Chapter 33. The Four Philosophies: Pharisees, Sadducees, Essenes, Zealots and the Qumran Scrolls

In the last two centuries of the Second Temple, Judaism was a field of competing schools. Each had its own view of scripture, fate, purity, the Temple and the end of days, and each took its own position toward the Hasmonean, Herodian and Roman rulers. The historian Josephus, a priest who had served as a rebel commander and later lived as a Roman client, organised this variety into “philosophies” for Greek readers. In 1947 the caves near Khirbet Qumran gave up the library of one of these groups, and their discovery started a scholarly and political argument that has lasted to the present. This chapter sets out Josephus’ scheme, each group’s doctrines, the scrolls and their identification, the dispute over who controlled their publication, and the modern revivals of the “Essene” name.

Josephus’ Scheme: Three Sects and a “Fourth Philosophy”

Josephus introduces the schools in his accounts of the Maccabees and Hasmoneans (Antiquities XIII.171-173), describes them in detail in Jewish War II.119-166, and returns to them in Antiquities XVIII.11-25. In his short general description they are distinguished by fate: “As for the Pharisees, they say that certain events are the work of Fate, but not all … The sect of the Essenes, however, declares that Fate is mistress of all things … But the Sadducees do away with Fate, holding … that all things lie within our own power” [Josephus, quoted in Campbell, Deciphering the Dead Sea Scrolls, #62203, ch.3]. Campbell comments that despite “the language of Fate, well-suited to his Graeco-Roman readers, there is no reason to doubt Josephus’ basic point: the Essenes believed everything to be foreordained by God, the Sadducees held the opposite view, and the Pharisees took up a midway position” [Campbell, #62203, ch.3]. In the War, the Pharisees “are esteemed most skillful in the exact explication of their laws … These ascribe all to fate [or providence], and to God, and yet allow, that to act what is right, or the contrary, is principally in the power of men.” Of the Essenes Josephus reports that they hold souls to be immortal, “united to their bodies as to prisons,” and that when freed “from the bonds of the flesh, they then, as released from a long bondage, rejoice and mount upward”. He adds that this view resembles “the opinions of the Greeks” [Josephus, The Complete Works, #65483, War II.8.11-14].

The War passage begins with the political event that produced the fourth group: “Archelaus’s part of Judea was reduced into a province, and Coponius … was sent as a procurator … Under his administration it was that a certain Galilean” (Judas) raised a revolt [Josephus, #65483, War II.8.1]. Campbell explains that the census of 6 CE “outraged one Judas the Galilean and a Pharisee called Zadok.” Judas’s family remained leaders of “a loose coalition of revolutionary nationalists – including the sicarii, men armed with a dagger or sica” who “sought freedom from Rome under the jurisdiction of God alone.” He warns that “Josephus makes plain his loathing for the Zealots … blaming them almost entirely for the disaster of the First Revolt” and that, given Josephus’ own part in the revolt, “his representation should not be taken at face value” [Campbell, #62203, ch.3].

Pharisees: Oral Torah and Its Modern Critics

Josephus states the central Pharisaic doctrine in a passage that Nehemia Gordon quotes: “the Pharisees have delivered to the people a great many observances by succession from their fathers, which are not written in the laws of Moses; and for that reason it is that the Sadducees reject them, and say that we are to esteem those observances to be obligatory which are in the written word” [Gordon, The Hebrew Yeshua vs. The Greek Jesus, #67593, ch.11, quoting Antiquities XIII.10.6]. Tim Wallace-Murphy and Marilyn Hopkins, writing within their “Rex Deus” thesis, summarise Josephus’ praise of the party: “Their principal doctrine was that oral law had been revealed in spiritual teaching to Moses when he received the Ten Commandments. They were liberal in their attempt to interpret this body of oral law and tradition, trying to modify its meaning and observance in order to make it relevant” to daily life [Wallace-Murphy & Hopkins, Custodians of Truth, #70623, ch.5]. Campbell adds that the Pharisees were “predominantly lay Jews who … sought to organize their lives as though they were priests subject to Temple purity rules,” numbering only “about six thousand” in the first century but “highly regarded by ordinary people.” The name probably comes “from the Hebrew verb parash (‘to separate’)” [Campbell, #62203, ch.3].

Nehemia Gordon, a Karaite (scripture-only) Jew, writes from the opposite side. He told a friend “that the modern Orthodox Rabbis were the continuation of the ancient Pharisees; it says that right in the Talmud,” and that both “adhere to the same five fundamental principles which I call the ‘Five Iniquities of the Rabbis'” [Gordon, #67593, ch.3]. Iniquity #1 is “Two Torahs.” He cites the Talmud’s story of Shammai telling a gentile that there are two, “the Written Torah and the Oral Torah,” and a Midrash in which the Oral Torah was given “by word of mouth to preserve it as the exclusive domain of the Rabbis as a sort of secret knowledge” because God foresaw the Greek translation. Iniquity #2 is the “Authority of the Rabbis,” whose rulings are “binding, even if it is known to be factually untrue.” He illustrates it with the oven of R. Eliezer (Baba Metsia 59b), where the sages reply even to a heavenly voice, “we do not listen to Heaven,” and God laughs, “My sons have defeated me!” Iniquity #3 is “Irrational Interpretation,” and #5 is the enactment of new laws (takanot), such as ritual hand-washing [Gordon, #67593, ch.3]. The Encyclopedia of the Dead Sea Scrolls notes a related historical link: medieval “Karaite exegetes often employed the term pashar,” the Qumran pesher method of interpretation [Encyclopedia of the Dead Sea Scrolls, #63530].

Sadducees, Essenes and the Afterlife

Campbell sums up what is known of the Sadducees, all from hostile sources (the New Testament, Josephus, the rabbis). They were “closely connected to Jerusalem’s leading aristocratic and priestly families,” their name probably comes “from Zadok,” and “their favour was courted by all Second Temple leaders of Judaea from the Hasmoneans to the Roman procurators.” Josephus says they rejected angels and an afterlife [Campbell, #62203, ch.3]. Most other Jews believed in resurrection. The Soviet scholar I. D. Amusin, in the Romanian edition, writes: “The Qumranites’ belief in the resurrection of the dead, not only spiritual but also physical, agrees with the similar belief of the Essenes described by Josephus Flavius, and with analogous conceptions in the apocryphal Book of Enoch. Belief in the resurrection of the dead was widespread among all Jews (with the exception of the Sadducees)” [Amusin, Manuscrisele de la Marea Moartă, #15031]. He links the arrival of the messiah in 1 Enoch (chs. 45–47) to “the resurrection of the dead, the universal judgment, the bliss of the righteous in paradise and the torment of sinners in hell.” He also records reports that the Essenes said a morning prayer “addressed to the rising sun” and were famed as healers using herbs and “the power of the word” [Amusin, #15031]. Campbell is more cautious: the scrolls affirm “everlasting life” (1QS 4:6-8), “even though it remains unclear whether the soul’s immortality, bodily resurrection, or some combination of both, was envisaged” [Campbell, #62203, ch.3].

The Scrolls: Discovery, Purchase and Dating

Vermes begins his account with the find: “1947 a young Arab shepherd climbed into a cave in the Judaean desert and stumbled on the first Dead Sea Scrolls,” at the end of the British Mandate [Vermes, The Complete Dead Sea Scrolls in English, #62421, Introduction]. Eleven caves followed. Yigael Yadin, son of the scholar Sukenik who bought the first scrolls for the Hebrew University, tells how the remaining four were bought from the Syrian Metropolitan Mar Athanasius Samuel, whom “the Jordanian Government had already declared … a smuggler and a traitor.” They had been “advertised in the Wall Street Journal,” and “on the 1st of July, exactly one month after the advertisement,” the final negotiation began, conducted through intermediaries so that “agents from one or two Arab states” could not block a sale to Israel [Yadin, The Message of the Scrolls, #67253, chs.2-3]. Vermes notes that the fragments were “partly found by the archaeologists, but mostly purchased from the Arabs, who nine times out of ten outwitted their professional rivals.” He also reports that “in January 1996, two Israeli archaeologists” (M. Broshi and H. Eshel) “investigated man-made caves close to the settlement which, in their opinion, were used as sleeping quarters by members of the sect” [Vermes, #62421].

Campbell gives the dating evidence. A radiocarbon test in 1950 gave “33 CE – albeit within a 200-year margin of error.” AMS tests in 1991 gave, for example, 1QIsaiah^a at 335-327 or 202-107 BCE. Palaeography classifies the hands as “archaic (circa 275–150 BCE), Hasmonean (circa 150–30 BCE), and Herodian (circa 30 BCE–70 CE).” De Vaux’s excavations (1951-1956) showed Qumran reoccupied in the late second century BCE, with communal facilities “for up to two hundred people,” and overrun by Roman troops in 68 CE [Campbell, #62203, ch.3]. Vermes summarises that “the general scholarly view today places the Qumran Scrolls roughly between 200 BCE and 70 CE” [Vermes, #62421].

Teacher of Righteousness, Wicked Priest and the Essene Hypothesis

The sect’s own texts name figures who do not appear in Josephus. Yadin cites the Habakkuk Commentary on “the ‘Wicked Priest’ who was persecuting the ‘Master of Justice’ (or the ‘Teacher of Righteousness’), the leader of the sect.” He then admits: “But who was the Teacher of Righteousness …? Here again, scholars are divided according to their theories about the sect and its date” [Yadin, #67253, chs.11, 18]. The classic “Qumran-Essene Hypothesis,” as Campbell sets it out, runs as follows. When Jonathan Maccabee “scandalously assumed the High Priesthood in 152 BCE, the Essenes broke away” from the Hasidim. They “dubbed Jonathan Maccabee the ‘Wicked Priest’ (kohen ha-rasha’), a play on ‘High Priest’ (kohen ha-rosh),” of whom 1QpHab 8:8-12 says he “was called by the name of truth when he first arose. But when he ruled over Israel his heart became proud, and he forsook God.” In Nahum’s commentary, the Pharisees are “Ephraim” and “Seekers of Smooth Things,” and the Sadducees are “Manasseh” [Campbell, #62203, ch.3]. Campbell explains why the Teacher is missing from the classical sources: “Philo and Josephus only had superficial knowledge of the Essenes,” and they wrote for non-Jewish readers, so Josephus likens the Essenes to “the Pythagoreans, just as the Pharisees are likened to the Stoics” [Campbell, #62203, ch.3].

Campbell lists eight parallels between the classical Essenes and the Community Rule (1QS). They include a staged admission with an oath; common property handed to “the Bursar of the Congregation”; a hundred-member court; and a ban on spitting “into the midst of the company or to the right,” which is “too specific – not to say odd! – to be coincidental.” Pliny the Elder places “the solitary tribe of the Essenes” with “no women … no money … only palm trees for company” above Ein Gedi [Campbell, #62203, ch.3]. The marriage question remains open. The Damascus Document (CD 7:6-9) “speaks of those who do take wives and have children,” and the cemetery “probably contained a few female skeletons” [Campbell, #62203]. Prentis and Wilson, summarising the scholarship, conclude that the view “that Qumran was run on celibate lines like a medieval monastery … proved untenable after the emergence of the Damascus Document, with its regulations governing husbands and wives, and the discovery of skeletons” of women [Prentis & Wilson, The Essenes: Children of the Light, #81330, “New Light on the Essenes”]. Campbell also reviews and rejects rival identifications. Schiffman’s Sadducean thesis fails, in his view, because the scrolls affirm “angels and resurrection.” Golb’s fortress, Donceel-Voûte’s villa (a dining couch “50 centimetres wide” would have been “unique in the ancient world”) and a trading-post theory he also finds unconvincing [Campbell, #62203, ch.7]. The Encyclopedia adds that Jubilees is attested in more copies than any book except Psalms, Deuteronomy, Isaiah and Exodus, a sign of its authority at Qumran [Encyclopedia of the Dead Sea Scrolls, #63530].

The Politics of the Scrolls: Baigent and Leigh against the Consensus

In 1991 the journalists Michael Baigent and Richard Leigh argued that the consensus itself was the product of control. Campbell states their case. The reader “is informed of the delay in publishing Cave 4 material and the restrictions on access before 1991,” and of the fact that most of the team “were or became Roman Catholic and had an association with the Ecole Biblique … which operated under the auspices of the Vatican.” From this they “founded their main accusation: the Vatican directed de Vaux’s editorial team and was at pains to control the interpretation of the Qumran DSS to protect traditional Christianity,” using the Essene hypothesis to “separate the contents of Caves 1–11 … from early Christianity” [Campbell, #62203, ch.7, “The Qumran Dead Sea Scrolls and the Vatican”]. In their own book they argue that “even when … Yigael Yadin, in his excavations at Masada, found scrolls identical to some of those discovered at Qumran, the international team refused” to draw the conclusion. They say a Qumran calendar text found at Masada shows “the defenders of the fortress used the same calendar as the Qumran community.” The Masada garrison are “generally acknowledged to have been Zealots – not a religious sect, according to conventional interpretations, but adherents of a political and military movement,” yet “the doctrine of the garrison’s defenders would appear to have been that of the Essenes” [Baigent & Leigh, The Dead Sea Scrolls Deception, #71853, chs.8, 16]. They dismiss Vermes’ derivation of “Essene” from the Aramaic “assayya, which means ‘healers’,” which “has fostered an image … of the Essenes as medical practitioners, a Judaic equivalent of the Alexandrian ascetics known as the ‘Therapeutae'” [Baigent & Leigh, #71853, ch.11]. Their identification of the Teacher with James the Just and the Liar with Paul comes from Robert Eisenman [Campbell, #62203, ch.7].

The opposing case is made by Campbell, and indirectly by Vermes. Campbell accepts that the authors “draw on several factors which are true” but calls the cover-up thesis “unsustainable,” for three reasons. First, key parts of the consensus came from outsiders. “Geza Vermes … was the first to argue seriously that the Wicked Priest … was Jonathan Maccabee,” and he was “at the same time, a vociferous critic of the editorial team’s scandalous publication record.” Second, the Ecole Biblique’s Revue Biblique “remains at the cutting edge.” Third, Catholics such as José O’Callaghan and Joseph Fitzmyer dissented from the team [Campbell, #62203, ch.7]. Vermes himself describes how de Vaux “improvised, in 1953 and 1954, a team of seven on the whole young and untried scholars” for Cave 4, and how farming out texts to doctoral students “further delayed progress” [Vermes, #62421, Introduction]. He maintains that “none of the competing theories associating the Qumran group with Pharisees, Sadducees, Zealots, or Jewish-Christians can withstand critical scrutiny” [Vermes, #62421]. Campbell gives his own explanation of the Masada copy: Qumran refugees may have fled there in 68 CE “taking a handful of documents with them” [Campbell, #62203, ch.3]. The two sides therefore agree that publication was delayed and access restricted. They disagree on whether the cause was ordinary academic failure or a deliberate shaping of interpretation.

The Modern Essene Revival

The Essene name later took on a life outside scholarship. Edmond Bordeaux Szekely’s Essene Gospel of Peace circulates in health literature. Steve Meyerowitz, in a work on wheatgrass, reprints Szekely’s account of its discovery and a passage from Book IV in which Jesus speaks “about the angel of air, water and sun to his Brothers of the Elect,” and praises the translation’s “purity and simplicity” [Meyerowitz, Wheatgrass, Nature’s Finest Medicine, #65359]. Joanna Prentis and Stuart Wilson also draw on Szekely, citing “an alternative form on page 12 of The Essene Gospel of Peace, Book Four” [Prentis & Wilson, #81330]. Most of their book is based on past-life regression. Prentis writes that she “put him [Wilson] into an altered state of consciousness” and recorded an account of “how (and why) the Damascus Document … was written” [Prentis & Wilson, #81330]. Neither source questions Szekely’s provenance. In this literature the Essenes are healers, vegetarians and solar worshippers, a picture that partly matches Amusin’s notes on healing and the morning prayer to the sun [Amusin, #15031].

Key points

• Josephus classifies the sects by fate and free will: Essenes (all foreordained), Pharisees (both), Sadducees (free will only). The “fourth philosophy” of Judas the Galilean arose from the Roman census of 6 CE.
• The Pharisees held an oral law “not written in the laws of Moses” and revealed at Sinai (Josephus; Wallace-Murphy & Hopkins). Gordon sees modern Orthodox rabbis as their direct continuation and lists “Five Iniquities.”
• The Sadducees, the priestly aristocracy, rejected resurrection and angels; Amusin finds physical resurrection at Qumran, matching Josephus’ Essenes and 1 Enoch.
• The scrolls (from 1947; c. 200 BCE-70 CE) were bought partly through a Wall Street Journal advertisement (Yadin); caves near the site were identified as living quarters in 1996 (Broshi and Eshel, per Vermes).
• The Qumran-Essene hypothesis identifies the “Wicked Priest” with Jonathan Maccabee (152 BCE). Yadin admits that scholars are “divided according to their theories” about the Teacher.
• The Damascus Document’s marriage rules and the female skeletons undermine the “celibate monastery” model (Campbell; Prentis & Wilson).
• Baigent and Leigh accuse a Vatican-linked team of delaying publication and separating the scrolls from Christianity and from the Zealots of Masada. Campbell, citing Vermes and Catholic dissenters, rejects the conspiracy but concedes the “scandalous publication record.”
• Szekely’s Essene Gospel of Peace and regression literature (Prentis & Wilson) carry the Essene name into modern alternative spirituality.