Gabrielle Boccaccini, <t>Beyond the Essene Hypothesis: The 
Parting of the Ways between Qumran and Enochic Judaism</>. 
Grand Rapids: Eerdmans 1998. Pp. 230. 

Reviewed by Krista Baker for R.Kraft's RelSt 225 course 
at UPenn (Spring 1999) 

 
Gabriele Boccaccini teaches at the University of Michigan in the 
Department of Near Eastern Studies.  His webpage is 
http://www.uniud.it/isr/data/w/boccacc.htm. 
 
Boccaccini begins his book with a historiographical analysis of 
the Essene community by comparing writings about the Essenes by 
early Jewish/Christian (Josephus, Philo, and Hippolytus) and non-
Jewish (Pliny the Elder and Dio of Prusa) sources.  His 
hypothesis is that the early Jewish/Christian sources describe a 
larger movement with a different way of living than the Qumran 
community while the non-Jewish authors present a single community 
that could be the Qumran community.  He presents his case by 
examining 
a) the location, extent, and antiquity of the Essenes 
b) the communal ownership and 
c) the views of marriage and celibacy held by the Essene 
community in an attempt to establish differences in the way the 
Essene community is portrayed. 
 
After having identified differences in the representation of the 
Essene community by the early sources, Boccaccini analyses Qumran 
literature to explain a possible cause of the movement.  He 
begins by presenting the fundamental principles of Qumran belief 
-- cosmic dualism between good and evil, the omnipotence of God 
and the idea that everything has been predetermined by God, the 
identification of impurity with evil, and the idea that the 
community must live in isolation from the rest of humankind. 
 
Boccaccini then gives a historical account of the schism between 
the Zadokites and their opposition party, the Enochians, which he 
believes emerged in the fourth or third century BCE.  While the 
Zadokites believed in the responsibility of humanity and tried to 
separate itself from demonic forces influencing the earth, the 
Enochic Jews believed that it was the fall of a group of angels 
that brought evil into the world.    Because of this, humans 
cannot control the spread of evil and impurity in the world and 
therefore are victims of evil, although they are still held 
accountable for their own actions.  Also, while the Zadokites 
recognized the legitimacy of the second temple and believed that 
God's order had been fully restored with its construction, the 
Enochians believed that the restoration of God's order was still 
a future event. 
 
To present his case, Boccaccini analyzes many of the texts found 
at Qumran and attempts to place them in a historical context.  
Ezekiel, Boccaccini believes, is a starting point for analyzing 
pre-Maccabean Enochic literature.  While Ezekiel was prominently 
considered a Zadokite text, it inspired such apocalyptic writings 
from the Enochic party as the Book of the Watchers, Aramaic Levi, 
and the Astronomical Book. 
 
During what Boccaccini considers the "formative age" of the DSS 
community, or the period during the Maccabean revolt after the 
death of the last legitimate Zadokite high priest, Onias III, the 
book of Dream Visions (1 Enoch 83-90) and Daniel were written.  
While the two texts share a common apocalyptic worldview, Dream 
Visions contains many anti-Zadokite references in connection with 
previous Enochic literature , while Daniel strongly defends the 
principles of Zadokite literature such as the Mosaic torah and 
the legitimacy of the second temple while opposing the Enochic 
doctrine of evil.  However, Daniel also contains anti-Zadokite 
elements such as the period of the second temple was still a 
period of exile and punishment for the Jews that would only end 
by the intervention of God.  Boccaccini believes this element was 
what made Daniel popular at Qumran, and he theorizes that Daniel 
was read in light of Dream Visions, not vice versa. 
 
Jubilees was believed to have been written after the Maccabean 
revolt, and mentions that it was given to Moses, although it 
still gives great importance to Enoch.  Boccaccini believes this 
signifies that after the Maccabean revolt, the Enochians no 
longer saw the Mosaic revelation of the Zadokites as being a 
rival revelation.  Therefore, the Enochians tried to integrate 
the importance of Moses into their tradition, which was easier to 
accomplish now because Daniel provided a path to harmonize the 
two traditions, and later sparked pseudo-Zadokite works such as 
the Temple Scroll, the Proto-Epistle of Enoch, and the Halakhic 
Letter. 
 
After providing an account of Enochic Judaism up to this point, 
Boccaccini hypothesizes that the Qumran community originally was 
a separatist movement within Enochic Judaism.  He refers to the 
Damascus Document as the text that directly pre-dates the Qumran 
sectarian literature, and the point at which the Qumran community 
broke away from mainstream Enochic Judaism. After the Maccabean 
revolt, the Enochians emerged as victorious over the Zadokites, 
and sparked a movement headed by the Teacher of Righteousness 
that required stricter purity for the chosen people.  This 
movement then tried to gain control of the Enochic party.  
However, Boccaccini believes that the mainstream Enochians were 
not ready to part completely from the rest of Israel, and thus 
opposed this movement, as evidenced by later Enochic/ anti-Qumran 
texts such as the Epistle of Enoch, the Testament of the Twelve 
Patriarchs, and the Similitudes of Enoch.  He believes this is 
why these texts and texts reflecting the views of the Hasmoneans 
were not found at Qumran, yet are similar to Qumran literature 
and share common sources.  The Teacher of Righteousness not only 
met with hostility from outside his community, but also within 
(the house of Peleg), and because of this, the movement decided 
to separate from the mainstream movement. 
 
Boccaccini concludes his book by giving a comparative analysis of 
early writings about the Essenes with his theory that the Essenes 
of Josephus and Philo were the members of the Enochic movement 
while the Essenes of Pliny and Dio were the members of the Qumran 
community. 
 
Overall, I thought this book was well researched in light of 
current DSS research today, and was quite interesting.  
Boccaccini provides a logical, step-by-step process by which the 
Qumran community was established based on research by many 
prominent scholars in "Middle Judaism" studies.  His attempt to 
synthesize much of the DSS research today was impressive and in 
light of the evidence provided, at least fairly convincing.  He 
provides backgrounds for the texts when they are needed, and 
cites many of the issues concerning Qumran origins pointed out 
previously by scholars.  The flaw I found with the book is that 
his main conclusions are taken from his attempts to justify 
current DSS problems with textual interpretation only. I 
sometimes felt he kept making more and more assumptions in order 
to justify his own hypothesis.  However, while the theory he 
presents may be an oversimplification of the origins of Qumran, 
it was an entertaining and enjoyable book, nonetheless. 
 
//end//