1. Agriculturalist, theologian, and biblical archaeologist Guillaume seeks to make biblical exegetes more familiar with ancient farming and its techniques by integrating some of the growing body of knowledge derived from economic studies of ancient Mesopotamia and Egypt.

2. Philo of Alexandria, the first century Jewish sage, philosopher, and exegete, perhaps known most famously in Christian circles as the great Allegorizer of Israel’s scripture whose methods were taken up by the Alexandrian fathers of the church, has an important description of the ethics of the Essenes that may be pertinent to the question.