Qumran Community and the Essenes

The Essene community at Qumran is thriving during Jesus' lifetime, producing and preserving the Dead Sea Scrolls — over 900 manuscripts that are straight up the oldest biblical texts ever found. These dudes live a strict communal life with ritual purity, shared meals, and apocalyptic expectations that honestly sound a lot like early Christian communities. The scrolls, discovered in 1947, include every OT book except Esther and prove the Hebrew Bible was transmitted with insane accuracy over centuries. John the Baptist's wilderness lifestyle has led scholars to wonder if he had Essene connections.