page_title: Essenes
section_title: Location
hierarchical_section_title: Essenes / Location
caption_attribution_description: English: Remains of living quarters at Qumran.
context_page_description: The Essenes were a Jewish sect during the Second Temple period that flourished from the 2nd century BCE to the 1st century CE.
  The Jewish historian Josephus records that Essenes existed in large numbers, and thousands lived throughout Roman Judaea, but they were fewer in number than the Pharisees and the Sadducees, the other two major sects at the time. The Essenes lived in various cities but congregated in communal life dedicated to voluntary poverty, daily immersion, and asceticism. Most scholars claim they seceded from the Zadokite priests.
  The Essenes have gained fame in modern times as a result of the discovery of an extensive group of religious documents known as the Dead Sea Scrolls, which are commonly believed to be the Essenes' library. These documents preserve multiple copies of parts of the Hebrew Bible untouched from possibly as early as 300 BCE until their discovery in 1946. Most scholars dispute the notion that the Essenes wrote the Dead Sea Scrolls. Rachel Elior questions even the existence of the Essenes.
  The first reference to the sect is by the Roman writer Pliny the Elder in his Natural History.
context_section_description: According to Josephus, the Essenes had settled “not in one city” but “in large numbers in every town”. Philo speaks of "more than four thousand" Essaioi living in “Palestine and Syria”, more precisely, “in many cities of Judaea and in many villages and grouped in great societies of many members”.
  Pliny locates them “on the west side of the Dead Sea, away from the coast... [above] the town of Engeda”.
  Some modern scholars and archaeologists have argued that Essenes inhabited the settlement at Qumran, a plateau in the Judean Desert along the Dead Sea, citing Pliny the Elder in support, and giving credence that the Dead Sea Scrolls are the product of the Essenes. This theory, though not yet conclusively proven, has come to dominate the scholarly discussion and public perception of the Essenes. Part of the Dead Sea Scrolls that have been discovered is a small fragment known as the “Son of God text” or 4Q246.
caption: Remains of part of the main building at Qumran.
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