‘And after this purification they assemble in a private room, where no person of a different belief (τῶν ἑτεροδόξων, i.e. not an Essene) is permitted to enter; and (so) being by themselves and clean (αὐτοὶ καθαροὶ) they present themselves at the refectory (δειπνητήριον), as if it were a sacred precinct (§ 5).’
‘And they are divided into four grades according to the time passed under the discipline: and the juniors are regarded as so far inferior to the seniors, that, if they touch them, the latter wash their bodies clean (ἀπολούεσθαι), as if they had come in contact with a foreigner (καθάπερ ἀλλοφύλῳ συμφυρέντας, § 10).’
In all these minute scruples relating to ceremonial observances, the denunciations which are hurled against the Pharisees in the Gospels would apply with tenfold force to the Essenes.
(iii) Asceticism.
(iii) If the lustrations of the Essenes far outstripped the enactments of the Mosaic law, so also did their asceticism. I have given reasons above for believing that this asceticism was founded on a false principle, which postulates the malignity of matter and is wholly inconsistent with the teaching of the Gospel[[500]]. But without pressing this point, of which no absolutely demonstrative proof can be given, it will be sufficient to call attention to the trenchant contrast in practice which Essene habits present to the life of Christ. He who ‘came eating and drinking’ and was denounced in consequence as ‘a glutton and a wine-bibber’[[501]], |Eating and drinking.|He whose first exercise of power is recorded to have been the multiplication of wine at a festive entertainment, and whose last meal was attended with the drinking of wine and the eating of flesh, could only have excited the pity, if not the indignation, of these rigid abstainers. And again, attention should be directed to another kind of abstinence, where the contrast is all the more speaking, because the matter is so trivial and the scruple so minute.
‘My head with oil thou didst not anoint (Luke vii. 46).’
‘Thou, when thou fastest, anoint thy head (Matt. vi. 17).’
‘And they consider oil a pollution (κηλῖδα), and though one is smeared involuntarily, he rubs his body clean (σμήχεται τὸ σῶμα, § 3).’
And yet it has been stated that ‘the Saviour of the world ... showed what is required for a holy life in the Sermon on the Mount by a description of the Essenes[[502]].’
Celibacy.