Life After Death_ A History of the Afterlife in Western Religion - Alan Segal [178]
Eventually, after a period of chaos, a person emerged, called by the sect “The Teacher of Righteousness,” who was persecuted by one of the Maccabean kings. Most likely, the persecutor, known as the “Wicked Priest” in the Dead Sea Scrolls, is the same Simon who proclaimed himself high priest, but it may have been any of his successors. This may well identify the Hasideans as the forefathers of the Qumran or Dead Sea Scroll sectarians; but, if not, it certainly marks the group as another quite similar, dissident and isolated group of purists who had a special and secret view of divine providence. We have ample examples of the views of the Dead Sea Scroll community, who were certainly “a special conventicle” of apocalypticist Jews who expected God to intervene on their behalf and return them to rightful power. If the authors of Daniel were not the exact forebears of the Qumran community, they appear to be another closely associated group with relatively similar goals, expectations, and sociology.13 The Qumran group, however one identifies them, is defined by its priestly character and revolutionary social apocalypticism.
One thing they had in common was millenarianism. Just as Daniel is a millenarian text, so the Dead Sea Scrolls reveal to us a millenarian community living in expectation of the immediate end of the world. It is important to note therefore that the Danielic group may have been revolutionaries, but they were not necessarily from an underclass yearning to be free of economic domination, as we would normally assume in the modern period. Instead they were aristocrats, priests, who have been dispossessed of their traditional sacerdotal roles. The Judaism they evince is priestly in character.
The Dead Sea Scrolls and the “Essenes:” From Literary Apocalypse to an Actual Apocalyptic Group
THE DEAD SEA SCROLLS are now normally identified as Essene writings. But we cannot be absolutely sure that the Dead Sea Scrolls were exactly the group whom various writers called in Greek the “Essenes.” (We have no satisfactory equivalent for the Greek term in Hebrew or Aramaic. Thus, they appear to us to be mentioned neither in the New Testament nor in Rabbinic literature.) For one thing, there are apparently a number of groups with slightly different habits who called themselves or were called by the name “Essene” and they may, in turn, be related to the still different group which Philo called the Therapeutai (“Healers”). “Healer” is one possibility for the meaning of the term “Essene” in Aramaic, as it could easily come from the root ‘-s-y, meaning “to heal.” Josephus calls them the essaioi frequently, which could be a more exact Greek transliteration of “Healers,” Assai’in.
On the other hand, another possibility seems more likely in view of the ascent traditions which we see there. The word “Essene” may indeed come from the root h-s-y meaning to be pious and it connects them with the Hasidim of the time of the Maccabees. This also has the advantage that it can account for both Greek forms, Essaioi and Essenoi as the absolute form “pious one” is hesin, while the construct emphatic form “the pious ones” is ḥesaia. Philo also connects the name of the community with the Greek word hosiotēs, “piety,” “holiness.” The community, as we shall see, frequently called itself, “Holy Ones” or kedosim in Hebrew.14
According to Philo, who gives us the only description of the therapeutai, they lived in Egypt, where they founded a communal settlement. They were the model