Chapter V · PRE-CHRISTIAN GNOSTICS: THE ESSENES

It comes as rather a wrench to leave the graceful, if vain, speculations of the Greeks, with their joyous and free life and their passionate worship of beauty, which saw in every shifting aspect of nature the revelation of some Being more perfect and glorious than man, for the gloomy and misanthropic monotheism of the Palestinian Jews. Nor is the change made more pleasant when we consider the contrast between the ideas of the two nations as to the perfectibility of man’s nature and his lot after death. While the Greeks under Orphic influence had come to look upon their gods as usually well-disposed to mankind^[457] and even willing to share their power and place with, at any rate, a few highly-gifted or fortunate men, the fanatics among the Jews who returned from the Babylonian Captivity seem to have seen in their national Deity a jealous and uncompromising tyrant, possessed with a hatred for humanity in general, and only extending a modified favouritism to one small nation not distinguished by any specially attractive qualities^[458]. 150To this nation, Yahweh had, according to their own traditions, promised exclusive temporal advantages; but in spite of this promise they had become in turn the slaves or tributaries of the Egyptians, the Philistines, the Assyrians, Chaldaeans, and Persians, and had been more than once forcibly removed by their masters from the land that they looked upon as their God-given inheritance. Moreover, the grace, such as it was, of the Deity they worshipped was held by them to extend to this life only, after which they thought they would either perish like the beasts or would lead at the best a shadowy and colourless existence in Sheol or Hades, like that which called forth the complaints of the Achilles of the Odyssey^[459]. Hence the soil of Judaea at the coming of Alexander might have seemed to anyone to be as unlikely a field for the propagation of ideas resembling those of the Orphics as could well be imagined. But the Jews, with all their pragmatism and narrowness of ideal, have always shown a power of assimilating the ideas of others and of adapting themselves to the usages of the peoples among whom they are cast by a sort of protective mimicry like that to which the preservation of certain insect types is said to be due. This quality had already stood them in good stead during their different periods of captivity in Egypt and Chaldaea, where before Alexander’s conquests they had contrived to get a good deal of the financial management of their captors’ affairs into their own hands, and where they doubtless acted as spies and guides to the armies of the Great Conqueror^[460]. For these services Alexander after his fashion royally rewarded them; but the real crisis of the nation’s fate approached when Alexander’s work was done, and when the different nationalities which he had forced, as it were, into the melting-pot, became tired of acting as pieces in the war game played by his generals and successors, and began to look favourably upon the security offered by the Roman government. In this new order of the world, Palestine, which had hitherto owed its autonomous 151existence to the fact that it formed a useful buffer state or neutral ground separating the two great powers Egypt and Syria and was not vehemently desired by any other nation, saw the reason for her quasi-independence vanishing. Ptolemy Soter, with his usual prescience, had early seen the advantage of getting this borderland into his own custody, and had captured Jerusalem, it is said, one Sabbath morning, when the superstition of the inhabitants deterred them from defending it effectually^[461]. The story, as thus told, probably owes something to the necessity for flattering the national vanity; but it is evident that the politic Lagides knew how to reconcile the Jews to the easy yoke of their suzerainty, and under the early Ptolemies the Jews remained generally faithful to Egypt. When Egypt’s sway became enfeebled after the reign of Ptolemy IV Philopator, Antiochus the Great seized upon Palestine, probably with the connivance of a part of its inhabitants^[462]; and although it remained fairly contented with its new masters until Antiochus’ death, in the reign of his successor, Antiochus Epiphanes, the Jews found themselves confronted with a very disagreeable dilemma. For Antiochus Epiphanes, after his successful attack upon Egypt had been frustrated by the Romans, saw plainly enough that only an empire united and homogeneous in faith and culture could resist for long the new power rising in the West^[463], and resolved to force on the complete Hellenization of the Jews at all hazards. How he failed is told in the Books of the Maccabees, although his failure brought little good to his rebellious subjects, who soon passed with the rest of his empire into the hands of the victorious Romans.

To this end, the splitting-up of the chosen people into warring sects materially contributed. Josephus, writing somewhere about the year 70 A.D., tells us that there existed in his day three “philosophic” sects among the Jews^[464]. The first two of these were the Pharisees and Sadducees familiar to everybody 152through their mention in the New Testament, and the third was the “Essenes.” These Essenes—a name which by some has been thought to mean “the Pure^[465]”—he describes as a small sect numbering not more than 4000 in all, and scattered throughout the villages of Palestine. They lived entirely by manual labour, such as agriculture, and were extraordinarily hospitable to other members of the same sect, so that an Essene never found it necessary to take anything with him on a journey, but could always obtain what he wanted from his fellow-sectaries, even though personally unknown to them. As to their doctrines, he tells us that though “Jews by birth” they abjured marriage^[466], and only recruited their ranks by adoption. They practised, on the same authority, the fullest community of goods, and forbade conversation on worldly matters before the rising of the sun, at which they repeated certain traditional prayers, “as if they made supplication for his rising.” Their meals were always eaten in common and in a sacramental manner, purification in cold water and the donning of white garments being a necessary preliminary^[467]. Sobriety and restraint in speech were, he says, among their most marked characteristics, and they avoided the taking of judicial oaths, averring that “he who cannot be believed without swearing by God is already condemned.” Initiation into the sect was both long and difficult. The novice on his first reception was presented with a hatchet, a girdle and a white garment, but was not allowed to associate with the rest of the order, it being held that they would be defiled if he did so. In spite of this, he was forced to observe the austerities of the order for a year before being allowed “the waters of purification,” and for two years further before being admitted to full 153association with the other members and the common meal^[468]. After this probation, he was sworn on

“the most tremendous oaths to be just towards all men and faithful to the order, not discovering any of their doctrines to others, no, not though he should be compelled to do so at the risk of his life.”

Moreover, he had to swear

“to communicate their doctrines to no one in any other manner than that in which he had received them himself; to abstain from robbery^[469] and that he would equally preserve the books belonging to the sect and the names of the angels.”

Their doctrine concerning the future life was:

“That bodies are corruptible and that the matter of which they are made is not permanent; but that souls are immortal, and continue for ever; and that they come out of the most subtle air, and are united to their bodies as in prisons, into which they are drawn by a certain natural enticement^[470]; but that when they are set free from the bonds of the flesh, they then, as released from a long bondage, rejoice and mount upward^[471].”

154Finally, Josephus tells us that the Essenes take great pains in “studying the writings of the ancients and choose out of them what is most for the advantage of their soul and body,” that they were much given to the practice of medicine, and had those among them “who undertake to foretell things to come by reading the holy books and using several sorts of purifications, and being perpetually conversant in the discourses of the prophets,”—a statement which is explained by another passage^[472] wherein he tells us that they believed “fate forms all things and nothing befalls men but according to it.” From yet another passage^[473] we learn that they were excluded from the Temple worship and offered their sacrifices for themselves instead of through the regular Jewish priesthood^[474].

That Josephus’ account of the Essenes is fairly accurate and well informed appears from the fact that Philo of Alexandria, writing some fifty years earlier than he, also asserts that they numbered “in his opinion about 4000,” and explains their abstention from the Temple worship as being due to their objection to sacrificing living animals^[475]. Philo further tells us that there were among them no makers of warlike weapons, that they refrained from trade and had no slaves; but that their principal study was that of the Jewish Law and the “enquiry into the being of God and the creation of the universe.” 155According to him, on the seventh or holy day when no work was done, they were accustomed to meet together, when one

“takes up the holy volume and reads it, and another of the men of the greatest experience [among them] comes forward and explains what is not very intelligible, for a great many precepts are delivered in enigmatical modes of expression and allegorically.”

He at the same time confirms Josephus’ statement as to their having all goods in common.

Pliny in his Natural History also speaks of the Essenes; but adds little to our knowledge, except the remark that it was the irksomeness of this present life which in his opinion gave rise to the sect^[476]. Of the Christian heresiologists, Hippolytus in his Philosophumena merely repeats the statements of Josephus with the doubtfully accurate addition that the Essenes believed in a final conflagration of the world^[477] and the eternal punishment of the damned; while Epiphanius in his Panarion shows plainly that he had no first-hand knowledge of the Essenes and did not understand the traditional accounts of the sect which must have been extinct a long time before he wrote^[478]. Porphyry in his treatise on Abstinence avowedly quotes from Josephus only^[479].

We see, then, that all we really know about the Essenes is contained in the accounts of Josephus and Philo; but on this slender foundation there has been raised a vast superstructure of conjecture which the unprejudiced reader will probably consider too heavy for its base. The Essenes have been claimed by different writers as merely a strict order of Pharisees, as 156Zoroastrians, and as Buddhists. It has been argued that St John Baptist was an Essene and even that Jesus Himself belonged to the sect^[480]. A more probable theory is that the Essenes derived some of their tenets from the Orphics, whose views were particularly prevalent at Alexandria in the time of the early Ptolemies, as well as in Asia Minor under the Seleucids. From the death of Alexander the Great until that of Antiochus Epiphanes, Palestine was, as we have seen, successively under the sway of these two rival dynasties, and it was the rapid progress of the Jews towards Hellenization in culture, religion, and morals that brought about the Maccabaean uprising, in connection, with which we first hear of the Essenes^[481]. Hence this is the time when, if ever, we should expect the Orphic teaching to affect the Jews, and it is difficult to see whence the Essenes derived their views of the pre-existence of the soul—if that be indeed the construction to be placed upon the scanty and obscure words of Josephus—except from Orphism^[482]. Save for this, however, there is no very cogent reason for attributing to this Jewish sect an Orphic origin. The use of white garments is in a hot climate too general a practice to be really characteristic, while the abstinence from the procreation of children and from food that has had life, although common to the Essenes and the Orphics^[483], may easily have come to the Jews 157from more quarters than one. To the Essene refusal to take oaths and to engage in trade there is no parallel whatever in the Orphic teaching^[484].

But, although there is thus little sign of a direct connection of the Essenes with the Orphics, there can hardly be any doubt that the Jewish sect were Gnostics in the larger sense in which the word is used above. The one distinguishing fact which stands out from Josephus’ account of them is that they had secret doctrines of a kind differing from the beliefs of the rest of the Jews. This is shown by the great pains taken by them in the choice of neophytes, the “tremendous oaths” by which they, who forbade swearing in general, enforced secrecy upon them, and the prohibition to confide their teaching to any save by a long and tedious process of initiation. The only hints we have as to the nature of these doctrines are contained in Philo’s statement that they were given to the enquiry into the being of God and the creation of the universe, and in that of Josephus that the initiate into these secrets was sworn “to preserve the books of the sect and the names of the angels.” Dr Kohler and other Jewish writers see in Philo’s statement a reference to the speculations of the later Jewish Cabala upon what is there called “the Mystery of the Chariot” and “the Mystery of the Creation^[485]”; or in other words how the universe came forth from God and how it is governed. Although the proof of this is slender, it seems probable from the tendency of the whole of the Apocryphal literature of the time which dealt principally with the same subjects. It is evident that the Essene interpretation of the Old Testament, then recently made familiar to the Jews by the Alexandrian translation into Greek known as the Septuagint, must have been different in some respects from that of the other Jews, and that it must have been in some way likely to shock those who held by the traditional interpretation, as otherwise there would have been no necessity for the Essenes 158to bind their neophytes to so strict a secrecy. From Philo’s language on this point it would seem that they interpreted both the Law and the Prophets in some non-natural manner, and it is likely enough that this took the shape of the juggling with the numerical values of the letters of which we find at least one instance in the Revelation of St John, and to which we shall have to return later^[486].

What now can be said in explanation of Josephus’ statement that the Essenes were sworn to secrecy as to the “names of the angels”? The personal name of no angel appears in the Old Testament except in the Book of Daniel, now generally admitted to have been written in the reign of Antiochus Epiphanes, and there is on the face of it no reason why any Jew should wish to keep those there given—Gabriel and Michael—secret. But the knowledge of the name of an inhabitant of the spirit world was at the time of which we are speaking held throughout the East to give a magician full power over the being named, and this belief was universal in the magic of all the nations among whom the Jews had found themselves since the Captivity^[487]. There is thus every likelihood that the Essenes used “the names of the angels” for magical purposes, and this is borne out by the tradition that it was as exorcists of demons and healers of disease that they were afterwards celebrated^[488]. The manner in which these names were used may be judged from the tradition among the Jews that each tribe or order of demons was governed by an angel, and that his subjects were bound to obey upon being addressed by his name^[489].

159It was partly, and perhaps mainly, from this sect of the Essenes that there came, according to the general opinion of scholars, the apocryphal or secret literature which, from the name of its principal book, may be described under the generic name of Enochian^[490]. In the Book of Enoch in its various forms was set forth a vast system of teaching on matters which the Canonical books of the Old Testament hardly touch. Here we have a complete cosmogony in which the mundane egg^[491] of the Orphics plays its part; and the duties of the innumerable orders of angels and their connection with the heavenly bodies, the rebellion of Satan and his host against God, the fall of the Watchers, or angels set over the earth, through the beauty of mortal women, and the arrangement of the different heavens and hells all find a place in it^[492]. But it also deals at great length with that Messianic hope which had for two centuries been dangled by the Prophets before Israel, and which, thanks to the materialistic sense in which it was interpreted by the vast majority of Jews, was to lead directly to their extermination as a nation^[493]. The Book of Enoch and its many successors and imitators are full of predictions of the coming of a Messiah, who should lead the chosen race to the conquest of the world, and, what was to them probably an even more alluring prospect, to the overthrow and enslavement of all the other peoples in it^[494]. 160In the earlier parts of the Ethiopic version—which is in itself, as Dr Charles has pointed out, but “a fragmentary survival of an entire literature that once circulated under the name of Enoch^[495]”—it is described how

“the Holy and Great One will come forth from His dwelling, the God of the world, and going from thence He will tread on Mount Sinai and appear with His hosts, and in the strength of His might appear from heaven^[496].”

The judgment and destruction of all but the elect is next described, and the hurling down of the sinning angels into “the abyss of fire,” while the elect—that is, the Jews, or perhaps only the Essenes—are to live among millennial blessings of a material kind and in the enjoyment of universal peace^[497]. This seems to represent fairly the earlier Essene teaching upon this point, and there is reason to suppose that it was written before the Maccabaean struggles, after which the decadence of the Syrian Empire under Antiochus Epiphanes—hard pressed as he was by the Romans on one side and the Parthians on the other—allowed the Jews to obtain a temporary independence, and to set up a kingdom of their own for the first and last time in their history^[498]. But the wine of military success and political independence proved too strong for the heads of the race which had hitherto been the tributaries and subjects of the Persian, the Greek, the Egyptian, and the Syrian Empires in turn, and, like their kinsmen the Arabs of Mohammed’s time and the Mahdists in our own, nothing less would now satisfy the fanatical among them than universal domination. In the later parts of the same work, the aspirations of the writers become more bloodthirsty and less spiritual, and we hear of a time “When the congregation 161of the righteous will appear^[499],” a phrase which seems to cover the coming-forth of some sect or society till then kept in seclusion. “Then,” it goes on to say, “will the kings and the mighty perish and be given into the hand of the righteous and holy^[500].” In another part of the same book, we hear of angels being sent to

“the Parthians and Medes, to stir up the kings and provoke in them a spirit of unrest, and rouse them from their thrones, that they may break forth from their resting-places as lions and as hungry wolves among the flocks^[501].”

These are to make one final assault upon Jerusalem, and

“to tread under foot the land of His elect ones and the land of His elect ones will be before them a threshing floor and a path. But the city of My righteous [i.e. Jerusalem] will be a hindrance to their horses, and they will begin to fight among themselves, and their right hand will be strong against themselves, and a man will not know his brother, nor a son his father or his mother, till the number of corpses through their slaughter is beyond count, and their punishment be no idle one. And in those days Sheol will open his jaws, and they will be swallowed up therein, and their destruction will be at an end. Sheol will devour the sinners in the presence of the elect^[502].”

This, according to the author who has made the most exhaustive study of the Enochian literature yet attempted, must have been written after the spirit which had inspired the Maccabaean revolt had died away under the tyranny and luxury of the later 162Jewish kings^[503]. It seems very difficult, in the face of the many interpolations that the documents have undergone at the hands of Jewish and even Christian writers, to decide how much of these prophecies can be attributed directly to the sect of the Essenes; but there can be little doubt that they accurately represent the hope of supremacy over the nations which they shared with the Pharisees and the other fanatics among the Jewish nation. Only thus can we explain the community of goods and the very un-Jewish contempt for money-making which formed the most singular features of Essene practice^[504]. To those who expected to be immediately put in possession of the whole earth all desire for worldly advancement must have been a matter of indifference. A similar conviction led to the maintenance of the same practice in the Christian Church so long as she continued to believe in the nearness of the Parusia or Second Coming of her Founder^[505].

From this dream of universal dominion, nothing seemed able to arouse the poorer Jews. In vain did the Sadducees, who comprised those of the nation who had become rich either by trading with the Gentile or by dependence on the luxurious Jewish Court, try to persuade the people that they had better make the best of the Hellenist culture thrust upon them than try to arrest its progress by fighting against powers that would crush them like glass when once sufficiently provoked^[506]. In vain did the Syrian Empire, warned by the mistakes of Antiochus 163Epiphanes in Hellenizing the Jews against their will, accord them the largest possible religious liberty and even acknowledge their right to self-government in exchange for tribute^[507]. When the Romans, whom, according to their own account, they had called in to protect them against their Syrian overlords, destroyed once for all their chance of remaining an independent state, they not only gave the Jews the fullest liberty to practise their own religion, but set over them first a vassal king and then tetrarchs of Semitic blood, who might be supposed to moderate the too pronouncedly Western ideas of the Roman governor of Syria^[508]. But these concessions were no more effective in inducing the Jews to settle down quietly as the peaceful tributaries of a great empire than had been the severities of Antiochus. They seized every opportunity to revolt, every time with the accompaniment of horrible atrocities committed upon those unfortunate Gentiles who for a moment fell into their power, until, some sixty years after the Destruction of the Temple by Titus, Hadrian had to wage against them the awful war of extermination which extinguished their nationality for ever. At the Fair of the Terebinth, when every able-bodied Jew left alive in Palestine was sold into slavery, the nation must have realized at last the vanity of its dream^[509].

During this time, that is to say, between the years 168 B.C. and 135 A.D., the flood of Apocalyptic literature never ceased to pour forth. All of it was what is called pseudepigraphical, that is to say, the books of which it was composed were falsely attributed to Enoch, the sons of Jacob, Moses, Job, Ezra, Baruch, and other personages of the Old Testament. Not all of these have come down to us, but a considerable number of books have survived. The pre-Christian ones that we have, 164included, beside the Ethiopian Book of Enoch quoted above, the Testaments of the XII Patriarchs, the Psalms of Solomon, and part of the Sibylline Oracles. Later probably than the beginning of our era, appeared the Book of the Secrets of Enoch, which Dr Charles thinks was written in Egypt, the Wisdom literature, certainly having the same place of origin, the Book of Jubilees or little Genesis, the Assumption of Moses, the rest of the Sibyllines, the Apocalypse of Baruch, the later books of Maccabees, and the Fourth Book of Esdras^[510]. One and all of these deal with the glories before the Jewish nation, when by supernatural help it will be able to turn the tables on its would-be civilizers, and one and all breathe the most virulent hatred against every body who is not a Jew^[511]. They show no consensus of opinion as to the future lot of the Gentiles; for, while some teach that the victories of the Messiah will end in their complete 165annihilation, others declare that they will be preserved to become, as Isaiah had prophesied, the servants and hand-maidens of the Jews, to build up the walls of Jerusalem, and to be the herdsmen, ploughmen, and vinedressers of Israel^[512]. Others again, held that the Gentiles would be hurled into Gehenna with the sinning angels^[513]—even those who were dead being raised again for that purpose—and would there be tormented for ever in the presence of the Jews, who were to find one of their chief pleasures in the sight of their sufferings^[514].

“And I saw all the sheep that had been left, and all the beasts of the earth, and all the birds of the heaven,”

says the pseudo-Enoch in a vision wherein he describes under this figure the nations which had not been destroyed by the celestial hosts of the Messiah,

“falling down and doing homage to those sheep [i.e. the Jews] and making petition to and obeying them in every thing^[515].”

For the world was made for the Jews and the perversity of the Gentiles was divinely ordained for the express purpose that their “punishment” might be great^[516].

“All this I have spoken before thee, O Lord,” says the Apocryphal Ezra, “because thou madest the world for our sakes. As for the other people which also came of Adam, thou hast said that they are nothing, but are like unto spittle, and hast likened the abundance of them unto a drop that falleth from a vessel^[517]. And now O Lord behold, these heathen, which have ever been reputed as nothing, have begun to be lords over us, and to devour us.... If the world now be made for our sakes, why do we not enter into possession of our world? How long shall this endure?” And then comes Yahweh’s answer: “Behold I will call together all the kings of the earth to reverence me, which are from the rising of the Sun, from the South, from the East, and Libanus: to turn themselves one against 166another, and repay that they have done to thee. Like as they do yet this day unto my chosen, so will I do also, and recompense in their bosom^[518].” “After the signs have come of which thou wast told before,” says the Apocalypse of Baruch, “when the nations become turbulent, and the time of My Messiah is come, He shall both summon all the nations, and some of them He shall spare and some of them He shall slay. These things therefore shall come upon the nations which are to be spared by Him. Every nation which knows not Israel, and has not trodden down the seed of Jacob, shall indeed be spared. And this because some out of every nation shall be subjected to thy people. But all those who have ruled over you, or have known you, shall be given up to the sword^[519].”

So in the Book of Jubilees we are told that God

“sanctified [Israel] and gathered it from amongst all the children of men; for there are many nations and many peoples, and all are His and over all hath He placed spirits in authority to lead them astray from Him. But over Israel He did not appoint any angel or spirit^[520].”

As for the delight in the sufferings of the damned Gentiles it is poetically expressed in the Assumption of Moses:

“For the Heavenly One will arise from His royal throne

And He will go forth from His holy habitation

And His wrath will burn on account of His sons

*****

And the horns of the Sun will be broken and he shall be turned into darkness;

And the moon shall not give her light, and be turned wholly into blood

And the circle of the stars shall be disturbed

*****

For the Most High will arise, the Eternal God alone,

And He will appear to punish the Gentiles

And He will destroy all their idols

Then thou, O Israel, shalt be happy

And thou shalt mount upon the neck of the eagle^[521]

And the days of thy mourning will be ended

167And thou shalt look from on high and shalt see thy enemies in Gehenna,

And thou shalt recognize them and rejoice

And thou shalt give thanks and confess thy Creator^[522].”

And in what has been called the Apocalypse of Salathiel, we hear that the righteous Jews will “have joy in seven ways”:

“First of all they shall see with great joy the glory of him who receives them up, for they shall rest in seven orders. The first order because they have striven with great labour to overcome ‘the innate evil thought^[523]’ which was fashioned together with them, that it might not lead them astray from life into death. The second order, because they see the round in which the souls of the ungodly wander and the punishment that awaits them...^[524]”

A comparison of the dates of these documents lends little support to the view that this hatred of the Gentiles was wrung from the Jews by oppression; and there seems grounds for supposing that it had been present to their minds ever since their return from the Captivity^[525]. Tacitus was certainly justified when he speaks of the nation as animated by bitter enmity against the rest of the human race^[526].

How far the Essenes were responsible for the whole of this later literature, it is now impossible to say. Nearly every one of the books above quoted have been claimed as of Essene origin by some scholar or another^[527], and those who, like 168Dr Charles, are inclined to reduce Essene influence upon them to a minimum, admit that considerable interpolations have been made in most of the documents by Essene hands. Moreover, all those books which do not purport to be by Enoch himself either mention his name with peculiar reverence, or give the same account of celestial physics and other matters as the Ethiopic Book of Enoch, or quote it directly^[528]. There seems, therefore, little doubt that all this literature came forth from the same school, and that it was directly or indirectly the result of Essene teaching.

A point more difficult to determine is how the Essenes managed to reconcile their secret doctrines with the reverence for the Mosaic Law and its promulgator which they undoubtedly professed^[529]. There is no direct evidence with regard to this save Philo’s remark quoted above as to their allegorical interpretation of Scripture. This, too, may have had its origin in Orphic practice, for we know that the Orphics were accustomed to carry allegory so far as to both materialize their gods, as when they spoke of Bacchus as Wine, and to deify abstractions, as when they made hymns to Health, Peace and other abstract conceptions as if they were actual persons^[530]. But besides this, the Essenes probably practised a mode of interpretation peculiar to themselves, which they kept secret or confined to members of the sect. Something of the kind was not unknown among the Greeks, for some of the Orphic gold plates found in Magna 169Graecia are intended to be read acrostically^[531], and the Graeco-Egyptian magic papyri contain many instances of a similar use of the Homeric poems by which they could be converted into an oracle or fortune-telling book^[532]. By such means any document can of course be made to mean anything, and the Essenes seem to have added to this the practice of isopsephism or regarding words as equivalent in sense which had the same numerical value. The most familiar instance of this is in the Revelation of St John where “the number of the Beast” is said to be “the number of a man; and his number is six hundred threescore and six”; or, in other words, Nero Caesar, whose name written in Hebrew letters is equivalent to the number given^[533]. In like manner we read in the Book of Enoch, in the story of the sinning angels:

“This is the number of Kesbeêl, who showed the head of the oath to the holy ones when he dwelt high above in glory, and its name is Bêqâ. And this angel requested Michael to show him the hidden name, that they might mention it in the oath, so that those who revealed all that was hidden to the children of men might quake before that name and oath. And this is the power of that oath, for it is powerful and strong, and he placed this oath Akae in the hand of Michael^[534].”

170From the context, it would appear that the words Akâe and Bêqâ both cover the Tetragrammaton or four-lettered name of JHVH, by means of which omnific word it is said the heavens and earth were created^[535]. The mysterious name of Taxo given in the Assumption of Moses as that of the protagonist against Antiochus is doubtless to be interpreted in some such fashion^[536].

Of the history of the Essenes as an organized sect, we know hardly anything. If we accept Josephus’ account of their numbers as relating to his own time^[537], it would seem that they were flourishing at the date of the Destruction of the Temple under Titus. This event would probably affect them little directly, because, as we have seen, they took no part in the Temple worship; and, scattered as they were through the villages of Palestine, they may easily have escaped the punishment meted out by the Romans to those towns which were the strongholds of the rebellion. But it is extremely improbable that they can have survived the War of Extermination under Hadrian, when the partizans of the false Messiah kept up a futile resistance in the country as well as in the towns, and Hadrian’s general, Severus, had in consequence to lay the land desolate^[538]. Moreover, it is not improbable that the sect may have taken an active part in the Revolt, which they may easily have looked upon as the fulfilment of their Messianic hopes, and may thus have perished under the stern measures of repression which the fanaticism and barbarities of the rebels forced upon the conquerors. At any rate, we hear little more of the Essenes after this date. But the fantastic method of interpreting Scriptures which they practised and probably introduced, lingered long, and, after being used by the earliest 171Christian writers^[539], was revived, as has been said, by the Cabalists of the Middle Ages, and has even survived into our own time. It was especially high in favour with those numerous bodies of heretics who in the first three centuries of our era asserted that knowledge was the one thing needful for salvation and were thus called, both by themselves and by their opponents the Fathers of the Church, by the generic and distinctive name of Gnostics^[540].

172