Autor: Eloisa Lima | Publicado: 2011-10-01T13:01:00-07:00

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Robert Feather, MIMMM, C. Eng.

obert Feather is a Member of the 
Institution of Metallurgists and a 
Chartered Engineer. He is a member 
of The Orion Center for the Study of the Dead 
Sea Scrolls and Associated Literature at the 
Hebrew University of Jerusalem, the Society of 
Biblical Literature, The Egypt Exploration 
Society, and The Historical Metallurgy Society. 
The author of two works on the Dead Sea 
Scrolls, The Mystery of the Copper Scroll of 
Qumran: the Essene Record of the Treasure of 
Akhenaten (2003) and The Secret Initiation 
of Jesus at Qumran: the Essene Mysteries of 
John the Baptist (2005), Professor Feather 
created the present essay especially for this issue of 
the Digest dealing with the questions raised 
concerning the Essenes’ Messianic hopes, and 
connections with Egypt.

As part of his Easter 2007 messages Pope 
Benedict XVI made the surprise statement 
that he now believes Jesus celebrated the 
Passover Supper according to Essene rites and 
implied that he thought the meal took place 
in an Essene house somewhere in Jerusalem.1 
He did not go so far as to say he now believes 
Jesus had been an Essene, but reading 
between the lines it is the logical conclusion 
of his statement. 

Referring to contradictions in the Gospels 
on the timing of the crucifixion, the Pope said: 
“Jesus celebrated Passover with his disciples 
probably according to the calendar of Qumran, 
that is to say, at least one day earlier—he 
celebrated without a lamb like the Qumran 
community and did not recognize the Temple 
of Herod and was waiting for a new Temple.”

Many Christians, especially Catholic 
theologians, were thrown into a state of 
disarray. Previously they had tended to try to 
maintain as large a gulf between Jesus and 
the Essenes as possible, but here was the 
head of the Church confounding traditional 
thinking that Jesus had emerged from a 
Pharisaic background. In my second book, 
The Secret Initiation of Jesus at Qumran,2 
I developed a strong case, not only to link Jesus 
to the Essenes, but also to place him as a 
long-time member of their community at 
Qumran, and this suggestion met strong 
resistance from Christian scholars, especially 
the more conservative. Now that the head of 
the Catholic Church has made a statement 
supporting much of what I have been 
contending, theologians have had to accept 
the possibility of an entirely new perspective 
for the origins of Christianity.

One can only admire the Pope’s forthright 
thinking, but wonder what was the 
motivation behind this unexpected statement. 
I have several theories about the reasoning 
behind the Pope’s comments:

1. Relatively recent excavations have 
confirmed the existence of an Essene 
community living in the Essene Gate part of 
the city of Jerusalem in Second Temple times.

2. The ongoing problems caused by 
claims in the Da Vinci Code and other books, 
such as The Templar Revelation and Holy 
Blood, Holy Grail, that Jesus married Mary 
Magdelene and had a child with her. 3 If Jesus 
is now to be seen as following an Essene 
lifestyle, the implication is that he would 
have remained celibate and not married. 
Conceding one somewhat undesirable 
scenario completely eliminates a potentially 
much more damaging theory.

3. The Dead Sea Scrolls and books, like 
my own, have produced increasing evidence 
to support the likelihood that early members 
of Jesus’ followers, including John the Baptist, 
and even Jesus himself, were members of 
the Qumran community.




The consensus tendency, before Pope 
Benedict’s pronouncements, was to resist 
the conclusion that John the Baptist was a 
long-term member of the community, or that 
Jesus had ever been a member. Certainly 
John the Baptist’s rebellious character does 
not seem to be consistent with his remaining 
very long within the quiescent structure of 
the Qumran community. This resistance 
among Christian theologians and historians 
has almost certainly been motivated by a 
desire to retain the uniqueness of the 
Christian message and avoid the implication 
that another sect might have been the source 
of many of its beliefs and practices. 

However, even staunch Catholic 
traditionalists, like Father Jerome Murphy-
O’Connor, of the École Biblique in East 
Jerusalem, were forced to admit as early as 
1960, long before much more persuasive 
information had become available from the 
Dead Sea Scrolls, that Paul, the architect of 
Christianity, was definitely in contact with 
someone who knew Essene teaching 
thoroughly, and that Timothy, one of Jesus’ 
close followers, belonged to the same circle as 
John the Baptist.

In fact, some earlier scholars, such as Dr. 
Joseph Klausner in 1925 and Heinrich 
Graetz4 in the nineteenth century, were 
firmly convinced long before the discovery 
of the Dead Sea Scrolls that John the Baptist 
was at one time an Essene. The opinion of 
these latter scholars is largely based on 
analysis of the Christian Scriptures and the 
descriptions of John the Baptist given by 
Flavius Josephus, a contemporary Roman/
Jewish historian (37–ca. 100 CE). The most 
relevant quotation from the Christian 
Scriptures indicating John the Baptist’s 
membership in the Qumran Essene 
community comes from Luke 1:80:

And the child grew, and waxed strong 
in spirit, and was in the deserts till the day 
of his showing to Israel.

The Gospel of Luke endorses the 
probability that John the Baptist attained 
intellectual and religious maturity elsewhere 
than at his home when it refers to him 
spending his early life in the desert. For 
example, when the Evangelists describe the 
Baptist as “living in the wilderness and eating 
a diet of locusts and wild honey,” it is 
understood by most scholars to be a reference 
to the Qumran-Essenes, as anyone banished 
from membership would have previously 
taken a vow only to eat prepared food that 
had been blessed by the leader of the 
community. However, once evicted they 
would be forced to eat only wild food.

John the Baptist’s baptizing ritual was 
very reminiscent of the ritual immersion 
practiced by the Essenes; and, in the 
words of an earlier commentator, Israeli 
professor Yigael Yadin, “The influence of 
the sect’s teachings is recognizable in the 
views, practices, ideology, and even the 
very phraseology of the founders of 
Christianity.”5 Professor Yadin had little 
doubt that John the Baptist was a member 
of the community for a period of his life. 
Other experts of the Christian Scriptures, 
like the German Otto Betz and Jean 
Steinmann of France, believed that John 
the Baptist grew up as an Essene, almost 
certainly in the wilderness at Qumran.6


John the Baptist (with aspects of Bacchus) 
(1513-1516), by Leonardo Da Vinci.




So What of Jesus’ Earlier Years?

Between descriptions of the birth of Jesus 
and the beginning of his ministry, the 
Christian Scriptures give sparse detail of his 
formative years. The brief mention there is 
comes from Luke 2:41–52, where we are told 
he came up “according to custom” to 
Jerusalem at the age of twelve. Jesus then 
stayed on in Jerusalem to converse with, and 
confound, the learned persons of the Temple. 

The tradition of a boy going up to 
Jerusalem “according to custom” at twelve years 
of age is in itself rather strange, as the normal 
“Son of the Commandment” (Bar Mitzvah) 
ceremony, or coming of age for a Jewish child, 
occurs when the child is thirteen. An 
explanation may be that the earlier age involved 
a biblical linking to the beginning of the 
prophet Samuel’s ministering period, which 
commenced during his twelfth year.

What happened after this event and up 
to the time of the beginning of Jesus’ ministry 
is not clear from the Gospels, which say 
nothing about the eighteen intervening years. 
Why would the Christian Scriptures be silent 
about a period spanning more than half of 
Jesus’ critically formative adult life? 

When Jesus reached the age of sixteen, his 
parents were required by law to place him in a 
recognized school. From the knowledge that 
Jesus and the Christian Scriptures subsequently 
exhibited, it seems certain that they opted for 
the intense learning center of Qumran.

Our information on the requirements for 
recruitment to the community comes largely 
from three sources: the Dead Sea Scrolls; 
Josephus, Philo, and Pliny; and a recently 
found ostracon, or pottery fragment with a 
written inscription. For continuity of the story, 
we need to take a brief look at all three sources.

Analysis of scholarly opinion on John the Baptist’s 
membership in the Qumran-Essene Community7

Member at some period in his life

In contact and influenced

Little contact or influence

(Josephus)*

Jean Danielou

H. Rowley

R. Eisler

Jack Finnegan 

Frank Cross

Otto Betz 

 Daniel Schwartz

Pierre Benoit

Jean Steinmann 

Raymond Brown

Cyrus Gordon

Yigael Yadin

R. Harrison

Edmund Sutcliffe

John Allegro

Charles Scobie

John Pryke

Barbara Thiering

 John Robinson

Joan Taylor

Charles Fritsch 

Oscar Cullmann

James Charlesworth

Millar Burrows

Robert Webb

Carsten Thiede

David Flusser

 William Brownlee

 Ian McDonald

Kurt Schubert 

George Brooke

Michael Grant 

Lucretta Mowry

Joseph Fitzmyer

James VanderKam

Magen Broshi

The Jesus Seminar

Jozef Milik**

 Pope Benedict XVI

Geza Vermes

Robert Feather





Chart © Robert Feather

* The extensive descriptions of John the Baptist by Flavius Josephus in Jewish Antiquities have been taken by some scholars, 
such as H. Lichtenberger, as a portrayal of John as an Essene.

** Jozef Milik’s opinion was communicated to the author during interviews in 1999 and 2001.




The Dead Sea Scrolls

The Qumran Dead Sea Scroll called the 
Community Rule (also known as the Manual 
of Discipline), sets out the requirement for a 
ten-year period of study, after which, at the 
age of twenty, students had to undergo a 
public examination before their peers to 
verify their integrity and their understanding 
of the Law. A year of probation followed, and 
then the student was again examined. If 
he passed this test, he served a further year 
of probation before a proposal for full 
membership in the Brotherhood was put to 
the vote. If accepted, he was required to swear 
an oath of loyalty. The minimum age to hold 
office in the Brotherhood was twenty-five, 
and the “fourth degree of holiness” (referred 
to by Josephus) could not be reached before 
the age of thirty. (It is interesting to note the 
similarity in the use of the terms brotherhood, 
degree, and master to those used in the 
Masonic movement. This subject is discussed 
more extensively in The Mystery of the Copper 
Scroll of Qumran. 8)

The most likely scenario is, therefore, that 
Jesus “graduated” at the age of thirty and then 
chose to become an “urban Essene,” taking his 
own path with his own cadre of followers. 
Basing himself in Capernaum on the Sea of 
Galilee, he set forth with several close disciples 
to preach the basic message of the Essenes and 
Torah, enriched by his own divine revelation.

Josephus, Philo, and Pliny

Recruitment to the community appears to 
have taken place at any age, but the preferable 
age for an apprentice was when the child was 
quite young. Philo and Pliny report that adults 
were taken in for qualification, but Josephus 
says boys were also admitted for training.

Recently Found Ostracon 

The excitement was almost palpable as 
people crowded around pictures of an 
ostracon, or inscribed pottery fragment, 
trying to get a better view. The subject of the 
Copper Scroll, which had drawn delegates to 
an international conference in Manchester, 
England, in 1996, was for the moment 
forgotten. This was the star turn of the day. 
Esther Eshel, of Bar-Ilan University, was 
showing what appeared to be the first-ever 
archeological proof that the inhabitants 
of Qumran considered themselves a 
community—a Yahad.

The ostracon contains a legal text in 
Hebrew, apparently recording the surrender 
to the community by a new recruit of his 
personal property. The procedure is entirely 
consistent with that prescribed in the Manual 
of Discipline, and as such represents the first 
solid outside evidence that conventional 
scholarship is correct in its assessment of 
activities at Qumran.

That the Gospels and historical external 
evidence tell us almost nothing of Jesus’ 
formative years is not surprising, if those years 
were spent at Qumran. If I am correct, he was 
closeted away in a desert environment from 
an early age and excluded from outside 
contact with his parents and family.

The minimum age given in the Rule of 
the Congregation for when a novice could 
attain his full accreditation, thirty years, is 
exactly the same age as the Gospels state for the 
reappearance of Jesus into the outside world. 
By the time Jesus reached this age, he would 
have been fully immersed in the teachings of 
the Qumran-Essenes, and their protocols 
would have been engraved on his conscious 
and subconscious mind. This is a potent piece 
of correlation, which does not appear to have 
been connected to Jesus before.

It is not surprising, therefore, that so 
many of the echoes of the Qumran-Essenes 
can be detected in the later transcribed 
words and recordings of Jesus’ acts. If the 
view that John the Baptist was also at one 
time or another a regular visitor to, or even 
for some period a resident member at 
Qumran, it is reasonable to assume that his 
rebellious nature may have inspired Jesus to 
reassert his own radicalism. What is more 
natural than on reaching his majority at the 
age of thirty, Jesus should strike out on his 




own, leave the community, and 
seek out John the Baptist for 
reassurance and communion?

The Gospels of Matthew, 
Luke, and John say Jesus was born 
in Bethlehem, a village that 
certainly existed at the time of his 
birth. Nazareth, the town he is 
said to have lived in during most 
of his early life, is less easily 
identifiable. The question marks 
that hang over this period of Jesus’ 
life, and the uncertainty of 
Nazareth as a place of prolonged 
residence for Jesus, may well have 
relevance when it comes to considering an 
alternative place of residence for his maturing 
years. Athough Nazareth is now a bustling 
town of some forty thousand people, neither 
Talmudic texts nor the Masoretic Testament 
(Hebrew Scriptures, or Old Testament), the 
Apocrypha, or Josephus can help verify the 
existence of the Nazareth of the Christian 
Scriptures (New Testament).

Tellingly, Jesus, in the New Testament, 
performs many miracles, healings, and 
exorcisms across the Holy Land, but never 
performs anything in Nazareth. Josephus, one-
time commander of the Galilee region, lists its 
towns and villages, but makes no mention of a 
place called “Nazareth.” The only possible 
external reference to Nazareth comes from a 
fragmentary ancient Hebrew inscription dated 
to the end of the third century CE., found at 
Caesarea, on the north coast of Israel. This lists 
twenty-four priestly “allotments” of duty 
rotations (Hebrew, mishmarot) and the places 
from which they derived. The eighteenth 
allotment is given in Hebrew as nzrt, which 
could be read as Nazareth.

Archeological work at Nazareth in 1889, 
led by Father Prosper Viaud, and between 
1955 and 1970, led by Father B. Bagatti, has 
yielded some clues about a possible early 
history, and excavations are said to have 
revealed graffiti in lower layers under the 
existing Church of the Incarnation. These are 
believed to indicate an early Judeo-
Christian presence, but nothing 
from the first century CE.

If there is little proof that 
Nazareth actually existed in Jesus’ 
time, why is the name mentioned 
in the Christian Scriptures? The 
explanation put forward by a 
number of scholars as the most 
likely reason is that it has been 
confused with the term Nazirite or 
Nazarene (Nazorene). The Nazirites 
were a select Jewish group who 
took a vow of dedication to the 
Lord and followed a spiritual 
lifestyle. The three lifelong Nazirites 
mentioned in the Bible are Samson, Samuel, 
and John the Baptist; intriguingly, the term 
has been associated with the Essenes.

So where does current conventional 
scholarship stand on the possibility of a 
connection between Jesus and other characters 
from the Christian Scriptures, and the 
Qumran-Essene community? Surprisingly, a 
number of eminent observers of early 
Christian history, such as Dr. Matthew Black; 
Dr. Hugh Schonfield; and Hyam Maccoby, 
who was visiting professor at Leeds University 
until his death in May 2004; make little more 
than passing reference to the “Qumran-
Essene effect.” Their views can be summarized 
as follows: “The oldest roots of the Christian 
movement in ‘Galilee’ are to be sought in a 
group of dedicated Nazirites, sectarians who 
continued the ancient Israelite institution of 
the lifelong Nazirate.” 9

Even a modernist writer such as John 
Crossan, professor of Biblical Studies at 
De Paul University, Chicago, has a virtual 
blind spot when it comes to considering how 
the Qumran-Essenes might have influenced 
Jesus or the Christian Scriptures. When he 
does mention the Dead Sea Scrolls, his facts 
are questionable. 10 

In all these works, the associations of 
Jesus and John the Baptist with Qumran are 
highly contentious, accepted by many 


Oldest known Icon of 
Christ Pantocrator from St. 
Catherine’s Monastery, Mt. 
Sinai (6th-7th century).




scholars but disputed by others, as the 
following paragraphs point out.

The present state of opinion from 
authoritative scholars such as Magen Broshi 
(former curator, Shrine of the Book, Israel 
Museum), Geza Vermes (professor emeritus, 
Oxford University), and Professor George 
Brooke (Manchester University), is weighted 
in favor of John the Baptist having been a 
member of the Qumran-Essene community 
at some period in his life. The tendency, 
however, is to resist drawing a similar 
association for Jesus. This resistance, as one 
would expect, is far stronger from Christian, 
particularly Catholic, commentators, such as 
Father Émile Puech (director of research, 
CNRS, Paris), Professor Carsten Peter 
Thiede (minister, Church of England), 
Father Jerome Murphy-O’Connor (École 
Biblique, Jerusalem), and Professor J. Van der 
Ploeg (University of Nijmegen, Holland).

The more the emerging information is 
examined and the existing material 
reevaluated, the more apparent it becomes 
that the hotbed of spiritual industry bubbling 
away at Khirbet Qumran on the northwestern 
edge of the Dead Sea was a cauldron from 
which were cast many of the templates of 
early Christian ideas—a background that 
early Christian writers were readily able to 
adapt to the experiences of Jesus.

To assess what the relationship of John the 
Baptist and Jesus might have been to Qumran, 
it is necessary to understand a bit more about 
this strange, quirky, secretive, male-dominated, 
nonconformist Jewish community, and why 
the predominantly Christian researchers 
involved in early Dead Sea Scrolls studies 
tended to shy away from linking Jesus and 
John the Baptist to Qumran. 

The Qumran Community

The community that lived at Qumran 
never referred to themselves in their own 
documents as Essenes. The name is one 
applied to them by the Roman/Jewish 
historian Josephus. 

Since detaching themselves from the 
Temple environment, around 140 BCE., the 
community shunned its ceremonies and 
castigated the officiating Sadduceean priests 
for not adhering to the correct calendar, 
amongst other objections. However, the 
Second Temple was, to the Essenes, a place of 
intense contradiction. The holy place, central 
in concept to their inheritance, was occupied 
by alien forces and governed by the whims of 
Herod, a lackey of Rome. 

The Temple’s size and shape were not to 
their liking and, worse still, from around 
31-30 BCE onward, two lambs were 
sacrificed every day by the Temple priests for 
the “well-being” of the Roman emperor and 
the Roman Empire. This animal sacrifice 
was an anathema to many Jewish groups, 
and especially to the Qumran-Essenes. No 
wonder they interpreted the earthquake of 
31 BCE, which caused widespread destruction 
in the area of the Judean Desert and severe 
damage to their own settlement, as a portent 
that they were right and that their belief in 
an imminent apocalypse was justified.

Although they put immense store in 
traditional Hebrew teachings, they followed 
an apparently alternate form of Judaism, 
which yearned for and echoed the early days 
of Mosaic Sinai, and which, I maintain, 
dates back even further to the ancient 
monotheism of Akhenaten and Jacob.

It is evident from the Dead Sea Scrolls 
that the Essenes of Qumran considered 
themselves an elite messianic group; they had 
retreated from the fray of the Temple and the 
priesthood and sought refuge in the wilderness 
to protect their piety. The opening verses of 
Isaiah, chapter 40, aptly describe their role:

A voice cries out: “In the wilderness 
prepare the way of the Lord, make straight in 
the desert a highway for our God.”

As we go through a brief description of 
their unique teachings and behavior patterns 
it will be evident that many were transferred 
to Christianity. 




Successive “right teachers” had the role of 
ensuring that the community adhered to the 
true interpretation of the Torah, while they 
waited for a prophet similar to Moses and an 
unprecedented two messiahs.

This waiting was to be accompanied by 
immersion in the Holy Scriptures and by 
following an ascetic, celibate way of life. Each 
year a cumulative total of 120 nights was to be 
spent in prayer and study. Personal possessions 
and income were to be given to the yahad, the 
community, and in turn the community 
looked after the individual’s needs. Living and 
eating was communal, and garments were 
plain and purely functional. There are many 
similarities in this unselfish way of life to the 
modern ashrams of America and the kibbutzim 
of modern Israel.

Within the community, at least at the 
outset, there was a strong hierarchical 
structure. At the top sat the right teacher. 
Priests, aided by Levites (individuals of 
priestly descent), dictated the doctrine of 
the group. All full members could vote in 
an assembly on nondoctrinal matters, while 
general day-to-day administration was in 
the hands of a triumvirate of three priests 
and twelve helpers. Each member had a 
specific place in the hierarchy in relation to 
level of learning and holiness, as determined 
by their peers. 

Throughout the sectarian Dead Sea 
Scrolls that describe the feelings and 
activities of the Essenes, there are repeated 
themes and motifs that endow these works 
with a sense of collective purpose: of sons 
of light fighting sons of darkness, messianic 
portents, battles with evil, the fruits of 
righteousness. Their fundamental themes 
embody persons who are:

Righteous—Zaddikim

Pious—Hassidim

Holy—Kedushim

Meek—Anavim

Endowed with God’s Spirit—Ruachim

Faithful—Emunim 

The first three are recognizably strongly 
Jewish; the latter three carry noticeable 
overtones that would later become strongly 
applied in Christianity.

There is a continual reference throughout 
their scrolls to the part played by the 
Tabernacle priests. It is clear that the Essenes 
considered themselves the keepers of the 
covenant and part of the direct line of priests 
that attended the holy shrines.

So whom were the Qumran-Essenes 
waiting for? The answer is contained in a 
number of the Dead Sea Scrolls texts that 
indicate they were waiting for two, and some 
scholars read three, messiahs. These messiahs, 
one priestly and one royal, are given various 
titles in different scrolls:

Priestly: Interpreter of the Law, the Star; the 
Messiah of Aaron, who was of princely descent.

Royal: Prince of the Congregation, the 
Scepter; the Messiah of Israel; the King Messiah.

In addition, they expected the return of 
a prophet similar to Moses. Fortunately, 
there are quite detailed descriptions of these 
messiahs in a number of their scrolls, so 
one would assume it should be relatively 
easy to identify whom they were talking 
about. Unhappily that is not the case, 
and conventional scholarship makes little 
attempt to utilize this information.

A Davidic Messiah?

The idea of the kingly messiah referred 
to by the Essenes is inevitably taken as being 
someone emerging from the Davidic line of 
kings, commencing with King David 
himself. The tacit assumption by most 
scholars is that King David was the role 
model for this returning royal messiah. If 
King David wasn’t the role-model messiah, 
ordinary scholarship has nowhere else to go. 
The assumption, however, is fraught with 
problems. King David (who ruled in 
approximately 1000 BCE) noticeably failed 
to live up to the righteous ideals demanded 
in the books of Jeremiah, Ezekiel, Micah, 
Kings, and Chronicles.




David had Uriah, an officer in his army, 
murdered in order to marry Uriah’s wife, and 
brought destruction on seventy thousand 
Israelites for his evil doings. In a parable by 
the prophet Nathan, David is roundly 
condemned for his evil acts against God and 
told that his descendants will suffer as a result 
of his murderous deeds. This is hardly a 
worthy pattern for a future messiah. In fact, 
formal messianism in Jewish scripture does 
not appear until the time of Daniel in the 
second century BCE, so King David is even 
less likely to have been the role model the 
Qumran-Essenes were thinking of.

One has to wonder, 
therefore, where the 
Qumran-Essenes 
obtained their quite 
detailed and well-
developed philosophy of 
these anticipated messiahs 
and messianism—which, 
in any event, appear to 
predate any of the royal 
kings of Israel. The 
problem of identifying 
the two messiahs, one 
kingly and one priestly, 
alluded to in the Hebrew 
Scriptures but distinctly 
specified in the Qumran-
Essene literature, is so 
contentious that modern scholarship either 
ignores the problem or scratches around to 
try to find possible candidates using very 
weak evidence. 

Nowhere does the Pentateuch or any 
succeeding text of the Hebrew Scriptures 
suggest that, when the faithful in Israel 
worshiped at the Tabernacle or later in the 
Temple at Jerusalem, they looked to the 
Aaronic high priest as a foreshadowing of a 
future messianic high priest. Almost in 
desperation, some scholars have even 
suggested Zerubbabel, the rebuilder of the 
First Temple, or Joshua, the postexilic high 
priest, as possible contenders.

The phrase “Davidic line” is, in my view, 
only an indicator of a longer royal line 
predating King David. In fact, in Qumran 
texts, and in most biblical texts, the messianic 
king is deliberately not referred to as Davidic. 
Although many of the motifs in the 
expectation of a future king may be drawn 
from Israel’s experience of kingship, other 
motifs can clearly be traced to pre-Hebrew 
Scripture’s kingship periods of Israel’s history. 
Indeed, how can King David be the 
personification of a messianic figure when the 
same messianic figure is seen by Isaiah and 
Zechariah, and by Dead Sea Scrolls texts such 
as 4Q285, as a “suffering 
servant” of God who 
is frustrated in his 
ambitions and killed for 
his efforts? None of these 
characteristics can be 
applied to King David. 
One eminent scholar, 
Kenneth Pomykala, like 
others, has postulated 
that any reference by the 
Qumran sect to a messiah 
of Israel should be 
regarded categorically as 
non-Davidic.11 

Why should this 
be, unless there was 
some memory of another 
previous line of royalty? In the same way as 
there is no reference to Jerusalem in the so-
called New Jerusalem Scroll, there appears to be 
limited reference to a Davidic messiah in other 
sectarian Qumran-Essene scrolls. That the 
references to a Davidic messiah are limited, 
however, has not prevented most scholars from 
falling back on the assumption that David was 
the Essenes’ role model for a future messiah, 
even given the fact that there are alternative 
explanations that have not yet been explored.

John and Jesus’ continuity with the 
Qumran-Essenes

When one looks at other factors that tend 
to confirm the continuity of specifically 


David and Solomon, detail from the Icon of the 
Harrowing of Hell (Anastasis), 11th century, in the 
Nea Moni in Chios.




Essenic thinking and practices that have been 
transmitted on into Christianity, and by 
extension into Islam, it becomes irresistible 
not to conclude that both Jesus and John the 
Baptist must have been intimately involved 
with Qumran. One of the main contentions 
in my work has been that the Qumran-
Essenes had an allegiance in terms of holy 
and secret knowledge to the earliest forms of 
Hebrew religion, as developed in Egypt, prior 
to the Exodus, and specifically linked to the 
monotheistic Pharaoh Akhenaten.

If the early Jesus movement owed a 
powerful debt to the beliefs practiced at 
Qumran, then it would not be surprising to 
find that some of Akhenaten’s teachings and 
imagery would be transferred across and 
reflected in the early Jesus movement and 
later Christianity. The examples of these 
phenomena are numerous, but there is space 
here only to refer briefly to two of them. 

Melchizedek

Melchizedek is a complex character that 
appears in their texts as a figure of major 
importance to the Qumran-Essenes. There 
are detailed descriptions of this figure in the 
Dead Sea Scrolls, and in Rabbinic writings, as 
well as references in the mainstream Bible, 
but no one is certain who Melchizedek relates 
to, despite endless speculation. Just as the 
Qumran-Essenes revered this character, so 
Jesus has also to be associated with the 
kingly-priestly figure. 

As if to verify my contention that 
Melchizedek incorporated the concept of 
Akhenaten’s high priest, Meryra, new light 
on the Christian Scriptures’ Epistle of Paul to 
the Hebrews has been shed by the 
fragmentary first century BCE document 
found in Cave 11 at Qumran, known as the 
Heavenly Prince Melchizedek (11Q Melch.). 
The description in Hebrews depicting Christ 
as the “Son of God” and “without beginning 
of days or end of life,” as “priest according to 
the order of Melchizedek,” now makes sense 
as reflecting the same image of Melchizedek 
portrayed by the sectarian Dead Sea Scroll. 

This interpretative understanding was 
taken still further in discussion at a recent 
international conference on the Dead Sea 
Scrolls at the University of St. Andrews in 
Scotland. A paper by Margaret Barker 
published in the Scottish Journal of Theology 12 
maintains that Jesus knew of and understood 
Melchizedek; that he may have patterned 
his life on the Qumranic conception of 
Melchizedek; and that his earliest followers 
built on that understanding. In the Epistle 
to the Hebrews, Jesus is “…a priest forever, 
according to the order of Melchizedek” (5:6).

That this is the same high priestly figure 
of the Qumran-Essenes is underlined by a 
further reference to him as the superior priest. 
Suggestions that this priest is Aaron, or a 
Zadok of his lineage, is excluded by the 
insistence that Jesus, like Melchizedek, is in 
the Greek wording agenealogetos, “without a 
genealogy.” As Professor Joseph Fitzmyer, of 
the Catholic University of America, points 
out, “Every priestly family was supposed to be 
able to trace its lineage from Levi via Aaron 
and Zadok. Aaron’s lineage itself was known 
from Exodus 6:16–19, but Melchizedek’s 
lineage was unknown.” 13

Analysis of the Melchizedek that Jesus of 
the Christian Scriptures was to emulate, 


Meeting of Abraham and Melchizedek, Dieric 
Bouts the Elder, 15th century.




however, shows that this attribution, as 
explained by Deborah W. Rooke, of King’s 
College, London, was “not merely of high 
priesthood but of royal priesthood.”14 The 
relationship is spelled out in Hebrews, but 
although the royal association is assumed to 
be to King David, scholars are at a loss to 
explain why there is no specific Davidic 
categorization for this royal element.

David is not referred to by name in 
Hebrews. Instead, the king specifically 
mentioned is the King of Salem, who is 
related to the patriarchal period of Abraham, 
long predating the Israelite kings, and a royal 
figure who had nothing to do with King 
David. Once again, there is no Israelite king 
that conventional scholarship can turn to, 
and the issue is stuck in the mire of 
preconceptions. Indeed, it is made crystal 
clear that the Melchizedek Jesus aspired to 
emulate was the King of Salem in Genesis:

And Melchizedek king of Salem brought 
forth bread and wine; and he was the priest of 
the most high God. (14:18)

A number of other scholars have noted 
that the Melchizedek of Hebrews can definitely 
be linked to the Melchizedek in the Qumran 
scrolls (11Q Melch.), and this character, as 
discussed above, is certainly not Davidic. 15

Even if a royal association were tied only 
to the Genesis descriptions and not also to the 
Qumranic descriptions, we would have to ask 
why an apparently pagan king, the king of 
Salem, should be singled out as a prototype for 
a divine personage. Not only is he seemingly a 
pagan king; he is not even a Hebrew! The 
answer, I suggest, lies partly in the Amarna 
letters, where Jerusalem is specifically chosen 
by Akhenaten as “his holy city forever.” The 
appellation of King Melchizedek can then 
clearly be seen as a sacral name combining 
the royal aspect of King Akhenaten and his 
High Priest, Meryra.

The problem of why Abraham and Jesus 
should want to associate themselves with an 
apparently pagan figure is thus entirely 
explained by the fact that Akhenaten and 
Meryra, his High Priest, were not pagan, 
but together with Jacob and Joseph, were the 
first true monotheists. Thus Abraham 
acknowledges Melchizedek’s God El Elyon 
(God Most High) as his own God in their 
encounter in Genesis (14:18–24).

For this high priestly figure to have no 
ancestors can only mean that he was the first of 
his class. Once again, the literal evidence points 
strongly in the direction of Meryra, the first 
High Priest of Akhenaten’s new monotheism, 
who we know from Egyptian records was a 
hereditary Egyptian prince—a requirement 
also spelled out in the Dead Sea Scrolls. 

As becomes dramatically apparent in the 
explosive archeological evidence documented 
in The Secret Initiation of Jesus at Qumran, 
this assumption is almost certainly correct.

Amarna

Both the Christian Scriptures and 
historical tradition maintain that Jesus and 
his parents, Mary and Joseph, fled to Egypt 
from Judea around 4 to 7 BCE to escape 
the tyrannical threats of Herod the Great 
(Matt. 2:13–20).

If one had to predict where the family of 
Jesus might have stopped en route in their 
journey through Egypt, on the basis of 
the proposed connections I claim existed 
between the Qumran-Essenes and Akhenaten, 
and between the Qumran-Essenes and the 
earliest followers of Jesus, the following 
four destinations would have been definite 
favorites in their itinerary:

1. Lake Mereotis (Marioot), near 
Alexandria, traditional location of the 
Therapeutae, close Egyptian associates of 
the Essenes;

2. Valley of Natrun, traditional location 
of the Therapeutae;

3. Leontopolis, near Heliopolis (Cairo), 
site of the temple founded by Onias IV, 
who, I maintain, was the Essenes’ Teacher 
of Righteousness;

4. Amarna, site of Akhenaten’s holy city.




In horse-racing parlance, my shortest 
odds would be on Amarna, and the 
combination odds of all four of these highly 
significant Essenic connected places featuring 
as important locations in the Holy Family’s 
journey would be about ten thousand to one.

Take a look at the figure illustrated in this 
article. It shows the route, strongly entrenched 
in Egyptian legend and tradition, taken by 
the Holy Family in Egypt. All four suggested 
locations are included in the journey and are 
considered the most important of the 
numerous monastic centers that have grown 
up in Egypt. So which of these locations is 
believed to be the most important of all?

The words of Pope Shenouda III, 
guardian of the national traditions of the 
Coptic Church in Egypt, give us the answer: 
“Now it was time for the Holy Family to set 
out for what is, arguably, the most meaningful 
destination of all in the land of Egypt, the 
place where there would be ‘an altar to the 
Lord in the midst of the land of Egypt’—
Gabal [Mount] Qussqam.” 16

Nestled in the foothills of this mountain 
lies the monastery of Al Muharraq, on the site 
where the Holy Family were reputed to have 
lived for six months, their longest stay at any 
one place in their four-year travels through 
Egypt. It was the culmination of their 
journey, and to this day the area surrounding 
the monastery is redolent of the Coptic 
Christian ethos, so much so that it is named 
the Second Bethlehem. Why should this 
place have become so important to the 
earliest Christians? At first glance it appears 
to be in the middle of nowhere. The answer, I 
suggest, is that it really is not in such an 
obscure location. The location was directly 
opposite the place where Akhenaten established 
his Holy City and built a huge Temple in 
honor of Aten—his name for God.

At the turn of the millennium, the vast site 
of Amarna would have been as bleak and 
desolate as it is today. The only pockets of 
habitation would have been small settlements 
on the west bank of the Nile, near the village of 
Qussqam. The monastery of Al Muharraq lies 
directly opposite Amarna, at what was then 
one of the closest habitable places to Amarna.

Whatever you believe about the legends 
surrounding the journey of the Holy Family 
in Egypt, there is almost always a kernel of 
truth that kindles a legend. That kindling has 
resulted in a surfeit of historical Christian 
places of worship in the vicinity of the Nile, 
some often in quite remote locations, which 
makes it difficult to justify the charge that 
they were invented to attract tourists.

The preponderance of these witnesses to 
an earlier legend is concentrated around 
Amarna, the site of Akhenaten’s ancient capital. 
The grain of truth, if there is one, behind the 
legends in this region indicates that the main 
destination of the Holy Family was the 
Amarna area. Something must have sparked the 
tradition, and the raft of other evidence that 
points to Amarna as a site of special interest to 
the Qumran-Essenes and, by association, to 
the earliest followers of Jesus underlines the 
essential truth of this assertion.17


Journey of the Holy Family in Egypt, highlighting the location 
of their longest stay, near Amarna (Akhetaten). © Robert 
Feather, based on a map published by the Egyptian Ministry 
of Tourism. From The Secret Initiation of Jesus at Qumran.






1 http://www.vatican.va/holy_father/benedict_xvi/homilies/2007/
documents/hf_ben-xvi_hom_20070405_coena-domini_en.html. 

2 Robert Feather, The Secret Initiation of Jesus at Qumran (Rochester, 
VT: Inner Traditions, 2005; London: Baird/Watkins, 2006).

3 Dan Brown, The Da Vinci Code (London: Black Swan, 2004); 
Lyn Picknett, Clive Prince, The Templar Revelation (London: 
Corgi, 2007); Henry Lincoln, Richard Leigh, Michael Baigent, 
Holy Blood, Holy Grail (New York: Random House, 1983).

4 Joseph Klausner, From Jesus to Paul (London: Macmillan, 1922); 
Heinrich Graetz, History of the Jews (Philadelphia: Jewish 
Publication Society of America, 1946). 

5 Yigael Yadin, The Temple Scroll (Suffolk, UK: Weidenfeld and 
Nicolson, 1985). 

6 Otto Betz, “Was John the Baptist an Essene?” Biblical Revue 
(December 1990); Jean Steinmann, Saint John the Baptist and the 
Desert Tradition (New York/Boston: Harper and Brothers, 1958).

7 Joseph A. Fitzmyer, The Dead Sea Scrolls and Christian Origins 
(Grand Rapids, MI: Eerdmans, 2000);H. H. Rowley, “The Baptism 
of John and the Qumran Sect,” in New Testament Essays: Studies in 
Memory of T. W. Manson (Manchester, UK: Manchester University 
Press, 1959);Daniel Schwartz, Studies in the Jewish Background of 
Christianity (Tuebingen, Germany: Mohr-Siebeck, 1992); R. Eisler, 
The Messiah Jesus and John the Baptist According toFlavius Josephus’ 
Recently Rediscovered “Capture of Jerusalem” and Other Jewish and 
Christian Sources (New York: The Dial Press, 1931); Barbara 
Thiering, The Gospels and Qumran, (Sydney Theological 
Explorations, 1981); Otto Betz, “Was John the Baptist an Essene?” 
Biblical Revue (December 1990); Yigael Yadin, The Temple Scroll; 
John Allegro, The Dead Sea Scrolls and the Origins of Christianity 
(Metuchen, NJ: Criterion, 1967); William H. Brownlee, John the 
Baptist in the New Light of Ancient Scrolls (n.p.: Interpretation, 1955); 
Lucretta Mowry, The Dead Sea Scrolls and the Early Church (Chicago: 
University of Chicago, 1962); R. K. Harrison, The Dead Sea Scrolls 
(New York: Harper and Row, 1961); Charles Scobie, John the Baptist: 
The Scrolls and Christianity (Bloomfield, CT: Talbot, 1969); John A. 
Robinson, “The Baptism of John and the Qumran Community,” 
Harvard Theological Studies 50 (1957); Oscar Cullmann, “The 
Significance of the Qumran Texts for Research into the Beginnings 
of Christianity,” Journal of Biblical Literature 74 (1955); Kurt 
Schubert, The Dead Sea Community: Its Origin and Teachings 
(London: Adam and Charles Black, 1959); Jean Danielou, The Work 
of John the Baptist (Abingdon, Oxfordshire, UK: Helicon, 1966); 
Jean Steinmann, Saint John the Baptist and the Desert Tradition (New 
York: Harper, 1958); Jack Finnegan, Light from the Ancient Past 
(Princeton: Princeton University Press, 1959); Raymond E. Brown, 
“Second Thoughts: The Dead Sea Scrolls and the New Testament,” 
The Expository Times (October 1966); Charles Fritsch, The Qumran 
Community (New York: Macmillan, 1956); Millar Burrows, More 
Light on the Dead Sea Scrolls (New York: Viking, 1958); Pierre 
Benoit, Paul and Qumran (Chicago: Priory Press, 1968); Frank 
Moore Cross, The Ancient Library of Qumran and Modern Biblical 
Studies (New York: Doubleday, 1961); Carsten P. Thiede, The Dead 
Sea Scrolls and the Jewish Origins of Christianity (New York: Palgrave, 
2001); Cyrus Gordon, Adventures in the Nearest East (Fair Lawn, NJ: 
Essential Books, 1957); Edmund Sutcliffe, The Monks of Qumran 
(Westminster: Newman Press, 1960); Robert L. Webb, “John the 
Baptiser and Prophet: A Socio-Historical Study,” Journal for the Study 
of the New Testament, supplement series 62 (Sheffield: Sheffield 
University, 1991); James H. Charlesworth, ed., Jesus and the Dead 
Sea Scrolls (New York: Doubleday, 1992); David Flusser, Jesus (New 
York: Herder and Herder, 1969); Michael Grant, The Jews in the 
Roman World (New York: Scribner, 1973); James C. VanderKam, 
“The Dead Sea Scrolls and Christianity,” in Understanding the Dead 
Sea Scrolls: A Reader from the Biblical Archaeology Review (New York:
Random House, 1992); Joan E. Taylor, The Immerser: John the 
Baptist Within Second Temple Judaism (Grand Rapids: Eerdmans, 
1997); John Pryke, “John the Baptist and the Qumran Community,” 
Revue de Qumran 16 (1964); Ian McDonald, “What Did You Go 
Out to See? John the Baptist, the Scrolls and Late Second Temple 
Judaism,” in The Dead Sea Scrolls in Their Historical Context, ed. by 
T. Lim, et al. (New York: T & T Clark, 2004). The Jesus Seminars, 
listed in the middle column of the table, are meetings of a group of 
biblical scholars who discuss New Testament topics and then vote to 
determine a majority view. Founded in 1985 in America, the 
conclusions of the Jesus Seminar on the issue of John the Baptist’s 
relationship with the Essenes is purportedly summed up by John W. 
B. Tatum, who says the Baptist may have been a Essene at some 
period in his life (John the Baptist and Jesus: A Report of the Jesus 
Seminar (Sonoma, CA: Polebridge, 1994)). Geza Vermes, in a lecture 
at University College London, December 7, 1998, declared, “On 
balance John the Baptist was a member at Qumran” (Taylor, The 
Immerser). Joseph Ratzinger (Benedict XVI), “Homily given at the 
Mass of the Lord’s Supper,” April 5, 2007, at the Basilica of St. John 
Lateran, Rome. http://www.vatican.va/holy_father/benedict_xvi/
homilies/2007/documents/hf_ben-xvi_hom_20070405_coena-
domini_en.html.

8 Robert Feather, The Mystery of the Copper Scroll of Qumran 
(Rochester, VT: Inner Traditions, 2003). 

9 Matthew Black, The Scrolls and Christian Origins (Nashville, 
TN: Thomas Nelson, 1961); Hugh Schonfield, The Passover Plot 
(London: Element, 1993); Those Incredible Christians (London: 
Element, 1985); In a lecture at the Spiro Institute, London, on 
March 15, 2000, Maccoby spoke for over two hours on the origins 
of Christianity without once mentioning the Essenes.

10 John Dominic Crossan, Jesus: A Revolutionary Biography (San 
Francsico: HarperSanFrancisco, 1995). 

11 V. K. Pomykala, The Davidic Dynasty Tradition in Early Judaism 
(Atlanta: Scholars Press, 1995). See also Richard S. Hess and M. 
Daniel Carroll, Israel’s Messiah in the Bible and in the Dead Sea 
Scrolls (Grand Rapids, MI: Baker Academic, 2003). 

12 Margaret Barker, “The Time Is Fulfilled: Jesus and the Jubilee,” 
Scottish Journalof Theology, vol. 53, no. 22, 2000.

13 Joseph A. Fitzmyer, Responses to 101 Questions on the Dead Sea 
Scrolls (Mahwah, NJ: Paulist Press, 1992).

14 D. W. Rooke, “Jesus as Royal Priest: Reflections of the Interpretation 
of the Melchizedek Tradition in Heb. 7,” Biblica 81 (2000).

15 Yigael Yadin, “A Note on Melchizedek and Qumran,” Israel 
Exploration Journal 15, (1965); M de Jonge and A. S. Van der Woude, 
“11Q Melchizedek and the New Testament,” New Testament Studies 
12 (1966); J. A. Fitzmyer, “Further Light on Melchizedek from 
Qumran Cave 11,” Journal of Biblical Studies 86 (1967).

16 Mamdouh El-Beltagui, The Holy Family in Egypt (Cairo: Egyptian 
Ministry of Tourism, 1999). According to local traditions, the Holy 
Family stayed in Egypt for three years and eleven months; Coptic 
Christians celebrate their journey each year on June 1 (see Christian 
Cannuyer, L’Égypte Copte (Paris: Gallimard/IMA, 2000). The route of 
the Holy Family in Egypt, according to Coptic tradition.

17 This text and the images and chart marked © are Copyright © 
2007 Robert Feather. All Rights Reserved. Printed with Permission 
of the Author.