What were the Essenes where did they hide and what did they write?

Answer 1

The Essenes were a Jewish group that existed for about 300 years, from 200 BCE to 100 CE, who dedicated themselves to an ascetic existence shunning marriage, wealth and many so-called worldly pleasures. Some scholars believe they were responsible for the writing of the Dead Sea Scrolls.

I'm not sure why you ask where they hid - there is no suggestion that they were ever forced to do so. The philosopher Philo of Alexandria wrote that there were more than 4,000 Essenes living throughout Judea and that other Jews believed them to be characterised by piety, equality, philanthropy, honesty, morality and generosity. Josephus, a Jewish historian from the first century CE, has similar things to say about them and emphasises their devotion to charity and benevolence - all in all, not people who were at risk of persecution and as a result they'd have had no reason to conceal themselves.

• Jewish answer

The Essenes were a small sect in Judea who eventually disappeared from the Jewish community. They styled themselves "observant; pious ones." The normative, majority Jewish community viewed them as breakaways from the common stream of Jewish tradition, because of their non-traditional beliefs and practices. Their beliefs included an excessive amount of dabbling with the names of angels, messianic fervor, gnosticism and eschatological speculation; and their practices were more like Christian monasticism than the generally accepted Jewish way of living. The practices of the Essenes included vegetarianism, dwelling in isolated groups, communal ownership, monastic asceticism and avoidance of money, commerce and private property; and (among some of them) celibacy. Also, they had some forms of non-traditional observances (such as round phylacteries [tefillin]).
Some researchers identify the Essenes as a form of early Christianity, taking also into account the fact that early Christianity was far from uniform and was, for a time, thought of by some as a kind of modified Judaism.

Answer 3

The Dead Sea Scrolls. A conspiracy theory regarding the Catholic Church sprang up, and questions were raised regarding the authenticity of the modern Christian religion, due to the finding of those scrolls. The moment they were found, the Vatican was very quick to wrap its claws around them. Maybe they were scared that the scrolls said "Jesus never claimed to be the son of God." Much of the stuff in the scrolls, is not open to the public, adding to the suspicion. There is a published work called "The Dead Sea Scrolls" but, even that work is suspect, because it took longer than was necessary to publish the book. There have been accusations by some, particularly Muslims, the Jesus never claimed to be the son of God, those were words placed in his mouth by corrupt Catholic scribes of the early middle ages. Indeed; writting styles are like fingerprints, but they are also like DNA. The writting style of a German, will be similar to the writting style of another German, both because of culture, and genetics. The Old Testament, consistently shows the writting style of semitic authors, while the New Testament, jumps around from a semitic to a European style, implying there was tampering. Either Jesus was a split personality schizophrenic, or, a lot of what he said simply wasn't true ("I am the way, the truth, and the life, for no one comes to the father but through me.") You can't help but think "what an egomaniac....." A person that egomaniacal, would not have drawn large crowds of people. Hopefully one day the confusion will be cleared up. We human beings, have zero tolerance for egomaniacal rulers, rulers that demand adoration, have been the worst killers the worst butchers in human history. We need to be forced to follow egomaniacs, given a choice, we prefer not to, all of us human beings.