The Bible and the Dead Sea Scrolls: The ... - josephprestonkirk

64 QUMRAN AND THE ENOCH GROUPS
D. Perspectives for Future Research
The Enochic-Essene hypothesis has grown and strengthened among its
readers and critics. These changes have brought a stronger awareness of
the need to make a clear methodological distinction between “intellectual
movements” (or Judaisms) and “social groups” as the foundation for any
sound reconstruction of the history of Jewish thought. A Judaism is not
a single social group but a proliferation of individuals and social groups. 55
The chain of documents I identify in my essay does not mean that the
same social group wrote, one after the other, Dream Visions, Jubilees, the
Temple Scroll, the Apocalypse of Weeks, the Halakic Letter; and after an inner
split, the sectarian literature of Qumran, on one hand; and the Epistle of
Enoch, the Testaments of the Twelve Patriarchs, and the Parables/Similitudes of
Enoch, on the other. What I have identified is an intellectual movement
or a Judaism, not a single social group.
The sources themselves provide some evidence that the documents
preserved in the Qumran library were the product of at least three different
social groups (Enochians, urban Essenes, and Qumranites). We
still struggle to define the relationships among these groups. For example,
was Qumran the headquarters of the Essenes, or a marginal splinter
group of Essenes, as the Groningen hypothesis has proposed? 56 Were the
Enochians closer to the urban Essenes, as I suggest in my essay, or have
they parted from them as well? One does not need to be a prophet to
foresee that these questions will accompany us for many years to come.
It is true that none of the ancient sources speak of the Enochians or
connect them to the Essene movement. Systemic analysis, however,
shows that the Enoch group, the urban Essenes, and the Qumran community,
although distinct social groups, were all part of the same trajectory
of thought. It seems obvious to conclude that, after generating the
Essene groups (and the Qumran community), the Enoch group did not
lose its ideological and sociological identity, nor can we identify it sic et
simpliciter with the urban Essenes described by Philo and Josephus.
Clearly, we face a large diversity of distinct and somehow competing
social groups. Does the term “Essene” apply to all?
Paolo Sacchi has recently suggested that we limit the term “Essene” to
the urban Essenes and the literature related to them (Jubilees, Testaments of
55. Gabriele Boccaccini, “Texts, Intellectual Movements, and Social Groups,” in
Enoch and Qumran Origins: New Light on a Forgotten Connection (ed. G. Boccaccini; Grand
Rapids: Eerdmans 2005), 417–25.
56. Florentino García Martínez, “Qumran Origins and Early History: A Groningen
Hypothesis,” FO 25 (1989): 113–36.