Ancient testimony to the Essenes

Prior to the discovery of the Dead Sea Scrolls in 1947, information concerning the pre-Christian Jewish sect of the Essenes was limited to the testimony of various Greek and Latin writers, only three of whom (Philo, Pliny, and Josephus) were contemporaneous with the group. The earliest mention of the Essenes comes from Philo, an Alexandrian Jew, in two works written prior to A.D. 40: Every Good Man is Free (12–13 §75–91) and Hypothetica (11.1–18, preserved in Eusebius, Praeparatio evangelica). In addition, Philo devotes nearly an entire treatise (On the Contemplative Life) to the Therapeutae, a group in Egypt apparently similar to the Essenes who lived a more contemplative life than the Essenes. A second contemporaneous writer who mentions the Essenes is Pliny the Elder. Pliny's description of the Essenes in his Natural History (5.15 §73), completed in A.D. 77, is brief but highly significant with regard to the identification of the Dead Sea Scroll community, as will be seen below.

Josephus' account of the Essenes

But the most important contemporaneous description of the Essenes comes from the Jewish historian Flavius Josephus (ca. A.D. 37–100). In all, Josephus mentions the Essenes thirteen times in three works. Ten of the thirteen references to the Essenes are of comparatively minor importance for the present study, and are discussed briefly in the Appendix. But the other three passages form the basis for this study of Josephus' account of the Essenes.