While not prominent in the New Testament, the sect of the Essenes made up a significant subdivision of early first-century Judaism. The Essenes were an extremist monastic group, holding to a rigid, austere, and bizarre form of religion with Gnostic overtones, awaiting the Messiah to appear to deliver them to a new Israel.^F1 The sect, which had no concept of an Oral Torah, chose to preserve their teachings in writing (Flusser 1989:45).

For the most part the Essenes held themselves aloof from a Jewish society, which they saw as worldly and corrupt, and they shunned the company of women. The sect presumably arose in reaction to the Hasmoneans (Armstrong 1996:121). The Essenes resided above Ein Gedi and its spring (Cansdale and Crown 1994:28-29). There is insufficient literary or scientific evidence to link Khirbet Qumran with the Essenes although it has been popular to do so (Cansdale and Crown 1994:25-26; Davies 1994:126-142).

References in ancient literature bearing on an Essene presence in Jerusalem, in the first centuries before and after Jesus, include those in:

• Philo Judaeus (Hypothetica 11.1�18; Colson 1960:437�443; Quod omnis probus liber sit 75�91; Colson 1960:53�63), 

• Josephus (Antiquities 18.1.5, Wars 5.4.2; Whiston 1957:531, 780�781), 

• Pliny the Elder (Naturalis Historia 5.15, 5.73; Rackham 1961:277), and 

• Hippolytus (Rufutatio omnium haeresium 9.12�23; Roberts and Donaldson 1986:133�137; Wendland 1977:246�259).

The Essenes, according to archaeologist Bargil Pixner, had a major "camp" or "quarter" on Mt. Sion (Pixner 1976:245-275). Moreover, Richard Mackowski held that the material evidence on Mt. Sion shows that it "was not only the mahaneh of the Essenes during the time of Jesus, but also the birthplace of this extremely orthodox Jewish sect in Jerusalem" (Mackowski 1980:63 cf., 145).

In a description of the city walls of Jerusalem, as they were at the time of the First Jewish Revolt against imperial Rome (CE 66-70), Josephus wrote of the Gate of the Essenes as lying south of the Hippicus tower and Bethso, and east of the Pool of Siloam (Josephus Wars 5.4.2; Whiston 1957:781). This gate, according to Bargil Pixner, opened into the Jerusalem Essene community, living on Mt. Sion just inside the city wall, in the southwestern quarter of the ancient city (Pixner 1997:66). Pixner argues that in the early third century Judeo-Christians reconstructed this gate and a makeshift wall around their neighborhood to protect their Mt. Sion community and synagogue from outsiders (Pixner 1997:25, 29-31). At that time their synagogue, considered by some as the mother of all churches, was known as the Church of the Apostles and the Holy Church of God (see The Cenacle).

While Jesus of Nazareth was not an Essene,^F2 it appears that the Last Supper, also known as the first Christian Passover, occurred in this Essene community. "To my mind" writes Bargil Pixner "this took place in the Essene guesthouse on Mount Zion on the Tuesday night" (Pixner 1992:64). If so, it could explain the persisting tradition that the first Lord�s Supper occurred in an upper room on Mt. Sion. Mackowski, concurring, held that this "must have been a very simple dining hall in keeping with the simple life of the Essenes" (Mackowski 1980:141).

The literary evidence is found in the gospels of Luke and Mark. Both state that on of the day of the slaughtering of the Passover lambs, in reference to Nisan 14, Jesus instructed Peter and John to enter Jerusalem, presumably through the Gate of the Essenes, and to look for a man carrying a pitcher of water (Luke 22:8-10, Mark 14:13). This occurred, as Jews reckoned time at evening, at the dawn of a new day, at nightfall early Nisan 14.

They were to follow the man carrying a pitcher of water to where he entered a house and there to inquire of the oikodespore, housemaster, about the guest room where Jesus was to eat the Passover with his disciples. That is, the first Christian Passover not the traditional Passover of the Jews observed at the beginning of Nisan 15. Jesus said "He will show you a large upper room furnished and ready. Make preparations for us there" (Mark 14:15; cf., Luke 22:12).

The implication is that either Jesus had made some prearrangement for dining there or that he knew that this facility was open to guests on this occasion. It appears that the housemaster expected Jesus� party or walk-in guests for the Passover. He and his staff had the room furnished and ready. In this ancient culture, the carrying of water in jars to homes was the chore of children and women, not Jewish men. However, an Essene man, typically a celibate monastic, would carry water as a chore since an Essene conclave would have been absent children and women to perform this menial task. The two made preparations, and when it was opsios (late), that is, at nightfall, Jesus and The Twelve came (Mark 14:16-17).^F3 They observed the Last Supper in this Upper Room.

As celibacy was the common practice among the Essenes, albeit some married and had children, they actively sought new recruits so the sect would continue to survive. The Essene effort to proselytize, through the activities of itinerant teachers visiting synagogues in the Hellenic Diaspora in search of converts, resulted in Essene Gnosticism at times intruding into early Judeo-Christian congregations.

About CE 58, due to the efforts of itinerant Essene teachers, a Gnostic heresy sprang up in the Church of God at Colossae. The dogma proclaimed by these ascetic Jewish Gnostic teachers involved the ideology that Jesus was not the center of God�s divine plan of salvation, but rather that God was to be approached through self-abasement or asceticism (Colossians 2:23). The Essenes advocated ritual purity in everyday life, celibacy, vegetarianism, abstaining from alcoholic beverages (wine), and adoption of their solar calendar for festival and annual Sabbath observance (their weekly Sabbaths were on the same days as traditional Jews). The Essenes did not accept the ordering of the calendar and feasts in Jerusalem as set by the priesthood (Bowker 1969:27).

The Essene calendar consisted of a solar calendar of 364 days divided into seven-day weeks, twelve months of thirty days each except for one extra day in the last month of each quarter (see Essene Calendar). The major feasts, e.g., the Feast of Unleavened Bread, the Feast of Trumpets, the Feast of Tabernacles, and the Great Day (the eighth day of the Feast of Tabernacles), always began on Wednesday, actually at evening the day before as the Jews began days at evening not midnight (Simon 1967:73). Trumpets, Tabernacles, and the Great Day always occurred in the seventh month as set forth in the Law of Moses (Leviticus 23:24-44). David Flusser suggests that the Essene calendar differed significantly from that of the priests in order for the Essenes to distance themselves from the Jerusalem establishment (Flusser 1989:43).

Upon learning of Essene teachers attempting to proselytize the congregation at Colossae an indignant apostle Paul wrote, while under house arrest in Rome in ca. CE 60, an epistle to the Colossians to combat their teaching. Paul countered that the apostolic church, which in the context of the letter he referred to as the soma (body at Colossians 1:18, 1:24; 2:17, 2:19; 3:15), that is, the body of which Jesus Christ was the "head", kephale (Colossians 1:18; 2:10, 2:19), was the judge in matters regarding food, drink, festivals, new moons, and annual Sabbaths (i.e., the Sabbath days which shadow what is to come, that is, in Judeo-Christian terms those which symbolically pictured apostolic understanding of future events).^F4

The point made by the apostle Paul was that in these matters the congregation was not to let anyone, and in particular the Essenes, judge them except "the body of Christ" (Colossians 2:17), that is, the Church of God itself (see I Corinthians 12:27-28). He asked his Colossian Judeo-Christian readers why they would again want to be subject to halakah or decrees, dogmatizo, "are you subject to [its] decrees" (Colossians 2:20)? The phrase "elementary principles of the world" was not a Pauline reference to the Law of Moses but, in a Judeo-Christian context, to the less than divine religious teachings and commandments of Jewish sectarian groups, e.g., the Pharisees, Sadducees, Essenes, and the like.

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^F1An extremist cult perhaps more in the character of the Hassidic Jews of today�s world but even more radicalized.

^F2The public adult baptism of Jesus of Nazareth by John the Baptist (Matthew 3:16; Mark 1:9; Luke 3:21; cf. John 1:29-34), rather than Essene baptism of oneself within the solitude of the cult for the remission of sins upon confession in order to gain and maintain ritual purity, separates him from the Essenes (Howlett 1957:165).

^F3The Twelve who came with Jesus was absent John and Peter. They were already at the site. The implication is that the name-status of the group was The Twelve irrespective of the presence of individual members.

^F4Due to anachronistic readings of the New Testament all but the most careful of scholars fail to recognize the significance of the annual Sabbaths in the life of the early church. Moreover, an exegesis which has Judaizers, or Jewish Christians from Jerusalem, as the cause of the disruption at Colossae fails to account for the actual details of the controversy as set forth in Colossians and produces a forced rendering of Colossians 2:16-17. Scholars who adhere to a scientific approach in their work do not attempt to make a proof text of this passage as they have nothing to prove. The simple fact is that Paul's Judeo-Christian congregations including all of their Gentile members observed Sabbaths and Annual Sabbaths (high days) coming over from Judaism. What the implication is for Christian praxis in today's world remains in dispute.

Page last edited: 01/26/06 07:12 PM

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