Cherchez les femmes: Were the yahad Celibates?

This article challenges the consensual view that the yahad were a celibate group by raising the following arguments: (1) The silence of the Community Rule regarding women and family cannot attest to celibacy, since there are no passages in the scrolls which refer to celibacy; (2) The passage in CD 7:3-10 should not be regarded as alluding to the celibacy of the yahad ; (3) Comparisons with early-modern sects attest to the centrality of celibacy in the group ideology, hence it is impossible that celibacy was self-understood; (4) 4Q502 Ritual of Marriage mentions marriage, reproduction and children, and bears several lexical affinities with 1QS and other compositions of the yahad . Therefore, it should be related to the yahad . Consequently, the sweeping identification of the yahad with the (mainly celibate) Essenes seems problematic.