Did the Essenes live in the desert?

Answer 1

The Essenes were an ascetic community of men who were noted for their strict discipline, isolating themselves away from others. They expected the world to end shortly and headed off to live in the desert by the Dead Sea to escape the depravity and corruption of city life, and preparing for the End of Days. Additionally, it was easier to avoid persecution by leaving society behind.

Answer 2

Given their avoidance of such things as women and business, they wanted a hermit-type existence.

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

possibly the Negev desert.

Answer: The Judean desert.

Answer 4

Many lived in the Judean desert, but not all of them.