Free Speech and the Essenes

The Jewish people weren’t always unified. They have a long history of fighting among each other and during the Second Temple period the Pharisees, the Sadducees, and the Essenes had vast disagreements. So much so that the Essenes escaped into the desert to live like monks and to write the Dead Sea Scrolls. Until the Romans came and wiped them all out over issues of free speech, essentially the same problem we have today.