implies differences of time period and orientation. If, as seems plausible, the Manual of Discipline shows us the earliest state of the community, we can say that the community subsequently split into two movements. The larger one is that which the Damascus Document and Josephus mention. The other, more strict, is what Philo discusses in Quod Probus, but it still does not seem to acknowledge an obligation to celibacy when Philo was writing his work. By contrast, it existed after 41 when he wrote the Apology for the Jews. Josephus knew this last state. Therefore, it would seem that celibacy appeared late.
This poses the question of knowing what influenced its appearance. If we recall that we are dealing with a period around 40, and if we wonder what influences might give rise to the ideal of virginity in Palestine at that date, it certainly seems that there could only be one, Christianity. That would lead us to think that in Palestine there were mutual influences between Christianity and Essenism at this date.45 From that might follow the odd consequence that Eusebius was not completely wrong when he believed he recognized Christians in the Essenes described by Philo and Josephus. Indeed, those whom the former’s Apology for the Jews and the latter’s work describe might already have undergone Christian influence. But in this period, Christians and Essenes must not have been so easy to distinguish in outward appearance to a stranger to Palestine.
We can ask whether two other characteristics that differentiate the Apology for the Jews from Quod Probus may likewise refer rather to Christians than to Essenes so that in the Apology we would have a testimony about what Philo tried to say at the end of his life about the development of Christianity in Palestine, which from a distance he confused with Essenism. Quod Probus told us that the Essenes fled cities and lived in villages (κωμηδὀν) and that they numbered 4000 in all. Now the Apology for the Jews shows them as “dwelling in many cities of Judea and also many villages where they form numerous large communities (πολυανθρώπους)” (XI, 1). Living in cities is absolutely opposed to Essene practice. By contrast it describes Christians. Moreover, major growth of the Essenes in this period is not very likely. Their community in fact was pulled in two directions. The Zealots, on the one hand, sweep them along in the revolt against Rome, as Josephus testifies: a sign of this can be seen in the Apology’s no longer mentioning the pacifism to which Quod Probus bears witness. On the other hand, they were drawn into the Christian orbit, if we are to believe with Cullman that the numerous priest converts mentioned in Acts 6: 7 are Zadokites.
The other characteristic that separates the Apology for the Jews from Quod Probus is the affirmation that entry into the community is not by birth but free choice (Pro Iudaeis, XI, 2). That is why he adds: “Thus no Essene is a mere child nor even a stripling or newly bearded, since the characters of such are unstable” (Pro Iudaeis, XI, 3).46 This does not square with the Zadokites: the community was composed of priestly families. By contrast, the characteristic seems to correspond to the Christian affirmation that race is not important and that entrance into the community depends only of free choice. Accordingly, the difference between the Apology and Quod Probus pose a curious problem whose most satisfactory explanation is that there is a reference to Christianity.
With this we have not yet finished with the question posed by the comparison of the information from Philo and the Qumran manuscripts. Indeed, if they describe a community, they at least equally testify to the presence of an eschatological tendency. God sent the Master of Justice to announce that the end of time, foretold by the prophets, had begun. The community left for the desert to prepare itself for the imminent last judgment. The coming of the Messiahs of Aaron and Israel would be its first sign. Then the pagans would be annihilated and the people of God exalted. Now all this—the eschatological expectation, theology of history, messianic tendencies, national exaltation—are totally absent from Philo’s information. The practices described are the same, but the spirit is totally different. How are we to admit that Philo could have modified things to this degree?
Yet, this is the solution that imposes itself on us for various reasons. First, there are reasons of prudence. Philo speaks about the Essenes in apologetic writings directed to pagans. He wants to present the Jews in an attractive manner. It is clear that the Zadokite apocalyptic spirit would disconcert and perturb the pagans. Besides, partisan of the Roman Empire that he is, Philo has no sympathy for this facet of the Zadokites. He detests their nationalism. He is not unaware of the notion of an eschatological judgment, but it is foreign to his thought: his ideal is inner. Consequently, it must be admitted that here Philo deliberately sets aside the whole eschatological component of the Zadokite community to retain only its moral characteristics.
One last question remains. Does the rest of Philo’s work testify to knowledge of Essene doctrines? We know that the most characteristic Essene doctrine is that of the two spirits, of truth and of iniquity created by God at the beginning and presiding over all human history (Manual of Discipline, III, 18–19, IV, 15). These two spirits are mingled in each human. According to whether a person follows one or the other, he places himself in the army of light or of darkness. Here we are not merely dealing with the idea of inner struggle that sets the tendencies of good and evil against each other in the human heart. This last doctrine is that of the two yeser, which is found in Judaism before the Essenes. But what seems peculiar to them is attaching each yeser to a spiritual power and attributing to God the establishment of the latter from the beginning. On this point it is difficult to avoid seeing an influence of Iranian magi on the Essenes.
This doctrine is foreign to the totality of Philo’s work. As we will see, his angelology is not dualist. It is most unusual to find a text in his work where there is such pronounced dualism. The question arises of knowing whether the text is an allusion to Essene doctrine.47 It is found in Quaestiones in Exodum (I, 23). “Into every soul at its very birth, there enter two powers [δυνάμεις], the salutary [σοτερία] and the destructive [φθοροποιός]. If the salutary one is victorious and prevails, the opposite one is too weak to see. And if the latter prevails, no profit at all or little is obtained from the salutary one.”48 This first part affirms the presence from the start of two opposite powers put by God in man’s heart. This doctrine may be Essene. It is found again in Christian works influenced by the Essenes like the Shepherd of Hermes.
But the continuation is still more odd:
Through these powers [δυνάμεις] the world too was created. People call them by other names: the salutary (power) they call powerful [potens?] and beneficent [εὐργετικός];49 the opposite one (they call) unbounded [immensa?] and destructive [κολαστική]. Thus the sun and moon, the appropriate positions of the other stars and their ordered functions, and whole heaven together come into being and exist through the two (powers). And they are created in accordance with the better part of these, namely when the salutary and beneficent (power) brings to an end the unbounded and destructive [κολαστική] nature. Wherefore also to those who have attained such a state and a nature similar to this is immortality given. But the nature is a mixture of both (these powers), from which the heavens and the entire world as a whole have received this mixture. Now sometimes the evil becomes greater in this mixture and hence (all creatures) live in torment, harm, ignominy, contention, battle, and bodily illness together with all the other things in human life, as in the whole world, so in man.50
In any case, this difficult text affirms parallelism between the action of two hostile powers in the cosmos and their action in man. Here two problems must be distinguished. The idea of the two powers established by God at the beginning recalls the Manual of Discipline. We observe that Philo seems to assimilate this doctrine to that of the powers who surround God that is familiar to him. We can connect this to Quaestiones in Exodum, II, 68, where Philo teaches that the favorable power whose proper name is Benevolent (εὐεργετικός) is subordinated to the creative power and that the legislative (νομοθετική) power is joined to the royal (βασιλική) power. See also De Sacrificiis Abelis et Caini, 38, 131–33. These similarities assure the passage’s Philonic authenticity. But the doctrine of powers in our text still has a dualistic character foreign to Philo’s
