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.6John 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 2:4152, 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 Samuels 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 Baptists membership in the Qumran-Essene Community7Member at some period in his lifeIn contact and influencedLittle contact or influence(Josephus)*Jean DanielouH. RowleyR. EislerJack Finnegan Frank CrossOtto Betz Daniel SchwartzPierre BenoitJean Steinmann Raymond BrownCyrus GordonYigael YadinR. HarrisonEdmund SutcliffeJohn AllegroCharles ScobieJohn PrykeBarbara Thiering John RobinsonJoan TaylorCharles Fritsch Oscar CullmannJames CharlesworthMillar BurrowsRobert WebbCarsten ThiedeDavid Flusser William Brownlee Ian McDonaldKurt Schubert George BrookeMichael Grant Lucretta MowryJoseph FitzmyerJames VanderKamMagen BroshiThe Jesus SeminarJozef Milik** Pope Benedict XVIGeza VermesRobert FeatherChart 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 Miliks opinion was communicated to the author during interviews in 1999 and 2001.The Dead Sea ScrollsThe 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