Note 6 — THE ESSENES.

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 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.