 They dine in a similar way: when they have returned, they sit down with the vistors, if any happen to be present with them, and neither yelling nor disorder pollutes the house at any time, but they yield conversation to one another in order. 133 And to those from outside, the silence of those inside appears as a kind of shiver-inducing mystery. The reason for this is their continuous sobriety and the rationing of food and drink among them—to the point of fullness.

(8.6)

134 As for other areas: although there is nothing that they do without the curators’ having ordered it, these two things are matters of personal prerogative among them: [rendering] assistance and mercy. For helping those who are worthy, whenever they might need it, and also extending food to those who are in want are indeed left up to the individual; but in the case of the relatives, such distribution is not allowed to be done without [permission from] the managers. 135 Of anger, just controllers; as for temper, able to contain it; of fidelity, masters; of peace, servants. And whereas everything spoken by them is more forceful than an oath, swearing itself they avoid, considering it worse than the false oath; for they declare to be already degraded one who is unworthy of belief without God. 136 They are extraordinarily keen about the compositions of the ancients, selecting especially those [oriented] toward the benefit of soul and body. On the basis of these and for the treatment of diseases, roots, apotropaic materials, and the special properties of stones are investigated.

(8.7)

137 To those who are eager for their school, the entry-way is not a direct one, but they prescribe a regimen for the person who remains outside for a year, giving him a little hatchet as well as the aforementioned waist-covering and white clothing. 138 Whenever he should give proof of his self-control during this period, he approaches nearer to the regimen and indeed shares in the purer waters for purification, though he is not yet received into the functions of communal life. For after this demonstration of endurance, the character is tested for two further years, and after he has thus been shown worthy he is reckoned into the group. 139 Before he may touch the communal food, however, he swears dreadful oaths to them: first, that he will observe piety toward the deity; then, that he will maintain just actions toward humanity; that he will harm no one, whether by his own deliberation or under order; that he will hate the unjust and contend together with the just; 140 that he will always maintain faithfulness to all, especially to those in control, for without God it does not fall to anyone to hold office, and that, should he hold office, he will never abuse his authority—outshining his subordinates, whether by dress or by some form of extravagant appearance; 141 always to love the truth and expose the liars; that he will keep his hands pure from theft and his soul from unholy gain; that he will neither conceal anything from the school-members nor disclose anything of theirs to others, even if one should apply force to the point of death. 142 In addition to these, he swears that he will impart the precepts to no one otherwise than as he received them, that he will keep away from banditry, and that he will preserve intact their school’s books and the names of the angels. With such oaths as these they completely secure those who join them.

(8.8)

143 Those they have convicted of sufficiently serious errors they expel from the order. And the one who has been reckoned out often perishes by a most pitiable fate. For, constrained by the oaths and customs, he is unable to partake of food from others. Eating grass and in hunger, his body wastes away and perishes. 144 That is why they have actually shown mercy and taken back many in their final gasps, regarding as sufficient for their errors this ordeal to the point of death.

(8.9)

145 Now with respect to trials, [they are] just and extremely precise: they render judgment after having assembled no fewer than a hundred, and something that has been determined by them is non-negotiable. There is a great reverence among them for—next to God—the name of the lawgiver, and if anyone insults him he is punished by death. 146 They make it point of honor to submit to the elders and to a majority. So if ten were seated together, one person would not speak if the nine were unwilling. 147 They guard against spitting into [their] middles or to the right side and against applying themselves to labors on the seventh days, even more than all other Judeans: for not only do they prepare their own food one day before, so that they might not kindle a fire on that day, but they do not even dare to transport a container—or go to relieve themselves. 148 On the other days they dig a hole of a foot’s depth with a trowel—this is what that small hatchet given by them to the neophytes is for—and wrapping their cloak around them completely, so as not to outrage the rays of God, they relieve themselves into it [the hole]. 149 After that, they haul back the excavated earth into the hole. (When they do this, they pick out for themselves the more deserted spots.) Even though the secretion of excrement is certainly a natural function, it is customary to wash themselves off after it as if they have become polluted.

(8.10)

150 They are divided into four classes, according to their duration in the training, and the later-joiners are so inferior to the earlier-joiners that if they should touch them, the latter wash themselves off as if they have mingled with a foreigner. 151 [They are] long-lived, most of them passing 100 years—as a result, it seems to me at least, of the simplicity of their regimen and their orderliness. Despisers of terrors, triumphing over agonies by their wills, considering death—if it arrives with glory—better than deathlessness. 152 The war against the Romans proved their souls in every way: during it, while being twisted and also bent, burned and also broken, and passing through all the torture-chamber instruments, with the aim that they might insult the lawgiver or eat something not customary, they did not put up with suffering either one: not once gratifying those who were tormenting [them], or crying. 153 But smiling in their agonies and making fun of those who were inflicting the tortures, they would cheerfully dismiss their souls, [knowing] that they would get them back again.

(8.11)

154 For the view has become tenaciously held among them that whereas our bodies are perishable and their matter impermanent, our souls endure forever, deathless: they get entangled, having emanated from the most refined ether, as if drawn down by a certain charm into the prisons that are bodies. 155 But when they are released from the restraints of the flesh, as if freed from a long period of slavery, then they rejoice and are carried upwards in suspension. For the good, on the one hand, sharing the view of the sons of Greece they portray the lifestyle reserved beyond Oceanus and a place burdened by neither rain nor snow nor heat, but which a continually blowing mild west wind from Oceanus refreshes. For the base, on the other hand, they separate off a murky, stormy recess filled with unending retributions. 156 It was according to the same notion that the Greeks appear to me to have laid on the Islands of the Blessed for their most courageous men, whom they call heroes and demi-gods, and for the souls of the worthless the region of the impious in Hades, in which connection they tell tales about the punishments of certain men—Sisyphuses and Tantaluses, Ixions and Tityuses—establishing in the first place the [notion of] eternal souls and, on that basis, persuasion toward virtue and dissuasion from vice. 157 For the good become even better in the hope of a reward also after death, whereas the impulses of the bad are impeded by anxiety, as they expect that even if they escape detection while living, after their demise they will be subject to deathless retribution. 158 These matters, then, the Essenes theologize with respect to the soul, laying down an irresistible bait for those who have once tasted of their wisdom.

(8.12)

159 There are also among them those who profess to foretell what is to come, being thoroughly trained in holy books, various purifications, and concise sayings of prophets. Rarely if ever do they fail in their predictions.

(8.13)

160 There is also a different order of Essenes. Though agreeing with the others about regimen and customs and legal matters, it has separated in its opinion about marriage. For they hold that those who do not marry cut off the greatest part of life, the succession, and more: if all were to think the same way, the line would very quickly die out. 161 To be sure, testing the brides in a three-year interval, once they have been purified three times as a test of their being able to bear children, they take them in this manner; but they do not continue having intercourse with those who are pregnant, demonstrating that the need for marrying is not because of pleasure, but for children. Baths [are taken] by the women wrapping clothes around themselves, just as by the men in a waist-covering. Such are the customs of this order.

For more, read Mason, Steve. “Did the Essenes Write the Dead Sea Scrolls?.” as it appeared in Biblical Archaeology Review, Nov/Dec 2008, 61-65, 81.