2.2.2.

Qumran community

It is generally believed that the largest community of Essenes 1 was located in Wadi

Qumran and its vicinity2. The Qumran settlement (north shore of Dead Sea) was discovered in

1947. Among these discoveries there were hundreds of manuscripts (DSS). Ever since the

discovery of the DSS, many scholars have identified the Qumran community as Essene. This

identification rests on the similarities between the ancient accounts of the Essenes and the

archaeological and scroll evidence from Qumran. 3 The most widely accepted theory of the

origins of the Qumran community assumes that these Essenes withdrew to the desert to protest

what they regarded as the illegitimate Hasmoneans claim to the high priesthood. 4 The

archaeological and palaeographic data from Qumran community is from the mid second century

BC to AD 68.

Admission in the Qumran community is described in detail in the DSS writing entitled

the Rules of the Community. It speaks of a period of time spent outside the group followed by a

two-year initiation period within the community. The common meal is denied to the novice, and

an elaborate oath is made before the applicant is fully accepted. The Qumran documents also

stress the importance of order and obedience to authority.5

Thomas Schmidt provides a helpful summary of the evidence that does exist regarding

community discipline in this period: The Qumran sectaries developed an elaborate system of

penalties intended to safeguard the purity and order of the community. This included a formal

1
The origin of the word Essene is debated. There are some suggestions about the origin: 1) It might be delivered
from Aramaic word hsy (plural hsyy) that means pious, the equivalent of the Hebrew Hasid; 2) the Aramaic ‘assy’
that means ‘healer’; 3) Philo suggested that it was derived from the Greek ‘hoiotes’, that means holiness.
2
F.F. Bruce, New Testament History (New York: Doubieday & Company, 1972), 101.
3
T. Beal, “Essenes”, Dictionary of the New Testament Background, edited by Craig A. Evans and Stanley E. Porter
(Illinois: IVP, 2000) 345.
4
J. Andrew Overman and William Scott Green, “Judaism in the Greco-Roman Period,” The Anchor Bible
Dictionary, edited by David Noel Freedman (New York: Doubleday, 1992), 1042.
5
J. Andrew Overman and William Scott Green, “Judaism in the Greco-Roman Period,” 1042.
reproof procedure, short-term reduction of food allowance, exclusion from ritual meals, and

permanent exclusion. Bridget Illian builds the case for practices parallel to Matthew 18:15-17

among the rabbinic community and Essenes, stating that “expulsion was a discipline of last

resort in other communities, too, including early rabbinic Judaism [and] the Essenes.” 6

According to Florentio Gracia Martinez, The recommendations concerning brotherly rebuke

collected in Matthew 18: 15 – 17 and placed in the mouth of Jesus also have certain points of

contact with the regulations for living together in the Qumran community, particularly as regards

the process of rebuke in three stages.7

Horbury, Verbrugge and other historians focused on excommunication consequently tend

to refer to the discipline practices of Qumran community, the Essenes or the rabbinical material

contained in the Talmud. However, as to the expulsion practices of the Essenes and Qumran

community, Horbury wisely asks whether “in each case . . . the custom does not reflect the

exclusiveness of a close-knit minority group, rather than the practice of post-exilic Jewry as a

whole.”

Perhaps one factor in the practice of expulsion by Jews in this period was the degree of

autonomy afforded to local and national Jewish leaders by the Romans and earlier conquerors.

The Jews were forced (as it were) to dance to someone else’s tune for a large part of this time

period. It is equally erroneous to conclude that those practices developed in a vacuum and

without reference to the practices of post-exilic Jews. Further, the practices of the Essenes and

Qumran communities, though not necessarily reflective of universal practices among the Jews in

the first century, reveal an environment where exclusion from the religious community was a

commonly-understood concept, even if not uniformly practiced.

6
Bridget Illian, "Church Discipline and Forgiveness in Matthew 18:15-35," Currents in Theology and Mission 37
(December 2010): 448.
7
Florentio Gracia Matinez, The people of the Dead Sea Scrolls, (Michigan: Eerdmans Publishing Company , 1956)
212.
 Many Scholars have been able to detect that the excommunication in the inter testamental

period was only out of the sect of the Judaism, not the Jewish community as a whole, and the

reasons were basically for failure to go along with their official adopted version of the tradition.

Perhaps this is why Verbrugge concludes “that there is no continuous line of development” from

discipline in the Old Testament community to the New Testament church.