[62] Neither is this peculiar to the Essenes; for not only did the Pharisees of old do the same (comp. Ioma 28, a); but the orthodox Jews of the present day wash after performing the duties of nature. [↑]
[63] This division of the brotherhood into four classes, as well as the impurity contracted by the higher class when touching one who belonged to a lower class of purity, also existed among the Pharisees. (Vide supra, p. 7, note 1.) [↑]
[64] Philo, too, speaks of this fact. (Vide supra p. 36.) [↑]
[65] This is another instance of the anxiety of Josephus to make the different phases of Judaism harmonise with the Greek mode of thinking. [↑]
[66] It is evident that Josephus, as an orthodox and pious Jew, cannot mean by εἱμαρμένη the Fatum of the Stoics, which was above the deities; but intends to convey thereby the idea of eternal counsels and predestination spoken of in the Bible. Indeed, elsewhere Josephus tells us distinctly that “the doctrine of the Essenes delights to leave all things to God” (vide infra p. 52); so that that which is in the one case ascribed to fate, is in the other ascribed to God. [↑]
[67] No more regard is to be paid to this remark, that the Essenes are like the Pythagoreans, than to the assertion which Josephus makes afterwards that they are related in their manner of life to the Polistae, (vide infra p. 53), as his aim was to shew how much the Jewish sects resembled the Greek systems of philosophy. Comp. p. 41, note 21. [↑]
[68] The fact that Menahem saw Herod in Jerusalem, and that the Essene Judah, as Josephus tells us elsewhere (comp. Jewish War, book i. chap. iii. § 5; Antiq. book xiii. chap. xi. § 2), foretold in the temple the death of Antigones, clearly shows that the Essenes did not at first form a separate community, but lived together with the rest of their Jewish brethren. [↑]
[69] Pliny, whom Solinus copies, simply says that the Essenes live in the society of palm-trees (socia palmarum), to form an antithesis with the appellation a solitary community (sola gens); and this is perfectly correct. But Solinus’ alteration of it into “palm-berries are their food” (palmis victitant) is incorrect, inasmuch as they lived from the cultivation of the land, bees, &c. [↑]
[70] This is simply a reiteration of what Pliny says about the antiquity of the Essenes. [↑]
[71] This work of Josephus, addressed to the Greeks, is no longer extant. [↑]