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

GABRIELE BOCCACCINI 65
the Twelve Patriarchs, etc.), not to the Qumran community (and the sectarian
scrolls) or the Enoch group (and its literature collected in 1 Enoch). 57
The problem is that Pliny the Elder and Dio Chrysostom apply the term
“Essene” to the Qumran group, too.
John Collins would rather limit the term “Essene” to Qumran and
then use the term “apocalypticism” to denote the entire movement; 58 the
problem is that Philo and Josephus apply it to the urban Essenes, too, and
apocalypticism is a phenomenon that goes far beyond the boundaries of
the intellectual movement of which Enochians, urban Essenes, and
Qumranites were part. Since the ancient sources apply the term Essene
to two of the major components of this movement, it seems reasonable to
me to use the term “Essene” or “para-Essene” to denote the entire movement.
After all, ancient historians also seem to be aware that “Essenism”
was not a single social group but rather a large and diverse movement.
Josephus speaks of different groups of urban Essenes; Pliny and Dio
apply the same term to the secessionists of Qumran; Philo seems to
encompass under the same label even the Egyptian Therapeutae. The
link among these groups is so close that anyway we would need to create
a common term to denote collectively the entire movement to which
they all belong.
In this sense, I happily and unrepentantly stick to my claim that the
Enochians were so closely associated to the (urban) Essenes that they can
be properly labeled as an Essene (or para-Essene) group, and yet I would
not say that they were the Essenes or the “parent group” from which the
community of Qumran split. The Enochians were and remained a single
social group, while in my view the term “Essene” denotes the much
larger intellectual movement that historically manifested itself in a proliferation
of different social groups such as the Enochians, the urban
Essenes, the Qumran community, perhaps the Therapeutae, and later
the Jesus movement.
Obviously, in delivering these conclusions, summarized in this postscript
as points A, B, and C, my paper would have benefited by the a posteriori
application of the methodological and terminological discussions
that I have summarized as point D. In particular, within the non-Qumran
57. Paolo Sacchi, “History of the Earliest Enochic Texts,” in Enoch and Qumran
Origins: New Light on a Forgotten Connection (ed. G. Boccaccini; Grand Rapids: Eerdmans
2005), 401–7.
58. Collins, Apocalypticism in the DSS; idem, “Enoch, the Dead Sea Scrolls, and the
Essenes: Groups and Movements in Judaism in the Early Second Century B.C.E.,”
in Enoch and Qumran Origins: New Light on a Forgotten Connection (ed. G. Boccaccini;
Grand Rapids: Eerdmans 2005), 345–50.