The Essenes, a strict ancient Jewish sect devoted to religious purity and linked to the Dead Sea Scrolls, are one of the most interesting and mysterious religious elements in Judaea around the time of ...

Rival groups of scholars excavating this dusty plateau overlooking the Dead Sea are arguing over who lived here in biblical times — ordinary farmers or the Essenes, a monastic sect seen by some as a ...

Sensational charges have flown across the Atlantic in recent weeks, and refreshingly, their origin has not been political. Sensitive points in Biblical history have relegated some international issues ...

The end of the world seemed at hand. The sun beat down on the rock-strewn desert and struck shimmering heat waves from the flat, metallic surface of the Dead Sea. In a room of the community, the ...

Recently, Israeli paleopathologist Joseph Zias and American biblical scholar James Tabor claimed that primitive latrines they discovered close to the ancient city of Qumran confirm that Essenes had ...

In her book, “Memory and Oblivion: The Secret of the Dead Sea Scrolls,” Elior proposes that another Jewish sect, the Sadduces, authored the Scrolls, a claim that is stirring up controversy among ...