The Studia Philonica Annual 19 (2007) 0–00 PHILO OF ALEXANDRIA ON THE ESSENES: A CASE STUDY ON THE USE OF CLASSICAL SOURCES IN DISCUSSIONS OF THE QUMRAN-ESSENE HYPOTHESIS JOAN E. TAYLOR The issue of whether the site of Kh. Qumran, on a plateau by the Dead Sea, was occupied by Essenes during the late Second Temple period continues to divide scholars. Archaeologists and historians both for and against the Qumran-Essene hypothesis appeal to the classical sources in support of their arguments, the important evidence being that of Philo of Alexandria, Josephus and Pliny the Elder. Fundamental in terms of making the association between the site of Qumran and the Essenes has been the evidence of Pliny. Pliny writes (Hist. Nat. 5.15, 4/73): ab occidente litora esseni fugiunt usque qua nocent, gens sola . . . socia palmarum, “in the west [of the Dead Sea] the Essenes flee all the way from the shores which are harmful, a type of people alone . . . in the company of palms”; infra hos engada oppidum fuit . . . inde masada, “below them was the town Engedi . . . from there Masada.” 1 While in modern scholarship questions have been raised as to whether Pliny has been read correctly, 2 it is worth remembering that already in the 19th century 1 The connection between the Dead Sea and the Essenes was also made by Synesius (c.400 c.e.), citing Dio Chrysostom (c. 100 c.e.): the Essenes were “a whole happy city by the Dead Water (παρὰ τὸ νεκρὸν ὕδωρ), in the interior of Palestine, [a city] lying somewhere close by Sodom” (Synesius, Dion 3.2). Solinus (fl. 230–240 c.e.) in his Collectanea 34.9–12, reflects Pliny, while Epiphanius (c. 375 c.e.) places ᾿Οσσαῖοι on the other side of the Dead Sea within the regions of Nabataea and Peraea (Pan. 19.1.1; 19.2.2; cf. Pan. 53.1.1. See also Martianus Capella, c. 400 c.e., De Nuptiis Philologiae et Mercurii (Satyricon) 4.679. 2 The usual understanding is that Pliny situates Essenes in terms of a movement from the source of the Jordan to the south, see Roland de Vaux, Archaeology and the Dead Sea Scrolls (The Schweich Lectures of the British Academy; Oxford: Oxford University Press, 1973), 133–137; Geza Vermes and Martin Goodman, eds., The Essenes according to the Classical Sources (JSOT Press: Sheffield, 1989), 3 n. 19; John J. Collins, “Essenes,” ABD 2, 619–626, at 620. For the argument that Pliny refers to the Essenes as being physically above and west of Engedi see Jean-Paul Audet, “Qumrân et la notice de Pline sur les Esséniens.” RB 68 (1961): 346–387 and the eloquent response