Essenes
The Essenes were a Jewish religious sect that flourished from the 2nd century BCE to the 1st century CE.
They are discussed in detail by Josephus and Philo. Many scholars believe that the community at Qumran that allegedly produced the Dead Sea Scrolls was an offshoot of the Essenes; however, this theory has been disputed by Norman Golb and other scholars.
The Essenes were the followers of a group of priests who had essentially rejected the Second Temple. They argued that the Essene community was itself the new Temple, and that obedience to the law represented a new form of sacrifice. Accordingly, the destruction of the Second Temple in 70 CE was of no consequence to them; precisely for this reason, they were of little consequence to the vast majority of Jews and died out. Although their lack of concern for the Second Temple and its destruction alienated them from the great mass of Jews, their notion that the sacred could exist outside of the Temple was shared by two other Jewish sects, Christians and Pharisees, which evolved into modern Christianity and Judaism.
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