Having anticipated the results in this statement, I shall now endeavour to develope the main features of Essenism; and, while doing so, I will ask my readers to bear in mind the portrait of the Colossian heresy in St Paul, and to mark the resemblances, as the enquiry proceeds[[240]].
The Judaic element is especially prominent in the life and teaching of the sect. The Essene was exceptionally rigorous in his observance of the Mosaic ritual. In his strict abstinence |Observance of the Mosaic law.| from work on the sabbath he far surpassed all the other Jews. He would not light a fire, would not move a vessel, would not perform even the most ordinary functions of life[[241]]. The whole day was given up to religious exercises and to exposition of the Scriptures[[242]]. His respect for the law extended also to the law-giver. After God, the name of Moses was held in the highest reverence. He who blasphemed his name was punished with death[[243]]. In all these points the Essene was an exaggeration, almost a caricature, of the Pharisee.
External elements superadded.
So far the Essene has not departed from the principles of normal Judaism; but here the divergence begins. In three main points we trace the working of influences, which must have been derived from external sources.
1. Rigid asceticism, in respect to
1. To the legalism of the Pharisee, the Essene added an asceticism, which was peculiarly his own, and which in many respects contradicted the tenets of the other sect. The honourable, and even exaggerated, estimate of marriage, which was characteristic of the Jew, and of the Pharisee as the typical Jew, found no favour with the Essene[[244]]. |marriage,|Marriage was to him an abomination. Those Essenes who lived together as members of an order, and in whom the principles of the sect were carried to their logical consequences, eschewed it altogether. To secure the continuance of their brotherhood they adopted children, whom they brought up in the doctrines and practices of the community. There were others however who took a different view. They accepted marriage, as necessary for the preservation of the race. Yet even with them it seems to have been regarded only as an inevitable evil. They fenced it off by stringent rules, demanding a three years’ probation and enjoining various purificatory rites[[245]]. The conception of marriage, as quickening and educating the affections and thus exalting and refining human life, was wholly foreign to their minds. Woman was a mere instrument of temptation in their eyes, deceitful, faithless, selfish, jealous, misled and misleading by her passions.
meats and drinks,
But their ascetic tendencies did not stop here. The Pharisee was very careful to observe the distinction of meats lawful and unlawful, as laid down by the Mosaic code, and even rendered these ordinances vexatious by minute definitions of his own. But the Essene went far beyond him. He drank no wine, he did not touch animal food. His meal consisted of a piece of bread and a single mess of vegetables. Even this simple fare was prepared for him by special officers consecrated for the purpose, that it might be free from all contamination[[246]]. Nay, so stringent were the rules of the order on this point, that when an Essene was excommunicated, he often died of starvation, being bound by his oath not to take food prepared by defiled hands, and thus being reduced to eat the very grass of the field[[247]].
and oil for anointing.
Again, in hot climates oil for anointing the body is almost a necessary of life. From this too the Essenes strictly abstained. Even if they were accidentally smeared, they were careful at once to wash themselves, holding the mere touch to be a contamination[[248]].