The eschatology of the group who produced the Scrolls, while sharing some common features with other ‘apocalyptic’ writings, must not, then, be read simply as ‘dualistic’, or as expecting ‘the end of the world’. Sanders seems to me exactly right: ‘From the Scrolls, we learn that the sect looked forward to a dramatic change in the future, which modern scholars often call “the eschaton” …, which is slightly misleading, since like other Jews the Essenes did not think that the world would end.’200 Rather, the exalted language about a coming great day was intended to refer to the time when Israel’s
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