Essenes << EHS eenz or eh SEENZ >> were members of a Jewish sect living in Palestine from about 150 B.C. to A.D. 68. They numbered about 4,000 and had a communal life. Essenes were ascetics, and tried to avoid contamination by worldly impurity (see Asceticism). According to the Jewish historian Josephus, the Essenes believed in the immortality of the soul, but rejected the idea of the resurrection of the body. They apparently objected to animal sacrifices. In the late 1940’s and the 1950’s, the remains of a settlement and several jars of scrolls were found at and around Khirbat Qumran near the Dead Sea. Many of these scrolls, which include the oldest Biblical manuscripts yet found, probably belonged to a group of Essenes. See Dead Sea Scrolls.
