While I don;t think Fourth Philosophers were the only Jews to ever go out into the wilderness, this is another similarity that Fourth Philosophers, Jesus and the Teacher share. It appears to have been a "thing" in the first century CE. Yes, other Jews have gone out into the wilderness, from Elijah to Judas Maccabee, people who needed to "get away" from society, since Israel began.
But Jospehus says that Essenes lived in cities ("They have no one certain city, but many of them dwell in every city ... in every city where they live ... [they] betake themselves to their labors again till the evening; then they return home to supper"). And an Essene connection to Qumran isn't certiain, as Shanks discusses here:
Most scholars agree that the word “Essene” does not appear in the scrolls.1 Nor does any inscription from the site say that it is an Essene settlement.a The Essenes are known chiefly from the writings of two first-century C.E. Jewish writers, the historian Josephus and the philosopher Philo of Alexandria. Neither indicates that the Essenes have a home in the desert, however; on the contrary, the Essenes are described as living in many villages and towns of Judea. The only reference to Essenes living in the desert comes from the first-century C.E. Roman encyclopedist Pliny the Elder ...
Pliny actually tells us where we can find these desert hermits: “Then below this [tribe] is Ein Gedi” (infra hos Engada).b Is Pliny locating the Essenes at Qumran, north of Ein Gedi? Many scholars think he is, but it all depends on the meaning of a single Latin word, infra. Those who believe Pliny was referring to Qumran argue that infra hos means “south of this”—surely, Ein Gedi, a Jewish settlement in the valley by the Dead Sea, is south of Qumran.
Other scholars, however, emphasize that maps in the ancient world did not have north at the top, as our maps do. They had east at the top. The famous Madaba map, with its well-known map of Jerusalem, is an example.c Hirschfeld agrees that if Ein Gedi is “below” the Essene community, north (Qumran) is not the direction to look. In fact, says Hirschfeld, when Pliny says “below this,” that’s exactly what he means—at a lower level. The site Pliny is referring to, argues Hirschfeld, would be found up the slope, above Ein Gedi.
But, according to Hirschfeld, there’s another, even more fundamental reason why Qumran can’t be Pliny’s Essene community. The site was not a community of desert ascetics at all, he argues, but the manor house of a large agricultural estate. As such, “Qumran is not a unique site,” says Hirschfeld (emphasis in original). “It is part of a pattern of settlement characteristic of Judea from the first century B.C.E. through the first century C.E. … It was part of a kingdom-wide phenomenon.”
https://library.biblicalarchaeology.org ... ot-qumran/
In any event, there are no references to Essene teachers having a "thing" for going out in to the wilderness in the first century CE. As Shanks notes:
Josephus himself spent three years in the desert in the company of a hermit. His mentor there, a certain Bannus, is described as an ascetic who ate wild plants, dressed in tree bark and immersed himself frequently in cold water. Despite his similarity to the Essenes, however, we cannot include Bannus among them, as Josephus relates that he joined Bannus after he had studied the way of life of the Essenes, implying a distinction between them.
But Josephus notes that going out into the wilderness was a "thing" for Fourth Philosophers:
There was also another body of wicked men gotten together, not so impure in their actions, but more wicked in their intentions, which laid waste the happy state of the city no less than did these murderers. These were such men as deceived and deluded the people under pretense of divine inspiration, but were for procuring innovations and changes of the government; and these prevailed with the multitude to act like madmen, and went before them into the wilderness, as pretending that God would there show them the signals of liberty.
This is like the Teacher's followers in the DSS, who "departed from the land of Judah" to go out into the wilderness of Damascus (perhaps in emulation of Elijah in 1 Kings 19:15: "Then the Lord told him, 'Go back the same way you came, and travel to the wilderness of Damascus'"; and CD changes Amos 5:27 from being exiled "beyond Damascus" to "
to Damascus" to fit this meaning).
And Jesus follows this pattern too, by going out into the wilderness at the beginning of his ministry and then taking his disciples out to "desolate" places (e.g., Mk. 8:4 and 6:35, "And his disciples answered him, 'How can one feed these people with bread here in this
desolate place?'"; "And when it grew late, his disciples came to him and said, “This is a
desolate place, and the hour is now late").
So to me, this is just another example of Jesus and the Teacher sounding like Fourth Philosophic kooks who took their followers out into the wilderness "under pretense of divine inspiration," which Josephus notes was a "thing" during the first century CE.
