As to the relationship which Essenism bears to Judaism, the very fact that the Essenes, like the other Jews, professed to he guided by the teachings of the Bible, and that a rupture between them and the Jewish community at large is nowhere mentioned, but that on the contrary they are always spoken of in the highest terms of commendation, would of itself be sufficient to prove it. In doctrine, as well as in practice, the Essenes and the Pharisees were nearly alike. Both had four classes of Levitical purity, which were so marked that one who lived according to the higher degree of purity, became impure by touching one who practised a lower degree, and could only regain his purity by lustration. Both subjected every applicant for membership to a noviciate of twelve months. Both gave their novices an apron in the first year of their probation. Both refused to propound the mysteries of the cosmogony and cosmology to any one except to members of the society. Both had stewards in every place where they resided to supply the needy strangers of their order with articles of clothing and food. Both regarded office as coming from God. Both looked upon their meal as a sacrament. Both bathed before sitting down to the meal. Both wore a symbolic garment on the lower part of the body whilst bathing. Amongst both the priest began and concluded the meal with prayer. Both regarded ten persons as constituting a complete number for divine worship, and held the assembly of such a number as sacred. Amongst both of them none would spit to the right hand in the presence of such an assembly. Both washed after performing the functions of nature. Both would not remove a vessel on the Sabbath. And both abstained from using oaths, though it is true that the Essenes alone uniformly observed it as a sacred principle. The differences between the Essenes and the Pharisees are such as would naturally develope themselves in the course of time from the extreme rigour with which the former sought to practise the Levitical laws of [[22]]purity. As contact with any one or with anything belonging to any one who did not live according to the same degree of purity, rendered them impure according to the strict application of their laws, the Essenes were in the first place obliged to withdraw from intercourse with their other Jewish brethren, and form themselves into a separate brotherhood. Accordingly the first difference between them and the others was that they formed an isolated order. The second point of difference was on marriage. The Pharisees regarded marriage as a most sacred institution, and laid it down as a rule that every man is to take a wife at the age of eighteen (Comp. Aboth v. 21), whilst the Essenes were celibates, which, as we have seen before, also arose from their anxiety to avoid defilement. Hence the declaration in Aboth d. R. Nathan—“there are eight kinds of Pharisees; … and those Pharisees who live in celibacy are Essenes” (c. xxxvii.).[6] The third difference which existed between them and the Pharisees, and which was also owing to the rigorous application of the Levitical laws of purity, was that they did not frequent the temple and would not offer sacrifices. And fourthly, though they firmly believed in the immortality of the soul, yet, unlike the Pharisees, they did not believe in the resurrection of the body.
The identity of many of the precepts and practices of [[23]]Essenism and Christianity is unquestionable. Essenism urged on its disciples to seek first the kingdom of God and his righteousness: so Christ ( Matt. vi. 33 ; Luke xii. 31 ). The Essenes forbade the laying up of treasures upon earth: so Christ ( Matt. vi. 19–21 ). The Essenes demanded of those who wished to join them to sell all their possessions, and to divide it among the poor brethren: so Christ ( Matt. xix. 21 ; Luke xii. 33 ). The Essenes had all things in common, and appointed one of the brethren as steward to manage the common bag; so the primitive Christians ( Acts ii. 44, 45 ; iv. 32–34 ; John xii. 6 ; xiii. 29 ). Essenism put all its members on the same level, forbidding the exercise of authority of one over the other, and enjoining mutual service; so Christ ( Matt. xx. 25–28 ; Mark ix. 35–37 ; x. 42–45 ). Essenism commanded its disciples to call no man master upon the earth; so Christ ( Matt. xxiii. 8–10 ). Essenism laid the greatest stress on being meek and lowly in spirit; so Christ ( Matt. v. 5 ; xi. 29 ). Christ commended the poor in spirit, those who hunger and thirst after righteousness, the merciful, the pure in heart, and the peacemakers; so the Essenes. Christ combined the healing of the body with that of the soul; so the Essenes. Like the Essenes, Christ declared that the power to cast out evil spirits, to perform miraculous cures, &c., should be possessed by his disciples as signs of their belief ( Mark xvi. 17 ; comp. also Matt. x. 8 ; Luke ix. 1, 2 ; x. 9 ). Like the Essenes, Christ commanded his disciples not to swear at all, but to say yea, yea, and nay, nay. The manner in which Christ directed his disciples to go on their journey ( Matt. x. 9, 10 ) is the same which the Essenes adopted when they started on a mission of mercy. The Essenes, though repudiating offensive war, yet took weapons with them when they went on a perilous journey; Christ enjoined his disciples to do the same thing ( Luke xxii. 36 ). Christ commended that elevated spiritual life, which enables [[24]]a man to abstain from marriage for the kingdom of heaven’s sake, and which cannot be attained by all men save those to whom it is given ( Matt. xix. 10–12 ; comp. also 1 Cor. viii .); so the Essenes who, as a body, in waiting for the kingdom of heaven (מלכות השמים) abstained from connubial intercourse. The Essenes did not offer animal sacrifices, but strove to present their bodies a living sacrifice, holy and acceptable unto God, which they regarded as a reasonable service; the Apostle Paul exhorts the Romans to do the same. ( Rom. xii. 1 ). It was the great aim of the Essenes to live such a life of purity and holiness as to be the temples of the Holy Spirit, and to be able to prophesy: the apostle Paul urges the Corinthians to covet to prophesy ( 1 Cor. xiv. 1, 39 ). When Christ pronounced John to be Elias ( Matt. xi. 14 ), he declared that the Baptist had already attained to that spirit and power which the Essenes strove to obtain in their highest stage of purity.[7] It will therefore hardly be doubted that our Saviour himself belonged to this holy brotherhood. This will especially be apparent when we remember that the whole Jewish community, at the advent of Christ, was divided into three parties, the Pharisees, the Sadducees and the Essenes, and that every Jew had to belong to one of these sects. Jesus who, in all things, conformed to the Jewish law, and who was holy, harmless, undefiled, and separate from sinners, would therefore naturally associate himself with that order of Judaism which was most congenial to his holy nature. Moreover, the fact that Christ, with the exception of once, was not heard of in public till his thirtieth year, implying that he lived in seclusion with this fraternity, and that though he frequently rebuked the Scribes, Pharisees and Sadducees, he never denounced the Essenes, strongly confirms this conclusion. There can be no difficulty in admitting that the [[25]]Saviour of the world, who taught us lessons from the sparrows in the air, and the lilies in the field, and who made the whole realm of nature tributary to his teachings, would commend divine truth wherever it existed. But whilst Christ propounded some of the everlasting truths which were to be found less adulterated and practised more conscientiously among the Essenes than among the rest of the people, he repudiated their extremes. They were ascetics; he ate and drank the good things of God ( Matt., xi. 19 ). They considered themselves defiled by contact with any one who practised a lower degree of holiness than their own; Christ associated with publicans and sinners, to teach them the way to heaven. They sacrificed the lusts of their flesh to gain spiritual happiness for themselves; Christ sacrificed himself for the salvation of others.
It is now impossible to ascertain the precise date when this order of Judaism first developed itself. According to Philo, Moses himself instituted this order; Josephus contents himself with saying that they existed “ever since the ancient time of the fathers;” whilst Pliny assures us that, without any one being born among them, the Essenes, incredible to relate, “have prolonged their existence for thousands of ages.”[8] Bating, however, these assertions, which are quite in harmony with the well known ancient custom of ascribing some pre-Adamite period to every religious or philosophical system, it must already have become apparent, from the description of it, that the very nature of the Essenes precludes the possibility of tracing its date. The fact that the Essenes developed themselves gradually, and at first imperceptibly, through intensifying the prevalent religious notions, renders it impossible to say with exactness at what degree of intensity they are to be considered as detached from the general body. [[26]]The first mention we have of their existence is in the days of Jonathan the Maccabæan, B.C. 166. (Joseph. Antiq. xiii. 5, 8). We then hear of them again in the reign of Aristobulus I., B.C. 106, in connection with a prophecy about the death of Antigonus, uttered by Judas an Essene, of which Josephus gives the following account. “Judas, an Essene, whose predictions had up to this time never deceived, caused great astonishment on this occasion. When he saw at that time Antigonus pass through the temple, he called out to his disciples, of whom he had no small number—‘Oh! it would be better for me to die now, since truth died before me, and one of my prophecies has proved false. Antigonus, who ought to have died this day, is alive; Strato’s Tower, which is six hundred furlongs distance from here, is fixed for his murder, and it is already the fourth hour of the day [ten o’clock]; time condemns the prophecy as a falsehood.’ Having uttered these words, the aged man sunk into a long, dejected, and sorrowing silence. Soon after, the report came that Antigonus was murdered in the subterranean passage which, like Cesarea on the sea side, was also called Strato’s Tower. It was this circumstance that misled the prophet.” (Jewish War, i. 3, § 5; Antiq. xiii. 11, § 2). The third mention of their existence we find in the well known prophecy of the Essene Manahem, uttered to Herod when a boy.[9] Now these accounts most unquestionably show that the Essenes existed at least two centuries before the Christian era, and that they at first lived amongst the Jewish community at large. Their residence at Jerusalem is also evident from the fact that there was a gate named after them (Ἐσσηνῶν πύλη Joseph. Jewish War, v. 4, § 2). When they ultimately withdrew themselves from the rest of the Jewish nation, the majority of them settled on the north-west shore of the Dead Sea, sufficiently distant to escape its noxious exhalations, and the rest lived in scattered communities [[27]]throughout Palestine and Syria. Both Philo and Josephus estimated them to be above four thousand in number. This must have been exclusive of women and children. We hear very little of them after this period (i.e. 40 A.D.); and there can hardly be any doubt that, owing to the great similarity which existed between their precepts and practices and those of the primitive Christians, the Essenes as a body must have embraced Christianity.
Having ascertained the character of the Essenes, we shall be better prepared to investigate the origin of their name, which has been the cause of so much controversy, and which was not known even to Philo and Josephus. There is hardly an expression the etymology of which has called forth such a diversity of opinion as this name has elicited. The Greek and the Hebrew, the Syriac and the Chaldee, names of persons and names of places, have successively been tortured to confess the secret connected with this appellation, and there are no less, if not more, than twenty different explanations of it, which I shall give in chronological order. Philo tells us that some derived it from the Greek homonym ὁσιότης holiness, because the Essenes were above all others worshippers of God; but he rejects it as incorrect (vide infra, p. 32) without giving us another derivation. 2. Josephus does not expressly give any derivation of it, but simply says, “the third sect who really seem to practise holiness (ὁ δὴ καὶ δοκεῖ σεμνότητα ἀσκεῖν) are called Essenes.” (Vide infra p. 41). From the addition, however, “who really seem to practise holiness or piety,” Frankel[10] argues that the word must mean holiness or piety, because it appears to justify the name, and hence concludes that Josephus most probably took it to be the Hebrew חסידים or צנועים. Whilst Jost[11] is of opinion that Josephus derived it from the Chaldee חשא to be silent, to be mysterious, [[28]]because חשן the high priest’s breast-plate, for which the Septuagint has λογεῖον or λόγιον is translated by him ἐσσην, or that he might have deduced this idea from חשן itself, and traced it to λογεῖον or λόγιον as endowed with the gift of prophecy.[12] In Aboth of R. Nathan[13] it is written עשאני from עשה to do, to perform, and accordingly denotes the performers of the law. 4. Epiphanius again calls them Ὀσσαῖοι and Ὀσσηνοι and tells us that it etymologically signifies στιβαρὸν γένος the stout or strong race, evidently taking it for חסין or עזים. 5. In another place Epiphanius affirms that the Essenes borrowed their name from Jesse the father of David, or from Jesus, whose doctrines he ascribes to them; explaining the name Jesus to signify in Hebrew a physician; and calls them Jesseans.[14] In this he is followed by Petitus who makes them so related to David that they were obliged to take the name of his father Jesus or Jesse;[15] although Jesus does not signify physician but God-help. 6. Suidas (Lex s. v.) and Hilgenfeld (Die jüdische Apokal. p. 278), make it out to be the form חזין = θεωρητικοί seers, and the latter maintains that this name was given to them because they pretended to see visions and to prophesy. 7. Josippon b. Gorion[16] (lib. iv. sects. 6, 7, p.p. 274 and 278, ed. Breithaupt), and [[29]]Gale (Court of the Gentiles, part ii., p. 147), take it for the Hebrew חסידים the pious, the puritans. 8. De Rossi[17] (Meor Enaim, 82 a), Gfrörer (Philo, ii. p. 341), Herzfeld (Geschichte d. V. Israel ii. p. 397), and others, insist that it is the Aramaic אסיא = θεραπευτής physician, and that this name was given to them because of the spiritual or physical cures they performed. Indeed, De Rossi and Herzfeld will have it that the sect Baithusians ביתוסים mentioned in the Talmud is nothing but a contraction of בית אסי the school or sect of physicians, just as בית הילל stands for the school of Hillel. 9. Salmasius affirms that the Essenes derived their name from the town called Essa, situated beyond the Jordan, which is mentioned by Josephus (Antiq. xiii. 15, § 2), or from the place Vadi Ossis.[18] 10. Rappaport (Erech Milln, p. 41), says that it is the Greek ἰσος an associate, a fellow of the fraternity. 11. Frankel (Zeitschrift, 1846, p. 449, &c.), and others think that it is the Hebrew expression צנועים the retired. 12. Ewald (Geschichte d. Volkes Israel, iv. p. 420), is sure that it is the Rabbinic חזן servant (of God), and that the name was given to them because it was their only desire to be θεραπευταὶ θεοῦ. 13. Graetz (Geschichte der Juden iii. p. 468, second ed.) will have it that it is from the Aramaic סחא to bathe, with Aleph prostheticum, and that it is the shorter form for אסחאי צפרא = טובלי שחרית ἡμιερβαπτισταί hemerobaptists; the Greek form Ἐσσαῖος, Ἐσσαῖοι being nothing but Assaï or Essaï with ח elided. 14. Dr. Löw (Ben Chananja vol. i. p. 352) never doubts but that they were called Essenes after their founder, whose name he tells us was ישי, the disciple of Rabbi Joshua ben Perachja. 15. Dr. Adler (Volkslehrer, vi. p. 50), again submits that it is from the [[30]]Hebrew אסר to bind together, to associate, and that they were called אסרים because they united together to keep the law. 16. Dr. Cohen suggests the Chaldee root עשן to be strong, and that they were called עשיני because of their strength of mind to endure sufferings and to subdue their passions. (Comp. Frankel’s Monatschrift viii. p. 272). 17. Oppenheim thinks that it may be the form עושין and stand for עושין טהרת הקדש or עושין טהרת חטאת observers of the laws of purity and holiness. (Ibid). 18. Jellinek (Ben Chananja iv. 374), again derives it from the Hebrew חצן sinus, περίζωμα, alluding to the apron which the Essenes wore; whilst, 19, Others again derived it from חסיא pious. The two last-mentioned explanations seem to have much to recommend them, they are natural and expressive of the characteristics of the brotherhood. I, however, incline to prefer the last, because it plainly connects the Essenes with an ancient Jewish brotherhood called Chassidim חסידים the pious, who preceded the Essenes, and from whom the latter took their rise. Those who wish to trace this connection, will find an article on the Chassidim in Dr. Alexander’s edition of Kitto’s Cyclopædia of Biblical Literature. [[31]]
II.
I shall now give in chronological order the description of the Essenes found in the writings of Philo, Pliny, Josephus, Solinus, Porphyry, Eusebius and Epiphanius, and subjoin such notes as will explain the difficulties, and show the historical value of the respective documents.
As Philo is the oldest in point of time, we will begin with him. The exact date of the birth of this celebrated Jewish-Alexandrian philosopher is not known. It is, however, generally agreed that he was born in Alexandria between the years 20 and 1 B.C., and died about 60 A.D. Having resided all his lifetime in Alexandria, his information about the Essenes, who lived in Palestine, was derived from hearsay. This will account for some of the inaccuracies in his description of this remarkable brotherhood. He has given us two accounts of them, one in his treatise, entitled Every Virtuous Man is Free, and the other in his treatise, called Apology for the Jews. The latter is no longer extant, but Eusebius has preserved the fragments which speak of the Essenes in his work, entitled Præparatio Evangelica viii. 11. The description of the so-called contemplative Essenes, or Therapeutæ, which is generally appealed to as illustrating the doctrines and practices of the brotherhood in question, has nothing whatever to do with the real Palestinian Essenes; and it is almost certain that it is one of the many apocryphal productions fathered upon Philo, as may be seen from Graetz’s elaborate and masterly analysis of it.[19] Philo’s first account is contained in his treatise entitled Every Virtuous Man is Free, and is as follows:[20] [[32]]
“Palestine, and Syria too, which are inhabited by no slight portion of the numerous population of the Jews, are not barren of virtue. There are some among them called Essenes (Ἐσσαῖοι),—in number more than four thousand,—from, as I think, an incorrect derivation from the Greek homonym hosiotes, holiness (παρώνυμοι ὁσιότητος), because they are above all others worshippers of God (θεραπευταὶ θεοῦ). They do not sacrifice any animate, but rather endeavour to make their own minds fit for holy offering (ἱεροπρεπεῖς διανοίας).[21] They, in the first place, live in villages, avoiding cities on account of the habitual wickedness of the citizens, being sensible that as disease is contracted from breathing an impure atmosphere, so an incurable impression is made on the soul in such evil company.[22] Some of them cultivate the earth, others are engaged in those diverse arts which promote peace, thus [[33]]benefiting themselves and their neighbours. They do not lay up treasures of gold or silver,[23] nor do they acquire large portions of land out of a desire for revenues, but provide themselves only with the absolute necessities of life. Although they are almost the only persons of all mankind who are without wealth and possessions—and this by their own choice rather than want of success—yet they regard themselves as the richest, because they hold that the supply of our wants, and contentment of mind, are riches, as in truth they are.[24]
“No maker of arrows, darts, spears, swords, helmets, breastplates, or shields—no manufacturer of arms or engines of war, nor any man whatever who makes things belonging to war, or even such things as might lead to wickedness in times of peace, is to be found among them.[25] Traffic, innkeeping, or navigation, they never so much as dream of, because they repudiate every inducement to covetousness. There is not a single slave to be found among them, for all are free, and mutually serve each other. They condemn owners of slaves, not only as unjust, inasmuch as they corrupt the principle of equality, but also as impious, because they destroy the law of nature, which like a mother brought forth and nourished all alike, and made them all legitimate brethren, not only in word but in deed; but this relationship, treacherous covetousness, rendered overbearing by success, has destroyed by engendering enmity instead of cordiality, and hatred instead of love.
“They leave the logical part of philosophy, as in no respect necessary for the acquisition of virtue, to the word catchers; and the natural part, as being too difficult for human nature, to the astrological babblers, excepting that part of it which treats upon the existence of God and the origin of the [[34]]universe;[26] but the ethical part they thoroughly work out themselves, using as their guides the laws which their fathers inherited, and which it would have been impossible for the human mind to devise without divine inspiration. Herein they instruct themselves at all times, but more especially on the seventh day. For the seventh day is held holy, on which they abstain from all other work, and go to the sacred places called synagogues, sit according to order, the younger below the elder, and listen with becoming attention. Then one takes the Bible and reads it, and another of those who have most experience comes forward and expounds it, passing over that which is not generally known, for they philosophise on most things in symbols according to the ancient zeal.